Austin Tremblay

It wasn’t Johnny’s best Thanksgiving at The Golden Corral, but it was all right. He’d been working at the mashed potatoes, full of lukewarm lumps, for ten minutes before he thought, “If they had any self-respect in this establishment, they’d serve a strong bourbon.” Then he said it out loud, to no one in particular. He’d thought the same thing every year, even though he didn’t always say it out loud. No one would’ve heard him, anyway. He was by himself, at a table that could easily house twelve or fourteen people, one of those ridiculously sized families that he sometimes saw in the restaurant. Now he was a little distracted, imagining a huge family, the kids putting each others’ faces in the pudding fountains, the parents getting spent, and then going home to nap it off in front of the TV. The Corral was a tough place to be, especially at this time of year. He needed to get back to the job application next to his plate.

But this woman kept eyeing him, and he liked that. He wanted to think about that, instead. She was over in the corner, with her son. Johnny wrote on the job application, “Perchance, maybe you might consider the benefits of adding several alcohols to your menu and/or establishment.” This was in the “References” section. He wasn’t what he’d call drunk, though some might. He was warm with whiskey. Comfortable. Except for the woman eyeing him, though that, too, was comforting in its own right. The attention was a dull heat.

Right when Johnny was about to stand up and go over to the woman and her kid, an asshole walked directly behind his chair, as Johnny was sliding it out. So he knocked into the guy, who said, “You need to watch what you’re doing and where you’re doing it, boy.” It was a habit in the town to call any man under 40 a boy, and maybe there was good reason for that, but it stuck in Johnny’s craw all the same. Johnny, being 37, looking 46, generally confused people on this issue, but the asshole was upset and probably defaulted to “boy” as a defense. Without turning around, Johnny said, “I will punch you in your mouth, right in your fucking mouth, right here in front of the goddamn buffet.” Johnny was what his people called a cob, short for corncob, and it didn’t take him long to prove it. He didn’t look tough so much as like he’d been handled roughly. The guy realized it and walked on, muttering into his own beard like a stalled engine.

The woman had heard what Johnny said, it was clear. He was sure she’d stop her looking now. But she kept on. So he concentrated on his application, specifically the question “Where do you see yourself in 10 years?” Johnny wrote, “Haven’t seen myself in a long time really but I wouldn’t mind if it was earning a decent living in some kind of place like this even on the holidays, which I don’t mind working all of them.” The restaurant was never closed, not once in the entire 365-day calendar, not for Abraham Lincoln or veterans or Christ himself, and Johnny appreciated that. Whatever you were going through, whatever holiday crisis you might be having, the Corral was open, and you could herd yourself on in. “Dependable,” he muttered and sipped out of his coffee mug. He bit out of a brown, puffy roll that had smelled kind of like motor oil and cinnamon but, strangely, had no taste. He tried hard to enjoy it, the way he had worked at being reliable himself. Getting up before noon, before ten some days. Having nary a drop when they called him in to drive the school bus on afternoons somebody called out sick. He wondered how he might explain that on his application, how to seem good for a reason that wasn’t bad.

Just then, the woman who’d been watching Johnny walked over to his table, bringing the kid over too, him toting both their plates. The kid sat down first. Then, the woman said, “I been seeing you.”

“I noticed,” Johnny said.

“I see you on that bike out there.” She pointed out the window to Johnny’s ’87 Honda 450cc.

Johnny always sat the nearest he could to his bike. Parked, it looked like something he could remember, which appeased him. The kid smiled.

“Why don’t you take me anywhere?” the woman said. “I’m Naomi.”

“I’m busy here.”

“Yeah?” She took Johnny’s fork, placing the back of the tines on her bottom lip and flipping the fork up with her mouth, as if half in salute and half a tease. The hard water spots on the tines interrupted her lipstick color.

“Yeah.” He spun the application on the table. “I’m getting my shit together. And I don’t mind saying that in front of your kid, neither. I’d like him to see what a man getting his shit together looks like.”

“I don’t mind,” the kid said to his mom.

“You don’t look, to me, like you’re doing a thing, except pissing people off,” Naomi said.

“That guy was an asshole,” Johnny told her. “Sorry, kid,” he said.

“It’s okay. Really,” the kid said. He must have been 14. “My mom says—”

“It’s not okay,” his mom told him.

“I thought you’d like it,” Johnny said to her.

“Of course I didn’t like it. In fact, that’s why we came over here. To tell you how much I didn’t like your general demeanor.”

The kid bowed his head and stared at the reflection in the napkin dispenser.

