Free Waking Lazarus by T. L. Hines Page B

of his son appeared. Nathan, a boy who was wise beyond his years, a boy wise beyond his father’s years, for that matter. He thought about what Nathan would do, and the answer became very clear.
    Jude pressed the caller ID button and memorized the number for the Stumble Inn.
    Jude and Kristina met at the Red Lodge Cafe, perhaps the easiest place to find on the town’s main street. Its sign was a large tipi, with orange neon Indian figures dancing around it.
    People who weren’t exposed to Indians, he knew, were always offended by the term Indian . They wanted you to use the euphemism Native American . But growing up around Indians in Nebraska, and living near the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations in Montana, Jude knew there was nothing wrong with Indian . Most of the tribal members called themselves Indians and had no problem with the word. It only made outsiders uncomfortable. In a lot of ways, death was a similar thing. People who hadn’t faced death, hadn’t experienced it, wanted to think warm, comforting thoughts about it. People who knew death up close and personal, people such as himself, were more pragmatic. There was nothing touchy-feely about the experience.
    Jude looked at the tipi sign as he walked under it. Yes, it was politically incorrect by contemporary standards. But it was somehow correct on a deeper, more meaningful level. It didn’t shy away from reality.
    The glass front door whooshed open, then swung closed behind them with the soft chime of a bell. Immediately smoky smells drifted toward them. Onions, eggs, potatoes, and other things he couldn’t quite identify. In the center of the cafe waited an old-fashioned lunch counter with built-in stools; behind the U-shaped counter the grill hissed and rumbled. Booths lined the walls, with nondescript tables and chairs filling the wide floor of the middle. Even though the front of the cafe was plate glass, the whole place always seemed a bit dark, cavelike. Maybe that was why Jude liked it. It had dark creases where he could hide.
    Kristina asked where Jude wanted to sit. He picked a booth in the corner, keeping his back to the wall.
    The waitress approached them, a young woman with short-cropped blond hair and a flinty edginess. She tapped the end of a pen nervously against her pad as she stood facing their booth. Jude came in occasionally, mostly late at night, but he didn’t remember seeing this particular waitress before. She didn’t even ask for an order; she merely stood there waiting for Jude to speak. He looked at Kristina, who shook her head, then back at the waitress.
    ‘‘I guess a coffee is about all we need.’’ He wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, but he felt he needed to order something. The waitress wrote on her pad and started to turn away, but Jude stopped her. ‘‘You know what? Do you have any peach pie left?’’
    ‘‘Yeah, I think so.’’
    ‘‘Gimme a piece of that.’’
    The waitress scribbled on the note pad again, turning away as she did.
    Jude glanced toward Kristina. She was staring, but he pretended he didn’t notice and busied himself looking around the room. ‘‘I like their peach pie,’’ he said simply, feeling as if he needed to fill the dead space with some sort of idle chatter.
    ‘‘So, do you know why I’m here, Jude?’’ she asked.
    He stiffened, then leaned across the booth a bit. ‘‘How about you just call me ‘Ron’ when we’re . . . you know.’’ He nodded his head to indicate the two other people in the cafe, both seated at the counter and oblivious to their presence.
    Kristina didn’t follow his gaze but nodded. ‘‘Okay, Ron. Do you know why I’m here?’’
    ‘‘Didn’t we already go over this?’’ he said.
    She looked at him and shook her head, almost imperceptibly. ‘‘I’m here because . . . because I think there’s something more to you. More than you can admit. Maybe even more than you know.’’
    ‘‘Such as?’’
    ‘‘That’s a question for you