A Francisville Reunion

The sign for Lucky’s Pub squeaked above him in the night wind. Its hanging plastic had green letters, a foaming mug, and the head of a buck with many points.

Jameson could not see Sadie anywhere. He had barely seen her in the bar, but she had spoken in a low voice, her voice, distinct among the chatter and Kenny Chesney. “I want to see you,” she said, and the heat in his groin burned through his tether to reason. He had closed his tab and rushed to this empty curb.

Twenty-four years ago he failed out of college and came to see Sadie. Two days later he left a note, her, his uncle’s house and Francisville. He got to a restaurant on the West Coast and traded charm for gratuities until a regular asked if he’d considered selling real estate. That was 1998, in Seattle.

He had thought little of Sadie since. Jameson had money to burn in a hot town and he married one of the girls. He did not think of her during the flings that preceded and followed the divorce.

He had sent his RSVP for the reunion on a whim. When the reminder came and he no longer had a plus-one, he tried to find Sadie on Facebook, but then she appeared in Lucky’s and said, “I want to see you.” She had turned to the door almost as soon as she spoke, but she was Sadie. He remembered her voice and the smell of her, and Jameson looked down the road outside the pub and knew where she was.

The Route 66 Diner was a house beside a vacant lot; in some distant decade Sadie’s grandparents had knocked down interior walls in favor of tables, on which they served blueberry pancakes and home fries to loggers. Jameson and Sadie had fucked atop one of those tables on a night when their houses weren’t free and Sadie slipped the key from her mother’s purse. He had poured syrup across her torso and fucked her and she had loved it, and he had masturbated to the memory until he found other girls in his semester at Penn State.

The gutter had pulled away from the porch roof. Faded block letters still read “Route 66 Diner” with “Truckers Welcome” in cursive below, but time or blunt force had torqued the posts and sign into bent ruin. A Coldwell Banker sign on a smaller post offered showings by appointment; it was old, too. When Jameson turned the doorknob it rattled in his hand.

The air smelled stale and he could make out little in the dim light from the street, but peering to the far wall he saw an outline seated on a table, their table. “It’s been a long time, Sadie,” he said.

The fluorescent lights burned his eyes when she flicked them on, and his vision adjusted gradually. “It has, Jameson,” she said. There was no ambient noise here, and she spoke with a smoker’s sandpaper voice. She had patchy gray hair, gray and mottled skin, and a body too thin to look well.

Jameson sat on the next table. He ran his finger through its coat of dust for an excuse to look away. “How long’s it been closed?”

“A few months after Mom died. I hurt my back and gave up.”

“When was that?”

“You got me pregnant, Jameson.”

She lit a cigarette in the silence. As she exhaled he found his tongue. “What?”

“That time right before you left. You got me pregnant.”

“You never told me.”

Her laugh merged into a cough. “You never cared.”

“What did you do with it?”

“Named him Jameson.”

His gurgling nausea thickened, and to suppress it he yelled, “Why would you do that? Why didn’t you find me?”

“I pictured the way you’d cry when you came home and met our son. Then I wised up, and his name was to remind everybody of what you did.”

“Where is he?”

Sadie’s hand trembled as she raised the cigarette. She breathed it deeply before answering. “The cemetery off Belmont Road. Electrical fire. He was six.”

The fluorescents’ hum grew loud while Sadie smoked and Jameson bent his head toward his knees and a carpet stain. It took him a long time to perform the calculation, but the answer was 22.

He asked, “Where were you when it happened?”

“A few thousand miles closer than you were.”

That angered him. He met her glare; she blew smoke toward him. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

She snorted. “Ask around.”

“What do you want?”

“You owe me, Jameson.”

“Bullshit.”

“Yeah, bullshit. A mountain of it. You’re king of the mountain now, aren’t you, Jameson? Go off twenty-four years, buy some drinks at Lucky’s, make sure everybody sees your wallet and fancy watch?” She leaned forward and pointed her cigarette at him. “You owe me, Jameson.” She put out the butt on the table.

Unanswerable questions drifted through the stagnant air. He had to leave; he stood and opened his wallet. He counted and placed the bills on Sadie’s table. “I have $132.”

He waited for release. She watched him with her hollowed eyes and made no move toward the cash.

“There still an ATM outside the station?” he asked. She nodded. “I’ll be back.”

“Sure,” she said. Sadie pulled another cigarette from her pack. “I’ll be right here. Waiting.”

A traffic light hung over the four-way. It wavered in the wind and blinked red onto the gas station and the dollar store across the road. Jameson inserted his card. His finger hovered over the withdrawal button but pushed “Check Balance.” He turned back toward the sidewalk. There was a pet and garden store, a lot with U-Hauls, Lucky’s, a few houses, secondhand and hardware stores with apartments above. The diner waited in the dark beyond. A church needing paint stood just past the intersection; its sign advertised Sunday’s sermon, “The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth.”

He ripped his card from the machine and strode away. Jameson pictured Sadie, moaning with syrup on her young breasts and Sadie, gaunt, cackling smoke from the end of the table as he thrust, and he put down his foot and his rented car sped down Route 66.