Free Lucky Strikes by Louis Bayard

wake, every trucker that come down from the hills already knew about Mama.
    Not that they said a word on the subject or breathed her name. Mostly they just brung me stuff.
    â€œHey now, Melia, here’s a piece of quartz. From down by Staunton.”
    â€œFound this here oilskin hat at the Wheeling bus depot. Thought it might fit.”
    â€œMy wife, she wanted you to have this handkerchief. She made it herself. Got a blue border, see?”
    Joe Bob brought an old pinochle deck. Glenmont brought canned cabbage. Dutch give me a sample bottle of Gilbey’s Spey Royal, and Trevor, he had a back issue of Photoplay with Jean Harlow on the cover, looking half-asleep.
    Warner didn’t bring a damn thing, he just barreled in like always, shouting, “Fix the goddamned radiator!”
    Didn’t take me long to figure out the coolant was leaking, so I went and fetched some pepper—it was a trick Mama taught me—and sprinkled it in, and by the time I slammed down the hood, Warner was standing there with his third cup of Sanka, stirring it with his pointer finger.
    â€œYour mama was plenty all right,” he said.
    He downed his coffee in one gulp. Crumpled the paper cup in his mitt, tossed it into the cab of his rig.
    â€œYou run into any trouble,” he said.
    Then he was off.
    I can guess what you’re thinking. Couldn’t just a one of ’em have said “Sorry to hear”? But if you was to twist my arm, I wouldn’t trade that quartz or that hankie—or Elmer’s brand-new toothbrush or Merle’s cracked compass—for a week’s worth of sorrys.
    I was sorry to see ’em drive off, though. The midday lull was gray, for all that the sun was needle-bright. I set at the store counter, flipping through the Photoplay , but all I could think was, How the hell we gonna get by charging nine cents a gallon?
    That missing penny kept multiplying in my head. Twelve cents less every truck. Fifteen dollars less every day. A hundred dollars less each passing week. Coins and dollars flying out the door, and me and Earle and Janey down to our last can of stewed tomatoes, and a crazy ol’ ghost of a man rattling over our heads.
    A rattling in the air around me, too. Just loud enough to crawl in my brain. I looked up and found a redbird pecking away at the store window.
    No, pecking don’t cover it. That bird was throwing himself at the danged glass—beak and claw and body—like he was fixing to bust right through. At first I took it personal, thinking he was picking a scrap with me, but when I crossed to the far side of the store, he just kept hammering at the one square of glass.
    That’s when it hit me. Fool bird was attacking his own reflection.
    Not just once, I’m telling you—a dozen times, three dozen times. Take that, you son of a bitch!
    Don’t recall how long he stayed that first time, but he was back next day, a hair past noon, madder than ever. The day after, too. Take that! In my head, I began sorta waiting for him—not exactly pining—just curious to know what was on his mind.
    â€œWhy you hating on this other bird so much?” I’d say. “He ain’t done nothing. He’s got just as good a right to be there as you do.”
    He never listened.
    On Saturdays, Earle and Janey minded the store, and when I asked ’em if some redbird had come a-peckin’, they looked at me like I was touched. Sundays we was closed, and then come Monday, and if I’d been a betting type, I’d have put money on that bird being dead, but seven minutes after noon, he was back, slamming his fool self against the glass.
    â€œHe’s got some temper on him,” said Hiram Watts.
    He’d gone and crept down the stairs without a sound.
    â€œIt’s kinda crazy,” I said. “He thinks he’s fighting some other bird. I can’t seem to explain his mistake to him.”
    Hiram frowned. “Have you got