All-Day Breakfast Read online

  “Weren’t you all writing letters to Congress?”

  “Screw that,” said Grace, “we’re the refugees now. Didn’t you call the factory guy—he say anything good?”

  “Oh.” Child was using her brain! “Guy said to meet him way out in Lancaster County, but I’m going to head to Velouria before that, see what anybody has to say.”

  “We’re in. Hey, crazy chick,” she called to Amber, “come get in the car.”

  “What’s that thumping?” I asked.

  “It’s that asshole!” said Amber. “Pop the trunk, I want to munch his face!”

  Demurely, Grace slid to the ground and circled the car. “What’s going on down the block there?” she asked, flicking up a pierced eyebrow.

  “Megan Avery’s dad got run over by somebody.”

  “Megan’s hilarious.” Amber clacked her nails on the back windshield. “Come on, come on!”

  Grace reached beside the driver’s seat and the trunk opened with a metallic burp.

  “Yeah, about time,” a man’s voice hollered from inside, “you fucking—”

  Amber’s fist came back to her shoulder and descended.

  I peered in—a shirtless, black-bearded, three-hundred-pound man held his hands to his nose as blood seeped between his fingers. He had a snake’s open mouth tattooed around his eyes, a fang threatening each eyeball, and napalm death written across his bare chest. The trunk smelled of booze and vanilla air-freshener.

  “Mr. Giller, I am sorry, but you would not believe how rude he was to us.”

  “You drive a yellow car, sir?” I shouted down at him. “Huh?”

  “Getting oud,” he said, grasping for the lip of the trunk. “Nod funny.”

  Grace stood at my hip, unwrapping another Slim Jim, while Amber waited with that right fist still cocked, eyes darting from me to our large victim.

  “One missing arm,” she hissed. “He calls me a freak—not like it’s a harelip!”

  His head came up, then he raised his massive legs and lowered them to the cement. He staggered across to the opposite sidewalk, hands to his face like he needed to keep pieces from falling off.

  “Done and done,” I said. “Let’s carry ourselves with some dignity here, girls.”

  “We were grocery shopping,” said Grace. “You want some raw wieners?”

  I sure did.

  “No, thank you.” I glanced at the firemen standing on either side of the silver emergency blanket they’d spread over Avery, and suddenly I felt snipers peering at us from every window. “I want to ditch you two,” I said, “and get to Velouria.”

  “Hey, no way!” Grace chewed hard, already unwrapping the next one. “Can they splatter us with the stuff again, you think? I am seriously so sick of eating these!”

  Again I heard sirens from down the hill. I shut my eyes for a second so I could think. I didn’t need these two, no, but Hoover was not safe for any of us.

  I took Grace’s Slim Jim and started to chew. She just smiled at me, nodding, as if to say That’s cool, man, but my imagination was out on the highway to MacArthur, telekinetically pushing Deb’s car away from Hoover—God willing, they were already out past the Fuddruckers billboard.

  “Can you just leave town?” I asked. “Where do your folks think you are?”

  “My mom’s in Taiwan,” said Grace, “so I’m at the chick’s place, but her folks are at the hospital ’cause her dad got backed into by a sand truck, so he’s got whiplash.”

  “Sand truck? There’s no snow on the ground!”

  Amber shrugged, her empty sleeve flapping in the breeze. “That’s what I said.”

  Two police cars slid up the block, sirens off now, stopping beside the fire truck. I trotted over and leaned in a window—it was my guy with the sideburns and dimples.

  “Not here,” I said. “Seven or eight houses up.”

  He nodded and drove away, followed by the next cop, then an ambulance that had appeared. Another car was in line behind them, a green Taurus station wagon.

  “Mr. Giller!” Colleen Avery leaned over her steering wheel. “You haven’t seen Megan around, have you?” She smiled, like Megan was off playing hide-and-seek, giggling. “You know, since our field trip she’s been—”

  “I don’t know where she is.”

