Another half hour passed, and they pulled into Allentown. He got off the bus to stretch his legs. The bus depot was next to an old-fashioned diner, and Brandon suddenly realized how hungry he was, having skipped both dinner last night and breakfast this morning. He approached the driver, who was catching a quick smoke outside.
“Do I have time to run in and get something to eat?”
The driver exhaled a long gust of smoke to the side and checked his watch. “You got ten minutes. I don’t wait neither.”
With a nod, Brandon ran into the diner. The surprisingly comforting smell of hamburger grease and french fries hit him. The place looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 1970s; white walls were covered with a grayish film, and framed album covers from the 1950s and ’60s hung in no particular arrangement. The booths were upholstered in a once sparkly vinyl that had long since cracked and grown dull with age and years of bodies sliding in and out of the seats. There were the requisite mini jukeboxes on each table that Brandon bet, had he checked, wouldn’t have a song newer than when Bill Clinton was president.
He ordered a turkey sandwich from the desultory waitress standing behind the horseshoe-shaped front counter, and grabbed a bag of chips from the rack. She assured him with a snap of her gum that it wouldn’t take long, so he sat in one of the spinny chairs at the counter.
“Brandon? Is that you, man?” A voice he hadn’t heard in years called out from the pass through of the open-air kitchen that ran the length of the front of the restaurant.
Brandon whirled around and stared in shock as a guy he’d gone to high school with, Jacob Zimmerman, came out from behind the swinging doors, wiping his hands on his apron.
“Ahh, hey, yeah. Jacob, wow.” Brandon was at a loss for words.
“Holy shit, where did you disappear to? Like one day you were there and the next you weren’t.” Jacob’s round face was screwed up as if the thought process was hard for him to continue.
“I, um, went to New York and became a teacher.”
“Cool. Are you back here to live or to see your mom?” A sympathetic look crossed his face. “Sorry about your dad.”
“S’okay.” He craned his neck to see the waitress walking toward him with a bag he hoped contained his sandwich. “Um, I came back to take care of some things.” He paid for the sandwich and chips and turned back to Jacob, who still stood waiting, as if they were going to have a long conversation. “Sorry, Jacob, but I can’t stay; my bus is getting ready to leave.”
With a shrug, Jacob began to walk away, then stopped. “Good seeing you, Brandon. Don’t be a stranger.” He walked back to the kitchen.
Brandon pondered what Jacob had said as the bus started up again. Did Jacob mean it when he said not to be a stranger? Was it possible not everyone in high school had hated him? Perhaps the misery he’d suffered at home had twisted his outlook on everyone he knew. He’d trusted no one then, and that had continued into his adult life. Now he wasn’t sure he even trusted himself.
The miles rolled by as he munched his sandwich. Familiar sights sped past him on the road: rolling farmland, all brown and withered now, but in his mind he knew come the spring the farmers would be out there with their tractors or, if they were Amish, with their teams of mules, churning up the dirt, the scent of manure hanging heavy in the air. So different from the concrete streets, the sidewalks jammed all day with people hurrying, racing to catch up to a life they never stopped to savor.
The lives his brothers had chosen, law and finance, held no interest for him. He respected them for their accomplishments, but to him, nothing was more important than feeding a child’s mind. That moment when a child’s face lit up with understanding was the greatest of his achievements. Even now he missed the classroom and his students. Guilt washed over him at the thought of disappointing Dwayne and Wilson.
The bus pulled into the inner-city bus terminal in downtown Reading. It was totally unchanged from when he’d left eight years earlier—poor, nondescript, and gritty. Not a place to hang around. He needed to double back somewhat, so he opted for a cab and hailed one that sat idling across the street.
It felt funny to be traveling the streets of this once-familiar town, looking for places he’d known like the back of his hand, only to see they’d gone out of business, replaced by a few trendy little shops, restaurants, and coffeehouses. It couldn’t hide what he saw on the side streets—houses boarded up and stores with old for-rent signs hanging in the windows. Apparently the economic boom hadn’t reached this far inside the state.
They’d gotten back on the highway, and he was grateful the cabdriver was silent. He had no desire to make small talk. After a fifteen-minute drive back up Route 222, it was only a short distance from the exit. His stomach churned as they pulled into the street.
A fog of poverty and disrepair hung over the house. The wooden front steps sagged to the right, and the color had faded to something indeterminate—not brown, not gray. It was if an artist had finished painting the picture and then smudged it, blurring all the lines.
“This it, buddy?” The cabdriver met his eyes in the rearview mirror.
“Yeah.” Brandon paid the fare and got out. Immediately he was assailed with the nauseating smell from the chicken coops down the street. He held his breath and ran up the rickety steps.
From somewhere in the distance a dog barked. Plastic furniture stood about on the porch. Though nausea cramped his stomach, it was something he needed to do. He knocked on the door.
From within, he heard shuffled steps. The inner door opened, and a woman peered through the torn outer screen door. “Oh my God.”
“Hi, Mom. Can I come in?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sitting in Ash’s office waiting for the phone to ring was torturous. Tash had managed to cancel his patients for the morning, as he was in no mental state to treat anyone. Not knowing what had happened to Brandon last night was bad enough, and now to find this morning that he’d taken off the rest of the week for points unknown and wasn’t responding to anyone’s phone calls was enough to drive Tash to the brink of insanity.
“Where the hell could he have gone?”
“Shh. I’m trying his phone again.” Ash put up his hand. “Brandon, is that you? Are you all right?”
Tash jumped out of his chair and ran to Ash’s side.
