Home at Chestnut Creek

by Laura Drake

  “She’s my boss.”

  His face goes slack in a goofy look. “What’s she like?”

  He doesn’t suspect I’m a spy…he’s hot for Lorelei! I shovel in a spoonful of chili to give me time to figure out what to say. He’s gotta be ten years younger than my boss. Grease slicks the inside of my mouth; I got a lump of tomato, no meat, and…There’s a volcano in my mouth. I wave a hand in front of my face. “What’d you do, put ghost peppers in it?”

  He smiles and pours me a glass of milk. “Nah, just habañeros.”

  When he sets the glass in front of me, I guzzle half in one gulp. “Where did you learn to cook?”

  His brows come down. “Why do you ask?”

  “Never mind. I’ve gotta get back to work.” No way I’m eating more of that crap. I slide off the stool.

  “Wait, you’re not going to tell me about Lorelei?”

  I pull out a couple bills and tuck them under my plate. “What is this, junior high? You want me to pass her a note?” I walk out.

  Things are going south. I really need to blow town, but the thought pulls at something in my chest.

  Dammit, I like it here. Maybe I could stay. Tell the police.

  Oh yeah, they’re probably going to believe that an ex-felon didn’t steal all that money. That defense that didn’t work last time. Then, on my word, they’ll go look for a drug dealer who doesn’t even live in their state. Yeah, ’cuz that’s how it works.

  My mood is lower than a Houston sewer when I step in the back door of the café. Joseph is eating a patty melt and it looks like Carly and Lorelei haven’t moved since I left. They pounce.

  “Did he lower prices?”

  “Was there a line out the door?”

  “No and no.” No excuses left, I study my tennies. “It’s me.”

  Carly grabs my sleeve and shakes it. “Ah, they’ll be back. Don’t you worry.”

  “Maybe I should go work at the Lunch Box. With my reputation, I could put him out of business. But I don’t know why his food hasn’t done that already. I took one for the team and ordered the chili.”

  Joseph chuckles. “Moss says that chili gave him the runs.”

  “Good thing I didn’t eat more than a bite, then. Oh, hey, Lorelei. Did you know he’s got a thing for you?”

  “I know what he wants.” She crosses her arms over her chest and sticks out her chin.

  I smile for the first time all day. “Wild, go-all-night sex?”

  “No!” Her cheeks go pink. “He wants to shut us down. He’s tried to hire Fish twice. I’m surprised he didn’t try to hire you.”

  I wince. “Back to that reputation thing.”

  “Stop it,” Carly says. “What we need is something to bring them back in. Let’s put our heads together.”

  Joseph says, “We could give away a free slice of pie with every meal.”

  I’ve probably done more to take down the café than Dusty Banks ever has, and still, these people are being nice to me. I look at Joseph, and he winks, trying to make me feel better. Nobody’s ever stood behind me before. “I gotta get the gum off my shoe. Be right back.” I duck out the back door before they can see that I’m all leaky. I’m a mess of sloppy emotions: happy, guilty…but mostly, crazy-grateful.

  * * *

  Houston, Texas

  Cisco sits in the back of his new Caddy, tapping his fingers on the leather seat.

  His driver’s eyes in the rearview mirror are worried. “Where to, boss?”

  “Don’t bother me. I’m thinking.” The only sound in the car is his tapping.

  His phone rings. He checks the number before answering. “I was just about to call you. Have you got her?”

  “Not yet. It’s like she dropped into a black hole when she left Fort Worth. You got any leads?”

  “I’m not looking, idiota. That’s why I called you!”

  “I’m doing my best, trust me. My client is waiting for her.”

  “Mierda. I should’a known, I want something done, I gotta do it myself.” He looks out the window at the late afternoon traffic snarl on Waco Street. “But if I find her first, your client won’t want what’s left. So you’d better try harder.”

  “On it, jefe.”

  He clicks End. “I’m surrounded by fools.”

  His driver’s eyes are still on him.

  “What’re you lookin’ at? Drive, fool.”