“In fact,” Naomi said, “you know what I do like?” Johnny knew she was going to tell him, no matter what he said, so he didn’t say anything. And, as she told him, she leaned across the table, towards him. “I like it when people take me places. Makes me feel special. New, or something.”

“That’s good,” Johnny said. “That’s a nice feeling.”

“But that’s not what I love,” she continued. “Do you know what I love?” Johnny had the same answer as before. She picked up Johnny’s fork again and stabbed a green bean, and then bit it one small piece at a time, down to a nub. “I love it when people take me places. And we go and go and go. Until we almost run out of gas. And we coast into the gas station, and he coasts in, and he gets out, and he gets the gas, and I love it because I get out, too. I don’t stay in the car. I don’t like staying somewhere.” Her hand, with long, skinny fingers meant to love a piano, came towards Johnny and wrapped around one of the epaulets on his jacket. “Not even for a little while,” she said.

Johnny put his head down. He had half an erection, but he wasn’t sure why. And it was distracting. So he squinted at the application, concentrating. Some of it was in tiny print, and he couldn’t quite make it out. He pointed to a line of text and looked at the boy. “What does that say right there?”

The boy read slowly. “Do you…have re…liable transportation…to and from the…workplace—”

Snatching the paper back, Johnny made his own circle, between the “Yes” and “No” options and wrote in “She acts up but is generally okay.” He thought that was kinda funny. And he was sure his sense of humor was the most overlooked thing about him, so he wanted to get that on the application in several places.

Naomi sighed and turned her head like it was pulled that way on a string.

“Thought you wanted to go somewhere,” Johnny said.

“She does,” the kid said. “I do.” He was staring at the Honda again.

Johnny smiled at the kid. “You like that bike, huh?”

The kid grinned, but he wouldn’t quite look Johnny in the eye.

“You’re not gonna take me anywhere,” Naomi said.

“Not right now, no. Like I said, I’m getting my shit together. I got things to offer the world.” Like a sense of humor, he thought. Even when he was a kid, he’d made his whole family laugh at the supper table, for hours, doing funny voices, impersonating his aunts and uncles. He tried to get people to laugh like that now, but mostly they just didn’t.

“You know why you’re not gonna take me anywhere?” Naomi said. “I’m just gonna tell you why since you won’t figure it out yourself.”

“I’m talking about my aptitude,” Johnny said.

“I’m talking about your shitty attitude,” she said.

“You keep talking about it,” he said, “ and I’m gonna…have to do something…” He grabbed her hand, not exactly coarsely but not nicely either. She stared at him. “I’m gonna have to…have a cigarette. You got one?”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. Your shitty-ass attitude. Only want to do for yourself.”

Johnny didn’t understand why people assumed that. He did want to help people. He wanted a job and a paycheck and a good couch to sit on after work, maybe even a family. He wanted to buy a nice ball glove for that boy so he could write his name it. A daughter, to name her Anna.

“You smoke, kid?” Johnny asked.

“Just like his damn daddy—you are! Bunch of cobs. No, he don’t smoke. He don’t ride bikes or smoke or talk mean to nobody. I don’t let him act like that.”

The kid bowed his head. “What’s a cob?” he said. Johnny laughed a little.

“It’s somebody who acts tough,” Naomi said.

“Wipes their ass with a corncob instead of shitter paper,” Johnny said, leaning towards the kid.

“He ought to be thankful for it, too,” Naomi said, quickly. “The protection I give him. You got any kids?”

“Do I look like I have kids?” Johnny asked, in earnest. He wanted to know how people saw him. It would come in especially handy in his interview.

“I don’t know what you look like,” she said. “You just sorta…look.”

“Always wanted a son,” he said. “Or a daughter. Not really picky. Always think about the past like that. My daddy…stumbled through my rearing like a bootlegger.”

“That’s too sad,” Naomi said. She stood up from the table, pulled her brown hair up into a bunch above her head, and let it fall. Then she put one knee on her chair and plunged Johnny’s spoon into his ice cream. It was soupy and resembled skim milk. He’d been saving it for a treat, after his application. It pissed him off that she’d just take it like that, but still, you had to admire a woman who knew what she wanted. “Why won’t you take me anywhere?” she said, spooning one bite of the ice cream in her mouth and then leaving the spoon there, in her cheek, talking around it easily. “Just for a while. We can leave the boy here. He’ll be all right for a few minutes. They’ll watch him. I’ve done it a time or two.”

Johnny studied the kids’ face. The kid said, “I’m all right,” like he was resigning from something.

“He really likes that pudding fountain,” Naomi said. “And the fudgy pudding. Well, just pudding in general, I guess. And the stacks of plates. He’ll stand there for hours sometimes, just looking at them.”

