Horrible Harvest

The spoon set heavy in Allison Weaver Duffy’s hand, ready to shovel another bite of sugar and rice into her mouth. She give me a look. A long look. She was waiting for me to get on with it, to give her a peek at Daddy, in that room, mad as a hatter, but I run out of desire to say anymore on the state of him in that place. Not because it made me sad or tugged on my heart, but it made me mad because I didn’t get to see him take the final turn that crushed his mind to dust.

“Wha’choo find in Room J-522?”

“A man.”

“Was it your daddy? Was it really him?”

“No.”

“I don’t understand.”

I turned to her.

“It was some other one-eyed fella named Horace Tennyson?”

“It was just some man. Didn’t recognize him.”

“So that’s your whole entire Baltimore story?”

“That’s it entire.’

She shoved the spoon into her mouth, and I heard the sound of metal running against her teeth. Chewing she said, “That’s a piss-poor story, Mr. Augustus Tennyson. It surely is.”

“My life is full of those.”

“I can believe that.”

“Not all stories have endings.”

“I think you mean happy endings. Not all stories have happing endings.”

“I said what I meant.”

“Everything has an ending.”

“No, it don’t.”

She snickered. “Somebody don’t know nothing about nothing. It goes like this. Beginning. Middle. End. That’s a story. That’s how it goes. It ain’t complicated.”

“You say that ‘cause you’re young. You’ll learn. Not everything ends.”

“Name a thing that don’t end. ‘Sides your Baltimore story. Name something that ain’t got an ending. We’ve just come from a funeral, ain’t we? You know what a funeral is? It’s an end. Felix was born. Had him a life in the middle. It all ended two-three mile from here. They’s laying sod over him right this now. That’s the period on his life. The end.”

“You think that, do you?”

“I do. I ain’t happy about it. He was good to me all my life. I’d give anything to be sitting here with him instead of some old grump who can’t tell a decent story. One that ends.”

“And I’d give anything if this conversation had an end, but here we are. Talking endlessly about whatever a little Scotsman’s wife full of drink want’s to conversate about.”

“You ain’t glued to that seat of yours. You can see the door from here. Get off your ass and head towards it.”

I raised an eyebrow, full of hate for myself because I was enjoying her company so much.

A loud crash come from the other side of the counter. The waitress stood, folded into herself, as if she was shielding herself from embarrassment. She’d drop a pile of plates and they was broke to pieces on the floor. Her eyes was fixed on them. The sight of her, in that pose, her trying to hide herself, I was back, with Tate at the edge of the woods, staring at the farmhouse, fixing to execute his plan. His very bad plan.