  * * *

  Nevada

  Despite a poster in every window on the square advertising a free slice of pie with your meal at the Chestnut Creek Café, a whole week has gone by, and business is still slow. Employees all act as if nothing’s out of the ordinary, but the empty booths are anything but.

  And with every day that goes by, the responsibility weighs heavier on me. Carly depends on this place to put food on her table. And her grandparents’. The employees need their jobs; they’re not easy to come by in this almost-dead town. I want to go out and shake every townie I see on the sidewalk, tell him I’m a good person, and drag him in by the ear, but I doubt that would make the right impression.

  It’s up to me to make it right. But how?

  It takes me a while to figure it out; after all, I can be a little stubborn, and this is uncharted territory for me. After the lunch non-rush, I pull off my apron, tell Joseph I’m taking a break, and march out the back door.

  I looked up the address of the newspaper in the phone book earlier, and spend the whole walk to the library trying not to think. If I do, I’ll chicken out. I walk around the back of the building to a glass door with the Unforgiven Patriot in black scrolly letters.

  I don’t know what I expected, but it’s just an office, with a counter up front, file cabinets on every wall, and a couple of cubicles. There’s a girl wearing a phone headset at the counter, reading a computer screen.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Is—” I croak and have to stop to clear my throat. Good thing I didn’t eat lunch, because it would be sloshing in my jittery stomach. “Is Ms. Miner in?”

  The Wicked Witch of the West’s head pops from behind a fabric cubicle screen. “Oh.” She looks as surprised as if Dorothy and Toto just dropped into her lap.

  And I’m feeling more like the Cowardly Lion. “Can I talk to you?”

  She sniffs. “I’m very busy.”

  I’m finishing this. I walk around the counter.

  “Hey, you can’t—”

  My “talk to the hand” stops whatever else the receptionist was going to say.

  Ann Miner’s eyes widen.

  “I’m not here to make trouble. I just want to talk to you for a minute.” I cram my fists in the front pockets of my jeans. My muscles hum with the message from my brain: Leave, leave, leave!

  Her face is a mask of unconcern, but her pressed lips and darting eyes give her away. She’s scared.

  At least I’m not the only one.

  “Look, about the article…”

  “You can’t claim slander. Everything I said is truthful.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Then why—”

  “Look, you can say whatever you want about me.” I swallow. I know I’m taking a chance. If she’s stone-cold-heartless, and not just your run-of-the-mill bully, I could be making it worse. “This is about other people. Business is off at the café. It’s hurting Carly, and everyone who works there. And they don’t deserve it.” I watch her eyes for clues as to how she’s taking this. “I came to ask what it’ll take for you to back off. To make it right.”

  Her penciled-on brows come down. She’s looking for a trap “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t be clearer. What do you want?”

  She tilts her head and gets a gleam in her eye.

  If she were green, I’d be looking around for flying monkeys.

  “You, quit the café. You ruin the ambience for me.”

  My stomach drops to the floor of my pelvis, but I nod. I knew this was a possibility “Okay. But you’v
e gotta promise that you’ll write something nice about the café to help business.”

  “That’s what you came here to tell me?” Her eyes are doubting.

  “Yeah. What did you think?”

  She touches her sprayed hair helmet. “I—I didn’t know.” She gathers herself, unhunches her shoulders, and her face changes back into the pinched spinster look. She lifts her nose. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Nope.”

  Her eyes fly to mine. “What?”

  “You have to decide right now. That’s the deal.”

  “You mean that you’d pack up and leave, just to help Carly and the café?”

  I shrug to hide that I’m squirming inside. “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  She stands judging me for what seems like ten minutes.

  I force my feet to stay planted, and my gaze to stay locked on hers. It’s not easy.

  She turns back to the desk. “All right.”

  I’ve got my backpack; I’ll just have to bum a ride to the bus station.

  “You are rude and irascible, but clearly care about Carly and the café. That has to count for something. You don’t have to leave. I’ll write something in next week’s paper.”

  “Really?” My breath rushes out of me in a whoosh as my muscles relax. I didn’t know until right this second how bad I want to stay. I’m grateful, but damned if I’m going to tell her that.

