The Folds Page 19

  “Good afternoon!” Danny yelled to the short and portly cook.

  “Get away from me, you freak!” Bob squealed, darting to the opposite side of the stainless steel prep table.

  “I just want to talk to you! C’m’ere, big boy!” Danny called and began chasing Bob in a circle around the table.

  “Danny! That’s enough! Danny!” Butch shouted from outside the kitchen across the counter.

  After completing a couple of laps in the kitchen, Danny tackled Bob on top of several large bags of sweet onions.

  “Someone get ’im away from me!” Bob shrieked.

  “Bob, Bob, Bob…sshhh!” Danny brought his volume under control as he sat on top of the short, plump man. Joyce, Butch, and the remainder of the customers suddenly found themselves silencing their voices as well. He gently waved his hand through a bright red fold above Bob’s right shoulder and stated concernedly, “I just wanted to tell you to be careful when you drain that fryer at night!” Danny smiled and raised himself up off Bob, picked up his tissue hat, and assisted the rotund chef to his feet. “Now,” he continued, handing him his large spatula, “why don’tcha fix me up with one o’ those onion burgers I been hearin’ ’bout?” Like a mannequin, Danny placed Bob in front of the grill, motionless and shocked.

  Danny calmly exited the kitchen, passed Butch and Joyce, and made his way back to the rear booth. He lightly sat himself down, reached for his Dr. Pepper, and exclaimed, “Man! Am I hungry!”

  Joyce handed Butch all the remaining order tickets hanging on the kitchen wheel and politely remarked, “Thanks for coming in, but we can’t serve you today. And thanks for not ever coming back!”

  Butch, with a handful of tickets, stared at Danny in disgust.

  From across the still and silent restaurant, Danny’s innocent defense rang out. “What?”

  Once they had paid their tab and were out in the alley, Danny described the scene he just created. “Man, were you white!” he declared, laughing. “You were the whitest black man I ever seen!”

  “Thought that was all pretty funny, huh?”

  “‘I’m a cop!” Danny imitated, making himself laugh all the more. “It’s all right! Everything is under control!”

  Butch failed to see the humor in what had just transpired. “Pretty big joke, huh?”

  “A joke?” Danny repeated as they climbed into the car. “You think that was all just a joke?”

  “Well, what else do you want me to call it?” Butch snapped with a squeal of the tires as he pulled away from the curb. “The big show? The parade? The circus? Huh? You know when you go and do those kinda things…you embarrass your mother, me, and yourself! So, yeah, it looks like a joke and it makes it just a tad difficult to believe in you!”

  “So you still don’t believe me, do ya?”

  “Sure I do! Of course I do! Why not? From that little bit of insight into your delicate, little precious world back there? Yessiree, I believe you!” he patronized with a slap on the steering wheel and a thumbs up. “Especially after you chase a grill cook around a table and throw ’im on top a bag of onions. Now that’s a convincer!”

  “Okay, so maybe I went a little overboard.”

  “A little?”

  “I was serious, though. Anyhow, you got nineteen days.”

  “What? I got what?” Butch asked.

  “Nineteen days…in nineteen days each of those will have happened exactly as I said they will.”

  “To who? Those people back there? Oh, this’ll be great!”

  Danny opened the glove compartment and began rooting around, dropping napkins and straws.

  “What’re you doin’?” Butch asked, irritated at the mess Danny was creating. “What’re you lookin’ for?”

  Danny closed the compartment without answering, lifted the center console lid, and removed a small sticky note pad. “First one,” he announced and grabbed the pen out of Butch’s breast pocket, scribbling as he spoke. “Four days from now, on Friday…Mabel will have a stroke and die in her recliner. Her son Red will find her two days later on Sunday just before 6 p.m., when he goes to pick her up for evening services. That’s one.” Danny removed the sticky note and slapped it on Butch’s forehead just to spur him on.

  “What am I supposed to do—?”

  “Two!” Danny interrupted loudly as Butch removed the paper from his head. “Eight days from now, on Tuesday, Sally, with her great impatience, poor hearing, vision, and incredible stubbornness, will attempt to get her social security check cashed by driving herself to the bank. Her car will stall out on the railroad tracks. She won’t hear the train, she won’t see the train, and when she finally does…well…”

  “What do you expect me to—?”

