Horrible Harvest

She tried to sneak in a conversation in between her bites of sugar and rice, but I wasn’t having none of it. Allison Weaver Duffy was becoming a helluva bother the longer she occupied the stool next to me at the counter. I shoulda left. Felix was buried. I’d come to the diner to sit in congress with the other mourners. I’d done it all out of a sense of propriety. It’s just something you do for a fella you woulda died for. You show up. Simple as that. But a half bowl into her sugar and rice, I’d done enough. Being around people was torture for me, and I was in the mood to give myself relief from it. Then she said something that nailed me in place.

“Miss Virginia used to go on about you all the time.”

I looked at her. “You knew Virginia?”

She nodded. “She come around all the time when I was a wee thing. When she got sick, Uncle Felix used to take me to see her in this awful place. Spenser Hall, they called it. Palliative care facility. Hell is what it was.”

I turned and stared at my coffee. My heart teetered in my chest. It felt as if it would crawl up into my throat and choke me.

“She loved the fire out of you, boy. Wouldn’t shut up about you. She was always asking Uncle Felix if you’d sent a letter or telegram first thing when we’d visit. You never did.”

I didn’t reply.

“Always wondered why you didn’t.”

I sipped from my coffee.

“The stories she told about you – I mean goodness knows, she thought the world of you. Almost like you was her daddy.”

I sniffed out a chuckle.

“That funny?”

“I had a daddy. Didn’t think the world of him.”

“He was a bad sort, was he?”

“You could say that.”

“Well, you wasn’t that way to Miss Virginia.”

“When a body ain’t around, you can make him out to be just about whatever you want.”

She shrugged. “If you weren’t half the man she said you was, then you sure had her fooled.”

“That’s what people are.”

She waited for me to give a little more to my claim, but I didn’t.

“What are people then?”

“Fools.”

She shoved a spoonful of sugar and rice into her mouth. “Boy howdy, somebody sure enough did hurt you along the way, didn’t they, Mr. Augustus? They surely did.”

“Can’t hurt what can’t be hurt.”

“You’re that sort, are you? Mean rough and tumble?”

“I’m what I need to be to get by.”

“Well, that ain’t true.”

I cocked an eyebrow.

“You give me that evil eye all you want, but sometimes a fella needs to be nice to get by in this world, and I’m of the mind that ain’t a base you ever come near touching.”

I fought a smile. Much as she annoyed the piss out of me, I was warming up to her.

She got the waitress’s attention and ordered another round of sugar and rice. “Train ride here took it out of me. I need to fill my belly ‘fore I get back on it to head home.”

I didn’t respond.

“Normal people would ask where I was from after I mentioned arriving here by train.”

“Told you before, you chose the wrong seat.”

“Well, I certainly didn’t expect you to ask me such a question. I just thought you might want to know how normal people act.”

“I don’t.”

“Baltimore. Maryland. You heard of it?”

“I have. Been there.”

She placed her hand over her chest. “Goodness me, Mr. Augustus. That sounded almost like you was participating in a conversation with me. You probably want to know more. You’ve got questions swirling around in that grumpy old brain of yours, don’t you? Met a Scotsman in Charleston, I did. Big brute. Ugly fella, just between you and me. A carpenter by trade. Like our good Lord and savior. So, I says to myself, I says you might as well marry this one, and it was set. All I had to do was talk him into it, and as you can imagine, I did. I set my mind to something and that something is mine. Soon as we said our I do’s he got a letter from an old boy he apprenticed with in Charleston. He said there’s more jobs than you can shake a stick at in Baltimore. So off we went. That’s the story of how I got to Baltimore. Ain’t it cute?”

I sipped from my cup.

“Now you.”

“Now me what?”

“I wanna hear your story of how you found yourself in Baltimore.”

I stared at her.

“You said you been there. You and me, we’ve got Felix, Virginia, and Baltimore in common. I can’t get you to talk on neither Felix nor Virginia, I’m sure. So, let’s land on a safe spot. Baltimore. How does Augustus Tennyson find himself in Baltimore, Maryland?”

I swallowed a swig of coffee and let a chuckle slip.

“That a ‘She don’t know what she’s asking for’ chuckle?”

“That’s a I ain’t got no safe spots to land chuckle.”

“I’m a big girl, Mr. Augustus. I’m as rough and tumble as you. You ain’t gonna make me faint away. Tell me your Baltimore story.”

The waitress filled my cup without me asking, and for some damn reason, I felt obligated to drink it. I looked at Allison. “You’re set on hearing about my time in Baltimore, are you?”

“I am, and you’re gonna tell me.”

“Because when you set your mind to something – ”

“It’s mine.”

I sipped from the fresh pour and told her about the time I found myself in Baltimore.