Free Lit Riffs by Matthew Miele Page A

reflection has suddenly caught up with her.

    Neither speaks when they began driving again. She holds the Coke that Jackson bought her but doesn’t open it, and eventually it grows warm in her hands.
    The night is bleeding into a predawn haze by the time Jackson turns onto an unmarked dirt road. They bump along and drive up clouds of dust, until they find another road, even more rough, that leads them to a weather-beaten shack, which leans impossibly. There is loud music playing, they hear it through the closed windows as they drive up, and the light from the shack gives it the orange glow of an invitation.
    We’re here, Jackson says, and climbs down from the truck.
    Meg sits there for a minute, wondering at what she has done, at where they are, but then he opens her door and offers his hand, and his touch is all it takes to push away her questions again.
    She straightens her smock and follows him up the dirt path. As they approach, laughter rings out over rowdy music, a loud thumping beat, yowling voices. Jackson holds the wooden door for Meg and she plunges into a room of dancing people. The place is thick with sweat and smoke and the heavy odor of fried food. The noise rushes through her.
    Jackson takes Meg’s elbow and steers her toward a raw pine bar. While he shouts for beers, she watches the whirling couples, each one moving faster than the next.
    They mind us in here?
    What? He leans in close, but still she has to yell.
    They mind us coming in here like this? She sweeps the room with her hand, trying to show him how her color doesn’t match, how they are different from everyone else there.
    I don’t think so, he says, but he presses his lips together and she is sorry for having asked.
    We’ll only be a minute, he yells. If you mind it, I mean.
    No, she says. No, I just—she circles with the hand again, then forces herself to clutch a wet beer with it instead. I just was wondering is all.
    He nods, his jaw set. Come on. He steers her back beyond the ever-spreading dance floor, until they come to a rough doorway that opens into a larger room crowded with rough-hewn picnic tables. You wait here, he says, and points.
    She sinks onto a wooden bench and he disappears again. The dark floor has worn smooth with age, but it is clean. A few people sit at nearby tables. Two coffee-skinned men in matching baseball caps and a huge woman with dark curls tumbling down her wide back are hunched over eating with great concentration, as though the place were quiet.
    Panic takes Meg by surprise. Where are they and how is she ever going to make it back in time for her shift? The thought propels her to her feet and she lurches toward the door, then takes a step back when she sees Jackson weaving toward her, a plastic tray piled high with food and more beer gripped tight in his large hands.
    This is worth it, hon, he says. Worth the whole night’s drive. Don’t know what it was, but I had to take you here. Haven’t been here in years. Too long. But it’s the same. Catfish to make you cry. Here, taste—
    He shoves a paper plate at her. Though her stomach rumbles at the sight, she lifts the sandwich gingerly and sniffs it.
    Go on. His eyes are bright and focused on her. She flushes, but takes a bite, and the bread is warm and soft, the fish crispy outside and flaky inside, warm and tasty. She closes her eyes and takes another bite. Wow, she says.
    My mom took me here first, when she and my dad split, Jackson says. She lit out of Texas and we drove for days. Took me here and it was the best place I’d ever been. They played more country then, more old-timey stuff. First time I remember hearing the banjo. And I always meant to come back. Even when I was touring around.
    Touring? Meg wipes her mouth with a paper napkin.
    Yeah. I’m on the radio all over, he says. You didn’t recognize me?
    She stares for a moment, then shakes her head slowly and notices the light in his face dim a little.
    Well, I’m known, he says. Get