A week later, the little locomotive in the city park was defaced with the word “Niger” painted on its side either by a racist who couldn’t spell or someone with an obscure connection to the age-old river which twisted its way through West Africa.
Not even the Honk was spared the mayhem that spread from one side of town to the other.
Kim, a carhop for less than two months, didn’t come to work for three days after a neat and studious-looking young man exposed himself to her when she delivered the foot-long hotdog he’d ordered to his car.
But to some, more extraordinary news than even the crime wave concerned Bilbo Porter, who gave up smoking on the evening he rushed Peg to the hospital choking for breath. As he stood over her in the emergency room, watching her fight for air, he vowed he would never again put a cigarette to his lips.
When he stopped by the Honk that night and told them of the pledge he’d made, the bets came down hard and fast, and before he left, he had two hundred dollars on the line that he wouldn’t make it a week.
He started walking the next morning, eight or ten blocks each time he wanted a smoke, and he developed a craving for sweets, so he stocked up on ice cream, candy, cookies and pies. By the time Peg was released eight days later, he had walked fifty-six miles, gained nine pounds and had ten twenty-dollar bills stuffed in the pocket of his pants which he had not been able to button because of his bulging belly.
A few nights later, when someone broke into the IGA and stole sixty cartons of cigarettes, those who’d lost their money to Bilbo accused him of being the culprit.
When the Dairy Queen reopened three weeks after the kitchen fire, Caney’s business slacked off a little except for Friday nights, when Bui’s Asian Delight Special drew customers from three counties and filled the Honk from five o’clock until closing.
Hamp came by the Honk several times during the summer, always to ask about Brenda. He said his friend Bob Swink thought he’d heard one of her songs on the radio, but he couldn’t remember the title or the station that played it.
Molly O didn’t know where Brenda was, but early in August she’d gotten a phone call—long distance, she judged from the sound—and though no one spoke when she answered, she had a mother’s intuition that her daughter was on the other end of the line. For the next three nights she slept on the couch to be near the phone, but Brenda didn’t call again.
Life almost managed to complete his proposal of marriage to Molly O while they were playing bingo at the VFW on a Saturday night. But just before the last few words were out of his mouth, she called out, “Bingo!” as she marked B-1 on her card, making her a winner of fifty dollars for filling all four corners.
Then, desperate and with nothing to lose, he gave her Reba’s journal to read when he took her home that night.
Three days later, shyly avoiding his eyes as she poured his first cup of coffee, she slid the journal across the counter to him, then turned without comment and hurried to the kitchen to hand Bui the order for Life’s bacon and eggs.
The heat of summer held on in Sequoyah until the last Thursday in September when a steady soaking rain fell from early morning until midafternoon, ending a thirty-seven-day drought and twelve straight days of temperatures exceeding a hundred and three, to which caladiums, scarlet sage, nasturtiums and Duncan Renfro succumbed.
Ellen missed him shortly after eleven when she began to listen for the phone call that would signal his sighting. When no such message came, she got in the car and drove to the Honk, but no one there had seen him all day.
She didn’t know until that evening that he had managed to climb into the attic of their own house where he’d spent the hottest part of the afternoon measuring the rafters until he dropped dead of heat stroke.
He was buried two days later, wearing his striped carpenter’s overalls with a tape measure shoved into each pocket.
Throughout the fall the weather was unusually cold, but not cold enough to keep Caney inside. While Bui cooked for the breakfast trade, Caney took off to ride the gelding. And some afternoons, when it was warm enough, he left after lunch to go fishing with Hooks.
To fill his nights, he took up with Louis L’Amour again, staying up till two or three, reading and drinking coffee in bed.
Mostly, though, he tried not to think about Vena.
But on those days when an eighteen-wheeler would pull up out front, he’d lean forward and look out the window as if he expected to see her crawl down from the cab and walk back into his life.
T
HE ONLY CHRISTMAS decoration in the Honk was a bedraggled plastic wreath in the front window. No trees or lights, no frizzy-haired Barbies or candy canes. Even the nativity scene remained packed away.
When Molly O had started hauling in boxes of ornaments and tinsel, Caney had asked her not to put them up this year, an annual request which she annually ignored. But this time she heard a deep sadness in his voice she hadn’t heard before.