  “Three!” he interrupted for the last time and placed sticky note number two over Butch’s mouth. “In nineteen days, good ol’ onion burger Bob, in a hurry to meet his buddies, will incorrectly drain the fryer, melt the sole of his shoes, slip and fall—INTO THE GREASE—and break his neck.” Danny placed the third sticky note on the rearview mirror just as Butch was pulling into the DPS parking lot. Sarah was already waiting outside, sitting under a tree on a bench by the steps of the station. “You’ll hear from me in twenty days,” Danny simply stated as he opened the door and waved to his mother. “Oh, and by the way,” he added with a buddy punch to Butch’s right shoulder, “thanks for the great lunch!”

  A PROPHECY FULFILLED

  Monday morning. One week had come to pass since Danny and Butch’s disastrous lunch. Butch had been completing paperwork since 6 a.m. and decided he could use a break. Standing up to stretch, he took a few lunging paces around his office, lifting his elbows high as he twisted from side to side. He left his office to go to the snack room for a mid-morning bite to eat.

  As he neared the intersection of the two hallways joining the administration offices to the training and dressing rooms, he heard laughter and multiple voices coming from the break room. The casual conversation and jocularity came to an abrupt halt upon his entry. The relaxed and laughing employees immediately resumed their crime-fighting, law-enforcement personas, complete with good posture.

  “Morning all!” Butch smiled as he greeted the staff with handshakes and pats on the shoulders. He pulled a handful of coins from his pocket as he contemplated his choices from the vending machine. “Rice Crispy Treat,” he mumbled to himself softly, “or Bugles?” He overheard two of the dispatchers talking.

  “So I said, ‘Okay, sir, sir, calm down please.’”

  “Bugles,” Butch decided.

  “‘Sir, please calm down and tell me where you’re calling from.’ And he was just rambling! I could barely get his address; he was freaking out so bad!”

  “Oh, poor thing!” the second dispatcher sympathized. “I can’t imagine what I’d do if that happened to me.”

  “If what happened?” Butch inquired, joining in on the conversation. He opened his bag of Bugle chips and stood over the two women, waiting for an answer.

  “Well, last night, the son of an elderly woman went to pick her up for church services and when he got to her house she was dead.”

  “Who was he? How’d she die?” he politely interrogated. The two dispatchers glanced to each other, nervous to answer. Butch hardly, if ever at all, asked any questions of dispatch calls unless there was a problem.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “But the son did say that she’d had a history of heart problems. She may have had a stroke or a heart attack.”

  “A name?” he asked impatiently. “Did you get a name?”

  “I remember his first name was Red, but don’t recall his last…”

  Without so much as a word, Butch turned and walked briskly out of the break room without a sound.

  DIGGING UP THE PAST

  Danny turned his ’75 Impala onto Andi Boulevard, eyeing both sides of the street for any sign of an address. “Seven Eleven Andi,” he muttered as he slowly cruised by dilapidated shacks and abandoned shanties. Judging
from the condition of the asphalt, one would have thought they were driving down “Pot Hole Lane.” From curb to curb, the entire street was a web of tar-injected crevices with potholes littering its length. He saw a yellow DEAD END sign mounted on a corrugated aluminum crossbar at the end of the street after passing the remnants of a burnt house on his left. As he neared the end of the block, he noticed a single rusted mailbox with the barely legible letters “F-A-R” on its side. The lid on the leaning postbox was dangling from one rivet and the red flag was bent permanently into place. On the corners of the split and crumbling concrete driveway were the weathered ghosts of spray-painted “711.” He had successfully located the home of Chester Farley, Butch’s estranged father.

