“God, I love that song,” she said, smiling.
I backed up and leaned on the hood of her Bug. “I can tell,” I teased.
She looked over at me seemingly just realizing that we were out in the middle of my field. “What are you doing out here?” she asked, studying her surroundings.
I gestured to the dead tree. “It fell down a few weeks ago when that big storm rolled across and I’ve, uh, been meaning to get to it before my dad did.”
“That’s awfully nice of you,” she said, catching her breath.
“Not really. My motivation is guilt.”
“Best kind, really,” she joked.
“Yeah,” I laughed, “the great persuader.” I studied her. “Don’t have work today?”
“Nope. Well, not during the day. I don’t work Mondays through Wednesdays at the travel agency.”
“What do you do for cash then?”
“I, uh, work nights at Buffalo’s,” she admitted, avoiding eye contact.
I fought a smile.
She sat up, fighting a smile of her own. “Whatever, Moonsong! I do what I have to do. I’m not ashamed!”
Buffalo’s was the local burger joint. That may not seem that bad, but unfortunately its main clientele were usually between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. Local farm kids rarely get the opportunity to do much other than school and work on the ranches. Needless to say, when they get together, they’re, let’s call them a rambunctious lot. Oh, and I almost forgot, the manager makes the waitresses there sing and dance to songs from the jukebox on the bar top once an hour. Nothing seedy but, I mean, come on, it’s pretty girls in shorts and cowboy boots. You can imagine how much the local high school boys like it.
“I’m not knockin’ it, Fin. I just feel sorry for you is all.”
Her smile went crooked.
“What time’s your shift?” I asked.
“Six o’clock,” she answered, standing up and brushing the grass from her shorts and band T-shirt. “It’ll be busy but you should come out,” she prodded.
“I know what you’re doing,” I said, walking back over near the tree and picking up the chainsaw.
“What am I doing, Ethan?”
“You’re tryin’ to keep me from the bar.”
“So what if I am?” she asked, joining my side and propping herself on top of the dead trunk of the tree. She looked me dead in the eye.
“I have no plans to go to the bar tonight,” I admitted.
She narrowed her eyes. “Really,” she stated as a fact more than a question.
I met her eyes. “Really.”
“Why not? I mean, I’m glad and all, but I want to know why.”
“Because of how close I was to you know…” I left the sentence hanging. Nothing more needed to be said.
“Come in at eleven. It’s pretty dead by then. I’ll save you a booth.” She jumped off the tree trunk then tied her hair back. “Let’s do this,” she said, examining the tree.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Finley helped me by binding up all the loose branches with twine and setting them in a pile as I broke down the dead tree. I felt pretty grimy by the end of it but it also felt so good to use my muscles again. It’d been a while. It was odd to go from a backbreaking type of work to nothing at all in the matter of one day. It was amazing as well as disheartening to have realized that I was more sore than I should have been and it encouraged me to begin working out every day to keep myself up. Finley had gone home to shower and change for work, and I promised her I’d go in to Buffalo’s that night.
Inside, I stripped and sat under a hot shower for a few minutes reveling in the burn of the muscles of my back and arms. After, I threw on a pair of jeans and my boots and went to the fridge. It was empty, which made my chest ache. It’d been empty for about five years ’cause my mom was the one who’d kept it full. Looking back, I thought about all she’d used to buy in order to make whatever meals she planned for the week.
Which made me think of something. I left the fridge open and studied the calendar on the wall near the pantry.
Son of a bitch.
Suddenly, I wanted a drink. Badly. I slammed the fridge door closed and paced the small kitchen, at war with myself. It would have been so easy to head out to my truck and grab my emergency stash. I could have just as easily started it and headed toward my dealer Vi.
You can’t, I told myself. Distract yourself.
I looked at the fridge once more then grabbed my keys. My truck started easily for some reason and the roads never seemed so clear to me. I headed straight for Sykes Market because that’s where Mom always did her shopping.
