we stopped in here.'
Leonard said, 'Lady named Florida Grange.'
'Oh, yeah. Nice lady. A looker too. She was around here a few days.' He looked at Leonard. 'You kin?'
'Nope,' Leonard said.
'Boyfriend? Either of you?' He gave me a good hard look. 'Though in this town, you better not say you are if you are.'
'Nope,' I said. 'We're not boyfriends.'
'She owe you money?'
'Nope.'
'Y'all some kinda law?'
'Nope.'
'Well then, let me say I tried serious hard and major purposeful to put the make on that little gal, but she wasn't havin' any. I think she has a thing about white guys. And not a good thing.'
'Trust me,' I said. 'She does.'
'Ah, so you tried her too?' he said.
'It didn't work out,' I said. 'You might say I'm an ex-boyfriend. But what we're lookin' for is to help out her current boyfriend who's worried about her. And we want to do it because we're friends of hers too. Sort of. Used to be.'
'I see,' the man said. 'I think.'
It grew very dark suddenly, then there was a crack of thunder and a sizzling race of lightning, and right after that it seemed as if a great tidal wave washed over us. The rain came down so hard it nearly knocked us flat.
'Goddamn,' said the pale-faced man, putting his cap on. 'There it is. Y'all come on in and we'll talk.'
Leonard followed the man inside. I topped off the tank, hung up the gas nozzle, and damn near swam to the door. Inside, the store was warm and the lights were on, and the cold rain and midday darkness outside made the place seem tight and cozy.
The joint was stocked with pretty basic goods. Breads, crackers, a lunch meat cooler housing pressed ham, bologna, olive and liver loaf. There were soft drinks, peanuts, chips, that kind of stuff. Cans of oil, transmission and brake fluids. A rack of John Deere caps. A few straw cowboy hats. A cardboard display of colored plastic combs, and on the wall a dusty calendar over ten years out of date with a gorgeous, big-breasted woman in shorts and a halter top holding a wrench and smiling; the logo above her read January, and above that Snap Tight Tools.
Next to the cash register were two large jars containing yellowish brine water, and by my standards, some rather nasty looking pig's tootsies. Didn't appear to me that before they pickled them little delights they had washed the pig shit out from between the hooves, but maybe that was just a concentration of black pepper and meat gelatin.
There was a homemade oil barrel stove in the middle of the room, and there were lawn chairs and wicker- bottomed chairs pulled all around it. Near a couple chairs were two tobacco-splattered cuspidors, and the floor around them, which was covered with newspaper, was also splattered. Beneath the stove there was a large square of scarred, fire-spotted linoleum, and on it were tufts of dust bunnies, a chewing tobacco wrapper, and something that looked like blue glass or plastic that caught the electric light and pulled it in and winked it back.
There was a small stack of firewood next to the stove and there was a hatchet stuck deep in one of the logs and a gray lizard lay by the hatchet, attempting to trick us into thinking he was nothing more than a wood knot.
At the back of the store was an aluminum Christmas tree covered in lights and colored ornaments. The lights weren't on, and the angel at the top of the tree was too heavy for the little tip, so it leaned to one side, as if it were about to be cast from heaven.
Leonard paid for the gas and bought some oil, and when he got his change back, the pale-faced man said, 'Y'all want some coffee?'
'You bet,' Leonard said.
'I got a pot goin' in back. Sit down.'
We took us a spot by the stove and sat. Leonard eyed the cuspidors and the tobacco wads, said, 'Looks of this place, this ole boy talks to everybody, and for some time. He might know something nobody else does.'
'And maybe just the weather report and where to get pig's feet,' I said.
A moment later the man came back with two cups of coffee. He gave us a cup apiece, disappeared into the back of the store again, came back with a cup for himself and some ragged white towels. He tossed the towels at us. We used them to dry off. The station man sat his cup on the stove and took off his heavy coat and draped it over a chair near the stove, sat in another chair, put his feet up close to the heat.
'Now, you're lookin' for this gal?' he asked.
'That's right,' I said.
'By the way, my name's Tim Garner.'
'Glad to meet you,' I said, and Leonard and I leaned forward and took turns shaking Tim's hand and giving our names. When we finished, Tim kicked back again and sipped his coffee.
'What do you mean she's missing?'
'Last time anyone's seen her we know about was here,' Leonard said.
