Desperation Road(15)
“I’m gonna run on back to town,” Russell said. “Feel weird being still.”
“That sounds right.”
“Seems I saw a café downtown. It any good?”
“Mostly. If you hit it right.”
“Well. I’m gonna try to hit it right.”
“And tomorrow night we’ll fill you full of fish. Get some pounds back on you.”
“I’ll come out tomorrow afternoon then.”
Mitchell looked up at Russell and nodded then said hold on a second. He wiped his hands on a towel and then he walked in the back door and closed it behind him. Russell stood and waited and looked around the place. Just like he had done in a thousand dreams of home. He would go inside but he was saving that for later, not ready to see it all the same save for his mother in her apron with flour on her hands. The door opened again and his father came out with a shotgun tucked under his arm. He held a box of shells and he wiped the barrel of the gun with the end of his shirt and he walked over to his son and he held the shotgun out to him. Russell recognized it as his own 20-gauge, the one he used to walk the woods with looking for something to kill.
“What’s that for?” Russell said and he hesitated to take the gun from his father.
“You know what it’s for,” Mitchell said. “Take it.”
Russell took the gun by the barrel and then he took the box of shells.
“I’m breaking about two dozen laws by having it.”
“I know it. I can’t force it on you.”
“You’re trying.”
“No. I ain’t. But there’s choices you gotta make.”
“It’s not gonna be this bad,” Russell said and he tucked the barrel under his arm.
“You don’t know how it’s gonna be. I hope it ain’t bad but you don’t know.”
Russell nodded. Mitchell nodded. Then Russell said again that he’d be back tomorrow and he walked to the truck and drove off as Consuela watched from the kitchen window, standing at the sink where his mother used to be.
10
A GRAY LIGHT AS HE DROVE BACK TO TOWN. WHEN HE REACHED the house three boys were tossing around a football in the front yard of the house next door and a woman was on the front porch swing. He waved to her and she half waved back and then he went inside. He locked the door behind him and walked to the bedroom. It didn’t take long to unpack as there were only the essentials—a handful of T-shirts and socks, a toothbrush and deodorant, and the folder filled with the supposedly helpful documents provided by Mildred Day. At the bottom of the bag was a wooden picture frame holding a photograph of Sarah. He took the frame and went to the living room mantel and placed her in the center. She sat on a bench in Jackson Square in the French Quarter, her hair pulled back, a pleasant smile on her face as if some reassuring memory had crossed her mind the moment the camera clicked. She had rested on a short bookshelf at the foot of his skinny, noisy bed for the last eleven years and as he set her on the mantel and stepped back he thought that somehow she looked younger removed from the confines of the square cell.
He spent another hour drinking and smoking on the back porch and then he was hungry and he remembered seeing the café on the ride from the bus station at the corner of Main Street. He decided to leave the truck and walk. It took twenty minutes and he broke a solid sweat in the humid evening. He walked past houses with their television screens shining through the living room windows and three little girls, probably sisters, played hopscotch by the carport light in a driveway lined with rows of petunias. He crossed into downtown and spoke to a handful of men in suits standing together in front of a law office. They nodded and waved in the direction of the café when he asked.
When he got there the café was getting ready to close. But he looked tired enough for the waitress to stop wiping tables and stacking chairs and ask the cook if he had time for one more. Russell heard the cook swear but then agree and she told him it’d have to be something simple.
Russell sat down in a red vinyl booth and the front of the menu advertised a Big Breakfast. “Is that simple enough?” he asked.
“Probably. Minus the grits,” she said. She took a pad out of her back pocket and reached for a pen that was supposed to be behind her ear. She felt her pockets and looked aggravated and he figured she had kids somewhere waiting on her. Hungry like he was.
“What to drink?”
“Still got coffee?”
She turned and looked behind the counter and half a pot remained. “Probably ain’t no good but we got it.”
“That’s fine.”
She went into the kitchen and Russell heard the cook swear again and then she returned to his table with the coffee. He took a sip and it tasted like a slap in the face. The waitress went back to stacking and wiping and Russell fought with the coffee. The cook hollered for her and she returned to Russell with a plate loaded with scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, and toast. She went about her work and kept one eye on Russell, amazed at how fast he made the Big Breakfast disappear. When he was done he wiped his mouth and asked her how much. He left the money on the table and told her thanks and she followed him to the door and locked it behind him.
He spotted a gas station about a quarter of a mile away and he walked that way. He was still hungry so at the store he picked up some beef jerky and a couple of Honey Buns and a family-size bag of potato chips. He filled a giant Styrofoam cup with Coke and then walked to the cash register and motioned for the man with the ponytail to include a Playboy from the wire rack that sat tucked in the corner behind the counter. This is a good one the man said as he put the items into a bag and Russell said I never seen a bad one. He took the bag from the counter and then he walked back to the house, finishing the jerky and one of the Honey Buns before he got there.