Free Tony Dunbar - Tubby Dubonnet 06 - Lucky Man by Tony Dunbar

said, getting up and brushing the dust from his behind. “I was in the neighborhood.”
    “That’s nice,” she said. “Did Buddy forget you were coming?”
    “No. I didn’t know myself.” Tubby was losing himself in her eyes. They were green. “I mean, I didn’t call ahead. I’m just dropping in.”
    “I’m happy you did. Would you like to look around?”
    “Oh, sure. Buddy said to come over anytime. I was down the road at the casino. Not gambling, of course. I don’t want to interrupt anything. Am I?” He gave her his most hopeful expression.
    Something about it struck her as funny.
    “Come on in,” she said, laughing. “I’ll give you the cook’s tour. After all, I’m the cook.”
    With appreciation for the way she moved in blue jeans, he followed her into the hall.
    “This is our formal dining room.” She pointed through a plaster archway at a vast table. “That used to be in the boardroom of a bank that went out of business. We eat supper together every night. Right now there are twelve kids staying here, so with the staff we’re feeding fifteen or sixteen.”
    “Where is everybody?” Tubby asked.
    “School, work, shopping. We try to keep them busy.”
    “Oh, excuse me.” A vacant-eyed youngster said, barging into the hall and almost colliding with Faye. “I’m just going outside to smoke.” She slipped quickly away and let the screen door slam behind her.
    “Of course, not everybody is ready for the real world yet,” Faye said wryly.
    “Is this a church, a nuthouse, what?” Tubby asked.
    “A little of everything,” she said. “Buddy can explain the religious side of things. He holds services every day. Some of the kids go. Some don’t.”
    “But what’s the main point, I guess I’m asking.”
    “Oh, you don’t know that? These are all basically runaways. Buddy picks them up on Highway Ninety, hopefully, before the police do or before they get too hooked on drugs.”
    “What can you do for them?”
    “Free room and board and a chance to chill out. You know, clean air, clean living.”
    Same thing I’m after, Tubby thought.
    She asked him about his children, and he made some general comments— about them, about the divorce from his wife.
    “Do you still see her?” she asked.
    “Mattie? No. We get along better from a distance. She’s got her own life and she’s happy enough with it.”
    Faye showed him the grounds, and they took a walk along the sandy shore. She seemed a lot more relaxed out here than she had been in New Orleans. He learned that she had been married before, but she did not offer any details. She made some disparaging remarks about the Big Easy in general, with which he automatically agreed.
    “It’s so dirty, you couldn’t clean it with Tide,” she said. He thought she was talking about the litter but later wondered if maybe what she meant was the politics.
    “It’s so much better here,” she said, “where you can breathe fresh air and smell the dew in the morning.”
    “Sure, that’s nice,” he agreed. “I’ve been thinking about moving out of New Orleans myself. You know, to the Northshore.”
    “That’s not far enough, if you ask me. Louisiana just seems like such a hopeless mess. Mississippi is the place to be.”
    “Yeah?” He would have to pass a new bar exam to make a living here. Looking at the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled, he almost could believe it would be worth it.
    “What are your plans for Thanksgiving?” she asked him.
    “I don’t know. It’s kind of funny, with the kids all gone and all.”
    “We do a big meal here. You’d be welcome to come, of course.”
    “Yeah? Thanks. We’ll see what happens.”
    “Country living is not so bad,” she said, nudging his foot with hers.
    He wanted to think that it was so, but with the moisture of the marsh creeping through his leather soles and the sun beginning to set behind violently crimson clouds he inexplicably had a cold sense of being out of place in this