Kenny’s food truck sticks out in the parking lot like a lighthouse in a storm. With its bright blues and reds and the swooping white letters of Who Gives a Crepe? painted on either side, it’s a far cry from the dated sedans and beat-up trucks scattered nearby. As usual, he’s set up his French and Hoosier flags next to the ordering window, and they ripple in the wind, rolling gently as if posing for a perfect snapshot. I’ve been meaning to ask him why he sets these up if the point of a food truck is mobility, but we haven’t necessarily been on speaking terms lately.
Whatever he’s doing, though, it’s working. He’s set up at Regent Hill, a little strip near campus with restaurants, bars, and a couple bookstores, and he’s had a steady line for the better part of the last hour. Kenny’s working the window, disappearing sometimes to help whomever he’s hired to cook, but largely manning the register, typing in orders, taking money, making small talk—running a business, I guess. Watching him reminds me of Mark working at King’s. His eyes are just as focused, his smile is just as bright, and his movements are just as intentional, as if he’s practiced the most efficient way to take someone’s dollars and place them in the register. It’s nothing like my life at Confluence, where I’d melt into my ergonomic chair to avoid doing anything, and I can’t help but wonder if I would have been better off if I’d stayed here all along.
I expected him to look worse. I figured he’d be shuffling from one side of the truck to the other, shoulders sagged, eyes bloodshot, but, at least from here, there’s no hint of the drunk man who started a fistfight at a funeral and threw up in a flowerpot. He looks like he could run a marathon or climb a mountain, making me suddenly self-conscious that I’m still stuck in my middle school funeral outfit, still covered in splotches of Mark’s ashes and nursing the remnants of a hangover.
I’ve been sitting across the parking lot since 11:00 a.m., waiting for a chance to get in line. I parked the Prius at the corner of the lot at an angle behind the truck so I could wait for my moment and minimize the risk that Kenny would see me. It’s been a little more than an hour, but my legs are cramping up, and I can’t sit still. Nerves, probably. I’ve been waiting for the line to shorten enough so that he can’t spot me standing in it and run or call the cops, but business is good. I don’t know what he’ll do given how we left off the last time we spoke, but nothing about the way the last few weeks have gone tells me it will be good. Truth is, though, that I don’t have much of an option. Given what we did at the funeral, I kind of need Kenny on my side.
Last night, after leaving the spot where Mark died, I rented a room at the Holiday Inn downtown. I hardly used it, opting instead to work on my master plan in the business center. I tried to avoid renting a room, but the hotel staff weren’t crazy about a drunk, beat-up man using their computers for free in the middle of the night, so I paid for one and set up shop. I stayed up researching my plan and putting together the necessary pieces, then grabbed a bite at the continental breakfast, worked on a couple things around town, and headed here.
Kenny hands a crepe to his last customer, a girl wearing pajama pants and a Purdue sweatshirt. She smiles at him and holds it up as if to say cheers or thank him, then turns and heads toward campus. Line gone, Kenny sighs and disappears back through the window, so I grab a piece of paper from my passenger seat and get out of my car. I make my way across the parking lot slowly, taking soft steps like a spy, as if doing so will make the ash-covered old guy in a pink cast blend in near a college campus. I move to the side so I can come up on the truck from behind, minimizing the likelihood that Kenny will spot me before I want him to. He’s either fiddling with the register, cleaning his equipment, or talking with his coworker, so I have the perfect chance to pull a fast one and sneak up on him.
Until the back door opens, that is. Kenny starts to step down before he notices me, and when he does, he stops, his foot lingering midair as if he’s Captain Morgan posing. He grabs the inside of the door for support, then draws his leg in and takes a step back. I hold up my hand to wave, shaking my cast-covered arm back and forth, and he stares at me, wide-eyed, like Mark did in Walmart all those years ago. Only this isn’t a department store, and there’s nowhere for him to run. In a creepy, stalker sort of way, I’ve done what I can to make sure that doesn’t happen.
I lower my arm and take a couple steps forward. “Hey.”
Kenny’s cheeks turn red, then a little blue, looking almost like he did before he threw up.
“Can we talk?” I ask. He’s far enough away that I have to raise my voice, and a couple students walking nearby turn toward us.
Kenny’s eyes move down to his red Who Gives a Crepe? shirt. He stays that way for a couple seconds, then looks over his shoulder, says something I can’t hear to the young guy working the truck, and hops down. He shuts the back doors behind him, being careful not to slam them, and starts walking toward me. When he gets a few feet away, he stops and stuffs his hands in his pockets. The space between us is far enough that he’ll have to move forward if he tries to punch me, so I relax a little and consider myself safe.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
Kenny sighs, and his shoulders sink, making his upper half look like a pile of wet sand. “I deserved it. I shouldn’t—”
“For bailing, I mean. Back then,” I add, scratching the back of my neck. “When everything happened with Beth and me. I guess I thought I’d blown it all, so it was easier to say screw it and run away.”
