Free Spirits (7 page)

I look around the empty restaurant. “I guess this is a slow time of day, huh?”

“Yeah,” Big Ed says. “It’ll pick up in the evening when fellers want to come in and shoot pool.”

“Do any of the guys from over at the meat packing plant come in to shoot pool?” I ask.

“Naw.” He lights a cigarette, which makes me worry about a grease fire. “Most of them’s Mexicans, and they don’t want to eat here. They got their own place.”

“You mean El Mariachi,” Adam says. “You ever been there?”

“Naw.Ain’t goin’ there neither.They can have their tacos and their nachos. I’ll stick to my good old American hamburgers.” He looks at Adam. “I no likey ‘flied lice’ neither.”

“Steamed rice is much healthier,” Adam says while shooting me a “please help me” look.

I don’t much want to be in Big Ed’s mind, but I’m there anyway. And really, it’s not a very busy place. Looking at Adam, he’s thinking,“Look how squinty his eyes is,” but he’s not thinking it in a hateful way. He’s noticing it the same way you’d notice a cat was a certain color. Big Ed’s brain isn’t full of hate. It’s not full of much of anything.

Once I’m out of his head, I make a big show of draining my glass, look at Adam, and say, “Ready to go?”

He nods.

“You’uns come back sometime and play some pinball or something,” Big Ed calls as we leave.

“I no likey flied lice?” Adam says as soon as we’re outside. “What an idiot! I can totally see him dosing El Mariachi’s food with Ex-Lax.”

“The thing is,” I say, getting back on my bike. “Big Ed is nowhere near smart enough to come up with an idea like that. I mean, putting Ex-Lax in food is a scummy thing to do, but it’s also clever. Big Ed isn’t clever. I was in his head, Adam. And I was just about the only thing in there. I honestly think when he said that stuff about Chinese food, he really wasn’t even trying to be mean. He honestly thought that was how you strike up a conversation with an Asian person. He’s just ignorant.”

“Yeah, well, a lot of hate comes out of ignorance,” Adam says.

“But that doesn’t mean ignorance and hate are the same thing. When I was in his head, the way he was thinking of you was with this kind of clueless curiosity—the way a little kid looks at an exotic animal in the zoo.”

“Gee, that makes me feel better. Now I’m a zoo animal.”

“That’s not what I mean. I guess what I’m trying to say is that in his own stupid way, Big Ed kind of liked your difference and found it interesting. He didn’t hate you for it.”

Adam shrugs. “Well, that may be, but I don’t think I’ll be stopping by the Burger Buddy to play pinball any time soon.”

“Me neither. Besides, I bet the machine’s so greasy you can barely keep your hands on it.”

Adam laughs. “So…wanna go to the Whippy Dip?”

The Whippy Dip is on the outskirts of town, near the meat packing plant. It’s a long ride, and by the time we get to the small metal building with a big plastic ice cream cone on top of it, a real ice cream cone sounds pretty good.

We go up to the window, and Vonda, the owner of the Whippy Dip, says, “Hey, how you’uns doing?”

I’ve seen Vonda lots of times when I’ve come over for ice cream, and her bleached blond hair always has the same amount of black at the roots. She always wears the same shade of blue eyeshadow.

I tell her we’re good, ask how she is, and order a chocolate cone. Adam gets a vanilla because boys like vanilla for some reason.

“So,” I say, licking my cone, “have you gotten more business here since the meat packing plant opened?”

“Lord, yes,” Vonda says, smiling. “I’ve had to hire somebody to help me at lunchtime during the week ’cause I just about get more business than I can handle. Them Mexican fellers is so funny. They make fun of my chili dogs ’cause they say the chili ain’t got no spice to it. One of ’em brought in this big bottle of Mexican hot sauce for me to keep here, and every time they come I get it out for them and they douse their chili dogs with it. I tried some one time, and I thought my tongue had done burnt out of my head.”

“Have you ever eaten at the Mexican restaurant?” I ask.

