The Book of Lost Friends(19)
“Yes’m.”
LaJuna slides around the corner, and it’s obvious that I need to move along, as well. Impatient noises and toe-taps have begun increasing among the customers behind me. On a whim, I spring for a piece of banana cream pie from the dessert case. I don’t need it. I shouldn’t spend the money, but it looks so good. Comfort food, I tell myself.
“That old house you live in,” Granny T offers as we settle up. “It’s been passed down since the judge died, like everything else. Judge’s two older sons, Will and Manford, got the Gossett Industries mill, the foundry, and the gear plant north of town. Judge’s youngest son died years ago, left behind a son and a daughter. Those two children inherited the big house and the land that would’ve gone to their daddy, but the girl, Robin, she’s passed away since—sad thing, her just thirty-one years old. Your landlord is her brother, Mr. Nathan Gossett, Judge’s grandson, but he won’t be fixin’ that roof. He lives down to the coast. Got him a shrimp boat. Leased out the Goswood land, left the rest to rot. That boy’s the rambling one. Can’t be bothered about none of it. Lot of history in that old place. Lot of stories. Sad thing when stories die for the lack of listenin’ ears.”
I nod in agreement, feel the whip-sting of my own family ties flapping in the wind. I don’t know beans about my familial history and couldn’t recite an ancestral story if my life depended on it. I’ve always tried to tell myself I don’t care, but that statement from Granny T hits home. A blush creeps up my neck, and I hear myself blurt out, “Would you be willing to come talk to my classes sometime?”
“Ffff!” Her eyes widen. “Did you listen at me while ago when I told you I didn’t make it past the eighth grade? You’ve got to have the banker, and the mayor, and the manager from the foundry come talk to these kids. Folks that’s amounted to much.”
“Well, just…please think about it.” An idea blooms in my head, unfolding as if by fast-motion photography. “It’s what you said about the stories. The kids should hear them, you know?” Maybe real stories from people around here would touch my students in a way that Animal Farm can’t. “I’m not having much luck getting them interested in my classroom books, and there aren’t enough copies anyway.”
“This school ain’t got nothin’,” a forty-something freckle-faced redhead behind me mutters, air whistling through a cracked front tooth. “Our boys got all the way to district last year, and they gotta wear cleats somebody else’s used before them. This school’s crap. School board’s crap, too. Them kids over at Lakeland school get everything, and ours don’t get squat.”
Something’s about to spill from my mouth that’s probably better left unsaid, so I just nod and take my to-go container. At least the football team has enough cleats for everyone. That’s more than I can say for books in the English room.
When I exit, LaJuna is settling herself on an overturned trash can near the side of the building where two guys in meat-spattered aprons squat in the shade, smoking cigarettes. LaJuna flashes a covert glance my way as I move past, then turns her attention toward a kid on a rust-dotted spyder bike, wobbling across the highway. He barely makes it into the Ben Franklin parking lot before a minivan zips past. If I’m not mistaken, he’s the little guy from the crosswalk incident. A city police car turns in, and I hope there’s a safety scolding in the making, but the officer seems more interested in my improperly parked vehicle.
I hurry through tiny rain lakes in the gravel, back across the grassy muck border and to my car. Pointing at the Ben Franklin, I give the officer the thumbs-up. He rolls down the window, rests a meaty elbow on the frame, and warns, “No restaurant parkin’ over here.”
“Sorry! I was trying to figure out where to buy some roofing tar.”
“No place open on Sunday for that. Blue law.” His eyes scrunch into his sweat-sheened red cheeks as he studies my vehicle. “And get a bumper on that thang. I see it like that again, I’ll write it up.”
I make promises I can’t afford to keep, and he leaves. One day at a time, I tell myself and hear the theme song from the TV show in my head. It was not only one of my favorites as a teenager—Valerie Bertinelli made being half-Italian look very cool, especially after she married Eddie Van Halen—that theme song has become my motto for this weird, transitional year.
The little boy splashes through the grassy strip on his too-big bike, lets it topple to one side, and skip-skids on the wet gravel until he manages a stop. Kicking a leg over the bar, he proceeds to the back of the Cluck. I watch as he talks through the screen, then gains a chicken leg from one of the workers, who quickly shoos him away. Off he trots, pushing the bike, chicken leg and handlebars all clutched together. The corner of the store building obscures my view, and he’s gone.
Maybe I should walk around there and talk to him about crossing streets. I contemplate my new position as an authority figure. Teachers are supposed to look after kids….
“Here.” The voice startles me. LaJuna is standing on the other side of my car door. Three long, dark braids escape her hair band and bisect her young face. She lets them hang like the pickets of a stockade fence as she holds out a restaurant ticket, arm stretched as far as it’ll go. “Here.” Shaking the ticket, she glances uncomfortably over her shoulder.