Neal turned to leave, but hesitated—he couldn’t resist telling Snell one more thing. He looked the old man straight in the eye and became acutely aware of their age difference, the wrinkles on Snell’s face, the balding head, the pot-belly. Neal lost his nerve for a few seconds, but then decided that he had tell Jimmy Snell what he really thought of him, no matter what.
With his voice quavering a bit, Neal finally got it out.
“You’re a selfish prick.”
This was the worst insult Neal could conjure up, but Snell did not seem to be in the least phased by it. “No, son, I’m just a bidnessman, tryin’ to do the best I can for mysef and my fambly. If you don’t like workin’ for us, why, there’s somebody else who will.”
Neal snickered. “I can see how much you want to ‘hep out’ your fellow Georgia Tech students.”
This touched a nerve in the old man. “Now you listen to me for a minute, you smart-mouthed college boy. You don’t have a damn clue ‘bout how hard it is to make a profit these days. I try to hep out students like you much as I can, but you got to realize there’s...well, other economic forces at work here.” Snell lowered his voice, cocking his head towards the loading door. “Those nigra-boys are just happy as clams workin’ for less than minimum wage.”
This had been the last straw—Neal turned around and walked out, fighting an almost overpowering urge to tear up the check and throw it in the old man’s face. But he couldn’t do that—he and Annie needed the money too much.
Now, Neal sat in his car, parked in front of his apartment building, staring down at the miserable pittance of a paycheck in his hand, wondering how he was going to explain it all to Annie. She was probably furious about everything that had happened already.
Neal gobbled down another couple of pain killers and swallowed them dry. He wanted to dope himself into a stupor.
After staring into space another ten minutes, he finally mustered up the courage to drag himself out of the car and into the building. When he entered the apartment, he was relieved to discover that Annie and Natasha weren’t home. He then realized that he hadn’t noticed Annie’s car out in the parking lot. Annie was almost always home when he came back from work.
When he went into the kitchen, he saw a napkin taped to the refrigerator. There was writing on it, but he couldn’t read it—his vision seemed blurry. It must have been because of the pain killers. Everything seemed to be going in and out of focus.
He tore the napkin free and held it close to his face, squinting at Annie’s uneven handwriting.
Neal stared dully at the note, leaning against the refrigerator. After a moment, he hobbled his way into the bedroom and lay down.
He soon fell into a deep, drug-induced sleep.
CHAPTER 7
Just as Annie was approaching the entry ramp to I-75, she decided to buy some more diapers before she left Atlanta. Her nose told her that Natasha already needed another change, and she didn’t want to take any chances.
She considered trying to find a drugstore so she could buy one of the brands she liked, but decided against it—they were all too crowded this time of day. Plus, she would have to unstrap Natasha and take her inside the store with her. Unlike some mothers, Annie refused to leave
Annie decided to go to a mini-market instead. They usually only had Pampers, she knew, but that would just have to do for the moment. She could stock up tomorrow when she and Natasha were safely in Chattanooga. The best thing about mini-markets was that Annie could leave Natasha strapped in her car seat and just run inside and be back in less than a minute, keeping an eye on the baby the whole time. Whoever came up with the idea of a mini-market was a genius, Annie mused.
Annie followed the creeping flow of traffic along Windy Hill Road and across I-75. She spotted a mini-market on the right-hand side, just past the exit ramp. Good. There was a
