Free Riversong by Tess Thompson Page A

awhile in the ‘70's.”
    “You said your last name is Tucker? By golly, your mother was Eleanor Tucker. Sure, I remember her now.” He shuffled his feet and glanced again at the sky. “She had some health problems?”
    “You could say that.”
    His face softened as he connected her to the memory. “I remember you too, now you mention it. Little red head, thick glasses, sweet thing huddled behind your mother's check stand.” He half smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Embarrassed to say I used to go in there for smokes. Kicked the habit now but I was in there every other day and if your mother was on shift in the late afternoon or evening, there you'd be, curled up with your nose in a book.” He cocked his head to one side and said with admiration in his voice, and a hint of surprise. “You turned out real pretty.”
    “I got contacts.”
    “It's more than just the contacts. You've done well for yourself, I can see that, in spite of your-.” He cleared his throat, but Lee knew what he thought, even though he was too courteous to say, in spite of your mother . This she hated, this small town peculiarity, where everyone thinks they know everything about you, but in fact it is only a half truth, a piece of your life that is public, the rest of you obscured by the collective narrative.
    He lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “Mike opened this restaurant in the old market space and his son's running it. Rumor has it, the boy's mixed up in some bad stuff. Mike, he's kind of our honorary mayor and he's always talking about how to get tourists in here and thought a nice restaurant might tempt folks to stop on their way through, but so far they just keep on driving.” He glanced around as if someone might hear. “Now I shouldn't say this, but I do their books, and the restaurant's bleeding cash. Course he's rich as all get out, his family's owned the mill for three generations, but Mike doesn't like to lose money. They could use a real business woman to help them out, get it profitable.” He patted her shoulder again.
    She wanted to rip the toupee off his head and dash it with her high heeled boot. She could be ten years old the way his kindness ripped her of pride and made her the meek impoverished charity case. She dared not look in the window below the hand painted ‘Ray's Accounting' sign for fear she'd spy the reflection of the pitiful little girl and her drunken mother stumble out of the grocery store on their way home to their cold, cigarette infested house, to eat their television dinners in front of the black and white television with the broken sound, the clink of ice cubes in the high ball glass occasionally drowning out the show.
    Ray puffed out his chest, clapping his hands, his toupee shifting higher on his forehead. “Tell you what, I'm gonna call Mike right now. Come on back to my office.”
    When she stepped inside the restaurant, she waited for her eyes to adjust to the muted light, holding her breath against the odors of grease and stale beer. Plastic tables, folding metal chairs, and artificial plants were scattered about the room. There were two guitar amplifiers and a microphone in the front corner. A man, his back to the door, sat at one of the red checked plastic covered tables, punching numbers into an adding machine and scribbling in a notebook. “We're not open.” His hand jerked when the lead of his pencil snapped. “Dammit.”
    “Excuse me, I'm here to meet Mike.” Her boots squeaked on the rough uneven slabs of wood, dull and scratched from dirt and wet shoes. She sneezed and grabbed a napkin from one of the tables. There was dust and grime along the floorboards and her boot squished on a limp greasy fry on the floor.
    “This time of day he's at the mill.”
    He raised his head and Lee stifled a gasp. It was Zac Huller from high school, except his face seemed expanded like there was a centimeter of water under the surface of his skin.
    He stopped writing and looked at her.