“Oh, yeah, I go there every couple of weeks or so,” Vonda says. “I never order nothing too hot, though. I tell you, some people talk bad about the Mexicans that come here, but all the Mexican fellers I’ve met from over at the plant are as nice as they can be. Hard workers. Love their families. Good to their mamas.” She grins. “Some of them’s awful good-looking, too.”

I think of Isabella’s brother. “Yes, they are.”

“Well, we know she didn’t do it,” Adam says as soon as we’re back on our bikes and headed toward town.

“Yeah, that’s all we know, isn’t it?” I’m pedaling fast on my bike to try to keep up with Adam. “Who didn’t do it. And I’m starting to feel like that’s all we’re ever going to know. I hate to let down Isabella, but I’m wondering if maybe this was just one of those bad things that happens and nobody can do anything about it.”

“I know what you mean.” Adam sighs. “Well, at least we got an ice cream out of the experience.”

This morning after months of making awful noises, Mom’s car stopped making any noise. When she came into the kitchen she said, “Well, old Bessie wouldn’t start. I guess I’d better call the mechanic for a tow, huh?”

“It’s kind of like waiting to call the ambulance after somebody’s done died,” Granny said, but Mom didn’t seem to think it was funny.

I’m walking with Mom over to A and S Car Repair. Mom said that maybe if the mechanics saw that she was a widow with a child, they’d take pity on her and not charge so much.

I asked if we should maybe dress in rags, too, but she didn’t laugh at that either. Not knowing how much it’ll cost to fix her car makes her lose her sense of humor.

A and S Car Repair is a gray concrete block building surrounded by piles of used tires and a few old cars that seem beyond repair but stay around so the mechanics can tinker with them when business is slow. I follow Mom into the garage where her car is sitting with the hood up. I breathe in the strange smells of manliness: oil and gas and grease and sweat.

A big man with a gray ponytail all the way down his back is washing his hands at the utility sink in the corner. As soon as he sees us, he dries off and says, “Mrs. Jasper?” His eyes are twinkly blue, and his gray mustache and goatee that make him look like he could be from another time.

“Yes,” Mom says.

He comes over and holds out a beefy hand for Mom to shake.

“I’m Rick,” he says, which matches the name stitched on his light blue shirt. “I’m the one that took a look at your car this morning.”

“Nice to meet you,” Mom says. “This is my daughter, Miranda.” I’m surprised she doesn’t mention she’s a widow and lives on a small fixed income.

I’m kind of surprised when he sticks his hand out in my direction. Not many grownups shake hands with kids. But since he’s one of the few, I reach out and take it.

As soon as my skin touches his, I’m on fire. Flames lick at my brain, but then I realize it’s not my brain I’m feeling. It’s his. There’s so much anger—so much rage—it boils like hot lava. Looking at my mom, he thinks, With that black hair and the way she’s dressed I thought she might be a spic at first. But I don’t reckon she is, not with that red-headed, fair-skinned little girl. Guess if she’s not a spic, I won’t charge her double. Not like those greasy beaners over at the meat plant that want me to fix their thirty-year-old broke-down pickup trucks.

Now his thoughts run all over the place. Pictures flash in my head: an American flag, a Bible held up in an old man’s knotty hand, a huge pot of beans with handfuls of pills being stirred into them.

He’s the one. I don’t have one speck of proof other than what I just saw in his head, but I know it.

When I come back into myself, Rick is saying,“No guarantees with a car this old, but I’m thinking we can probably get old Bessie patched up till she’s good for a few more thousand miles.”

“That would be great,” Mom says. “So you think you can have it ready by the end of the week?”

“Unless the parts are slow to ship, it shouldn’t be a problem,” he says. His tone is so pleasant and friendly, nobody would suspect how much hate is in his head.

Once we’re out of the garage, Mom says, “What happened in there? When you shook his hand, it took you way too long to let it go. I could tell you were creeping him out, but at least he was nice about it. And he’s not charging me too much to fix the car.”

“He’s not nice. I went into his head. I didn’t mean to, but I did. And I saw all kinds of ugly things.”

Mom puts her arm around me as we walk toward home.“Poor baby. I’m sorry. People’s heads are full of all kinds of ugliness. When you’re older, it gets easier. You won’t just fall into people’s thoughts accidentally. You can choose when to do it.”

