by Scott Blade
Roy’s Red Dinner was one of the only buildings lit up. A neon red light traced the roof and shined up into the night sky. Above us, the red glow beamed off the bottom of the low clouds.
Matlind and I entered the diner. We were the only people in the place and I didn’t see any reason to make the waitress walk farther than necessary, so we sat at a booth near the kitchen.
We seated ourselves. Matlind held a menu in front of his face. It trembled in his hands.
I knew that he was starving, had to be because his stomach growled and his face was sunken like he hadn’t eaten in days, but I doubted that he was really looking over the menu. I doubted that he would order any food. It looked more like he was trying to hide his face from the staff.
I didn’t need a menu. I had it memorized. I knew the items. I knew the prices, with tax.
After another minute of waiting, Maria burst through the kitchen door full of pep. She smiled at me, didn’t even look at Matlind, and then she walked over to our table.
She said, “You’re back.”
I said, “We just needed to get out and grab some coffee.”
She said, “I thought that you don’t like coffee?”
I said, “I don’t. Generally. I mean it as an expression. You know, like how people are always saying ‘Let’s grab some coffee.’”
She nodded and then looked Matlind up and down. He never looked past his menu. Never acknowledged her. He was still hiding his face.
She asked, “What’s with your friend?”
I said, “He’s shy. Bring him a coffee and a bottle of water for me.
She nodded and smiled and walked away.
I turned to Matlind. He moved the menu downward and looked at me.
With a tremble behind his voice, he said, “She knows who I am. The whole town is in on it.”
He looked paranoid, but I stayed quiet.
I said, “Tell me what happened.”
Before he began, Maria returned with our drinks. She saw Matlind’s face and recognized him. I was sure of it, but she kept quiet.
She walked away and never offered to take our orders. She knew we weren’t there to order food.
Matlind looked at me and began.
He said, “Eight days ago, I married the most beautiful woman in the world. Her name is Faye.
“She and I met a year ago at a hospital. She is a nurse and I had just gotten out of medical school. I’m a doctor. I guess I told you that.”
I nodded. Stayed quiet.
“I haven’t slept. I haven’t eaten.
“Faye and I worked on the Gulf Coast. We got married on the beach. Decided to go on our honeymoon. She has a mother who can’t travel. Medical reasons. She lives in Chicago.
“So we thought that we’d make our honeymoon a road trip. We wanted to drive through rural places and take in the scenery. We were really going to take advantage of it. We had two weeks and we were in no rush.
“Faye is really into history. She loves old towns and dives and I love to fish. So we thought that we would detour off the interstate and make our way to Jarvis Lake.
“I had a friend who drove through here once. He told me about the fishing.”
He stopped, paused a beat, and then took a sip of coffee. It was straight black. No cream. No sugar.
I took a drink of water.
He made a satisfied expression like he had just tasted the nectar of life. I had seen people enjoy coffee, but never understood it. What was the big deal with people and coffee and coffee shops and caffeine? Might as well stuff their faces with caramels. But I stayed quiet.
He said, “So we drove into town. We got a room at the motel. The cabins were all booked or I would have gotten one of those.”
I nodded and thought about how the cabins are really huge and not what I considered to be a cabin at all. Then I shrugged and listened closely.
He took another sip of coffee, followed by another satisfied look.
I had seen that look before. Coffee was like crack to most people. I had seen Americans stuff themselves into coffeehouses to pay $5 or more for a cup of coffee. I didn’t get it, but then again, I had never really given coffee a chance.
I just grew up without it as a part of my diet. My mom drank it, but I had never felt the urge to give it a try. Plus, I had no desire to get addicted to a beverage that would end up costing me tens of thousands of dollars over the course of my life.
Matlind said, “Faye and I checked into our motel and then we drove into town. We walked along the lake. We…”
I interrupted him. I asked, “I thought that you didn’t have a car?”
He said, “I don’t have one that works. I’m getting to that part.”
I nodded.
He said, “We walked the lake. All the way around it, followed a jogging path. We sat a couple of times. It is really beautiful. Very rural and quaint.
“We stayed out near the lake for a long time, the entire morning. Before we realized it, it was noon. So we decided to walk back to town.
“That was when we passed the redneck headquarters, the one near the fork on the south side of the lake. Has the giant Confederate flag?”
I said, “I saw it.”
He said, “That was where our trouble started, with the occupants of the compound, three of which were those guys you met in my motel room.
“The bastards who broke my nose.”
He said this and reached up with his free hand to lightly touch his makeshift nose splint.
He winced slightly at the pain and his eyes shut tight and then reopened. They watered. I could see agony rush across his face, but he didn’t complain. He toughed it out. He was taking it like a soldier.
He said, “We walked out along the road, right next to the compound. The mobile homes were all quiet. But as soon as we were alongside them, they were full of life like we’d tripped an alarm or something.
“Everyone who lived there had come out to see us. The men. The women. Even the children came outside and stared at us. I’m telling you that I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m from the South. I was born in Georgia. I lived in Alabama. Hell, I graduated from Southern Alabama. And I’ve never seen anything like it before.
