~ 10 ~

        My bus due at quarter to ten, I only had an hour-and-a-half to get myself to the Esso station.  Packing up mickety-tuck, twenty minutes later I swung my bags over my shoulders and closed the door behind me.  The bus stop was at a crossroads a half-mile or so outside of town, and I gave thought to asking the motel clerk to call a taxicab, but after a few breaths of the crisp blue morning, I chose instead to walk, and grab a quick breakfast at Riley’s Restaurant.  
        The Sunday-morning streets stretched out nearly vacant—a scatter of parked cars along the sidewalks, stores dark inside, a few carloads of folks wheeling past, fixy for church and eyeing me, the sole traveler afoot in sight.  Nearing a cluster of beat-up cars parked by the storefront church where I’d ducked out of the rain the other day, I heard a chorus lift to Jesus a tune familiar to me, but at a loss for a word of it.  The church door wide open, I didn’t slow half a step.
        A sign in Riley’s window read, Closed for Worship ~ Open Noon to Five.  My bags growing heavier, I trudged onward, the straps digging into my shoulders.  A far piece yet from New York City, I reckoned I’d best get stronger at toting my baggage.
        At the far edge of the business district, I came upon a rail-car diner, much like Jake and Loretta’s place.  A few faces in the windows sipping coffee, I pushed through the door and swung my bags and myself into a booth.  A pimply waitress fetched up, pad and pencil ready to write, and I asked if I might get some coffee, toast, and eggs, fast, because I had a bus to catch.  With a shrug, she allowed why not, and the wiry cook at a griddle behind the counter heard me and had an egg cracked before she’d hollered my order to him. 
        Over my shoulder, I scanned the backsides stooped along the counter—unlikely churchgoers, most likely solitary miners, nursing hangovers from too much three-two beer on their Saturday night.  
        And then I gasped when I spotted Dwayne hunched over a coffee mug at the far end, his stitches rusty-red across the chalk-white patch shaved in his stringy hair.  
        If he’d seen me walk in, he didn’t show it.  But how he scowled at his coffee put me in a panic.  He wouldn’t do anything to me there in the diner, but what if he followed me when I traipsed the rest of the way to the bus stop.  Now I wished I’d called that taxi—maybe I’d best call one now.  But that might alert him that I was there, if he didn’t know already, and he might follow the taxi out to the bus stop.  Fear stuck in my throat, and I swallowed hard my loss of Walt’s protection.  In my terror, I even honed for Fred to be near.
        The back of my head to Dwayne, I shrunk down into the corner of the booth, scared spitless to turn and look.  Shortly, the waitress brought my breakfast and tore my bill out of her pad, and I lit into the food—all the while squinting a corner of my eye toward the devil atop his stool.  In no time at all, I’d gobbled down the buttery eggs and toast, and slurped up half the scalding coffee.  Praying Dwayne hadn’t yet seen me, I dropped some dollars on the table, and left the coffee mug still steaming.
        Swinging out the door, I dared not look back until I’d hoofed down the block a stretch.   And when I did, he wasn’t in sight.  Whether he had seen me or not—or whether he favored not dragging up what had gone down in the mud—I could only guess.
        Heart pounding, lungs burning, the bags swaying side to side and weighing me down like a mule, I tore off in a burnt hurry.  The sidewalk came to an end at the edge of town and I crunched onward through the gravel along the birm of the blacktop.  What if Dwayne wheeled up beside me and told me to get on in?  There was nobody out here to witness me being kidnapped.  Maybe traveling alone wasn’t such a smart idea.
        Sweat dripping, stinging my eyes, I spied the Esso sign up ahead, when all of a sudden a horn blasted behind me, startling me to a stagger.  I spun around to a carny semi rolling by, hauling piggyback the folded-up Tempest.  The two ride boys in the cab ogled me with goofy grins as they roared past, the driver’s face hinting a touch of recognition.  Relieved it wasn’t Dwayne, I waved at his rearview mirror, and he tapped the horn twice, the rig rattling onward in a swirl of dust.

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copyright © 2012 by S.M.Fernand