I nod. I feel a little sick.

“Did you see anything you need to talk about?”

“No.” We’re passing in front of the Piggly Wiggly, and my eye catches the pay phone in the parking lot. “Would you mind if I called Adam for just a minute?”

“That’s fine. I can wait for you.”

After four rings Mrs. So answers, and I ask if Adam’s there. As soon as he picks up, I say, “Can you come over tonight after you get finished with your homework? You and Abigail and I need to talk.”

Abigail and Adam are sitting on the floor of my room, looking at me like kindergarteners waiting for their teacher to tell them a story.

“I know who did it,” I say. “Who tampered with the food at El Mariachi.” I remember the pictures in Rick’s head: the American flag, the Bible held up in an old man’s hand. They’re the same pictures that came into my head when I put my hands on the words spray painted on the front of the restaurant. “It’s the same person who wrote the graffiti.”

“Well? Who is it?” Adam demands.

“His name’s Rick. He works at A and S car repair. He’s probably in his sixties. He has long gray hair in a ponytail.”

“What’s his last name?” Adam asks.

It’s such an obvious question, but I don’t know the answer. “Wait. Mom’s got his business card. She put it on the fridge.” I run down the hall and down the back stairs to the kitchen.

“Miranda!” Mom yells from the living room. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I say, reading the card: Rick Boshears, Certified Mechanic. “I just came down for some juice.” I open the fridge door so she can hear me, then close it.

As I start back up the stairs, Mom yells again, “Miranda, I don’t have to look into your head to know you’re up to something. Be careful, okay?”

Adam and I are in his room, with sodas and a bowl of microwave popcorn Mrs. So brought us. I’m standing behind Adam’s desk chair, looking over his shoulder while he types on the computer. A poster of Bela Lugosi is hanging on the wall behind me and a big inflatable Godzilla is propped in the corner. I feel like Dracula and Godzilla are looking over my shoulders while I’m looking over Adam’s.

“It’s B-O-S-H-E-A-R-S, right?” Adam says after the search engine page pops up.

“Right.”

“Hmm…we’ll try it with Rick first, and if that doesn’t pull anything up, we’ll try Richard.” He types in the same and clicks on “search.”

“Well, you can’t say it didn’t pull anything up,” I say, looking at the heading: 1,121 results.

“Let’s try Rick Boshears with Kentucky,”Adam says.He types and clicks. “Hmm…look at this. A letter to the editor published in the Lexington newspaper. You think it’s him?”

The letter is from October of last year and is signed Rick Boshears, Wilder, Kentucky. I lean closer over Adam’s shoulder and read:

Dear Editor:

Ward Jacobs’ column of September 27,titled “Masters’ Meats: A Business Boon for Southeastern Kentucky,” makes the spurious argument that the new meatpacking plant in Wilder “brings much-needed jobs to economically depressed Morgan County.” One need only look at the list of the names of Masters’ Meats employees to see that the company might as well have built their new plant in Mexico: Sanchez, Rodriguez, Ramirez. Are these the names of local workers? Masters’ Meats hasn’t brought jobs to Wilder; it has brought its own workers—workers who bring with them an increased crime rate, decreased property values and an inability to speak the English language. These are all “gifts” which the citizens of Wilder would happily live without.

The U.S.-Mexico border has already proven itself to be so flexible as to be ineffective. I never thought I’d live to see the day when the border became so flexible that it extended all the way to Kentucky. American businesses only benefit Americans when they hire Americans, and those naysayers who disagree with the idea of building a wall to form a true border between the U.S. and Mexico would do well to remember the words of beloved American poet Robert Frost: “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Rick Boshears

Wilder, Kentucky

“That’s definitely him,” I say.

“Yeah,” Adam says, “but you know what’s weird? He actually writes pretty well. He has a good vocabulary, and he quotes Robert Frost.”

“Yep,” I say, “and Robert Frost is probably rolling over in his grave. But you’re right. He’s ignorant, but he’s not stupid. Go back to the search page and see what else we’ve got.”