Jack Spivey never flew when he traveled. He never paid travel expenses with plastic. He never wore anything but khakis, a blue button-down, and a plain black baseball cap. If a jacket was required, it was something as unassuming as the rest of his attire. His car was a silver Honda Accord for which he made regular payments at a too-high interest rate. Everybody drives a fucking silver Honda Accord, and everybody gets screwed over by ridiculously high interest rates. He could have paid cash for the car a hundred times over, but a cash transaction at a car dealership draws attention, and he wanted to be just like every-goddamn-body. He dyed his hair and beard brown because that’s what about every third man in America looks like. He stayed in shape, but not so much that he looked like a muscle-bound freak that lived in the gym. He kept himself thin enough to be confused for a half-dozen assholes living on Average Citizen Street, USA.
Spivey wasn’t invisible, but he was pretty damn near it. He was tethered to a checkered past that included stints in juvie and prison, but those days were stretched out long behind him, and his profile was as low as a belly button on an earthworm.
He sat in a booth in Pep’s Roadside Flapjacks and sipped on a cup of black coffee. It was early, just after sunup. Truckers and tobacco farmers crammed into the booths and tables all around him. He was a stranger to them, but they could tell he was their kind. He’d worked away the rough spots of his upbringing—changed the way he talked, ditched the hickbilly bravado, and threw out every belt buckle and sleeveless shirt he’d ever owned—but that didn’t change who he was. He was a backwoods cracker, and every now and then, it was the sort of thing that got him into trouble.
A short, fat man dressed in clericals stepped inside the restaurant and scanned every patron before walking to Spivey’s booth.
“Spivey? Jack Spivey?”
Spivey looked the man up and down. “What the shit are you wearing?”
The man tugged on his white collar. “Got work after.”
“You’re a fucking preacher? I thought you were a lawyer. That’s why I hired you.”
“I’m a partway preacher. Law’s my primary.” He motioned toward the booth. “You mind if I sit?”
“What the hell is a partway preacher?”
“I do ceremonies and such. Weddings. Funerals. Anything that needs an officiant. Can I sit?”
“What else needs an officiant besides weddings and funerals?”
“I do swear-ins here and there. I’d like to sit, if you don’t mind.”
“Swear-ins?”
“At lodges and clubs and the like. I swear in officers. President, treasurer, and whatnot. Can I sit?”
“You need a preacher to swear in some shithead president of the fuck-a-moose-in-the-ass lodge?”
“You do if you want the Almighty to bless his term. Now, can I sit?”
“Well, goddamn, man, I don’t own the fucking booth. Sit if you want to.”
The partway preacher–full-time lawyer sat. “How’s the coffee?”
“Lukewarm. So, what’re you swearing in today, a president, a treasurer, or a whatnot?”
“It ain’t a swear-in. It’s a funeral. Old Ben Casper. A fella of about eighty, slipped on a spot of cooking oil in his kitchen. Hit his head on the counter. Turned up deader than a Democrat at a pro-life rally.”
“And this Casper, he doesn’t have a regular preacher? They had to call in a partway preacher?”
“Churches around here wouldn’t have a thing to do with him. He got caught diddling a kid or two some time back. His sister give me a call. She’s got one foot in it herself. Wouldn’t surprise me if I end up doing a doubleheader today. Of course, that would be unfortunate because it wouldn’t leave no one to pay.”
“So, you’re going to pray for this kid-diddler? You don’t have a problem with that?”
The partway preacher waved him off. “Won’t nothing I say take. I ain’t ordained by no particular religion. Got my credentials off a website for thirty bucks. I ain’t got God’s ear. I’m just for show, to make folks feel like things are done holy.”
“And you don’t consider that fraud?”
The partway preacher shrugged. “I expect it is, but in the grand scheme of things if making a body feel official in the eyes of the Lord is a sin, I don’t mind answering for it when my time comes.”
Tonya, one of four waitresses working the eatery, approached the table with a pot of coffee and another cup. “Morning, Gus. Having the special?”
“I am.” Gus, the partway preacher, waited anxiously as she placed the empty cup on the table and filled it with the black liquid. He took a peek at her sagging chest and noticed her name tag was on upside down. “You’re all wonked up there, girl.”
She finished pouring the coffee and stood straight up. “What the hell you talking about, son?”
“Your name tag’s turned on its head.”
She bellowed out a smoker’s cough as she peered down at her chest. “Well, ain’t that some shit. That’s a laugh and a half right there. No wonder everyone’s been staring at my left tit all goddamn morning.” She turned to the kitchen. “Y’all coulda told me my name tag was on upside down!” She turned back to the table. “What about you, mister? You want something to eat?”
“Toast.”
“Toast?” she asked. “That it? Pep makes some damn good flapjacks. It’s in the name for a reason. He ain’t known for his toast. Otherwise we would have called it Pep’s Roadside Toast. Wouldn’t have near the number of customers we got if we did, so you gotta respect a man’s art.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Spivey asked.