  He pulled into the driveway and sat in his car for a moment to fully note how discouraging the house appeared. It looked nothing at all like the home where he was raised. Butch’s childhood home reflected the image as never having had any love contained within. The house, with its chain-link-fenced yard of barren and unleveled red dirt, bumped up against a Shamrock Oil Distribution Center. The smell of oil, petroleum, and gasoline filled Danny’s lungs. There were no trees or shrubs on the property, with the exception of one tall, gray stump of a dead willow in front of the first bedroom window. Judging from its size, one could assume that at one time, when hope still lingered in the air, maybe the tree felt loved. The reddish-orange bricks framing in the small staircase to the front door were stacked irregularly with barely any mortar between them. One black shutter clung to the house near the window frame of the master bedroom.

  As he continued his visual examination of the rundown house, Chester exited the screen door. The door closed behind him with a flat slam; the glass was busted from the top frame and the screen ripped halfway out of the bottom. Chester, only in his mid-sixties, hobbled as if he were in his eighties. He lived the younger part of his life fast and hard, but after he married and had Cleo (Butch), he tried to live faster. The good times disappeared all too quickly for Chester, mostly through the bottle. Now it would appear that the only friend he had was hard times.

  Danny watched Chester as he crept down the stairs, carrying a blue plastic watering can. He’s was clad in a yellowed, ribbed undershirt, brown trousers with elastic suspenders, and mismatched winged-tip shoes. Chester ambled to the faucet, filled the watering can, and lumbered awkwardly under its weight as he crossed the yard to where there sat a single, potted purple tulip. Danny could hear Chester mumbling to himself as he bathed the flower. How odd, sad, and out of place, Danny thought to himself. For all that Chester had done in his life, the one thing he now had to show for himself was that flower.

  Danny quietly exited his car and walked to the waist-high gate and fence, waiting for Chester to finish his watering. As Chester turned back to the house, Danny politely said, “‘Scuse me! Mr. Farley? Chester Farley!”

  Chester glanced up, answering as he scooted along. “Depends on who want’n to know!”

  “My name’s Danny Albright, sir.”

  “Don’t know no Andy Fallright!” Chester replied, approaching Danny.

  “That’s Danny Albright, sir.”

  “Danny, huh?” Chester asked, now standing merely feet away inside the fenced yard. “Well, Danny, you’ll hat’ta f’give me. These ol’ ears and bones ain’ doin’ so well.”

  “No need to apologize,” Danny insisted, smiling. “But I was jus’ wonderin’ if I could talk to you for a minute of two?” he asked, shielding his eyes from the bright-red setting sun.

  “Talk to me? Why?” Chester inquired suspiciously, backing away from the fence. “What’d I do?”

  “You didn’t do anything, sir. I just wanted—”

  “I ain’ ‘n trub, am I? ‘Cuz I tol’ ’em to stay off my prop’ty, and it was my gun—”

  “No, no, no! You’re not in any trouble,” Danny persisted with a slight chuckle. “I just wanted to know if I can talk to you about this?”

  Chester approached the fence cautiously then snatched a folded newspaper from Danny’s extended hand.

  After squinting and adjusting the paper, Chester sluggishly spewed out, “‘New Generation of Law Enforcement.’ Wha’ this got’ do wit me?” he asked, confused.

  “Well, if you read further on,” Danny suggested, opening the gate to let himself in, “it’s about your son Cleo.”

  Chester slapped the paper against Danny’s stomach and sternly declared, “I don’t have a son!”

  He turned away to climb the porch steps, but Danny energetically persisted, jumping in front of him. “Sure you do! You just ain’ seen him for a while. If you could just—”

  “Look!” Chester interrupted angrily. “My son been dead for years! You need to get off my prop’ty ’fore I lose my temper!”

  Danny could see the tears beginning to well up in his eyes. “He’s a detective now!” he boasted of Butch. He unfolded the paper and read aloud a couple of lines from the article as Chester began climbing the stairs. “Graduated valedictorian of his high school class… First black valedictorian as a matter of fact.” He, too, then climbed the steps to the porch as he continued reading. “Graduated with a double major and honors from UT.”

  Chester again choked out, “I ain’t got no son!”

  “Mr. Farley, I didn’t come here to upset you,” Danny explained. He reached around Chester and held the paper in front of him with Butch’s picture and article. “I just wanted you to know it’s okay now. Whatever happened…it’s done. It’s in the past and it’s okay now.”