And she didn’t have to guess at the cause.
She had pleaded the case for the wreath, then gave in without further argument, relieved in a way that she wouldn’t be faced with reminders of Brenda—the Santa she’d made in second grade that always went at the top of the tree; an old high-heeled shoe decorated with macaroni, sprayed gold and stuffed with plastic holly; the special ornaments she loved—mice made of straw, elves of ceramic and red birds with real feathers.
But now, with Christmas only two days away and the Honk looking like it had been hit by the Grinch, she wondered if she hadn’t made a mistake.
“You’re running a little late this morning,” Quinton said as Soldier came through the door.
Soldier shrugged out of his coat and pulled up to the table where Quinton was just mopping up the last of his biscuits and gravy while Hooks worked on his second cup of coffee.
“Looks like I’m not the only one who slept in,” Soldier said. “I see the damned paper’s not here yet.”
“Nope.” Molly O filled a cup for Soldier, then picked up Quinton’s empty plate. “Can’t say this new carrier’s any better than Big Fib.”
“Yeah, but as far as we know this one’s still living on Earth.”
“Little Fib still sticking to that story ’bout his daddy being held captive on Mars?”
“Hell, yes. He’s getting as bad as his old man. He keeps on, he’ll have to change his name from ‘Little’ to ‘Bigger.’ ”
“You gonna have breakfast, Soldier?” Caney asked as he came out of the kitchen and settled behind the counter to have a cigarette.
“Not unless Bui’s doing the cooking.”
“He’s not here yet,” Molly O said. “Galilee’s got him closing in her back porch, making extra room for when his wife and baby get here.”
“They still in Vietnam?”
“No, they got out of there,” Hooks said. “Bui told me they was in a refugee camp in Malaria.”
“Hell, Hooks. Malaria’s a disease.”
“Didn’t Wilma’s husband have that once?”
“Rex hasn’t had
anything
just once.”
“Speaking of disease,” Soldier said, “look who’s here.”
“Morning, Wanda Sue,” Caney said as she trooped in and took her usual place at the counter.
“Paper’s not here yet?” she asked.
“No, we was just saying that things ain’t improved a bit since Big Fib went to Mars.”
“Mars?” Wanda Sue pulled at her ear, signaling she had something to tell. “Why, you’re not even close. Not even on the right planet.”
“I take it you know more than we do.”
“Don’t I always?”
“Well, I bet whatever it is, we couldn’t pry it out of you short of torture.”
“He’s gone to Jupiter.” Wanda Sue gave her stool a dramatic spin to face her audience. “Jupiter, Florida.”
“Now what the hell would he be doing in Florida?”
“I imagine you’d hightail it out of here, too, if the Mosier brothers was after you.”
“Yeah, I probably would,” Soldier said. “But I wouldn’t stop at Florida. I’d go on to Cuba, even if I had to swim.”
“Seems Big Fib was running around with Jake Mosier’s wife and got caught.”
Quinton whistled between his teeth.
“So the two Fibs cooked up the idea of making it look like a spaceship took him.”
“I reckon if Jake Mosier ever catches up with him, Big Fib’ll wish he’d hooked up with them aliens.”
When Hooks saw the bus pull in, he said, “Why’s Bui driving the bus today? This Sunday?”
“No, Hooks. Sunday comes right after Saturday. Every week.
But you keep working on it, you’ll get it.”
“Bui’s car’s up on concrete blocks behind Galilee’s house,” Caney said. “Threw a rod.”
“Say,” Hooks said as Bui walked in, “I hear you’re getting ready for your family to come.”
“Yes, Sister Galilee make home for me and wife and baby.”
“Well, that’s good. Home’s important, all right.”
“For me, yes. But some people ascared of home.”
“Now who told you that?” Molly O asked.
“Miss Vena.”
After Bui went to the kitchen, no one spoke or stirred until Caney turned and wheeled into his room.
*
“I guess I’d better get going,” Molly O said as she came from Caney’s bedroom, snapping on a pair of dangling rhinestone earrings.
“Wow!” Caney said.