Kenny nods a couple times. “Thanks,” he says. “I’m sorry too,” he adds, “about S.A.M. and all of that. I was just so mad about you running off, then Mark spiraling out of control. I always felt like if you would have stayed, it never would have happened.”
Despite having thought this dozens of times, hearing him say it takes the air out of my chest.
“Not that it’s your fault. I get that now. I just—I don’t know what got into me. When I saw everyone’s faces at the funeral, saw you covered in Mark’s ashes and all that, it just hit me how bad I’d screwed up, you know?”
“Yeah.” I picture Beth standing over me, her blonde hair curtaining either side of her face, cheeks red, jaw clenched. “We both screwed up pretty bad, huh?”
He lowers his head and stares at the pavement.
I want to press him for information on S.A.M. because I want to know the ins and outs of starting a secret society for running someone out of town, but I decide to save it for another day.
“You talk to anyone from the funeral?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“Me either,” I say, “but I think I have a way to fix that.” I hold up the piece of paper, a flyer I designed at the hotel last night, and he takes it in one hand, leaving the other in his pocket. His eyes, narrow at first, widen as they make their way across the page. His grip tightens, crinkling the paper, and as much as I want to reach out and take it from him to keep it pristine, I stand still and let him finish reading.
When he looks up, his mouth has fallen open, and his right eye is twitching. “What is this?”
“A memorial for Mark. Music, food, photos—the whole shebang.”
“The ‘long-anticipated reunion of The Jackals’? Sponsored by King’s and Who Gives a Crepe?” A vein bulges from his forehead, and little beads of sweat start to form around his hairline. “And you’re doing this tomorrow?”
I stuff my hands in my pockets and rock back on my heels. “I was kind of thinking we would do this tomorrow.”
“You have to get permits for this sort of thing. You can’t just set up a food truck and a band in a public park and put on a show.”
He’s right, of course. I researched this for half an hour or so on the hotel’s computer last night, trying to find a loophole. The band isn’t a problem—I’ll take the hit for that—but Kenny could get in deep shit if his food truck randomly sets up shop, especially across the street from King’s. I’d like to tell him that I figured it out, that we can get away with it without any sort of repercussion, but I can’t because, well, that’s not true. Knowing my luck since I got back here, it probably won’t end well, either.
“Oh,” I add, “I already put those flyers up around town too.”
Kenny hands me back the flyer, which I try to smooth against my chest, then runs his hands over his face. “You know I’ve booked a spot for tomorrow, right? Posted it on Facebook, my website, everything. And I’m supposed to bail on it because you planned something without asking?”
I force a smile. “Yeah?”
He takes in a long breath through his nose, pulling his shoulders up to his ears, then exhales. His eyes move to the flyer in my hand, and he shakes his head a couple times. “How the hell are you going to get the band back together? In case you missed it, Mark’s gone, Brian isn’t talking to us, and you have a broken arm.”
I don’t have an answer for this, either.
“Look, dude,” I say, “I don’t have a ton of this figured out. I do know, though, that if I can get your food truck in and say that the band will be there, and people see it, they’ll come out. And if they do, they can share some memories of Mark, eat some crepes and custard, and listen to some of the songs Mark made everyone fall in love with.”
Kenny starts to open his mouth, but I keep going. “I know I’ve pissed off a lot of people, but it kills me to think that Mark’s memory is being whittled down to some flowers on the sidewalk and a fistfight at his funeral. I just want to make it all right, and the best way I can figure out to do that is to hang at Riehle Park and play music and eat food and spend time with everyone. That’s really all I can come up with,” I add, throwing my hands up, “and I know it’ll go way better if one of my best friends is there with me.”
Kenny grabs the flyer out of my hand. His eyes make their way over the letters again, scanning from left to right, top to bottom, over and over. After what feels like an hour, a smirk breaks out across his face, and he starts laughing. It’s a quiet thing, a whisper almost, like he doesn’t want anyone to hear that I’ve made him feel something good.
He sighs. “Fuck it. I’ll do it.”
I don’t mean to hug him, but I do, throwing my arms around his torso as tightly as I can. He winces when the plaster of the cast smashes into him, but he’s laughing again, not scoffing like I expected him to. He wraps his arms around me, giving me a couple claps on the back before wedging his hand in between us and pushing me away.
“Okay, okay,” he says. “Calm it down a little.”
“You won’t regret this.”
He raises his eyebrows. “We’ll see about that.”
“I promise,” I add. “Meet me at Riehle Park at 5:00 p.m. tomorrow. This is going to be great.”
“Noted,” he says, giving me a little salute.
The corners of my mouth curl up at this, and I turn back toward my car, ready to run from the sudden rush of adrenaline. I’ve made it five or six steps when Kenny’s voice comes across the parking lot.
“Hey, Jack?”
I stop and turn. “Yeah?”
“How did you get Mark’s dad in on this?”
I take in a breath and hold it there. I was hoping he wouldn’t ask this.
“It’s a surprise?”
“Jesus Christ,” he says. He waves me away with a dismissive hand, then turns back toward his truck. “We’re screwed.”
I force another smile and turn back toward my car, confident for the first time since this all started that everything is going to be okay.