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The Lightning Tongues
- University of Georgia Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
1 One of the pleasures of working day shift at the newsstand at the mall is popping open the paper bundles, arranging them by local, state, and national, and then taking one of each into the back room to keep me company through a large coffee and a Long-John from Donut Queen. I don’t mind not getting paid for the first fifteen minutes, but the second fifteen are on the clock. And though it isn’t, I’ll admit, a fringe benefit anybody I know would be pleased to have, the truth is I would read through the whole half hour for free, saving the local paper until last. Which was why I didn’t find out, until five minutes before I had to unlock, that Stacey Long, who worked at the pet store next to the newsstand, had left for lunch yesterday at 12:30 and hadn’t been seen since then. I’d eaten lunch with her more than a few times, even when she The Lightning Tongues 2 was still married. By then she was happy to have me sit across from her at Arby’s or Burger King because Wade, her husband, though she’d moved out, let it be known she still belonged to him and he wasn’t about to truck with her shacking up behind his back. “It might as well be you he imagines, Danny,” she told me. “He knows who you are. He remembers you from high school.” I didn’t think my having been a linebacker was any protection to her. I’d added thirty pounds of unhelpful fat in the ten years since I’d worn a helmet, and I’d never even been in a shoving match around a pileup. But if it made a skinny loudmouth like Wade Long keep his place, I was pleased to help, meanwhile trying to believe something real for him to fret about would sometime or another arise. I stopped reading and looked at the picture her mother must have given the reporter because I didn’t remember her hair long like that since she was married to Wade. He must have had a hundred pictures of her looking like she did in the here-and-now instead of five years ago, but I admitted to myself there were more reasons than guilt for not giving up such a photo. And when I saw it was 9:02, that I was already late with opening, there was Wade Long himself fidgeting at the door. It was daylight. I equated sunshine with safety. A well-lit place like the mall made me relax. I unlocked the door as if Wade were there to buy lottery tickets or a cigar or a sack of candy bars. “Don’t this beat it,” Wade said. “You tell me, Wade.” “You ain’t taken a mind to bein’ one of them search party faggots ?” “I don’t know anything about a search party, Wade. I have a job right here for the next eight hours.” [18.207.104.87] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 14:05 GMT) 3 “You don’t have that much to do. I seen how you work your own damn self right over to where them puppies yammer all the damn day.” “You’re mistaking lunch for sex, Wade.” Wade bounced from one foot to the other, tapping the set of keys in his right hand against the door frame. “I got to give it to you getting to the point, Danny. That’s why I’m here—clear the air and all.” “The air here is clear, Wade.” “She could have herself sitting in a motel somewhere watching the television and laughing at Wade Long getting hassled by the police. They talking about my involvement, and there ain’t nothing happened far as I can make out.” “The paper says her car’s still out in the lot.” “With all that yellow tape and shit around it like the front seat was covered with blood. With the police standing around looking at me like I had her stuffed up my shirt.” A group of old people walked by, finishing the walking trail they followed each morning before the stores opened. Wade looked them up and down as if he were checking for a plainclothesman. “Listen up, Danny,” Wade said. “Guilty men don’t come back. That’s mythology made up by cops. You see me standing here. You see proof...