  “No? Oh, hello, girls!” Colleen waved at the two on the sidewalk, her voice all ice cream. “My husband was coming to see you. Has he already gone home?”

  I leaned in her open window. A puffy-maned My Little Pony, stinking of strawberries, dangled from the rearview mirror. I shut my eyes so I could think.

  “What?” she asked.

  Somewhere beneath my surface, the person I’d been before Pipe #9 burst felt the merest ripple of the real horror of everything, but that person was only able to contribute the word enunciate.

  “You’re going to want some time to think about this,” I said, trying to take some kind of ridiculous long view, as though she already knew what I knew. “It’s been a hard week, and it’s only—what day’s this, Thursday?”

  “What’s happened?”

  I looked at her. She only had the fingertips of one hand on the steering wheel, and her eyes and mouth had stretched wide like something was trying to emerge from behind her face. I reached in and softly took her wrist.

  “He told me all this stuff about the military,” I said, “then he went on up the street and a car ran him down. That’s what happened. He’s dead up there, under that blanket. I know that’s the worst shit you’ll ever hear and all I can say, seriously, is that when I find the jackass I’ll rip his head open.”

  I should’ve worked for Hallmark! Her lips stuck out from her teeth and her gaze stayed on my forehead. I realized that her car radio was on, had been on all along, playing “Take It on the Run,” by REO Speedwagon.

  “Now I think there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go up to these cops,” I said, “and tell them everything, everything possible, and call all this shit to a halt.”

  She coiled her fingers around the steering wheel as though she’d fly into space if she didn’t. She was going to say, Yes, God, let’s get help through official channels.

  “We can’t,” she said, throat sticky. “The police told us last night it was an FBI file, they told us to call a number, then the FBI told us on the phone that this wasn’t a case they were able to pursue.” She swallowed. “So I don’t think we should talk to these exact people about it.”

  “But if it’s an FBI file, why in hell can’t they pursue it?”

  “Doug said it must’ve—must be their doing to begin with.”

  “But, Jesus, how can we get into worse trouble than we’ve got already?”

  “This is all going to work itself out,” she said sleepily.

  Her watery eyes finally settled on mine, but I don’t think she was really seeing anything anymore. She’d lost her husband, but did she at least have her child sitting reassuringly beside her to remind her of the halfway-rosy future? No.

  “I’ll stick with you,” I said.

  I still hadn’t let go of her wrist. Her arm tensed.

  “Tell me the car that did it,” she said. “Right now, make and model.”

  “Jesus, Mrs. Avery, I…it was yellow, sporty, I guess. Low to the ground.”

  “How old?”

  “Last ten years? Could’ve been brand new.”

  “Have a spoiler?”

  “Yes, definitely.”

  I pictured its spoiler jeering at me as the car rounded the corner.

  “Then probably not a Chevy, thought for sure it would be. Mustang, Charger maybe. That weird Trans Am. Was it a big long family car or little and sporty?”

  “Something in between?”

  “You’re helpful as a bag of crap.” She shook my hand away to grip the wheel. “I’m going to
see Doug.”

  I got out of the way so she could park at the curb, then she climbed out and swayed away up the sidewalk. She wore a blue tracksuit and silver bracelets. The cops were already hurrying up to meet her. I’d just announced that I’d stick with her but instead I walked back to Grace and Amber because I was suddenly spooked that these same police had an apb out on me for attacking those sidewalk-pouring guys.

  The girls sat in their car, each dipping their fingers into a wet package of Wimmer’s Jumbo Deli Franks that they’d wedged against the emergency brake.

  “Is that Megan’s mom?” Grace asked, chewing.

  “She looks sad!” Amber announced jauntily.

  “We aren’t getting to Velouria before five o’clock,” I said.

  “The tour-guide guy said they run the place all day and night!” said Amber. “And if he lied to us, shit, he will regret it.”

  Grace rattled the keys. “How about rubber hits the road?”

  “We’d better wait for, uh, Mrs. Avery. She might want to come.”

