“Hey, Dad.” Sam found his father working the grill. A basket of french fries hissed as they were lowered into the deep fryer, and identical slabs of “chicken breast” sizzled in neat ranks on the grease-slick cooking surface. “I think there’s something wrong with my paycheck.”
“Something wrong?” Old Mule sounded skeptical, as though he were receiving news the Swiss army had just pulled up in the restaurant’s parking lot and demanded the surrender of their complete stock of shaved ham. “Doubtful,” he said.
“It looks a little low. Less than what we agreed on.”
“Uncle Sam has to take his cut, remember.”
“I’m familiar with taxes, Dad. I mean the gross pay is low. Look.”
Mule wiped his hands on the grease-mottled apron that languished around his neck, then squinted at the pay stub. “That’s right,” he said. “At least for the time being. Remember you totaled my car before you disappeared.”
“My car.”
“That we paid for. And your mother, God bless her, made me hire a damned private investigator to go look for you at the end of that first year. Like on television. That didn’t come cheap.” Mule took a deep breath. “Since you’ve borrowed gas money from Mom twice since you’ve been back, I assume you’re in no position to reimburse me for these losses, so I’ll deduct installments from your check until we’re square.”
“Couldn’t we have discussed the payment plan first?”
“Like you talked to us before you left? No. This isn’t about getting reimbursed. I just want you to understand the hurt you put on us when you left. The money was the least of it.”
Sam’s back sweated under the radiant heat of the pizza oven. “They didn’t find me? The investigators?”
“Do you recall getting found?” Mule returned to flipping chicken patties. “I figure you owe me about $9,600 in total, plus a whole lot of explaining. You’d have known if we’d found you.” He pulled the next order ticket down from above the grill. “Don’t worry, I won’t charge you interest. Since you’re family and all.”
Sam gritted his teeth and tried to remember the things he’d learned in counseling. Tried to acknowledge his father’s anger. Tried to be patient. “Can we revisit this next month? The farm needs a lot–”
“The farm. Funny you only show up when you’re about to get something. Wouldn’t be surprised if you sold it before your Gran’s even cold in her grave.” The older man turned back to his assembly line of sandwiches. He slipped the patties onto a queue of waiting buns, then dealt each a translucent, paper thin slice of tomato as if from a deck of cards. “You better get changed. I need you tonight.” Mule closed the sandwiches. “There’s a clean Lily Bee’s shirt in my office.”
The basement was just as creepy as Sam remembered it, with shelves of dry goods, dark corners, and an earthy smell to the air. A 10×10 office was framed out of the back corner, with harsh fluorescent lights and a battleship of a steel desk. Sam found the shirt and changed into it, folding the one he’d taken off on top of his father’s desk calendar. He turned the sleeves toward the center with a neat crease, revealing the words “Lily MRI”on the gridded white sheet beneath. He paused mid-fold, reading the names of several doctors he did not recognize. He thumbed through a pile of bills and invoices on the credenza, several marked “Past Due.” Growing up, his father had always considered lateness to be the eighth deadly sin. Sam’s concern for his parents increased with each tri-folded bit of evidence that times were hard.
Back upstairs, the first of the dinner crowd settled into the worn wooden booths and creaking chairs of the dining room. Model ships they had built together as a family sat displayed on shelves alongside seashells and woven nets even though they were hundreds of miles from the nearest beach. The bright blue walls stood in contrast to the gray day outside.
“Hey, waiter,” his former classmate Oliver Erwin called.
“Hey, Ollie. What’ll you have to drink?”
If Ollie was interested in something to drink, it didn’t seem to be at the top of his mind. “So it’s true. Sammy Bonzo, back from the dead. Jonas said he’d seen someone coming and going out at your grandmother’s farm – sorry about her passing, by the way. It was a nice funeral.”
“Thank you. You want coffee, tea? We’ve got Pepsi products.”
“Make it a diet. And a steak hoagie, plain. Baked chips instead of the home fries – watching my cholesterol.” He patted his stomach as though demonstrating where his cholesterol was located. “And some of that land from you if you’re selling.”
Nothing would have been easier than to sell the place to Ollie and have it out of his hands, to get back to his old life. Yet, standing in the Bee with his dad’s words fresh in his ears, Sam said to Ollie, “That’s not on the menu.”
“You going to farm it?”
“Yep. Garlic.”
“Garlic?”
“Gotta settle down sometime.”
“And you’re settling with garlic?”
“Wholesale organic brings in a good profit margin.” Sam didn’t know if it was true, but it sounded good.
He slipped out back by the dumpsters to check his messages. A light rain fell on his neck. One text. Julie Haydn. He tapped the message, ready for a long, angry diatribe, but the message said only, “I miss you.”
You too, Julie, he thought. He scrolled through the contacts, took a breath, and hit the call button. The phone rang into the parentheses between when he’d left and when he’d returned to this little town – into the space that might have been, with a restaurant of his own, and a wife, and obligations of his own making. The rain fell more steadily now. The phone rang three times before he lobbed it into the dumpster.
Janie Kronk is an architect, college instructor, and adult literacy tutor living in South Carolina with her husband and daughter. She is a fair bread-maker but a terrible gardner.