When I walked into Sykes, I barely recognized it. It’d been renovated since last I saw it and that made my gut ache. Everything changed. Everything. Nothing seemed to stay the same anymore. All the things I thought I could rely on, I realized I couldn’t.
I grabbed a basket and walked the store, taking things in. There were only two registers and they sat catacorner to one another. Behind the registers, I noticed the entrance to the diner. To my great relief, it looked much the same. The same red countertops and blue stools, though a little faded. The same lacquered table tops and red and blue chairs. But now the lights shone down on white vinyl flooring instead of the red I remembered.
I set my basket down on the countertop and sat on a stool, remembering all the biscuits and gravy I used to eat there with my mom and dad on either side of me. My hands glided over the counter and I found myself breathing deeper from the memory. I remember my dad liking the fact that he could get a cup of coffee for a dime. He mentioned it to us every single time we went there, and my mom would just smile at me and wink when he’d say so, only to agree with him as if it was the first time he’d ever told us.
God, I missed her with the fire of a thousand suns. Losing your mom is a kind of pain you never knew could exist. No one but others who have experienced the same understand with even an iota of comprehension how it desolates you. Their sympathy, although sweet in its intentions, is futile. Because losing a parent is life altering. Everything you come to rely upon shatters into such tiny slivers and into such abundance there is no hope for refastening it as it was. Yes, you can lace and reassemble as well as you possibly can, but no matter how attractive the weave, the strength in that foundation is never the same. Its new formation is a fragile, fragile thing despite appearance’s sake.
Which is why Cricket’s leaving me was so catastrophic to me. I’d come to rely upon her. She was a stable fixture in my world after my mom passed. She was my world. I realized even then that it wasn’t exactly the healthiest way to cope, but I was young and knew no other way. Besides, no one understood me as well as Cricket did at that time in my life, as she had lost her own mom as well.
I looked down at the countertop once more and remembered all the shared baskets of onion rings and huckleberry bread puddings and nearly froze to my seat. My hands began to shake so I brought them to my chest and tucked them beneath my arms.
“Haven’t seen you in a while! Can I get you somethin’, hon?” someone asked, startling me. It was Delia Phillips. Delia had been the head waitress there since before I could remember.
I looked up at her and the expression on her face turned from cheerful to worried in the span of a heartbeat.
“You okay, baby?” she asked.
I shook my head and stood up quickly, desperate to escape, nearly tripping over myself to reach the exit as fast as possible. I fought the urge to glance behind me, to drink that misery down deeper. Sykes was haunted now, swarming with the excruciating ghosts of my former life.
I bypassed the checkout counter, tossing my basket on top of the others and escaping out onto the sidewalk. My eyes searched my surroundings. The bank, the post office, the secondhand store. I was enveloped by memories of my mom carting me around to all these places. The memories beat down on me with such a furious pounding I grabbed at my head and squeezed, hoping to force them out. My breaths came hard and
fast. I was losing it. So close to losing it all. I didn’t know how much more I could take and in that moment, I realized it. The sum of my miserable life came tumbling at my feet in the form of burnt ash. I had nothing left.
I closed my eyes. “There’s nothing salvageable,” I whispered.
Just when I thought I couldn’t think of a single reason to hang on to the small sanity I had left, a warm hand touched the back of my neck, subduing the war brewing inside my head, and I breathed an inexplicable sigh of relief. Finally, I lamented to myself.
I opened my eyes and looked toward the owner of that hand.
Finley.
Without thinking, I grabbed her and brought her to my chest, grasping with an almost wildness. For a second, I thought it would scare her and even contemplated letting her go, despite how much I needed her, but it didn’t and she hugged me back with the same kind of intensity.
“Finley, I—” I began, but she stopped me by pulling back a bit, her eyes wide and piercing mine with a resounding unspoken no before she pulled me back in.
