The diner was starting to become his second home. Jenson sat
in the booth along the far back wall stirring sugar into coffee that had already
grown cold. Every time the bell on the door jangled, he looked up to see who
was entering, but so far it had just been older couples.
The guy he’d talked to on the phone had sounded around his
age and nowhere close to as frail as the people who’d been stopping through all
morning for their two egg breakfast specials, fake butter and pink sweeteners,
please.
Conversations unfolded all around him, but they were all so
mundane he only dropped in on them for a few seconds before letting his mind
wander again. One lady’s doctor had warned her against using salt because her
blood pressure had gone up again. Two women had grandchildren on the way, one dude
needed a prostate exam.
It was a farming community, so weather was always at the
forefront of people’s discussions. The current temperatures were mild for this
time of year. Some felt that was a good thing and make for an easier harvest,
others were worried that it meant the winter to follow would be a brutal one.
It was the same anywhere. Worry about when the crops could be harvested, worry
about when the fields could be prepped for the following year, worry about the
amount of food that needed to be stored to get the animals through winter,
worried about winter, because the unpredictability of it factored into
everything from the town Christmas pageant to the annual horse drawn sleighride.
It sounded like the town went all out when it came to choosing
a theme and decorating Main Street, not that Jenson would be around to see it.
The farmer he’d come here to meet was already running more than a half hour
late. Either he’d found someone else to work the job he’d been coming to
interview Jenson for, or he’d decided that an out of towner wasn’t someone he
wanted to take a chance on.
He got that, he did. He’d worked with drifters before. Some lasted
a few weeks before moving on, some didn’t even make it a handful of days, it
just depended on the type of work they’d done in the past. Jenson didn’t
consider himself a drifter, despite his slightly nomadic lifestyle at the
moment. Before taking the job that had brought him out here, he’d worked for
two years at a small poultry farm with a couple he’d truly enjoyed working for.
In fact, the job was waiting if he decided he wanted to go back. He didn’t.
He loved them to death but there were too many memories
associated with that place and his fuckups.
Even with sugar in it his coffee was bitter, but he was
going to finish it before he tipped the waitress and went back to the motel.
Maybe Pacey would have a line on something for him, because at the moment he
just felt stuck between two places he didn’t want to go back to.
When the bell jangled this time, he didn’t bother looking up,
until the chair across from his scraped across the floor and a man dropped into
the chair across from him.
Well hello.
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