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CHAPTER THREE

  Home again home again. Jiggity...

  Smithville was a small town on the southeastern coast of North Carolina. The beaches lay to the south but ran east and west which caused havoc for the local surfing population who had to travel up to Hatteras or down into South Carolina looking for waves on a perpendicular beach. In high school, Rusty always got his weather from them and often wondered how many meteorologists surfed.

  Full of southern charm, there was a healthy mash-up of folks who had lived there all their lives and transplants who retired and moved there because their grandmother lived there, or their uncle, or a neighbor’s uncle. It wasn’t well advertised; people just seemed to find the place. It was the opposite of Chicago. Part of that was bad, and part of it was good.

  The main drag, Howe Street, was lined with mom and pop businesses. Cafes, artsy shops full of nautical trinkets, saltwater taffy, seashells and t-shirts with Smithville, NC on them dotted either side in between the real estate offices, lawyers and dentists. There was a video rental store, still clinging to the peddling of DVD movies and video games. It sat next door to a coin laundry and a dry cleaner.

  As Travis drove down the street, he smoked—back to the cigarillos. His window was cracked and the air conditioning blasted inside the truck. His rosy disposition and perma-smirk seemed to have disappeared. The hand which held the cigarillo went to his forehead as if he had a whopper of a headache and he squinted as he rubbed his temples.

  “You all right?” Rusty said.

  “Fine. Headache is all.”

  It could be from all the different tobacco products you’re ingesting there, Iron Rod. Cancer is a motherfucker.

  Rusty watched the buildings flash by, none more than two stories in height. Some he recognized, others were new, or had been given facelifts. It was familiar, like a hug from an aunt you didn’t see very often.

  The aunt I don’t want to hug.

  He smiled at the thought.

  When they reached the NAPA Auto Parts store, it was after 7:00 pm. The sun was still bright and shining, but on its way down, stretching the shadows of the buildings to the east and gleaming off of any plate glass windows that dared face it. The parking lot smelled of the ocean, of coffee from a small café across the street and of grilled hamburgers and fried onions from a restaurant somewhere close by. The sign suction cupped to the front door of the NAPA said THURSDAY 10AM TO 6PM.

  “You just have shit for luck, don’tcha Rush-tee?” Travis said. It wasn’t a joking tone, more of a matter-of-fact tone mixed with an you’re-on-your-own tone.

  Rusty smiled at him and shook his head. “Nah. What I have is a reservation down on the waterfront at the Admiral Motel. I’m going to get me some fresh shrimp, some beer and some salt air. That is, if you don’t charge me a fortune for bringing the car out here.”

  Travis sniffed. “Always looking for a bargain, huh city boy? Tell ya what, Chicago. I’ll give you the standard rate since you’re local and all. No mileage or after hours surcharge. That suit you?”

  “Sure. What’s the standard rate?”

  “Seventy five bucks for the tow,” Travis said, chewing on the plastic holder of his cigarillo. Smoke curled up and over his brow.

  “Ouch. What’s the after-hours rate?”

  Travis switched the plastic holder from one side of his mouth to the other and spoke through his clamped teeth. “Whatever the fuck I want.” He spit on the ground. “Plus mileage.”

  Rusty frowned. “Seventy-five sounds like a sweet deal then,” he said and fished a fifty, a twenty and a five out of his wallet. He was glad he had exact change and wondered if it would ever get back to AAA Towing’s books. Books Travis likely kept himself. None of that mattered. Rusty was where he had set out to be. It was home at one time. Whether it would every feel like home again was an inner debate he wasn’t yet ready to have.

  Travis stuffed the cash into the front pocket of his shirt. “I’ll leave the car here. Bill won’t mind. You can catch up with him in the morning.” He chewed on the cigarillo holder a bit more.

  “That’d be fine,” Rusty said and he felt sorry for the little plastic piece between Travis’s gnashing teeth.

  “You want a ride down to the Admiral? No charge, at least while I’m still in a good mood.” He dropped the butt to the pavement and ground it in with his boot.

  Rusty looked down the street and stretched out his nagging back. He looked back at Travis hoping for the jolly face, the face of the roadie for a band that sang “Stretch You Out”, played several times on the local radio station. What he got instead was a raised eyebrow and lips drawn into a line. “No. I guess the walk will do me good. It’s been a long day of sitting.”

  “Suit yourself. Say, there’s a waitress at The Admiral named Sue. You tell her Travis said hello, will ya?”

  “Girlfriend?” Rusty asked.

  “Nope. And she probably won’t be glad you’re passing the message along, but I owe her some serious grief.” There was a wink that followed, but Rusty didn’t feel any mischief from it. It wasn’t a St. Nick heading up the chimney wink. There were no good feelings in that wink at all.

  Rusty waited a beat, wondering if an explanation was going to come about Travis and Sue, but it didn’t. He felt a small obligation to agree to the request even if the discount he’d been given stunk like the dumpster outside of a seafood restaurant. “I’ll tell her.”

  “See that you do.”

  To Rusty, those four words were menacing. There was something dark in their recipe, or maybe it was just his long day. He stepped down from the wrecker and watched as Travis lowered The Bat to the ground in one of NAPA’s six parking spots. A few cars rolled past and he wondered if he’d once known their drivers. Travis stood behind him, slapping his hands together in a work-is-finished motion. Rusty turned to face him.

  “Good doin’ business with you, Rush-tee. Don’t forget to tell Sue what I said.” Travis’s eyes were slits and there was no joy on his face. Somewhere on the way into Smithville, he’d lost his sense of humor.