  No, I owe her that much. She’s no Glinda, but she could’ve been much worse. “Thank you.” I turn and walk past the shocked receptionist and out the door. I feel lighter.

  It feels good not to turn tail and run for once in my life. To take responsibility. To take a stand.

  Too bad that won’t work with Cisco.

  Chapter 9

  Nevada

  I leave the newspaper office, feeling lighter. I smile at the warm sun on my face, melting the ice inside me.

  A dark Lexus with blacked-out windows turns onto the square. Cisco. My heart stumbles a beat, then cranks to redline. I duck into the alley next to the dime store on jelly knees and watch it roll past, real slow. This is it. The day I’ve dreaded for years. It pulls up to the curb, and the passenger window comes down. I recognize the Hispanic dude from the bad side of Houston; he’s one of Cisco’s foot soldiers.

  He asks a lady I don’t know on the sidewalk something, and she shakes her head.

  He says something else, and she shakes her head again, turns, and walks away, glancing over her shoulder with a worried look.

  “We’ve been here hours. Let’s head to Albuquerque. Makes more sense she’d try to hide in a big city anyway.” The window slides up. The car idles there for a moment, then pulls away from the curb. I watch it until it turns off the square, heaving giant lungfuls of air until the spots stop dancing in front of my eyes.

  Gotta go to plan B. Easy to relax, easy to die. Why do I keep forgetting that? I never used to.

  I step in the back door of the café and into Lorelei’s frown. “You can’t just walk out whenever you want, Nevada. There are tables to bus, Carly needs help with coffee patrol, and—”

  “I just talked to Ann Miner.”

  “You what?” Carly screeches from the other side of the serving window. A second later there’s a boom, and she barrels through the swinging door.

  I shrug. “I apologized.”

  “You. Apologized,” Carly says.

  I nod.

  “To Ann Miner.” She looks to Lorelei, who can’t say anything with her jaw hanging like that.

  “Yeah. She says she’s going to write something nice about the café in the paper next week. So hopefully, we should get busy again soon.”

  Lorelei puts her fists on her hips. “You beat all, Nevada Sweet.”

  “I don’t care what you like,” Carly says. “Prepare to be hugged.” She steps over and wraps her arms around me.

  I just stand there, arms trapped at my sides. “Enough, already.” I step back. “It’s not like I’m a hero—it’s my fault she wrote that stinking article to begin with.”

  Carly smiles. “Maybe, but I also know what it took for you to do that. Thank you, Nevada.”

  “Can I get back to work now?” Cheeks on fire, I duck away from Joseph’s stare, pick up a platter for dirty dishes, and walk out. Their whispers follow me. I guess when nothing exciting happens in a Podunk town, you have to make a big deal out of everything.

  The shock of that black Lexus creeping down Main Street is harder to get over. I’m leaving soon.

  * * *

  On the way home, Joseph gives me that x-ray stare. “Why do you want to buy Carly’s motorcycle?”

  I just shrug.

  “All of a sudden you need wheels? We’re going the same place every day; why wouldn’t we ride together?”

  “I didn’t say we wouldn’t. But I can’t be asking you every time I need to go somewhere.”

  “Where do you need to go, Nevada?” I can tell he’s not asking about carpooling. His eyes are soft. They soften me.

  “Nowhere, I hope.” Shut up. “Hey, I’m a grown woman. There are things I need to do.”

  “Like what?”

  Get out of town fast. “I don’t know.”

  We pull up beside his door. He shuts down the truck. “Follow me.”

  I snatch my backpack from the floorboard and follow. He leads me around to the far side of the hogan, where a corrugated plastic overhang shades a cement slab beside the house, plywood sides sheltering it from the wind. I’ve noticed it before, but never checked it out. Inside sit a washer and dryer.

  “Cool.” I’m already imagining the feel of really clean clothes. “I’ll work in the greenhouse every day to make it up to you, okay?”

  He rolls his eyes. “Oh, by all means.”

  I point to a shelf above the appliances where some big rocks and an old-fashioned washboard sit beside the detergent box. “What are those for?”

