Mr. Good(2)

"Don’t drink?" he asked.

I shrugged.

He nodded. "Don’t seem to talk, either."

After seven years that crawled all over me. I turned away and stared out my window.

"Ah son," he said, "I know, I know. I . . . well," and then I heard his cup slosh. I was looking out at a station wagon where a woman was handing around soft serve cones to her kids. A little boy in the backseat was looking back at me.

"Your grandma tells me you’re playing now," he said.

"Yeah." I still didn’t look at him.

"What’re you doing?"

I was in a bad cover band that played sock hops and dances at country clubs. I’d been listening to Earl Klugh and Wes Montgomery, too, trying some of that out.

"Not much," I said.

The boy pulled his nose up with his thumb and grinned. He had braces. His mother had on a green scarf.

"I guess you don’t go in for Bob Wills and such," he said.

"No," I said.

"Not many do anymore," he said. "That’s why this car’s such a piece of shit."

Then neither of us said anything. A long minute passed, then another. The little boy kept making faces between licks of his cone. Then the mother caught him. After a glance at me, she jerked him around by the collar.

I heard him splash bourbon into his cup again.

Then the car hop brought the tray with the food and hung it on his window and I felt like I could finally turn around.

"Anything else?" she asked. She was bleach blond and pudgy—I recognized her from school a couple years back but didn’t know her. She had on white jeans and a pink shirt with the tails tied into a knot below her breasts. When you looked at her all you saw was stomach.

"You all got any ice cream left in there?" he said.

"Sure," she said.

"Then get you one and charge it on my ticket. Girl who looks sweet as cake needs some ice cream to go with her."

She giggled.

"Or maybe you want a drink of this special Co’-Cola instead?" he asked.

She leered, looked left and then right. "Sure," she said. He handed her the cup and she ducked her head and took a drink.

"When they let you off here?" he said.

"Not soon enough," she said. "The horse’s ass that runs the place keeps us here half the night."

"Well, we’re big boys," he said. "We get to stay up late."

I opened my door and got out. He looked around. "Hey, where you going?"

I shut the door. My eyes met the girl’s over the roof of the car, then I ducked my head in the window. "I’ve got to go," I said. "I’ll see you," and I started away from the car.

"Hey!" he yelled.

But I didn’t turn around. He yelled a couple more times but I kept going. When I was far enough away I looked back. The girl was still standing at the Lincoln.

I was hoping he’d be waiting outside the house when I got home. He wasn’t.

A week later a notice came from Martin’s Drugs saying I had a Trailways package. It was a cardboard box wrapped in brown butcher’s paper and tied with string, light to carry but about the size of Shakespeare’s coffin. When I got it home and opened it I found a new calfskin guitar case packed in newspaper and inside that was the Hummingbird. The guitar was in good shape, but the words Mr Good were scratched in tall letters on the back of the body. In the bottom of the case was a note: