Midnight Crossroad

25

Manfred was busy with the woes of an eighty-year-old man from Arizona when his cell phone buzzed. He ignored it, of course, but after he’d told the man he’d find companionship at a church (fairly safe advice), he checked the listing. He whooped out loud. Then he sat for a moment, composing himself, before he hit “Call.”

“Manfred,” Creek said, sounding almost shy. “Thanks for calling me back. I got your phone number from Fiji.”

“Not at all,” he said, and then winced. That made no sense! he thought. “What can I do for you, Creek?”

“I was hoping you needed to go to Davy today? I need a ride to the Kut N Kurl salon.”

“You don’t have your driver’s license yet?”

“Dad has to take Connor to a doctor’s appointment. I usually do that, but the doctor will want to talk to Dad. So he’ll need the truck.”

“I’ll be glad to take you,” Manfred said. “Do you have an appointment?”

“At three. Is that at all . . . ?”

“I’ll stop by the service station to pick you up at two thirty.”

“Thanks, M . . . Manfred.” She’d been about to call him Mr. Bernardo. He had a lot of remedial work to do.

At two twenty-seven, Manfred pulled in at Gas N Go. There were no customers at the moment. Inside, Shawn was shelving motor oil. Creek was sitting on a stool behind the register, and she grinned when he came in. Shawn gave Manfred a grim look.

“Hey, Shawn,” Manfred said, doing his best to sound casual and responsible. “I had to go to Davy this afternoon, anyway, so it’s no trouble for me to give Creek a ride.”

“All right,” Shawn said heavily. He straightened up and looked at Manfred without much enthusiasm. “Teacher Reed’s coming over to take care of this place. I’m leaving as soon as Connor gets home on the bus. His doctor is over in Marthasville. Be sure and have Creek home by six. She needs to watch Connor.”

“She’ll be back by then for sure,” Manfred said. How much watching could Connor need? The boy was fourteen. “You ready, Creek?”

“Yeah, I’m ready,” she said, sliding off the stool and walking around the counter. “Thanks for giving me a ride, Mr. Bernardo. Dad, see you later.”

“Okay, Creek,” Shawn said grudgingly. “You got enough money?”

“Yes, sir.”

Shawn couldn’t think of any other reason to delay Creek’s departure, so Manfred held the door open for the girl and she flew out of the store.

Creek didn’t wait for him to open the car door for her but scrambled inside as if she feared her father would stop her from going to Davy at the last minute. Manfred buckled up as quickly as he could, and looked both ways about ten times before he pulled out onto the Davy highway. If Shawn was watching—pretty much a sure thing—Manfred wanted to be sure he saw how responsibly Manfred would drive with Creek in the car.

“Relief!” said Creek.

“Relief?”

“Getting out of Midnight for a little while. Well, actually, getting away from my dad for a little while.”

“You’re at the age when most kids separate from their parents,” he agreed.

“Okay, I won’t call you ‘Mr. Bernardo’ again, and you don’t call me ‘kid.’”

“Deal. What I was going to say is, sorry you didn’t get to leave for college like you were supposed to. Joe and Chuy told me about that.”

She shrugged. Her dark hair swung forward to obscure her expression. “Yeah, I hope I can still get the scholarship. I was all set to go.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged again. “It’s a long, boring story. Some paperwork didn’t make it on time. Is it true you’re a telephone psychic?”

Manfred started to shrug and tell her that was a long, boring story, but he thought he’d come off as too sarcastic. “My grandmother was a psychic, too,” he said. “My mom . . . the talent skipped her. She became the polar opposite. She’s become so down to earth and normal that it hurts to talk to her.”

“So where does she live?”

“In Tennessee,” he said. “I grew up in Tennessee. I lived with my grandmother a lot of the time.”

“I haven’t seen my grandmother . . .” Creek began, and then she trailed off. “I don’t ever see my grandparents.”

Manfred was not a mind-reader, at least not consistently or casually, but he’d been trained to be observant. Creek had not planned on ending the sentence that way. She’d almost said something completely different, something that would have revealed a lot about Lovell family life. Manfred was wise enough not to push, though. “Where’s this hair place you’re going to?” he asked. Visibly relieved at the change in the conversation, Creek gave him directions. Kut N Kurl was in an add-on structure attached to a house in a humble part of Davy. Not that Davy has many grand parts, Manfred thought. Until he pulled up in front of the house, their conversation was steady but impersonal. It was a start, he figured.

“How long do you think you’ll be?” Manfred asked as Creek opened the car door.

“Usually takes an hour,” she said. “Minnie might be running late. There are magazines to read, so don’t worry if your own errands run longer. I’ll be watching out the window.”

Manfred could tell from the smile on Creek’s face that getting her hair cut was a treat. That seemed a little sad. Maybe Creek just enjoyed the rare afternoon being in the society of other women? Maybe just getting out of Midnight and the ever-present grind of the convenience store was the real delight? “Okay,” he said. “Message received. I’ll be back in an hour or a little more. You’ve got my cell phone number, I know.”