“Those rednecks stopped whatever the hell they were doing and came outside and stared at us.”
He began tearing up. The agony on his face turned to sheer terror. He was white with it.
He said, “The look. The looks on their faces was like nothing that I had ever seen before. It was like we had reverted back to a time before civil rights. Before apartheid even. It was like we had gone back to the time of slavery.”
I followed, but wasn’t quite getting it. Why were they staring at the Matlinds so hard? What the hell does slavery have to do with it?
Then he said, “I was scared that they weren’t going to let us leave. But all they did was stare. Some of them stood on their porches. Some of them came all the way to the edge of their properties. They just stared.
“We froze with terror. I know that they had guns. Rednecks have guns. But they didn’t even need them. There were dozens of men in the family. Big, fat guys like the ones that you met.
“I thought for sure that they were going to lynch us.”
I still wasn’t quite following. Why would they lynch a young white doctor from Mobile?
Matlind wasn’t seeing the puzzlement on my face because he kept on with his story. I saw in his eyes that he wasn’t even seeing me. He had been staring right at me, but he wasn’t seeing me.
He was visualizing the story as it happened. He was so caught up in it that I doubted that he’d ever be able to shake it off.
Then he said, “We stood there frozen for a good five minutes. And finally I grabbed her hand tight and told her we’d better go. We didn’t run. We just walked away.
“No one came after us. No one followed. They didn’t pursue us. I was certain that they wanted to do bad things to us. I had no doubt in my mind. But they didn’t chase. Th
ey just let us go.”
Then he was silent.
He looked up at me. Real fear swam in his eyes.
He stared at me and said, “They didn’t chase after us because they knew that we would never get away.”
He repeated, “They knew because the whole town is in on it.”
I asked, “In on what? I’m not following. Why would these rednecks care about you?”
He ignored me and said, “We got back to town. I told her we should leave right there, right then. She wasn’t as scared as I was. She was scared in the moment, but the moment had passed. So she had shrugged off the whole thing like she was used to it.
“She insisted that we stay and eat at the diner like we had planned.
“This diner. So we came in here and didn’t utter a word about the rednecks. We just wanted to eat. She insisted that we continue our honeymoon. She said we could just stay on our side of the town and enjoy our time.”
He fell silent again and peered around the diner like he was looking for the waitress or anyone who was familiar and then he said, “We had a different waitress. This one is Latina. She is the only minority that I’ve seen in this whole town. I didn’t notice it before. Faye hadn’t noticed it. Or maybe she had. I’m not sure.”
I nodded. I had also noticed that. I remembered thinking that it was unusual, but this was the South after all. No minorities was strange. I was from a small town in the backwoods of Mississippi and we had plenty of minorities. There was an entire side of town that was all black families. We had gay people, black people, a small Asian community, and every type of minority that there was.
No one in my town cared about racial or sexual differences. I had never known a racist person in my life. That was outdated thinking. The generation before my mother’s. Maybe there had been some. Maybe there had been members of the Klu Klux Klan in my neighborhood, but if there were they were the quietest and most tolerant racists that I’d ever heard of because modern small-town American life went on.
I understood what Matlind was telling me. I still wondered what it had to do with the rednecks and his wife.
I looked at him with an expression that said continue. He acknowledged it and then he said, “We sat over there.”
He pointed to a booth on the other side of the diner, near the entrance.
He said, “Waitresses never came to us. Not one of them. They ignored us. I kept waving them over and they never came. The patrons never acknowledged us either. No smiles or cheery hellos. The strangest part was that they weren’t rude. They didn’t shout rude comments or give us rude stares. Not like the rednecks. They simply didn’t look at us. We sat there for over 20 minutes and then I grabbed the manager. He had walked by and didn’t even acknowledge that we’d been sitting there with no menus or drinks.
“I was furious. I shook the guy. I asked him what the hell was going on! Why the hell was everyone ignoring us!
“Faye grabbed me by the arm and insisted that we leave. I was so angry. I shook the manager even harder because he stayed quiet. He was a young guy. I guessed that he could take it, but finally he looked at me and asked me to leave. He asked me to leave.”
Matlind took another sip from his coffee, a long one, and then said, “I was furious. I mean what the hell?
“Now I remember that he hadn’t acknowledged Faye either. He never looked at her.
“He said that he was going to call the sheriff if we didn’t leave. So we left.”
I nodded.
He said, “We went straight back to the motel and packed and went to the car. I started it and then it broke down right as we were passing through town. I mean it just died.
“I pushed it into a service lot. A little old shop. The mechanic must have had it in his family for generations.
“He came out to the lot and helped us. He never really looked at Faye either. Just talked directly to me.
“He took a look under the hood and told me that it’d be a day or two before he could fix it.”
I asked, “Is it done now?”
He said, “No. Every time that I go there he says it’ll be another week.”
He looked deep into my face with complete desperation.