  “Those are my grandmother’s.” His smile takes a sad tint. “When my mother was small, her mother washed clothes at the river by pounding them on those rocks. When I was little, Grandmother used the washboard.”

  “Damn, that must’ve been backbreaking work.”

  “I don’t think she appreciated any modern convenience as much as this.” He pats the washer.

  “I’m going to go get my clothes, okay?”

  “I’ll be in the house if you need anything.”

  I reach up and run my fingers over the rusty galvanized washboard. How cool to have old stuff passed down from your family, even if it’s just a couple of rocks.

  I’m starting to realize that I have a hole in me, where good memories and soft things should be. I didn’t know it before. When you’re little, you think everyone is like you. You can only start to see the holes when you see how other people live and where they came from. Then you start to feel around inside; to find the edges of where things aren’t. I haven’t gotten all the way around it yet, but I know enough to understand that it’s a deep-space-size hole.

  Mary is old, and probably dying, but she has all those memory-tied mementos to pass down to Lorelei. Joseph has his whole culture, which has been passed down all the way back before white men came.

  I don’t even remember my grandmother. Mom said she died just after I was born. We didn’t have anything of hers; when you move a lot, it gets in the way. I’d always thought of it as heavy baggage, and I travel light.

  But I do have one thing. I reach in my pocket and run my fingers over Mom’s NA welcome chip.

  It’s like Joseph’s rocks. Things don’t have to be expensive to be priceless.

  * * *

  Joseph

  Sunday morning, I bang on Nevada’s door. “It’s Joseph. Do you want to help with the breaking?”

  The door opens. She’s fully dressed and there’s no sleepy edges to her—she’s been up for hours.

  “What do you need me to break?”

  “The ground.”

  She puts a hand on h
er hip. “Look, I know you’re all into this farming thing, but I’m not shoveling dirt on my day off, okay?”

  “No shovel required. Come on, city girl.” I walk away, and she follows. I’m glad for the sun, and the still wind, making it feel warmer than it is. I feel spring rising in me, like sap in a tree, and my body quickens.

  “Beats the hell out of the alternative anyway,” she mutters.

  When we reach the tractor at the edge of the field, I pat the seat. “Climb up.”

  “This thing runs? I thought it was yard art.”

  “Nah, this old Farmall has a bunch of years in her yet.”

  She clambers up. “Brrr, the seat is cold!”

  I chuckle. “Metal tends to be that way, sitting out all night.” I step to the engine compartment. “Do you know how to drive a stick?”

  “I’ve done it once or twice.”

  “Good. So push in the clutch. No, that’s the brake. The clutch is on the left. Good, now turn the key and pray to whatever God you know.”

  “Better not. You don’t want me to get hit by lightning, do you? Here goes.”

  The engine cranks…and cranks. “Okay, stop.” I pull a small spray bottle of ether from my back pocket and squirt some into the air filter. “Try again.”

  The engine fires right up. Then stalls. “What’d you do?” I ask.

  “Do I have to keep my foot on the clutch?”

  I pull a rag from my back pocket and wipe my hands. “I thought you said you’ve driven a stick.”

  She throws up her hands. “This is no car. The stick is between my legs, and I don’t know where the accelerator is.”

  “Okay, looks like she’s going to start, so I’ll show you. Scoot.”

  “Scoot where? There’s only one seat.”

  “Stand behind it.” When she moves, I haul myself up and settle. “Thanks for warming the seat for me.”

  “Ah, so that’s why you brought me out here.”

  Her smile takes the bite out of her words. I check to be sure the throttle on the dash is inched up, depress the clutch, and turn the key. When it starts with only a little cranking, I pat the dash. “See? Told you the old girl can still get with it.”

  “What?” she yells over the engine.

  I just shake my head and let the diesel engine warm for a few minutes, then yell, “Hang on.” I raise the throttle, ease the clutch out, and we bump over the weeds that have grown up since last fall. We hit a dip and her hands clamp on to my shoulders. Her palms are warm and strong. And I shouldn’t be noticing. “Hang on,” I yell over my shoulder, and her hands are gone, moved to the back of the seat.