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Chapter Seventeen
Joel
The gas gauge on my truck dips below empty as I make my way into Fairview. I’m worried that I will run out of fuel, but just then the town appears on the horizon.
The only business open in town is the diner, and I am hungry, so I decide to stop for lunch. There’s nothing else here and nothing for miles.
I leave my truck in front of the diner and go inside. The place is packed, but I manage to find a seat at the counter. I am reading the paper when a man appears at my side and says, “You're not from around here, are you?”
“No,” I say. “I’m from Texas.”
The man looks puzzled and then laughs. “I could tell by the way you talk,” he says.
I’m not in the mood for small talk today, or ever, come to think of it. “Tennessee is not Texas,” I say. “I know just as soon as I set foot in it that I want to get the hell out.”
I'm not just trying to get rid of him, it's the truth. Much as I complain about the townsfolk back in Pine Lake, I can’t imagine living anywhere else.
“Mind if I sit down?”
“It’s a free country.”
“Ah, a comedian.”
“Grave digger.”
“Wow, a real cowboy’s cowboy, I suppose.”
I have no idea what he means by that, but I reckon it’s not a compliment.
“Anyhow,” he says. “I’m meeting this lady up in Franklin. I decided to stop in and see if anyone around here knows anything about her. You know, so I might have the advantage when I show up. But they all look at me with this weird expression on their faces and they don’t say anything, just wish me luck.”
“What, like a blind date?”
His mouth turns against his will, and his lower lip juts out, and he starts to shake his head at me.
“I’m gonna marry her.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out a pack of cigarettes. He holds the pack out to me. I shake my head. “Well, Iwasgoing to marry her. But then I got to talking to this fella…”
We are interrupted by the waitress. She wants my order. I want to hear what this man was about to say.
“You don't know what you're dealing with,” he says. “That's what the guy told me. He said she's an expert at things I don't want to know about.”
The man has my attention. “What kind of things?”
The waitress appears again. “You want a beer?” I say to the man. “On me?”
“Already had a couple, but I'll take another, sure.” His eyes dart around the diner. “Anyway, he says she's the spook of spooks.”
I peer at him warily, wondering how many beers he means byacouple. “Right.”
He takes a long pull on his cigarette and snuffs it out. I watch as he lights another. “What she does,” he tells me. “She discovers things about you she shouldn't. She sees things in you that aren't there. She has ways of knowing things that are too horrible to contemplate.”
“We've all got our secrets,” I say, trying to reach the core of what he's getting at.
He draws a slow breath and holds up his forefinger. He slowly traces a path around the counter. “My secrets are complicated. But according to this guy, the lady's secrets would fill a book, and her methods are outlandish.”
He looks me square in the eye. “He said she's a very dangerous person.”
As he talks, the air around us both seems to get thicker, warmer. “But I don't know,” he says, raising his eyebrows at me. “Maybe that's just talk. Maybe I'll marry her, anyway.”
