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Saturday morning dawns cold and clear. The gray clouds that have blanketed most of the Midwest for the past couple of weeks rolled away through the night, and when my stomach finally settles, I down some toast. I pack a lunch and head to my car. Little Red is the only car in the lot, and the snow that has covered it over since the last storm has shrunk, keeping the form of the car while creeping in on itself, shrinking toward the center as the days have passed. I am half afraid the car won't start, but once I manage to break the ice seal around the door, creak it open, and climb in, Little Red cranks to life on the first turn of the key. I climb back out, leaving the car puttering with the heater on while I knock snow from all the windows and the domes of the trunk and hood.
My fingers are red and dripping with melting ice when I climb back into the car where the happy little heater is already beginning to throw out warm air. Something shifts inside; all is okay. I have a little car, and I can go anywhere I want. I am tied to nobody and nothing. I sit, the car puttering, until my fingers are warm and the steering wheel is no longer too cold to handle. Reversing the car, I crunch over the small drifts that have turned to ice under the tires and drive out of town on 127. There is snow only on the edges of the road, turned black and crunchy with the fumes from passing cars.
I had asked Lola where Sorento was yesterday, without any plans or intentions, just that the town’s name came into my head and suddenly I had to know. “’Bout twenty minutes out of town,” she’d said, pulling the lever for the press as I turned away to hang another group of sheathed clothes on the line. This one for a man named Hogan Myers. Pinned to the tag is a twenty-dollar bill I found wadded in one of his pockets. It’s not the first time I've found money in a pocket, not the first time I’ve pinned the envelope up as Lola has instructed me. We never take anything from the pockets and only dispose of items that are illegal to possess. Cocaine goes straight into the toilet. “I don’t hold no truck with drugs.” I respect that about as much I respect anything in the world. I don’t hold no truck with drugs either.
She told me that Sorento was just out of town, down 127 to old Route 10. That’d take me right to it. She didn’t ask me why I wanted to know. She doesn’t ever ask me anything. She let’s my private life be private, and I certainly respect that, almost as much as her stand on drugs.
I follow the signs in the bright morning light, and about thirty minutes after I crunched out of the parking lot, I see the small green sign that says “SORENTO” in reflective white lettering.
I roll into town, grinding through streets strewn with gravel. The traffic is flowing through the town, and up on the right I see that the destination appears to be a little diner called Marty’s. It is as good a place as any to do some looking around; and my stomach is churning, so maybe a little more than toast would be good. I park Little Red across the street, because there are no spaces left in front of Marty’s, and when I jog across the street, I see a rail and two horses, saddled and hitched, their heads low, relaxed, shifting their weight from one foot to the other. I can’t stop myself and let my hand slide lightly over the one nearest me, a chestnut, probably seventeen hands high. His mane flicks at my touch, his flesh letting off a low heat into the cool of the morning. I let my hand rest there, taken back to Dylan’s horses, to Chessa, who gave the best hugs ever. The door to Marty’s opens, and I draw my hand back, continuing to walk toward the door, and the old guy who opened the door holds it behind him as I go in. “Thank you,” I say, blushing. Such a small kindness, basic manners, and I am flustered and shy.
The honest truth is that it takes everything I have inside of me not to turn around and go right back out the door. This place is packed. A quick scan shows there are six tables on the floor and the walls are lined all around by a counter built out with stools under a great variety of bums. There is not a single place to sit. All of the tables are covered over with pancakes and eggs and bacon and hash browns. The cacophony is on the level of a roar, with voices in the kitchen calling out over the crashing of spatulas on the griddle, and voices of patrons humming to a low roar. It takes me maybe longer than it should to get accustomed to the close press of people and noise. I take a good look around. It’s all country. Blue jeans and flannel shirts and more cowboy boots and hats than I think I’ve ever seen in one place. The older men sport facial hair, beards or mustaches, sometimes both; only the younger men are clean shaven. What in the world have I stepped into? It feels like I’ve gone through a time hole and now I’m some sixty or eighty years in the past.
“You eating?” a voice pipes next to me, and I snap around to see a round face peering up at me. Her face is red as an apple surrounded by springy little curls, flying in all directions. The curls are breaking free of the bandana that is pretending to contain them.
“I would, but it looks like there’s no place to sit.”
She glances around the room and nods at an old guy getting his feet under him at one of the stools. “Jimmy’s leaving. Take his seat.” She nods, a curl-bobbing nod, and turns, taking her tray of emptied plates back to the kitchen.
I angle my way over to where Jimmy is sure enough getting ready to leave, and I wait, as far out of the way as I can, as he turns to come past me. I climb up onto his vacated stool and settle in, stacking the bowls into the plates he left behind.
A teen with a horrible case of acne clears the dishes away and swipes the counter, pocketing the bills that Jimmy had left tucked under the coffee mug. He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t look at anybody, just keeps his eyes turned down to the work in his hands. I guess all that acne would make it hard to feel very confident, but the sort of downtrodden-ness of the boy makes me feel determined. I’m not going to just walk away. I came here for a reason, and this is a good place to start talking to people.
I look toward the man sitting to my left. He’s an old guy like Jimmy, deep in conversation with the old guy on his other side. I give the man on my right a glance, and he’s kind of Mitch-like. Probably closing in on forty or not far past it, balding, taking long sips from his steaming cup of coffee.
I turn to face him and ask “You from around here?”