The window was sticky and the blood had started to turn brown, but I got most of it off and you couldn’t tell what it was by the time I was finished. I opened the door and started wiping down the steering wheel as good as I could, but I knew it would take another handful of paper towels to get it all clean. I sat down in the driver’s seat and waited.
“What’s he doing in there?” Ruby asked from the backseat.
“Getting cleaned up,” I said. “He can’t let nobody see him like that.”
“Why’d he have blood on him?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I ain’t had a chance to ask him yet.”
I tossed the paper towels into a garbage can by the curb and got into the backseat with Ruby. She sat on the passenger’s side, looking out the window.
“You think it was his blood?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “It could’ve been.”
“You think he hurt somebody?”
“No,” I said.
“I don’t either,” she said.
A few minutes later, the door to the ladies’ room opened and Wade stepped out. All the blood had been washed off his hands and his shirt and his jeans were wet where he’d tried to clean them. He walked around to the back of the car and opened the trunk; I heard him opening his bag and moving stuff around. The trunk slammed shut and he walked back toward the bathroom carrying new clothes. When he came back out he was wearing tan-colored shorts and a clean T-shirt. He opened the trash can and tossed his old clothes inside, and then he waved me out of the car and handed me the bathroom key.
The woman was alone behind the register when I went back into the store. I set the key on the counter.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You were in there a long time,” she said. “I almost came looking for you.”
“I’m sick,” I said. “Sorry.”
“I hope you feel better,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said. “I hope so too.”
Wade was on a pay phone in the corner of the parking lot out by the road when I came out. I stood there watching him for a second, but when he hung up and started walking back toward the car I knew I’d better get back inside there too. Wade pulled out of the parking lot and across the road right into the parking lot of a Waffle House. He shut off the car and turned around in his seat. “Are y’all hungry?” he asked.
“No,” me and Ruby both said at the same time.
“Well,” he said, “that’s too bad, because we’re going to go inside here and sit down for a few minutes and we’re going to eat something. Okay?”
“I want to go home,” Ruby said. Even though she was staring down at the floorboard and I couldn’t see her eyes, I knew by the way her voice sounded that there was a chance she might start crying again.
“That’s not going to happen, Ruby,” Wade said. “So right now we’re going to go inside here and eat instead.”
“I want to go home!” Ruby said again, but this time she kicked the back of the passenger’s seat and raised her voice.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey.” He waited for Ruby to look up. “You’re not going to talk to your dad like that. Not right now, not ever.”
“You’re not my dad!” Ruby screamed. “We don’t have one!” Wade looked at me like I’d told her to say it, and then he looked back at Ruby. He started to say something, but then he stopped. When he finally spoke his voice was lower and quieter.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he said. “And I’m sorry I scared you back there. I was helping a friend do something and I got cut and it bled a little bit, and I just wanted to get cleaned up before we ate. That’s all.”
“I don’t believe you,” Ruby said. Wade sighed.
“I do,” I said. “I believe you.” He looked at me and smiled. Ruby looked at me too.
“You do?” she asked. I nodded my head yes.
There wasn’t hardly anybody inside the Waffle House except for the people working there. We’d come in right between lunchtime and dinnertime, and even the waitresses seemed surprised to see us. “Y’all have a seat wherever you want,” one of them said.
We sat down at a booth right inside the door. Somebody’d left a newspaper on the seat, and Wade picked it up and tossed it on the table. It was opened to the sports section; the headline read SHOWDOWN IN ST. LOUIS? with side-by-side pictures of McGwire and Sosa swinging at pitches just below it.
“What can I get y’all to drink?” the waitress asked. Me and Wade both ordered waters, but Ruby wanted an orange juice.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Ruby said after the waitress left. The bathrooms were right inside the door, and you could see them over Wade’s shoulder. Wade turned around and looked at them, and then he looked at Ruby.
“Go ahead,” he said. I got up and let her out of the booth, and then I sat back down and acted like I was looking at the menu.
“I want you to know that I don’t believe you,” I finally said. “I don’t believe that you got cut back there helping somebody. I know you made all that up. I just said I believed you so Ruby wouldn’t start crying again.”
Wade just stared down at the menu. “Well, I appreciate that,” he said.
“So,” I said.
“So what?”
“What happened?”
He sighed and dropped the menu on the table, and then he closed his eyes and rubbed them with his fingers. They were bloodshot when he opened them again. “Telling you isn’t going to do any good.”
“I know you’re worried about scaring Ruby,” I said, “but you can’t scare me. Nothing can.” He stared at me for a second, and then he turned and looked to make sure Ruby wasn’t out of the bathroom yet. He leaned across the table to tell me whatever he was about to tell me.
“My mother lived in that house,” he said.
“Does she live there now?” He raised his hand like he didn’t want me to say anything until he’d finished.
“I hadn’t been inside that house in years, and I hadn’t seen her for a long time.” I opened my mouth to ask him why not, but he held up his hand and stopped me again. “And today, when I got there and knocked, nobody came. The door was unlocked, so I went inside.” He looked back at the restroom, and then he looked around the restaurant too. “And that’s when I found her,” he said. “And she was dead. Somebody’d come in and beat her up, Easter. I couldn’t even hardly tell who she was.” After he finished he sat there leaning across the table, and then he sat back against the seat and laid his hands flat on top of the menu. “I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “I just knew that you and your sister were out there in the car, and all I could think about was getting back to you.”
My mind pictured what he’d just seen, and I felt myself getting dizzy. The smell of the food cooking on the grill and the sound of the country music coming from the jukebox made me feel sick. I took a drink from my water to push down what was trying to come up out of my stomach. “Who do you think did it?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You think it was him?”
“I don’t know,” he said again. “I don’t know how he could’ve found her.”
“He found me,” I said. We sat there staring at each other for a second, but then the sound of the waitress’s voice made me jump. My knees hit the underside of the table and the ice rattled in our glasses.
“Y’all ready to order?” she asked.
Wade ordered a patty melt with hash browns, and I ordered waffles for me and Ruby and a bowl of cheese grits for us to share. I didn’t know how I was going to eat any of it.
Ruby came back to the table and sat down beside me. “I got you a waffle,” I said. “And I got some cheese grits for us to share.”
“I wanted pancakes,” she said, smacking the table with her hands. “I didn’t want a waffle. Why didn’t you ask me?”