“Yeah,” she said, embarrassed. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” he said promptly, and in the interests of being as thorough as he could be, he walked her to the door marked KUT N KURL. As she pushed it open, a waft of the beauty parlor smell drifted out to Manfred and evoked memories he hadn’t realized he possessed: taking his grandmother to her hair salon as she got older; smelling the salon incense of perm solution, hair dye, and wax; hearing the snick of scissors and the running water, the plastic crinkle of the protective capes . . . Suddenly, he had a mental image of Xylda so vivid that it almost brought tears to his eyes: this whole rush of past experiences, brought back by that one inhalation.

He knew he said something to Creek before he turned to walk back to the car, but he couldn’t recall what it was a minute later.

He had to sit in the car for a while before he left to run his errands. He pulled out his list of errands from his pocket and pretended to be studying it until he was calm and composed again. He had to smile a little; Xylda would have enjoyed knowing she was the center of so much of his life.

Maybe she did know it. That was not a bad feeling.

Home Depot, Walmart, and Dairy Queen were his three ports of call. An hour and fifteen minutes later, Manfred pulled up outside Kut N Kurl again. Before he could turn off his engine, Creek was at the passenger door. “I was watching out the window,” she said, climbing in.

“I brought you something,” Manfred said. “Here.” He handed her a cup with a spoon.

“What is it?”

“Butterfinger Blizzard,” he said. “I just guessed.”

“Oh, boy,” she said, and started in on the ice cream right away. “This is great!”

“You’ve had one before, right?”

“No, never. Connor’s on a very restricted diet.”

She didn’t explain why, and Manfred thought it would be pushy to ask. Manfred felt he might’ve undermined Shawn with the ice cream and that Shawn would not appreciate it. It felt strange to be on the parental consent side of things. “I hope I’m not in trouble,” he said.

“Not with me,” Creek assured him, and he felt better.

“I think it’s great that he wants Connor to eat healthy,” Manfred added quickly.

“He’s got some health issues,” she said, between bites of ice cream.

“Oh?” Manfred asked, “Allergies?” But when the pleasure on her face vanished, he realized he’d stepped over a boundary. “Sorry. Midnight people like to play things close to the chest.”

Her smile reappeared. He felt a rush of relief. “That’s one way to put it,” she said. “Yeah, my dad is pretty strict about us eating in restaurants, especially Connor. What about your dad? Was he hard on you?”

“I don’t know,” Manfred said. “I never met him. I don’t know who he was.”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry! Were you adopted?” She had flushed, which made her look even prettier, he thought.

“Nope. My mom was single, and she never told me anything about my dad.”

“I guess you asked her a lot,” Creek said, obviously feeling her way.

“Over and over, especially when I was little.”

“I’m really sorry,” she said. “I’m assuming you had to find ways to handle that. Were other kids mean about it?”

“I don’t think it would be as bad now, but then, in a sort of rural area, it was pretty tough.”

Creek obviously had a dozen things to say, but she seemed to be thinking twice about all of them. “Well, that sucks,” she said finally.

“Yeah, it kind of did,” he agreed, and they rode the rest of the way to Midnight in silence, working on their Blizzards. Manfred didn’t think the lack of conversation was uncomfortable; he characterized it as thoughtful. He pushed aside his own childhood mystery with the ease of long practice and instead focused on Creek’s. What kind of father keeps two kids chained to a convenience store in a little town that’s almost dead? And then has issues about them eating in restaurants? Manfred noted that was limited to out-of-town restaurants. The Lovells got takeout from Home Cookin regularly.

Manfred was beginning to wonder if there might be something sketchy about Creek’s not getting her scholarship, too. He couldn’t begin to imagine how he could tackle a line of questioning that would confirm or deny that suspicion, so he tucked the idea away for further examination.

He pulled into the convenience store parking lot before five o’clock. The old truck was back, parked over at their house next door, so Shawn and Connor had returned. Manfred debated going in to hand her over to her dad, then realized that would just be weird. She wasn’t eight years old, and this wasn’t a date. Plus, Shawn was probably watching.

“Thanks,” Creek said. “I appreciate the ride and the Blizzard.” She left the DQ cup in the cup holder, Manfred noticed.

“Glad to do it. Ask again,” he said, striving to sound casual. “And by the way, your hair looks great. You get about an inch cut off?”

Surprise flashed across her face. “Yeah,” she said. “I can’t believe you noticed.”

Not getting a lot of attention at home, Manfred noted. “My grandmother always wanted my opinion on her hair,” he said. “That’s what she said, but she really wanted me to tell her she looked great and not a day older.”

Creek laughed. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t believe you when you tell me I look great?”

“I’m going to make a deal with you,” Manfred said. “I’ll do my best to always tell you the truth.” He had no idea why he’d said that, but he knew instantly it had been the right thing to tell her.

“That’s an interesting deal, Manfred Bernardo. Okay. I’ll do my best to do the same.” And Creek opened her door and walked swiftly into the store.

When the door swung shut, Manfred went home, but it took him an hour to settle back to work.