It felt strange yet wonderful that I didn’t have to bend noticeably to hug her. I rested my cheek on the top of her head and breathed deeply, my dark hair swimming around her face, cocooning her. The sweet coconut smell of her hair was a balm to my disordered soul. Slowly, painstakingly slowly she pulled away from me and looked up at me. Her hands, her baffling and mysteriously pacifying fingers found my face, pushing my hair back from my eyes. Her palms held my hair back at my temples. We stood there quietly as she examined my face for something. Though I had no idea what she was looking for, I let her do it just to keep her hands on me.
“You’re a tortured soul, you are,” she finally said. I swallowed but kept my focus on her.
She began to pull her hands away but I quickly grabbed them and placed them around my neck. “No, please,” I begged her. She nodded in reply, asking for no explanation.
I brought her back to me, hugging her frenziedly. I asked if I was hurting her to which she replied, “Not even a little.”
I kissed the top of her head and she wrapped an arm around my waist, leading me with tenderness to my truck. I noticed that she never stopped touching me, not for one second, even when we were forced into awkward corners and walkways on the way back to the lot.
“You need to get to work now, don’t you?” I asked.
“Yes, but you’re comin’ with me,” she answered simply.
“It’s okay, Fin. I’ll be okay. You can go.”
She stopped then and shook her head at me. “What if I told you that I wanted you to be with me tonight? That just knowing you’re there will make me happier?”
“That’s kind, Finley, but you don’t have to—”
“No,” she interrupted, “it’s a selfish kindness. Just appease me, Ethan.”
“Okay,” I conceded, happy to be near her.
I walked her over to the passenger side of my truck and opened the door for her. She swung into her seat and started putting on her seatbelt as I was shutting her door. I walked to the driver’s side and got in. The key turned and the engine roared to life. I turned left onto Second Avenue and headed for Main and then Ninety-Three on our way to Buffalo’s.
“What brought you to Sykes?” I asked her quietly, keeping my eyes trained on the road. Her hand sat on my shoulder, bringing me relief.
“I was making a deposit before heading in and when I was crossing the street, I saw you. I shouted your name a few times before realizing that you were struggling with something and couldn’t hear me.”
“You must think I’m nuts,” I laughed without humor.
“Absolutely not,” she answered. I glanced at her and saw she was staring out her window at the passing scenery. A haunted song played on the stereo.
“I don’t think it a coincidence I found you today.”
“I’m starting to believe it’s not a coincidence either. That goes for all of the days you’ve saved me, actually, and I don’t believe in anything anymore,” I added quietly.
She squeezed my shoulder in answer.
We pulled into the lot and Buffalo’s looked unbelievably crowded. I wondered if it’d have just been better to drop her off then pick her up at the end of her shift.
“No,” she said softly, reading my thoughts, “just come in. It’s cool. There’s a booth in the back corner no one’s ever assigned so it can be left open for family and friends of Charles.” Charles owned Buffalo’s. “He won’t care if I use it tonight.”
I pulled into an empty space in the far back of the restaurant and we walked in the side door together and I almost turned right around.
Let me explain something to you, something I’d experienced every day of my life. I’m Native American. Mixed, yeah, but with a light olive skin tone, six foot three inches, almost translucent grey eyes, and I have long black hair. I’ve known since I was little that I didn’t look like everybody else. I wasn’t the Montana boy next door, and I’d always been okay with that despite the stares every now and then when I was in an unfamiliar place. Occasionally, though, I got taken by surprise even at home.
Buffalo’s was packed to the rafters but when we walked in, everyone stopped. Waiters, waitresses, customers, managers. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at me. But I knew in that moment it had nothing to do with my strange height or dark hair. No, they were staring because this was the first time I’d emerged into public save for the visits to the bar. I was a spectacle. Everyone look at the boy who just got dumped! Cricket’s and my breakup was the biggest thing to happen in our little town because we lived in a little town and scandals like ours just didn’t happen often. And I was the one who got left. I was the one they were curious about.