She had showered and changed from her workclothes into a cherry red silk dress with a low-cut neckline, low enough to show the cleavage between the halo of her breasts.
“You look great in that dress.”
“Oh, this old thing?”
“Come here and let me cut the price tag off the sleeve of that old thing.”
Molly O blushed as Caney pulled out his pocketknife and clipped loose the tag.
“I’ve never seen you so gussied up before.”
“Now, Caney, don’t tease.”
“Guess this is a real special occasion.”
“Life called it the eve of Christmas Eve dinner.”
“I never figured Life for a cook.”
“He’s not, but he says he’s been practicing.”
“Well, it must be one hell of a meal he’s fixing. He hasn’t turned up here all day.”
When Bui came from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a towel, he said, “Miss Ho, you look too beautiful.”
“Thank you, Bui.”
“She’s going to her boyfriend’s house for dinner.”
“Caney, he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Yeah? Try telling him that.”
“Look, I hate to take off so early, but—”
“Sure.” Caney made a sweeping motion across the empty cafe.
“Right here at our busiest time.”
“And as soon as I walk out that door, a dozen customers will show up.”
“Get on out of here.”
“Okay. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Oh, you never know. You might still be at Life’s in the morning.”
“Caney! You’re gonna have Bui thinking I’m some kind of loose woman.”
“What is loose woman?” Bui asked.
“I’ll explain it to you later,” Caney said. “After she’s gone.”
Molly O pulled on her coat, checked her makeup in the mirror, then waved as she slipped out the door.
“Bui, what do you say we call it a night?”
“Yes sir, Mr. Chaney. Kitchen all finished and—”
Caney swiveled to pick up the phone on the first ring.
“Honk and Holler,” he answered, “but we’re closed.”
When he heard the soft intake of her breath, he closed his eyes while he waited through the silence, waited to hear her say his name.
*
Bui had never driven the bus beyond the outskirts of Sequoyah, never passed another vehicle or even honked the horn. He’d never traveled faster than a safe thirty-five, never failed to yield to another driver and never taken the right-of-way, even when it was his.
But when he reached the highway and pushed the bus to sixty-five, felt the power and speed and authority only he controlled, a strange transformation began to take place.
He found himself overtaking monster trucks, bearing down on sleek sports cars, honking at unyielding drivers puttering along in the passing lane.
The qualities of patience, timidity and compliance instilled by the culture that had shaped him, waned with every mile. And by the time the bus roared across the Red River, speeding into the moonless Texas night, he was charged with boldness, tigerish at the wheel.
Caney, his chair locked in place beside the driver’s seat, said almost nothing through the blur of Dallas after midnight, Waco at three, Austin before dawn.
Even when they reached San Antonio in the middle of the morning rush hour, Caney didn’t seem to notice as Bui cut his way through the tangle of traffic, squeezing the bus into impossible openings, darting from lane to lane, yelling Vietnamese warnings to those who dared to get in his way.
*
The treeless patch of ground surrounding the complex was littered with aluminum cans, two bent bicycle wheels, fast-food boxes and the bottom half of a rusted metal chair.
A swing set missing the swings leaned on three legs near a child’s plastic swimming pool where a squashed rubber duck floated in two inches of muddy water.
At the curb a ten-year-old Mustang with four flat tires faced a pickup, the bed piled high with bulging garbage bags.
Bui parked behind the pickup, then hooked the plywood ramp he’d made to the top step of the bus and waited while Caney rolled to solid ground.
He faced a half dozen unnegotiable steps, but Bui pushed the chair up the dirt incline beside them and onto a cracked sidewalk.
“Number fourteen,” Caney said. “Hope it’s not upstairs.”
“If up the stairs, I carry you, Mr. Chaney.” Then Bui pointed to the last door on the ground floor. “I see the fourteen.”
When they reached the apartment, Caney pulled out a comb and ran it through his hair, then looked to Bui for approval.
“Look okay,” Bui said.
Caney took a deep breath, then knocked—three quick raps followed by sounds of movement from inside. Moments later, she opened the door.
She was barefoot, wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, and her hair, longer than when he’d last seen it, was twisted into a braid that hung across one shoulder.