  “This is so screwed up!” Grace grinned. “The other day when the chick’s arm fell off, I was like, ‘This is all about my dad, Congo, it’s the same stuff,’ and now it’s just worse and worse and I can’t stop smiling—so screwed! I was going to get the firemen to sign my stop-the-war thingy, but then I’m like, ‘Who cares?’ Climb in and we’ll go, G.”

  “I’ll go in my car. Good on my own.”

  I slid behind my steering wheel, clicked the seatbelt. What had she been saying about her dad? Down the block, Doug Avery’s gurney was hoisted into the ambulance. I stared at my ashtray. Lydia’s picture slept in there, of course, and I felt I’d better explain to her that our kids weren’t with me in our car. That I’d lost hold of them.

  “Bugface,” I said.

  So I took the picture out and slipped it into my wallet. That seemed like a reasonable compromise, leaving the report of my dad’s crash alone in the ashtray. Then I noticed the photocopies on the passenger seat—mythological coloring pages so kids could draw hilarious dicks on centaurs—and heaved them onto the back seat as Colleen came swaying up the block, her frail chin pressed to her chest. I’d honestly thought Josie would be the next person to sit up front beside me; the refutation of that belief just cemented that this Dockside business had spiraled out of control.

  “Okay.” Colleen slid onto the passenger seat. She shut the door with utmost delicacy so the latch barely clicked, her bracelets tinkling. “The fireman says it was a two-door, but he doesn’t know the model either. Two-door, no spoiler, probably not the Mustang. Where’re you going?”

  “Velouria. Maybe they’ve got a simple explanation. I tried phoning but—”

  She climbed out unsteadily, trotted up to the Taurus, reached inside her passenger door for something, slammed the door shut after a couple of tries then padded back to my car and climbed in. Between her knees she held a black metal cylinder, the handle for a multi-head screwdriver or something.

  “What’s that for?”

  “It’s stupid. It’s a telescoping baton thing. I never saw the point but Doug insisted I had it every time we went to Omaha. When I cave in the guy’s skull,” she said quietly, “I don’t want to bugger up my hand. Let’s go find Megan.”

  “Go where? Doug said she was at a sleepover.”

  “That was bullshit,” she sighed.

  She sat pinned by the belt across her chest. Considering that a person or persons unknown—who probably had eyes on us at that moment—were burning our houses down, separating us from our children and making our loved ones leak egg out of their heads, it seemed like seat belts were going to safeguard us about as well as a paper hat. I inched away from the curb, waving inconspicuously to the girls.

  “Hey.” Maybe I’d come over all sentimental at leaving the Giller family’s wreckage. “Don’t you want your dog?”

  “He’s tied to the fire truck.” Colleen wiped her nose on her sleeve. “If, if I can live without anything…”

  I started a U-turn so we wouldn’t have to pass the cops. The sun hit the side of Colleen’s face so her teeth looked translucent, lit from somewhere back in her throat.

  “If I can live without anything, I can live without Jocko.”

  I turned into the 7-Eleven, and Grace parked beside us.

  “Getting supplies?” she called through her window.

  “I want a supplies party!” yelled Amber.

  I went inside without them. The piped-in air smelled like burnt plastic.

  “Uh,” said the red-headed clerk. “Mr. Giller, right?”

  “Did anything come?” I asked.

  He pushed a white page across the counter: a typewritten fax from Jones. I felt my heart give a haphazard thump.

  Mr. Giller.

  Please desist. Our legal department does not look kindly on inflammatory personal harassment. I do appreciate your current difficulties and from one family man to another I urge you to pursue fresh opportunities outside Burroughs County.

  Yours sincerely,

  James Jones.

  Hoover and Velouria were both in Burroughs County, as it happened. I crumpled the fax and left it on the counter.

  Badgered out of town.

  I walked around toward the cooler.

  “It’s a dollar to receive the reply,” the clerk called after me.

  “Oh, oh—I’ll take your picture!”

  Franny, in a multicolored serape, held her cell phone up in my face. She closed one eye and the phone went click. Then she swung her plastic bag.

