* * *
When Ursula and José returned from their smoke break, Russell jerked away from the blue double doors before either one could see what he was doing there. He doubted they would say anything to the cops, but one always has to play it safe. Those cops were regulars, and if Ursula had a milligram of loyalty in her shriveled heart, it was to those two glorified security guards.
José walked past Russell, ignoring him completely, then through the double doors. Ursula headed straight for Russell.
Trying to avoid conversation with the hag, Russell grabbed a flashlight from the toolbox and aimed its beam into the oven’s cavity.
"Ya fix it yet?" she asked, bending down and looking inside.
Her breath reeked of baloney and cigarettes. Russell cringed and stuck his head inside the oven—partly to gain a better look at what he had to repair, but mostly to escape her jungle breath. The burnt odor of the oven offered only a modest respite; he would have to take his head out eventually and answer her question.
"No," he said, pulling his head out. "This one’s a bitch."
Then he was back in. He figured she’d have to leave if he positioned himself in such a way that made conversation impossible. Ursula either took the hint or found something better to do, because when Russell could no longer stand the claustrophobic chamber and removed himself, he was alone in the kitchen.
"Thank God," he said, recalling the restaurateur’s dog breath with a shiver.
Why’s it got to be dog breath? Huh? What kind of dog do you know smokes cigarettes and eats baloney sandwiches?
He didn’t have an answer to that other than: What kind of dog rips the throat out of a defenseless grandmother and slaughters hundreds of jackrabbits?
More questions but no answers.
Except there was one answer today. Those worried cops had provided it, unknowingly, through their seemingly-private conversation.
Russell contemplated how the officers would react if they knew a seventeen-year-old was privy to their secret. From what he had heard, even they didn’t want to divulge their information. It sounded like they had to, though, because if they didn’t, and someone else died, their asses would be out of uniforms, and jobs. What they knew was that big.
As he tinkered with the oven, Russell mapped out his plan of action. For the first time in a week, he felt genuine excitement—not the bad kind that gave you nightmares and fucked up any sense of normalcy you might have held in your head, but the good kind that filled you with a purpose beyond your own understanding, that buoyed you, exalted you.
And when I get there and see for myself—oh, man, it’s gonna be great!
But what does he do after he sees what he thinks he’s going to see? Who does he tell? Will the cops tell first?
Worry about those questions later, his mind said. You’ve got to see first. Then you’ll know what to do. You always seem to know what to do.
And that was true. The answers would come to him. In fact, he already had an inkling of how to proceed—once he confirmed with his own eyes, of course. He smiled at the future hero inside of him. Envisioning the relief spreading over Michelle Donovan’s addled face, he smiled even broader.
It looked like the Good Days might be coming back after all. And just in the nick of time, too. Russell now understood that the shocking events of the past week had really been a kind of cosmic acid test—one that he passed with flying colors. Going had been rough at times, and people (and animals) had gotten hurt and killed. But all of that was ebbing now—the efflux of a red tide nobody had wanted but had to accept, just the same—and the person responsible for ushering away the Bad Days and bringing back the good ones: Russell Whitford. Unless those two cops beat him to it.
Nah. Won’t happen. They’re both too afraid. They’ll chicken out. But I won’t. I’ll do what’s necessary.
Then the traitor’s voice rose up, negating nearly all of the optimism in Russell’s soul: What you just heard doesn’t change a goddamn thing, and you know it. What those cops were talking about may explain some of the strange occurrences that have been going on lately but not nearly all of them. In order to know the whole truth, you’re going to have to get down on all fours and sniff around like a dog, experience the world from their perspective. That’s the only way you’ll understand why they’ve been running away and gathering in feral packs. They’re only doing what comes natural, Rusty. Can you accept that? You can either see it or refuse to see it. It’s your choice. It’s always your choice.
"I’m not an animal," Russell told the kitchen, turning to see if anybody had heard. He was still alone.
Unceremoniously, and inattentively, he began gathering Busby’s tools and dropping them in the toolbox. The oven was broken beyond repair—at least Russell’s repair. Busby might have a chance at getting it to run, but in all likelihood it was just going to break down again in a couple of days. What Ursula needed an oven for, Russell hadn’t a clue. Then again, it wasn’t in his contract to know such things. He didn’t even have a damn contract.
"And that’s why I’m getting the hell out of here."
As he was hefting the toolbox, Ursula burst through the double doors.
"Ya finished?" she asked, eying him thoroughly, looking from toolbox to face.
Russell made his way to the doors but stopped short of leaving. "No. I can’t fix it." He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. "But I’m going back to the shop. Maybe Jeff can have a go at it later this afternoon, but, to be honest with you, even if he does manage to fix it, it’s just going to break again. You might want to think about buying a new one."
Ursula’s face puckered at the idea of spending money she didn’t have. "You do your job, young man, an’ I’ll do mine. You don’t have no clue ‘bout runnin’ no restaurant. I got to be on top of things. If my customers want pie, I better have pie waiting for ‘em. And to make pie, I need that oven. Hey, you come back here when I’m talking to you. Come back!!"
Russell was halfway out the front door when Ursula came rushing out of the kitchen, shaking her flabby arms at Russell’s back. "Jeff is gonna hear about this," she scolded in her sharp, Southern accent. "I’m calling him right now. You better believe me!"
Russell wasn’t so much worried about her as he was about the two beige-uniformed policemen, but when he took one last sweeping glance of the sleazy eatery before exiting the dim and entering the glare, he saw that they weren’t even there.
Through squinted eyes, he walked swiftly and heavily through the empty parking lot to his truck. I-65's low, cadenced purrs induced a sort of waking hypnosis in Russell, to the point that it drowned out most of Ursula’s grating voice. But not all of it. Words and phrases still found their way through the whooshes, prompting him to walk even faster.
She had graduated to physical threats and insults, making full use of various Southern colloquialisms—old gems, like: "I’ll skin ya alive and toss ya on an ant hill if you don’t come back here and fix that darn oven." And: "Dadgummit! You wasn’t raised right. You ain’t right in the head."
But their impact was lost on Russell, because now all of his attention was focused on the red smudge under the truck’s door handle. If only the truck wasn’t white, it wouldn’t stand out so much. He heaved the toolbox into the bed, then set to work on the smudge with his shirttail, not caring if it got stained since it was already covered in soot from the oven.
With the blemish gone, he climbed into the cab and started the motor. Outside, old Ursula jogged the distance to the idling truck. Her face was so red when she got there, and she was breathing so hard, Russell seriously thought she was going to stroke out. When he realized she wasn’t, that she was just catching her breath, he cupped his hand around his ear and leaned against the glass. The moment Ursie began to scream, Russell cranked the volume on the radio. He wasn’t surprised in the least when the song playing out of the classic rock station in Montgomery was "Sweet Home Alabama."
Screeching out of parking lot, leaving U
rsula to stomp her feet in frustration on the potholed asphalt, he sang along and nodded his head with the beat. Merging with Main Street’s meager flow, he chanced a look at the shrinking figure in the rearview mirror. He was pretty sure that was going to be the last he’d ever see of the old witch, but he was definitely sure he wouldn’t be stepping foot inside her disgusting dive ever again.
And when he smiled, he wasn’t sure if it was that thought or the guitar solo that put it there.
In the grand scheme of things, he didn’t think it mattered.