But Marsha cut him off. “They don’t make truck axles now, do they?”
“No, Marsha, they don’t.”
“You haven’t ever gone to the storytelling festival, have you?”
“No, dear. I have not.”
“It’s in September. Almost a year away.”
Perry coughed. The dinner had been an effort for him even without the conversation. He was sick, East had recognized from the beginning, but always florid, forceful somewhere back inside. Now he was tired inside.
“All right,” he said under his breath. “I’ll find you a place. I can help you pay for it.” He stared at the meat piled before him, then at his wife. “Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”
So the attorney son served himself more wild rice. He hadn’t had to say a thing. East wondered if he considered it wasted time, coming out here. But his sitting by Marsha’s side had given her courage.
Everyone finished in silence. East chewed his last green beans slowly, one at a time, crushing each little seed out and finding it with his tongue. His plate when he handed it over was as clean as if it had never held food. He stood and pushed his chair in square with the table, as if he’d never been there.
It had been difficult, sitting there. A conversation he could never really speak up into. But he would remember this meal — the good food of a family. Even this one, so far from his own, or what had once been his own.
—
It was the talk of the apartment that unsettled him — the moving, giving up space he knew for something different, threatening. He ruminated and could not sleep. The box was hot with his restlessness. He tipped it off him and listened to the wind creaking the skylight in its frame. He stretched his legs and drew them in again. Finally he sat up and found his shoes.
He locked the front door behind him and walked into town. In the night, the air had warmed, and the snow had thawed to gurgling mush. In the one bright window, a handful of people sat hunched at the doughnut counter. They all looked over at the one at the end, who was telling a story. It was three o’clock in the morning. The street smelled like the sweet, frying dough. The people didn’t look up as he passed the little slurry of light.
Near the gas station hung two black pay phones. East picked up a cold handset and stared at the powdery buttons.
It had come back to him, the number off the flyer, seesawing out of that woman’s body. He could see it now. He dialed.
“Abraham Lincoln, please.”
“Oh, baby,” the operator purred. “He ain’t been to work lately.”
“I got to talk to someone,” he said. “What can you do for me?”
She could have been the operator from before. He couldn’t tell. Some males paid a lot of attention to women, but he hadn’t paid much.
“If you work there,” he said, “you know about Abe Lincoln. You can get him, or you can’t.”
She said, “Hold on.”
The music was high, quavering. Vampire hip-hop. A car slushed by and stopped at the doughnut shop; two men and a woman climbed out, all talking at once.
East heard the different, male breathing first. Impatient. Maybe just woken up.
“Yeah. Who is it?”
“Who’s this?” replied East.
The male on the other end said flatly, “No. The first question is mine.”
He remembered now the chaos of the last time he’d called this line. They’d arrested them all.
“Did Walter get back?”
“Walter who?”
“Michael Wilson? Did Michael Wilson get back?”
“Michael Wilson who?” But the bite was fake. The voice knew this was real.
“From what I’m asking,” East said, “you know who I am. Just tell me. Are they back?”
He stood waiting. The line hummed. The man was waiting him out.
“Just tell Walter for me,” he said at last. “I was out here with him. I’m still out here. Get him on the line. I’ll call you back, half hour.”
“I ain’t your secretary,” the voice said. “Fuck you.”
But this meant yes. That East was still being listened to, the phone still connected, meant yes. “Half an hour,” he said again. He hung up the phone and turned around where he was standing.
Empty street. A big truck headed down the side road over the creek — they weren’t supposed to. They ruined the little bridges that weren’t load-rated, Perry said. But at night they came anyway. Somebody was driving them, and that somebody needed to go home.
—
He bought a chocolate doughnut and ate it at a corner booth. Rivers of glaze and grease on his fingers and the rich, fragrant cake. Dark crumbs on the waxed white bag. The half dozen customers and the night girl stole glances at him. So be it.
He listened. The three who had come in were discussing a card game, bowers and the dead hand. One of the men was the redheaded counter girl’s brother. The girl with the two men had just given up smoking, East observed. It was in her restlessness. He could not smell the smoke on her, but he smelled the need. He knew. The counter girl did not like the ex-smoker who was there with her brother. She said nothing. Nobody knew the one at the end, the balding customer with the round, streamlined head. He tried to insinuate himself; he laughed pleasantly at everything. He wanted to be a part of this place.
East watched the clock, counting off thirty minutes. He zipped his coat and headed for the door. “Good night,” ventured the counter girl from behind him with her plain, flat voice, clear above the murmuring and the bouquet of Christmas bells on the door.
“Good night,” he answered.
Above, dim stars showed, like something unburied.
“I’m gonna put you through,” the operator said. “Three-way call.”
“I just want to speak to him,” East said. “Don’t want a three-way call.”
“Shall I have him call you back at this number?”
“You got it, the number?”
“Yes, I have the number.”
So now they would have an idea where he was.
“How you doing out there?” she added. Like someone had told her.
He grunted and hung up.
East scratched the dry skin above his jaw. For a moment he considered just walking away — abandoning the phone, leaving just this trace, this much of himself. But that assumed something, he knew. That someone remembered him. That somebody was still wondering.
—
Walter’s voice was muffled. “Who is this?”
“How was your flight?”
“Damn.” Walter whistled. “Man. Nobody knew what to figure about you. Was you dead or in some jail? Or did you get back here and hide out?”
“Is it okay to talk?” East said.
“Yeah,” Walter said. “Yeah, I borrowed a phone, so be cool. But yeah.”
East was about to spill a story. But he swallowed it. “So. Fin still inside?”
“Yeah. He’s gonna be happy I heard from you, though.”
“Who’s running things?”
“Oh,” moaned Walter. “It was gonna be Circo, you know? Everyone was gonna hate it. But then he got a DUI and had weed on him, and Fin, on the inside, said no. Fin hates that, you know, distractions. So it’s kind of complicated, kind of in process. We’re changing up. Getting out of the house business. Some dude actually bought thirty blocks, the houses, the U’s, the kids, everything.”
“He bought, like, the houses? That people live in?”
“He bought the rights,” Walter said. “Any business going on in there, he gets to own that. Paid a lot of money. And—”
The strangeness of news from home. Like a message in a bottle. “Did Michael Wilson make it back?”
“I heard he did,” Walter said. “I ain’t seen him.”