There’s a faster way to do this. Before she can respond, I press my lips together and hold up my finger. She waits the minute I’m silently asking for while I open my backpack and take out a photograph. It’s eight years old, but it’s the only picture I have that holds the face of the particular person I’m looking for. It’s a summer scene, all of us posed outside May Beth’s trailer. I know it’s summer because her flower beds are in full bloom. She’s the one who took the photo and I took it from her, where it was nestled in the album she keeps of me and Mattie. This is the only picture of us that includes Mom—and Keith.
He has a hard face, a week’s worth of beard and deep crow’s feet I can’t believe he ever got from smiling too much. He looks like he would step out of the photograph just to hate you up close. He has a child on his hip and that child, with the messy blond hair, is Mattie. She was five. The eleven-year-old girl in pigtails out of focus in the far corner of the shot is me. I remember that day, how hot and uncomfortable it was, and how I could not be coaxed to pose alongside them until my mom finally said, Fine, we’ll do it without you, and that didn’t feel right to me either so I crept into the frame and became the moment’s blurry edges. I stare at it too long, like I always do, and then I point to the pen in Ruby’s apron pocket. She hands it over. I flip the photo and scribble quickly across its back:
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?
But I already know the answer because I heard about Ray’s from Keith. He used to talk about this place, said he was a regular, used to cradle Mattie in his arms and run his hand through her hair and say one day, maybe, he’d take her to Ray’s for a slice of apple pie because baby, you never tasted anything so good … if Ruby’s been here as long as she says she has, I know she’s seen him. I pass the photo to her. She holds it careful as anything while I lean forward, watching her closely for some flash of recognition. Her face gives nothing away.
“Who wants to know?” she finally asks.
My heart hopes as little as I’ll let it. “H-his d—his daughter.”
She licks her lips and I notice her lipstick has faded and all that’s really left is the harsh red of her liner. Then she locks eyes with me and sighs in such a way I wonder how often this happens, girls asking after men who have nothing in them to give.
“We get a lot of men in here and they don’t really stand out unless there’s something wrong with ’em. I mean—more than what’s usually wrong with ’em.” She half-shrugs. “He might’ve come through, but I don’t remember him if he did.”
I can hear a lie a mile away. It’s not some superhero perk from stuttering, being in tune to other people’s emotional bullshit. It’s just what happens after a lifetime of listening to liars.
Ruby is lying.
“He s-said he w-was a r—a regular. Knew R-Ray.”
“Well, I’m not Ray and I don’t know him.” She slides the photo back to me, the tone of her voice taking a saccharine turn. “You know, my daddy left me when I was younger than you. Trust me when I tell you sometimes it’s just better that way.”
I bite my tongue because if I don’t, I’ll say something ugly. I make myself stare at the counter instead, at a dried coffee splotch that hasn’t been wiped up. I put my hands in my lap so she can’t see them curl into fists.
“You said he’s a regular?” Ruby asks. I nod. “What’s your phone number?”
“D-d-don’t have a f-phone.”
She sighs, thinks on it a second, and then reaches for a take-out menu from the neat stack next to the napkins. She points to the number on it.
“Look, I’ll keep my eye out. You call, ask for me, I’ll tell you if I’ve seen him. I can’t make any promises.” She frowns. “You really don’t have a phone?”
I shake my head and she crosses her arms, the look on her face wanting a thank you, I think, and it just makes me madder. I fold the menu and shove it and the photograph in my bag, trying to ignore the hot flush working its way across my body, the awful shame of not getting what I want. Bad enough it happens in the first place, worse to be forced to wear it.
“Y-you’re lying,” I say because I won’t let her make me wear it.
She stares at me a long moment. “You know what, kid? Don’t bother calling. And you’re done with your coffee.”
She heads back into the kitchen and I stare after her. Good job, Sadie. You fucking idiot, now what?
Now what.
I exhale slowly.
“Hey.” The voice sounds featherlight, uncertain. I turn my head and the woman is staring at me. “Never seen anybody call Ruby on her bullshit before.”
“—” I push past the block, letting out a small gasp. “You n-know w-why’s she’s b-bullshitting me?”
“Haven’t been around that long. Just long enough to know she can be a real bitch when she wants to be.” She looks at her hands. Her nails are pink and long and pointy, and I imagine the feel of them clawing across skin. Every little thing about you can be a weapon, if you’re clever enough. “Look, there’s a guy … sometimes he’s hanging around behind the diner, sometimes, it’s the gas station … if he hasn’t been chased away from them, that is. If he has, you can usually find him by the Dumpsters at the back of the parking lot. Name’s Caddy Sinclair. He’s tall, skinny. He might be able to tell you something.”
“He a d-dealer?” I ask, but it’s a question that answers itself, so she doesn’t bother. I slide off the stool, tossing a five on the counter, because I know where I have to go now. “Thanks. A-appreciate it.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she says. “He doesn’t do anything for free and no one talks to him unless they have to so you might want to think long and hard on whether or not you really do.”
“Th-thanks,” I say again.
She reaches over for my half-drunk coffee, wraps her hands around it and says, bitterly, “I know a thing or two about missing dads.”
*
“You here for the Ruby Special?”
The voice is like phlegm, thick and unappealing. I cross from the light into the long, outstretched shadows of the truck stop until I’m in front of Caddy and Caddy is in front of me. I circled the diner and the gas station, and he wasn’t there. He’s in the last place I was told to look—the back of the parking lot next to the Dumpsters. He’s leaned against one of them, contoured by darkness that, for one moment, almost gives him extra dimension until my eyes adjust and I see how pathetically built he really is. He’s thin, his eyes cloudy and lifeless. Stubble shades his jawline and pointed chin.
“N-no.”
He’s smoking, takes a deep drag off the cigarette nestled between his long fingers. I watch the cherry flare and fade and my neck prickles uncomfortably at a memory of Keith. I don’t want to get into it, but I still have the scar on the back of my neck and I was afraid of fire for a long time after I got it. When I was fourteen, I forced myself to spend a night with a pack of matches and I made them burn bright, held them for as long as I could stand it. My hands would tremble, but I did it. I always forget fear is a conquerable thing but I learn it over and over again and that, I guess, is better than never learning it.
Caddy tosses the cigarette on the pavement and grinds it out. “Didn’t your mama tell you about approaching dangerous men in the dark?”
“W-when I see a d-dangerous man, I’ll k-keep that in m-mind.”
I’ve got no sense of self-preservation. That’s what May Beth used to tell me. You wouldn’t care if you died for it, so long as you were gettin’ the last word. It was hard enough having the stutter, let alone being a smart-ass on top of that.
Caddy slowly pushes himself from the Dumpster and sets his murky gaze on me.
“Wuh-wuh-wuh-wuh will yuh-yuh-yuh you?”
It’s not the first sorry imitation of myself I’ve ever heard, but I still want to pull his tongue out of his mouth and strangle him with it.
“I n-n-n—” Calm down, I think and then I want to slap myself for it. Calm down doesn’t do anything. Calm down is what people who don’t know any better tell me to do, like the difference between having a stutter and not having one is a certain level of inner fucking peace. Even Mattie knew better than to tell me to calm down. “I n-need to talk t-to you.”
He coughs, spitting something resembling drying Elmer’s Glue onto the ground. My stomach turns at the sight. “That right?”
“I w-w-want—”