“I’m trying to tell you the toast here ain’t no good. Get the flapjacks.”
“What do you mean the toast ain’t no good? It’s bread, toasted. How difficult can that be?”
Sensing his irritation, Tonya held up her hands in a show of surrender. “I was just trying to steer you in the right direction. If it’s toast you want, it’s toast you’ll be getting. You won’t be happy about it, but it ain’t none of my business.” She walked away, leaving the pot of coffee on the table, and adjusted her name tag.
Gus dumped sugar into his coffee and asked, “So, what brings you our way, Mr. Jack Spivey?”
“Traveling through.”
“Well, I gotta say, I didn’t ever expect to meet up with you in person. Thought you and me wouldn’t never talk but by phone.”
“Face-to-face isn’t my normal habit in these situations, but when I looked at the map and saw I’d be driving through Titus Grove, I figured it wouldn’t hurt. You bring the receipts?”
“About that—”
“What do you mean ‘about that’?” Spivey’s nostrils flared like a bull preparing to charge. “If you’re saying you didn’t bring the receipts, I’m going to have to find an officiant for your fucking funeral.”
“No, sir, that ain’t what I’m saying, altogether.” Gus reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a couple dozen handwritten receipts held together with a paper clip. “I got all but one.” He handed the receipts to Spivey. “Her signature’s on every last one of them. And, every dime of the money is accounted for, ’cept my five percent. I didn’t put no invoice together on that ’cause I figured you wanted it off the books.”
Spivey flipped through a few of the receipts. “Why is there one missing?”
“Because I ain’t been able to locate her for going on two weeks. She ain’t returned a one of my calls, and her trailer has stood vacant for a good while now. I’ve gone there myself three or four times.”
“What about friends and family?”
“What about ’em?”
Spivey sighed deeply to cool his frustration. “You haven’t contacted her friends? Her family?”
Gus snickered. “You ain’t serious, right?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t you know nothing about this woman you’ve been sending money to all this time?”
“I know what I know.”
“Then you know she’s a Pike.”
“What’s a Pike?”
Without warning, Tonya showed up at their table with an armload of plates. “A Pike is bad news, mister. That’s what a Pike is.” She placed all but one of the plates in front of Gus. “Just speaking that goddamn name exposes me to being cursed by the devil.” She held out a plate of burnt toast and showed it to Spivey. “Told you. Pep can’t do up toast to save his life. He’s got a mental defect in the area of toasted bread.”
“He burnt the shit out of it,” Spivey said.
“You want them flapjacks now?”
Spivey shook his head. “Leave it.”
“You’re gonna eat this toast?”
“I’ll pick at it. Leave it.”
“You got something against flapjacks?”
“You got something against a tip? Because you’re talking yourself out of one.”
She dropped the plate in front of him. “All you’ve ordered is coffee and burnt toast. I expect I can live without that fifteen percent.” As she walked away she mumbled, “I ain’t never known somebody so against flapjacks.”
Gus chuckled. “Tonya ain’t one to be trifled with, Mr. Spivey.”
“The same’s been said about me.”
Another chuckle. “I can believe that.”
“Tell me more about this Pike business.”
“I’d just as soon not.”
Spivey stared at the partway preacher.
“Eyeball me all you want. Won’t change my stance on discussing the Pikes. Folks find themselves in a bad way if they spend too much of a conversation in a public place on that bunch.” He pointed his fork filled with flapjacks to the crowd at the back of the restaurant. “Can’t never tell who’s into the Pikes for a bad wager and whatnot. Might get their debt whittled down for information about who talked on them. Might be a good sum knocked off if one of the talkers was a stranger who eats Pep’s burnt toast.” He shoved the flapjacks into his mouth. “That might not concern you, Mr. Spivey, but I gotta live here. You don’t. You hired me to deliver money to Luna Conway not yap about her family. I can’t help it if you don’t know nothing about the woman you’re paying off.”
Spivey’s stare grew colder. “I’m not paying her off. I’m doing my job.”
Gus stopped mid-chew when he caught a glimpse of Spivey’s unfriendly glare. “My mistake.”
Spivey stood and threw a twenty-dollar bill onto the table. “Get up.”
“Get up? I got three plates to go.”
“You’re taking me to Luna’s place.”
“She ain’t there. I done told you. Swung by her trailer this morning hoping I could deliver your last payment—”
“I said you’re taking me to her place. If I have to say it again, you’ll be sipping your next breakfast through a straw.”
“Well, can I at least get a to-go bag? Tonya,” he yelled, “can you bag this up for me?”
Spivey yanked him out of the booth by his arm.
“I’m coming,” Gus said before scooping up a handful of hash browns and shoving them into his mouth.
Tonya walked to the door and shook her head in derision as Spivey dragged Gus to a silver Honda Accord. “Good Lord, Pep,” she shouted, “your toast done turnt a customer violent.”