  “Clint got to my house and I was like, ‘This feels like a really special time in our lives, we need to take some pictures!’ We stopped for breakfast patties—they’re frozen, but who cares?”

  Honest to god, she filled all the space between me and the cooler.

  “And he was so sweet, he thinks I might be retarded—did you see him out there? His is the Geo with the dragons. His brother painted those!”

  “Why don’t you go out and eat?” I asked, because for me it’d been a while.

  “Brick, c’mon, we had three packages of bacon at my house. Is that Amber out there? What’re you Beanie Babies doing?”

  “Sir,” the clerk called. “Dollar to receive the reply.”

  “We’re going to Velouria,” I said quietly.

  “Oh, gosh!” She brushed her hair back and it clung to her hand. “We’re going to do that too,” she whispered. “Just give our names and say, ‘What up?’ ”

  Someone moved into my peripheral vision—a thick-necked soldier dressed in that baggy desert-camouflage they always seem to wear regardless of region or season, and his tight black boots shouted that he had jumped out of sixty-five airplanes. He still had his entire face, so maybe Congo was still waiting for him, whispering from across the ocean. He held a bag of Doritos in one hand and Tostitos in the other—both products of the Frito-Lay company—and seemed to be determining which was heavier though the weights were printed on the bags. Would his brain spin a cycle or two slower, I wondered, if the government had dumped plastic into his head? Then the back of my neck went hot. I realized that he was standing there to observe us, though his eyes never left the chip bags.

  “Shush a minute.” My voice barely left my teeth. “Did you have trouble at either of your places? They burn down?”

  Franny was shuffling through pictures on her phone.

  “When I was really little, yeah,” she muttered. “They all said it wasn’t my fault.”

  A dozen people milled around the store, filling giant Slurpee cups and reheating chimichangas filled with the meat of government-bred Hereford/rooster abominations.

  “This picture doesn’t look like you,” said Franny.

  The soldier sighed, crunched the bags of chips back onto the shelf and stalked out the door, head tilted forward
like he was confronting a hurricane.

  “Sir,” the clerk called, hands spread wide on the glass counter.

  I held a hand up so he might try to be patient, pushed past Franny and finally got my eyes inside the cooler. The wire bin for the bacon dogs was empty, and the rest of the food looked like kids’ feet wrapped in foil.

  “Hey,” I called. “Got any bacon dogs?”

  “No, sir. You cleaned us out at two o’clock.”

  “I’m taking the goodies out to Clint!” Franny called, and the bell on the door dingled behind her.

  “You got anything with bacon?”

  “No,” said the clerk. “But there’s ham subs.”

  I walked toward him and he backed up a step. That was a good reaction. I lifted a red case of Coke off a tower at the end of the aisle.

  “Do I look like I want a fucking ham sub?”

  I smashed the case through the glass counter, filling the air with silver scratch cards.

  Some concerned citizen immediately grabbed me from behind, but I prised his fingers off my wrists and twisted out of his grip—it wasn’t the furtive soldier but some heavyset bald guy in a snowflake sweater. Kept coming toward me, his big hands out like catcher’s mitts.

  He said, “What the hell, man?”

  So I hopped up onto him, wrapped my arms around his meaty shoulders and took his whole ear in my mouth, ready to dig my incisors in and buck my head around like a dog with a rabbit until the ear sheered away from his head and blood jetted onto the stacks of Wall Street Journal. But that kind of thing was still in my future. I pulled my mouth off his ear, instead I contented myself with driving my knee into his diaphragm until he fell down on his ass.

  I climbed off him, trying to look casual. The other customers had retreated down the aisles, so I picked a can of Coke from the broken case and walked out of the store.

  I opened the door of my car, feeling very sensible for letting the guy keep his ear. I’d risen above my rural origins.

  “Mr. G!” Grace called through her window. “Let’s carry ourselves with some dignity!”

  Amber hooted.

  “Don’t do what I do.” My tongue felt thick. “Hey, and don’t follow us for a while. They won’t connect us.”