When you’re as tall as I am, it’s hard to look conspicuous and the times in which you feel like you’re on display that height makes it difficult to shrink into oblivion. I started backing out but Finley grabbed my arm and pulled me through.
“Don’t worry, they’ll get over it soon,” she explained under her breath.
Sure enough, after a few seconds of utter silence except for the jukebox, heads returned to their plates and the staff got busy again. I sighed in relief. Finley dragged me to the booth in the far back corner by the long bar top and made me sit with my back to the wall.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, giving me a small smile.
I turned around in my seat, peered over the half wall near me and watched her tie her half apron over her cutoffs. She wore this almost sheer, billowy pullover on top of a a white tank top along with a pair of worn-in brown leather cowboy boots with a squared toe. An off-white sock peeked out of the tops of her boots. Her auburn hair was wavy and fell down her back. She stood near a mirror over a few shelves where she placed the messenger bag she’d brought with her. She peered into it and dragged all her hair on top of her head and started jamming pencils into the random pile. It looked absurd but when her hands fell to her sides and she examined herself, the result, I had to admit, was pretty. Tendrils framed her face and neck. Soft and romantic yet practical.
Someone moved behind her I couldn’t see because they were hidden in the office behind the open kitchen. She turned and said something to them then laughed. She waved a hand toward me and said something else then nodded her head before heading back my way.
She pulled a pencil out of her hair but it did nothing to ruin what she’d just accomplished. I stared at her in wonder.
“You thirsty?” she asked me when she reached my table.
“Yeah, uh, could I get a Coke, please?”
“Well, gee, I can see what I’ve got, Beav. Sit tight,” she said, winking then heading to another table and taking their drink order.
She approached a third group of four teenage boys and I sat up a little for some reason. They gave her their drink orders and she wrote them down, smiling and patting one on the shoulder. The one in the back corner on the left asked her a question and she leaned over to hear him better becau
se the music was so loud, which made me hold my breath for yet another reason I didn’t know. The one she’d patted on the shoulder purposely dropped something on the ground and tapped her on the shoulder then pointed toward what he’d let fall. She looked down and he said something to her to which she just laughed at then headed back toward the kitchen, passing me with a smile.
She got everyone’s drinks and spread them in a spiraling circle on a drink tray. She picked the thing up like it weighed nothing and walked our direction again. She set my drink down so quickly I barely saw it.
“Be right back,” she said over her shoulder.
She dropped off the table’s drinks between mine and the boys then moved on to the teenagers, setting theirs down along with a pitcher of dark syrupy soda. She took their orders as well as the middle table’s and then came to mine.
“Know what you want?” she asked, running her hand down the top of my head, her pencil tucked between her thumb and fingers, and grabbing a few strands of hair, pulling them softly to the ends. Her momentary touch assuaged my frayed nerves.
“Uh, surprise me,” I told her.
She didn’t question it and walked off to the kitchen.
She returned with another pitcher of soda and exchanged it for the pitcher she’d set down in front of the boys as if she knew they were going to drain it while she’d been gone. She set the empty pitcher on the bar top and the bartender took it from her. She glanced at her next table, looked satisfied then came to mine, leaning over the tabletop and resting her chin in her hand since the booths were set a few feet off the ground for easy access.
“I think you’re gonna like what I ordered for you,” she said, turning to look over her shoulder at the bartender when he said her name.
“Yeah, Pete?” she asked.
“Grab me a crate of pilsners, will ya?”
“Be right back,” she said.
And that’s how the entire night when on. About five hundred I’ll be right backs. She’d brought me a giant bacon burger a few minutes after she’d ordered for me, and I ate the entire thing along with a plate of fries. All the work I’d done that afternoon had caught up to me and I guess I was hungrier than I’d thought I was. That, or it was Finley’s oddly mollifying hands. She may not have been able to talk to me that often during her shift but every time she’d pass me, those hands found the top of my hand, forearm, fingers, shoulder, or occasionally my neck.
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