I got to the pool hall a little after four in the morning. On one of my earlier visits I had asked the fry cook when they opened. The answer was "Two or thereabouts."
The disturbance of my sleep, the dreaming, had brought me fully awake in tears. I needed to be awake and functioning in what normally is a controllable reality, or it is so believed.
As soon as Kathy could, she brought me coffee and a large glass of ice. No sooner than she had turned to her work behind the counter, when the door opened and Mr. Jones strolled in and took his seat across from me. He placed his hat on the seat and leaned his cane against the booth table.
"Morning, kind sir; you're out attentive to your mission early this day, I see," he greeted me.
Without thinking, maybe because I was not nearly enough awake to speak other than what was on my mind I briskly said, "Nightmares." That was all I said as I brought my eyes to connect with his. Mine was not a friendly gaze. It was a mean reflective stare. I call it the emerging of the 'wolf.' "You look upon me most exceedingly severe sir, as if perchance I had something to do with the troubles that visited you in slumber. I stand charged, sir, without evidence. Now, dear sir, is that proper?" He was making light of my discomfort and my troubled feelings. Hell, I was mad at him and not amused.
"Evidence, sir," I continued, charged by a building anger. "I have evidence of a sort!"
I then recounted the dreams as fully as I could remember. He sat still and listened attentively. As I spoke, his face was revealing nothing. After telling him about my nightmares, my ethereal evidence, I turned to the documented hard facts: the intriguing locations of Miss Patc's and his graves, his some fifty years as a boarder in the Stonebreaker home, the name of Miss Patc's son, he in Havana with King, and the slave schedule and census information about runaway mulatto children. The wolf spoke for me with an unabashed distaste for what I thought the historical facts meant.
His face betrayed no guilt, only mild amusement. Was it for my overplayed rage, leaps of conjecture, or because I had taken so long to discover things that were so obvious? My anger bordered on rage while I stared at his detached look, his smugness.
He threw a soft, perfect, inside pitch. "Kind sir, you impressed me with your dancing ability!" he said with a full-face smile. I seethed and felt my face redden until he reached across and held my right hand with both of his hands.