Free The Hard Way by Carol Lea Benjamin Page A

find him. My old man? Don’t know where he is. Don’t wanna know, the son of a bitch.” She pulled the blanket off her head and showed Eunice the scar on her cheek. “Florida ever punish you?”
    Eunice shivered, then shook her head no, not Florida. “He never,” she said, something stinging her eyes.
    â€œTry Penn Station. He don’t like the cold. Why’m I telling you that? You his old lady, right?”
    â€œThanks,” Eunice said, the dog standing in front of where she was sitting, the sweater touching the snow on the ground. Eunice thought he’d be better off without it, but it was the red one, her favorite. She liked the way it looked against his white fur, the way it made the patch on his right eye pop out. Florida, she thought. A tattoo on his hand. Nodding to herself. Thinking if the soldier evershowed up again in this lifetime, she’d tell him what she’d heard, see if he’d go over to Penn Station with her. And then there he was, his hands empty, chewing on the last of his lunch. Eunice felt hollow with hunger, mad, too, waiting in the cold while he had a sit-down lunch, coming out without her tomato soup, not even tomato rice, a soup kitchen, you figure you’d get a choice, wouldn’t you? Or is that only in a restaurant, only where there’s a menu laminated in plastic or printed fresh every day. Eunice sometimes read them in the restaurant windows. Soup of the day, always hoping it was tomato.
    â€œCome on,” he said.
    â€œNo soup? They wouldn’t let you?”
    â€œYou coming or not? It’s all the same to me.” His lips trembling, his color bad. He walked back into the park, found a bench, sat down, drumming one foot nervously up and down on the snowy path.
    â€œWhat happened? They ran out of tomato?”
    â€œThey called me Eddie,” he told her, stuttering, his voice cracking. “‘Some soup, Eddie?’ That’s what she said, a gray-haired lady, a scarf on her head.”
    â€œYou gotta cover your head so your hair don’t fall into the soup,” Eunice told him.
    He was shaking now, his whole body, as if he had a fever. “‘Some soup, Eddie?’” he repeated, Eunice seeing why he was out on the street, seeing the loose screw, the incomplete deck, that he had ten fries short of a Happy Meal. Every story was different, every one the same, too. It all boiled down to one thing—you couldn’t make it. You couldn’t hold a job, pay your bills, take out the garbage. You searched the garbage. You ate the garbage. You were the garbage.
    â€œ I call you Eddie. You said it was okay.”
    â€œIt’s not my name,” he said.
    â€œYou said it was. At the fire, you said…”
    But he was shaking his head, not listening to her. And then he got up, jumped up and began to walk again, Eunice following him, wondering if she could tell him what she heard, about the tall man, about Florida, wondering if he’d be able to go to Penn Station with her.
    He sat on another bench, but when Eunice tried to sit next to him, he shooed her away. She moved down the path, sat on a bench across the path so that she could watch him, see what he was doing. And that’s when she saw him, another man she knew. Or used to know.
    Eunice’s breath caught in her throat and everything seemed to stop except the snow. He was coming down the path from the north, not wearing a hat, the snow landing on his hair, Eunice’s first thought to hunker into herself, try to disappear, pull the scarf up around her mouth, her old cap lower on her face.
    He stopped to light a cigarette and Eunice wondered why she didn’t feel anything, not a thing, as if he were a stranger. And then she did the oddest thing. She stood, the dog standing, too, and together they walked to where he was and, with the cigarette lit, he looked back up, right at Eunice, and he reached into his pocket and took out