Dead Reckoning (29 page)

I could think of nothing to say.

“Who decides what is right and wrong, right here, right now?” Joe asked.

“We do,” I replied.

“Exactly,” Joe said, smiling. “I just hope we were raised right.”

At the top of the very next rise, we came to within view of Mary’s. Mary’s was one of those wonderful, local, hole-in-the-wall diners. Some people ate at national chain restaurants because you always knew what you would get and it always tasted the same. The rest of us ate at holes-in-the-wall like Mary’s because you never knew what you would get, and it never tasted the same.

I had met Mary once and eaten at Mary’s dozens of times, but I did not know her. The locals all knew Mary. Mary had to have been coming up on 80 years old, but last I knew, she still worked in that restaurant as she had been doing for the previous 65 years. She started out washing dishes and worked her way up until she could finally buy out the previous owner—I think his name
was Dick and I think it was called Dick’s back then—and change the name to make it her own.

Mary had employees for sure: cooks, dishwashers, other waitresses. But even at her age, Mary insisted on waiting tables during every meal, seven days a week. “The regulars are my family,” she would say, “and I’d be doing this for my family anyway, if I had one.” She must have put in sixteen hour days in order to work three meals a day and manage the business itself. But that was her way, and I figured her
for the kind of person who could imagine no other life for herself.

As we stood at the top of the hill observing Mary’s, I thought about the last time I’d eaten there. Mary was slight but had a gigantic head of unnatural red hair—thi
n and sparse, but always poofed-up. Her wrinkled, withered skin hung from her face and arms like gathered curtains. I watched her as she carried the entire meal for a table of eight in one trip—plates stacked carefully one on the other and wedged between fingers with bulging knuckles—and wondered how many times she’d made the same trip. How many plates had she lost before she could do that? She probably required multiple trips to serve large parties early in her career but gradually built up her strength and balance, plate by plate, until she finally reached the height of her career and could do it all at once. The Michael Jordan of waitresses. What pride she must have felt at having mastered what none of her other staff—some less than a quarter of her age—could do.

After enough time had elapsed, we moved down the hill toward Mary’s. As we neared, I noticed some faint yellow light spilling from a window. We walked up to the small building and peered carefully through the old, wavy glass. A candle flickered on the counter. Everything inside looked in order.

“Do you think we should go in?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know.”

Just then, movement inside startled us. A withered, old hairless Chihuahua of a woman shuffled slowly about. She ran bulging knuckles through the few remaining strands of poofed-up red hair. Gravity continued its relentless work on Mary’s sagging skin. Her sallow eyes, however, glinted with the last remaining sign of life within her.

“What the hell is that?” asked Joe.

“It’s Mary,” I said, motioning to the sign. “I think it’s ok. She looks harmless. Everybody eats here. She might know something.”

Joe pushed open the door, and the bell jingled which gave her a start. She quickly regained herself as we came through the door. “Hello,” Joe and I said in unison.

“Come on in and sit down anywhere you like,” she whistled from a puckered and toothless mouth. “Except table four. That’s reserved.”

We looked to our left and saw the ‘Reserved’ placard on table four.

“Are, are you open?” asked Joe.

“Why sure! We’re open every day of the week here at Mary’s.”

Joe and I looked at each other and shrugged while Mary stared at us intently. Although the worst had passed, the stale smell of rotting food and cigarette smoke wafted through the room.

“Well, then. Where will you sit?” she gummed.

“I guess we’ll sit at the counter,” I offered.

“That will be fine. Keeps me from walking so far.”

Joe and I took seats in the middle of the long counter, near the candle.

“Can I get you some coffee?” Mary asked, even though she had already turned over both cups and placed them on their saucers.

“Sure, but we don’t have any money to pay,” I said.

“We’ll worry about that later,” Mary said, chuckling.

She grabbed a clear pot with the orange handle and pretended to dispense coffee into Joe’s filthy cup.

I put my hand over my cup. “I’ll take regular,” I said, motioning to the pot with the brown handle sitting on the coffee machine. Mary switched pots and pretended to dispense caffeinated coffee into my filthy cup.

Joe and I looked at each other again. Joe circled his finger around his temple to signal that she was crazy. I nodded. We smiled and began to pretend to drink from the cups.

“So what’s kicking Mary?” I asked in an upbeat voice, attempting to play along and change the tone of the conversation. “Do you remember me?”

“Of course!” she lied. “Will you have your usual?”

“Naturally! And may I say you are looking as beautiful as ever?” I said.

“Now Jim Lambert! If I didn’t know your wife, I’d think you were trying to pick me up!” she exclaimed.

“You keep that between us, huh Mary?” I said.

“And for your friend here?”

“Uh, I’ll have what he’s having,” Joe said.

“In a jiff!” Mary said as she wrote out the ticket, clipped it to the wheel, and spun it back into the kitchen.

She turned and faced us and placed her gnarled, knuckled hands on the counter to balance herself. I was afraid she’d fall and instinctively reached toward her. So did Joe. She caught herself without our help.

“Well, then. I guess I had better go back into the kitchen and see what’s taking so long,” she said.

Joe began to rise. “Why don’t you let me check? You stay here and rest.”

“Nonsense!” she scolded as she waved Joe off.

Joe sat back down.

She shuffled to the end of the counter and around the corner toward the kitchen.

Joe and I waited. Nothing needed to be said. Mary was obviously off her rocker. She either didn’t know or didn’t care that anything had happened. How she stayed alive in that restaurant was anybody’s guess. But there would have been no point in saying anything to her. We couldn’t help her. She had spent her entire life in that restaurant and was obviously quite content to spend the
rest of it there too—however little remained. Even if we had tried to help her, she probably would have died ten minutes after leaving the restaurant. She was better off there than anywhere, and the best thing we could do for her, as fellow human beings, was to play along.