“They’re really warm,” the kid said. “I get cold.”

“Take me on that bike,” Naomi said. For the first time, she seemed a little off. “I want to go fast…fast-forward.” She had on a bright purple sweater and a fake leather jacket. Her face was perfect—the kind you assume no one has, not even famous people—and she looked like she’d never been to the beach or a swimming pool or anywhere that required long exposure to the elements. Looking at her face was making Johnny a little conflicted about finishing the application.

He got up from the table first and walked outside, taking the piece of paper with him. He searched every pocket in his pants, shirt, and jacket for a cigarette and finally found a pouch of tobacco. He tore off a piece of the application and rolled a cigarette with it. The tobacco was bitter in a way he craved. Naomi and her son joined him outside. The kid walked towards the bike, stood next to it, staring at it.

“You like that bike, don’t you?” Johnny said. The kid didn’t answer.

“He knows better than that,” Naomi said. “I taught him better than to do something half as dangerous as it is stupid.”

Johnny took a drag. “I asked my old man to play catch with me one time. He told me I had two balls and could play with myself. He thought that was funny.”

“It’s a little funny,” she said. Her voice broke and sounded like a child’s, and her face showed one freckle in the sun that was dying out in a sky the day had given up on.

Johnny turned to the kid. “You want to sit on it?”

The kid nodded. Johnny said, “Get on from the left. Always from the left.”

“You need to put me on that bike and take me somewhere,” Naomi told Johnny.

Sitting on the Honda, the kid could barely hear his mom. He also couldn’t quite put his feet all the way on the ground, though he could get to the foot pegs easily and tip toe the bike forward. He put his hands on the bars, and rolled the throttle back with his right hand. Nothing happened. It felt a little like a mouse pad and a hard piece of plastic his mom sometimes asked him to rub her back with. Though the engine was off, the kid heard it rev when he pulled on the throttle. It sounded like every car that spun its wheels on TV, and an old-timey train, and his dad’s Dodge pickup. In his head, it revved until it was a voice, a preacher’s holler, deep and frightening and doubled-up, two voices in one. The whole of the bike smelled like gasoline and burnt toast. He felt a sweetness in handling the machinery, the delicate, rich hatred of controlling something.

 

Johnny walked over to the bike. “Let’s crank it and see what it sounds like,” he said.

“Where you gonna take me?” Naomi asked.

Standing next to the bike, Johnny pulled the clutch in and put it in neutral. “This is how you change gears,” he told the kid. “You want to wait for the friction zone, when the engine’s almost going to quit on you. Then you let go of the clutch and give it some throttle.”

“Yeah,” the kid said, as if he already knew exactly what Johnny was talking about.

When Johnny turned the key, pulled the clutch in again, and pushed the starter button, the kid closed his eyes. He’d been waiting to actually hear the engine, and he was a little scared of it, but a lot more curious. The bike only clicked, though. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

“Battery’s dead,” Johnny said.

“Motherfucker!” Naomi said. “Fuck all of you!”

The kid kept his eyes closed. Johnny stepped back and sized him up. “All right. I need you to do something important for me. You ready for that?”

“Yeah,” the kid said, deadpan.

“We’re gonna bump start her.”

“Of course.” The kid was doing his best to speak like a police officer from a movie.

Johnny stood beside the bike again. “I’m putting it in second gear. Then I’m gonna get in the back and push you. When I get you up to speed, let out the clutch, on the left here, and she’ll start. You got it?”

“Yeah, I let it out.”

“You’re gonna need to pull it right back in, too,” Johnny said.

“That’s right,” Naomi said. “Pull it out and then put it right back in. Don’t go killing yourself or anything.”

Johnny started pushing the bike. The kid was enjoying the ride at first and almost forgot his job. At the height of the speed from Johnny’s pushing, the kid dumped the clutch and the engine caught. The sound was terrible, like a boat engine that was turning a propeller on hard land. After a couple of backfires that shocked him a little, he revved the engine hard, and the bike took off halfway across the parking lot.

Naomi jogged a little out into the parking lot, yelling. “Hey! Slow down! Slow down, boy!”

But he didn’t slow down. The two of them watched him ride the entire distance of the parking lot, awkwardly, like a drunkard, past the Wal-Mart, and out onto the street. He ran a red light and kept going into the boring-colored evening.

“I taught him better than that,” Naomi said. “Not to make mistakes. I didn’t want that kind of life for him.”

Johnny exhaled and rolled another cigarette. After a while, between drags, he said, “I doubt he wants it either.” There were long pauses between his sentences. “He’ll be back. I’ve seen this before.”