  “I won’t,” Rusty said. They shook hands and without another word, the tow truck driver got in his vehicle and disappeared up Howe Street from the direction they had come.

  Rusty opened the trunk of The Bat and pulled out his duffel bag full of clothes, a small shaving kit and a laptop case. He walked down the sidewalk, subconsciously counting the lines in the concrete and the street lamps, like sentries waiting for darkness. He wondered when his little town had put in a sidewalk, or streetlamps for that matter.

  I used to tightrope along this curb, past the convenience store and the car wash, past the trailer park on the right, down past the big houses and across to the bench with the great big oak tree in the middle of the parking lot. The fishing pier was to the left, the restaurant to the right and The Admiral Motel just beyond.

  There was a fleeting feeling of being home. He followed the same old path he remembered, going down beyond where his friends Chris and John lived. He wondered if the white families still lived on the east side of the road and the black families on the west. It was still that evening and when he crossed Bay Street at the end of Howe, the waterway still flowed and smelled of salt and the sweet funk that comes with low tide. He felt his very soul wanting to smile because damn he had missed that smell. It was a thing you didn’t know you missed until it was gone and then there again. The smile struggled to reach his face because there was something else lurking in with that aroma, whiffs and hints of something bitter and foul. Something that stung in the back of his throat and burned his eyes.

  His thought was put to rest when he reached the end of Howe Street. He saw the old bench was still there—the Whittler’s Bench it was called. It sat in the middle of the asphalt lot between the Admiral’s Restaurant and Lounge and the waterfront park with the small fishing pier just like he remembered. The old tree that had stood beside it for so long was gone. It had been chain-sawed down to a stump perhaps due to a hurricane, o
r maybe it had been struck by lightning. Rusty felt a small bit of his childhood wither and fall away. Had he ever sat on the bench or touched the old tree? Had he ever used its shade or treat it as anything other than a landmark? He didn’t think so. He suddenly felt like the old man in that Shel Silverstein book. The tree was one of those things he might tell his future children about, or maybe his future grandchildren. Like the smell of the ocean, he didn’t know he missed it until it wasn’t there.

  Half a dozen cars were parked next to the restaurant, a few more next to the motel. Rusty was exhausted and exhilarated to be at the final stretch of his journey. His shoulders ached from carrying the bags, his fingers had sore ridges pressed into them from the cheap plastic handles, and his feet and head was beginning to pound. “Coming at me from all sides,” he muttered. “I need food, beer, and a good night’s sleep.”

  He pulled the glass door open and stepped inside the small lobby. The room was the size of a walk-in closet with a single chair in the corner.

  Just in case two customers happen to show up at the same time.

  A fake palm tree poked out of a blue flower pot next to the chair. It was dusty and it crowded the area. The counter was a bead-board box with a slab of chipped 1960’s Formica as a cap. Behind it there was a pudgy girl with glasses, maybe eighteen, who was busy texting on her cell phone with one hand while she dumped flake food into a twenty gallon fish tank. Her name tag read KELLY in black letters on a gold background.

  Rusty felt sorry for the fish. A trio of fat black mollies pecked at their dinner for a moment and then swam back down amongst the bubbling plastic pirate ship and some fake pink plants. He perused the small rack of business cards and stacks of coupons on the counter. There was one for pizza delivery, one for charter fishing and even one that invited him to come to worship on Sunday at the Methodist Church on Nash street. When he picked up the pizza delivery card, its holder scraped the counter and the girl jumped. “Bless your heart, you scared me!” she said.

  “I apologize for that,” Rusty said. “I have a reservation. Clemmons is the name.”

  “Yes sir. Let me pull you up on the computer here and we’ll get you checked in.”

  A computer? This place needs a computer?

  “Is the restaurant still open?” he asked.

  She pushed her glasses high on her nose—an involuntary action—and opened the lid of the laptop computer which was hiding behind the lip of the counter.

  “Yep. Grill is open until 9:00 pm and the bar stays open until the customers stop filing in. Same drunks every night. Usually about 10:00 pm on Thursdays. You here for a week, it says?”

  “Yep.”

  Kelly smiled like she knew a secret about him. As it turns out she did. “Class reunion?” she said.

  “Yes. How’d you know?”

  She peered over her glasses at him and grinned. “Smithville’s small, Mr. Clemmons. Not much goes on around here outside of the 4th of July.”

  He’d forgotten. The population swelled over the Fourth, maybe tenfold. The rest of the year, it was like one big, dysfunctional family.

  “Right,” he said. “Please, call me Rusty. You say Mr. Clemmons and I’d never know you were talking to me.”

  “Okay then. I’ve got you in room seven. Out the door and to the left. Should have fresh towels and all. If you need anything just pick up the phone and push the manager button, ‘kay?”

  She slid a keycard across the counter to him—a white anchor on a blue background with the word ADMIRAL across the top. Then, with a sweet, but dismissive smile, she went back to her texting. Rusty would never understand the texting. He gathered the key and pulled the straps of his luggage and laptop case back up on his shoulder inviting the ache back for just a few moments longer.

  Stepping out of the tiny air-conditioned space, he felt the thick, humid air coat his freshly cooled skin. The focused heat of the day was gone, but it was still quite warm. Insects buzzed around the carriage lamps on either side of the door. Rusty took another deep breath, testing the air, looking for that therapeutic smell of salt air. It was there, but something wrong was there, too. Something unsettled and turned his stomach a little.