  Chester stood quietly with his head hung low.

  Danny watched his thin shoulders rise and fall with each sorrowful and regretful breath. “You should go see him.” he suggested.

  “What if he won’t see me?”

  “He’ll see ya, I’m sure of it. I think he’s been meaning to, but…maybe he’s been wonderin’ the same ’bout you.” Chester turned to face Danny with tears slowly trickling down his face, but had a thin smile curling the edge of his lips.

  “He doin’ all right?” Chester inquired hopefully.

  “Doin’ great!”

  He once again gazed upon the picture of his son before inquiring, “He big now? Like me?”

  “He’s huge!” Danny answered, stretching his arms to the side, leaning back.

  “I ain’ seen ’im since he was ten,” Chester lamented and struggled to read. “Vadel…vale…”

  “Valedictorian,” Danny said. “It means he was the smartest in his class.”

  Chester couldn’t hide his smile or overcome his crying.

  With a gentle pat of encouragement on the old man’s shoulder, Danny tenderly coaxed Chester. “Go see him.”

  AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

  T he next day, Tuesday, Butch was on the road, making his way back from Austin. He overheard a transmission on his radio as he entered the outskirts of town: “All units, officer needs traffic assistance and crowd control at junction of Yarbrough and La Plata.”

  Butch picked up the microphone and responded, “Ranger two-two-nine-nine, what is your current situation?”

  “Single car collision with freight train and fire.”

  He slumped the handle on his lap, shaking his head. Reluctantly, he replied, “Ranger two-two-nine-nine in transit.”

  When he arrived, he found Jason at the intersection between the railroad tracks and highway. Yarbrough was backed up for miles as rubberneckers slowed down to view the fatality. Butch waved to Jason as he directed traffic, letting him know he was there.

  He stopped and parked just in front of the engine, spying the engineers and rail hands clustered together. Thick, dark smoke billowed into the sky as flames from burning flesh, rubber, fabric, and oil danced brightly. As he neared the front of the engine, he could see the rear end of the burning car had yet to be incinerated. He jotted down the license plate number then turned to address the engineers. “What happened here, boys?” he asked, just as friendly as if entering a coffee shop and seeing his closest fri
ends.

  “She just stopped!” Patrick replied, holding his arm toward the wreckage.

  “Just stopped,” Butch repeated.

  “Yeah!” Patrick answered again, this time yelling as the siren of the hook-and-ladder truck arriving on the scene drowned out his voice. “It’s like there was an invisible chain. The car made its way up onto the crest of the tracks, then just stopped cold.” Butch listened closely as Patrick described the gory details. “I think she was still alive,” he added, “but by the time we stopped, backed away, and got down here, the fire had already started and we couldn’t get close to her.”

  Patrick’s friends rubbed his shoulder as the burly man broke down, sorry for what had happened, sorry for what he couldn’t control.

  “Thanks for your time,” Butch politely stated, nodding to the quartet of men before turning to his car.

  As he passed the hook-and-ladder truck, he watched as two more local law enforcement vehicles pulled up to assist, along with an ambulance and two more fire engines. Butch removed the small spiral notepad from his breast pocket and flipped it open to the page he wrote the license plate number on. He didn’t notice it at first, but when he reached in through the open window of his car for the radio, he saw “That’s Two” written on his windshield in white shoe polish. “Ranger two-two-nine-nine,” he called into his handset as he looked around, but found no sign of Danny anywhere.

  “Go ahead two-two-nine-nine.”

  “I need a license plate ID please?” Butch gave the dispatcher the license plate number from the burning car and took another long look at the crowd of spectators for any signs of Danny or his car. She repeated the number and asked Butch to wait a moment.

  “Two-two-nine-nine?” the dispatcher called.

  “Two-two-nine-nine,” Butch answered.

  “Yes, the car is registered to a Sally Carmichael of Killeen, Texas, in Bell County.”

  Butch tossed the handset on the seat and placed his hands over his head, laughing in disgust and dismay.

  “Copy, two-two-nine-nine?” the dispatcher asked. “Copy, two-two-nine-nine?”