Читать книгу Some Go Hungry - J. Patrick Redmond - Страница 13

Chapter Five

December

Christmas weekend soon arrived, and life in Fort Sackville and at Daniels’ Family Buffet fell into a cold, winter holiday rhythm. Folks went about their daily business of Christmas shopping, bundled and quick. Even the crisp chime of the courthouse clock seemed frigid and swift. Rosabelle always said, “Indiana weather can switch on a dime.” And it did. This particular Friday was unusually cold for December, and the weather left little opportunity for shoppers to chat outside a Main Street store or for neighbor’s to gather on front stoops. Like the season’s gunmetal sky, Fort Sackville and its inhabitants remained consistent, including Old Man Atkinson.

Every day at ten-thirty a.m., a yellow cab brought Old Man Atkinson to Daniels’ Family Buffet. Regulars watched through the Buffet’s large plate glass window as he opened the taxi door and pulled his endomorphic frame from the backseat while the driver retrieved a folded walker from the trunk and slipped it over his forearm. Escorted through the double-door entrance, Old Man Atkinson gripped the cabbie’s free arm tightly with one hand while carrying an empty water pitcher—the snap-lid kind found in hospitals—in his other.

Once inside, the cabbie unfolded the walker and placed it in front of Old Man Atkinson. After getting him positioned with the walking aid, the cabbie left and Old Man Atkinson watched him walk away, get in his cab, and circle out of the parking lot, back to Highway 41, his red taillights disappearing down the road. Once the cab was out of sight, Old Man Atkinson lifted his walker with both hands—its green tennis ball feet never touching the floor—and with his water pitcher secured atop one handle, he lurched defiantly down the pathway, carrying his walking aid toward the buffet, past the cashier’s desk, to a table three rows beyond the salad bar—the same table every day. Unlike every other customer, he never stopped to pay before entering the dining room; he insisted his waitress take his money. Upon arriving, he sat his pitcher on the table, then placed the walker next to his chair and headed unencumbered to the racked dinner plates on the buffet. Our waitresses knew to fill the pitcher with water—not for dining, but to go. An hour and a half later his cabbie would return, and he would become crippled again.

On this day, as I passed his chair with my bus cart to clear a table nearby, in a rapid, revving voice, discharging his words like a pneumatic air wrench—the kind used in his tire store to remove lug nuts from truck wheels—he said, “Well, you decided to come back, did you, boy?”

“Excuse me?” I asked, turning to him.

“From down south. Decided to come back home. Where your bread is buttered,” he said.

“Actually, I’ve been back for a while, Mr. Atkinson. It was just a vacation.”

“Uh huh,” he replied.

Old Man Atkinson—Ward Atkinson III, the great-great-grandson or uncle or something of a soldier who fought in the battle of Fort Sackville—was yet another longtime customer of the restaurant. He’d once been a part of the Coffee Club Clan, its membership comprised of local businessmen, farmers, and a car salesman from the dealership next door, their numbers varying based on weather or season. He sipped coffee with them every Saturday before he got pissed a couple of years back and quit the group. When Grandpa Collin was living, Ward Atkinson had been a fair-weather fishing buddy.

Old Man Atkinson owned and operated Atkinson Tire on Main Street, started by his father soon after the debut of Henry Ford’s Model T. Before cars, it had been his grandfather’s livery stable and blacksmith shop. The tire store made Old Man Atkinson’s family a very nice living, and he had inherited his father’s nineteenth-century redbrick and timber Banker’s Tudor. It was the largest home west of Main Street, its structure and yard encompassing one city block. The Atkinson place was not an inviting home, and it lorded over the neighborhood like a raven at sunset, posed as if it were about to attack and swallow its prey. Children on their way to and from school walked several blocks out of their way to avoid passing the place. It was said Old Man Atkinson’s wife had died a horrible choking death in the kitchen while eating breakfast one morning. They said he sat there eating and watched her die.

“You know, a fishing buddy of mine once had a grandson lived in Miami. Nothing but queers and Cubans down there. All of ’em got the AIDS.”

Oh shit. Here we go, I thought. I kept bussing the table.

“Yep. They’re all just fucking each other like them nigger-monkeys in Africa. You know that’s where the AIDS came from, niggers fucking monkeys? Did you see that movie star lady down there? The one trying to save ’em all?” he asked. I felt my face heating up; his voice tore through the dining room before he sank his teeth into a fried pork chop, using his hands to rip the white meat from his mouth’s grip.

“You mean Anita Bryant, the orange juice lady?” I asked.

“Hell no. She’s been gone a long time. That crazy liberal bitch from California. The one that’s married to the faggot husband. Sarandon something or other.”

“Susan Sarandon? I don’t think she’s married.”

“All the more proof she’s a dyke. Said on the news she wants to bring all those Cubans with the AIDS to America. Give ’em free doctoring.”

“Actually, I think it’s the Haitians she wants to help. But that was a few years ago.”

“Don’t matter. Better off the saltwater niggers drown on the way over. We don’t need their kind here.”

I had no idea how to remove myself from the conversation. I could feel the anger-induced anxiety rising in my chest.

“I don’t know, Mr. Atkinson, I didn’t see anything like that while I was there.” My hands shaking, I carefully and deliberately placed the salt and pepper shakers and sugar caddy back in the center of the table.

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re back, boy. That place ain’t nothing but a goddamn modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. You’re lucky you got out alive. You need to keep your ass here and work for your father like you’re supposed to,” he said. Honor thy father and mother, that’s what the Good Book says. Hear my words, boy.” He held the pork chop in his right hand and again sank his teeth in, ripping yet another piece of white meat from the bone.

“Yeah. Well, I guess I’m lucky.”

Continuing to chew his food, he said, “If it was up to me, I’d say let ’em all burn. They’re going to anyway.”

“Talk to you later, Mr. Atkinson,” I said, and turned away. I returned my bus cart to the serving station and headed toward the office. Once inside, I locked the door behind me and sat at the desk, propped my elbows on the desktop, and rested my face in the palms of my hands. I tried rhythmic breathing. I wanted to tell the old man to fuck off. But he was a paying customer. My South Beach euphoria had dissipated weeks ago. Being back was tougher than I had imagined. All I could think was, I should have said something. I picked up the phone receiver and thought about calling Rio, but I dialed Dad instead. Maybe, I thought, Dad wants to get out of the house for the evening. Maybe he’ll cover my shift at the restaurant—if he’s having one of his good days.