He said, “Reacher, the very next morning I woke up in my motel room and she was gone. Vanished. The door was left wide open. I could hear the sounds of passing cars, but my wife was gone. I called to her and called to her, but she had vanished. Not a note. Not a message. Nothing. She was gone.
“I checked with the old guy in the office. He never actually saw her. And she’d left no message.”
I asked, “What about your cell? Did you call her?”
“My cell phone was gone. I have no pictures of her. No contacts. All of my numbers were in there. I can’t call anyone. I can’t remember anyone’s number and the phones in the rooms don’t work.
“Don’t you think that I’ve tried?”
He paused a beat and then said, “No one in town will let me use a phone. Don’t you think that I tried? I went everywhere and begged and pleaded. No one will help me! I’m a prisoner here! I can’t leave! I can’t call out!”
He took a deep breath and paused again.
“That little manager remembered me. He called the sheriff and the sheriff came. He brought one of his deputies, right here to my door. I thought, thank God! Finally someone was going to help me find my wife!”
I stayed quiet.
He said, “But that’s not what happened! Not at all! It was the most shocking thing! They threatened to arrest me! Said I was acting erratic and indecent! Said that the manager from the diner had filed a complaint!”
Matlind caught himself growing angry. I watched him sit back in his seat and take a deep breath; then he let it out. He took one more and let it out and then said, “So I told the sheriff about my wife. He took my statement. Right out front. I had to sit in the police car and give him the whole story.
“He didn’t believe me. He said maybe she left me. Right in the middle of the night. She just left me.”
I felt stunned and then I asked, “He didn’t ask questions? Do an investigation? Fill out reports? Put out an APB on her?”
Matlind shook his head.
He said, “No way. Nothing. He did nothing.
“I mean, sure he asked the staff here. He spoke to the manager, but the guy just claimed that I was being unruly. He told him that I grabbed his arm and harassed him and the other patrons. And he claimed that no one saw her. They only saw me. Like she was a ghost. He acted like I’d made her up! My own wife!”
I asked, “What about the rednecks? You told him about that?”
Matlind shrugged and said, “I did. He even made a big show of driving me out there with one of the deputies.”
“And?” I asked.
He said, “And the deputy was related to them somehow. He was like their cousin or something. I know because of the way he talked to them like he was the redneck liaison or something. It was weird.
“The oldest male, I guess their father, came outside and spoke to the sheriff for a long time. I had to remain in the back of the squad car like a prisoner. I tried to jump out of the car and hear what they were saying, but the door was locked from the outside.
“The deputy had locked me in!”
I nodded. My jaw didn’t drop, but I was a little shocked. The police work sounded shady, but the whole story was tough to swallow, except for the fact that there had been three rednecks in his motel room. They had broken down his door and they had broken his nose and they had tried to abduct the guy. If I hadn’t seen that with my own eyes, I’d think that he was crazy, but the rednecks had been real. He didn’t fake them. He didn’t conjure them. I had seen them with my own two eyes.
He looked down at his shiny, new wedding band for a moment; that too was real. I had never been married. I was only 18 years old and had never been interested in the marriage thing, but I had known married people in my life. Some liked it. Some didn’t. I had been to weddings and I
had seen happy couples. I had also been to many murder scenes and seen dead husbands and dead wives. Many, many times one spouse was the one who had killed the other and many, many times, the spouse never even tried to hide it.
Matlind twisted the wedding band around his finger like a nervous habit and then said, “I’ve been here ever since. I’ve tried looking for her everywhere. I don’t know what else to do.”
I asked, “Did you call the Feds?”
“No one in the town will let me use a phone. I told you that! I’m a prisoner here! I can’t leave! I can’t call out!”
“Calm down,” I said.
He listened immediately, obediently and then he said, “I dealt with the sheriff already. What is the FBI going to do?”
I nodded. He was right. The FBI would probably reprimand the local sheriff’s department by calling the governor, who’d call the mayor, but that would be the extent of it. The FBI dealt with kidnappings, but there was no proof of a kidnapping, no ransom, and all of the witnesses claimed that his wife doesn’t exist. I could see his problem.
Even if the FBI or the state police got involved, the sheriff would say that Matlind was crazy anyway, and so far he might have been. I had no way to be sure, not yet. A gut feeling told me that this guy was telling the truth, but I had no hard evidence that his story was real. All I had were three rednecks, a distraught husband, no eyewitnesses, and a wedding band that could be fake. I’d gone on less. I’d seen my mom go on less.
Matlind drank from his coffee, stared off into the tabletop, maybe at the cracks in the wood, and then said, “Those redneck assholes. They took her. I know it.”
I said, “I don’t understand. You described that they stared at you and Faye like it was with some kind of intense hatred, but I don’t understand why. Why are you saying that they took her? And what about that part about the lynching?”
Then I finally understood. Before Matlind looked up and said one more word to me, I had gotten it. I knew exactly why he was so scared. I knew exactly what he was suggesting.
He looked at me and said, “Faye is black.”