She placed two plates onto the service bar and shouted: “Order up!” She emerged from the kitchen and served the dirty plates to us.

We pretended to eat, and she pretended to tend to other business.

“Say, Mary?”

“Yes Jim.”

“Do you get many customers anymore?” I asked, faking a mouth full of food.

She looked at me, puzzled.

I cleared my throat. “This economy, I mean.”

“Well, Sunday’s are our busiest day. But it varies. Not so much, no. But personally, I’m busier than ever.”

“That’s good,” Joe said.

“What are you up today, Jim?”

“Well, I’m off to Langley to get the truck fixed, and Joe here, he’s riding along.”

“I didn’t hear your truck pull up.”

“How could you have through all this noise,” I asked. I winked and smiled and motioned around, despite the silence.

Mary smiled.

“Have you seen Carol lately?” Joe asked, making up the name. He must have thought that everyone knows someone named Carol—especially someone who would have been exposed to as many people as Mary.

“Why no. How do you know Carol?”

“She’s my mother.”

“You don’t say. What did you say your name was?”

“Joe.”

“Of course! I think I remember Carol mentioning you.”

“Anyway, tell her that I said hi when she comes in again, won’t you Mary?”

“Of course I will.”

“And tell her I’m back in town for good.”

Mary suddenly had a twinkle in her eye—a purpose. To wait for Carol, whoever she was, and to give her an important message from her son.

“Of course, I’ll be happy to,” she gummed, less articulate than before.

Sensing that we were finished, Mary offered us desert. We declined.

Her mouth relaxed from smile to neutral as she folded the check and placed it in front of us.

“Will you take a credit card?” I asked.

“Nope! Machine’s busted!” She pointed off into a dark corner where a broken credit card machine must have sat collecting dust.

“Well, I guess we’ll be paying in cash then.” Joe and I pretended to fish for our wallets.

“Now, you go on, Jim Lambert! Your money’s no good here. I just appreciate your coming in,” she said, as she sighed.

I remembered the money I had taken from Paul's house. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a hundred dollar bill. I put it on the counter.

“Keep the change,” I said.

“I'm not taking your...”

“I insist,” I said.

As we made for the door, Mary repeated: “I just appreciate your coming in. Please come again.” She meant it.

She cleared our dishes and placed our check and the hundred dollar bill amongst the other receipts.

As we passed by the front windows, Mary leaned back against the counter and stared at the candle.

Joe and I walked along quietly. It grew colder, and a light rain began to fall. I couldn’t see much of the sky through the canopy of trees, but had I been able to, I probably would have seen the clouds lowering in advance of another storm. My apprehension grew the closer I got to the house. Less than an hour away then by my reckoning, I increased the pace
.

We approached a bend in the road, and blackened woods on the far side of the curve caught our eye. We hustled to the corner and stopped at the edge of a small gully. About ten feet below sat a blackened car upside down. Blackened ground surrounded the car and a burn scar extended away from the road as far as we could see into the woods.

Joe looked back up the road. “See those skid marks?”

I looked back and saw two sets of skid marks—one set stopped at the edge of the pavement and the other extended across the shoulder to where we stood and off into the gully.

“This car was run off the road,” Joe said.

We picked our way carefully down the bank to the vehicle and peered in. The stench was overwhelming. Nausea burned in me as I recognized the blackened remains of people still buckled into their seats. Two adult-sized people remained strapped into the front seats and two smaller humans were buckled in back. A little black lump of melted remains sat slumped on the ceiling of the car, just below an infant car seat.

Joe stepped to the front of the car and dry heaved.

I sat back against the wet ground
too shocked to feel anything. “At least it was probably quick,” I said to no one in particular.

Joe stood upright and looked intently at something behind the car. “Uh, Matt? Take a look at this.”

I moved around behind the car and found Joe kneeling next to another body—this one not black, but a normal looking male leaning against a tree. He slumped to his left and the left half of his head was gone. A gun lay next to his right hand.

Joe rolled the body over and retrieved a wallet from its back pocket. He flipped through the contents and then threw it on the ground. “Christ,” he said and walked away.

I picked up the wallet and studied the driver’s license. Jeremy Peterson, age 33, from Raleigh, North Carolina. I found a common access card assigned to him by the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. I flipped through his photos. There were photos of a beautiful teenage girl in a cheerleading uniform, school photos of young twin boys, and an infant girl. There was also a wedding photo of him and a stunning redhead.

Disgusted,
I threw his wallet into his lap, sighed heavily, and turned to leave. I stopped and retrieved the gun from his dead hand—a big, shiny, silver gun—and shoved it into my waistband. I scaled the bank back to the road.

I caught back up to Joe.

“What are we going to do?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

We walked on in silence.

It crossed my mind to turn the gun on myself. One of those involuntary thoughts that seemed to come from nowhere. But contained within the fact that I still had a gun was the suggestion that I should carry on to the end. I had at least some inkling that prayers could be answered now. Maybe it was all coincidence—Joe, the exact kind of person I needed, coming along just when I needed him. But what if not? No, I had to go on if for no other reason than when I found them all gone or dead, I could end it knowing that there was no further reason to live, nothing else I could do on this dreadful planet, just like Jeremy Peterson. Suddenly I remembered that I had never actually asked for the very thing I wanted most. God knows I had hoped, but perhaps there was a difference. I dared not take that chance.