LITMIR.BIZ

      One

      With nowhere to go, and in no hurry to get there, Jack Cordell dumped a second spoonful of sugar into his coffee and slowly stirred, killing time.

      The town he’d stopped in for lunch was a small one, the diner he’d chosen a mom and pop type place that boasted home-style cooking and a blue plate special for $4.95. Though the price of the food mattered little to Jack, the appeal of a home-cooked meal did. After six months on the road, eating cardboard-flavored food, his stomach had been ready for something with a little sustenance to it.

      Though crowded and noisy when he’d first arrived, the diner was nearly empty now, the only sound the rattle of pans from the kitchen and the occasional squeak of the waitress’s crepe-soled shoes on the worn linoleum as she went about her duties, clearing off tables after the noon rush. The woman looked to be on the downhill side of fifty, full breasted, thick waisted and with a tongue as sharp as the pencil tucked behind her ear. She wore her hair piled high on top of her head, a metallic gold clamp of some sort holding her bottle-red hair in place. She worked with an efficiency of movement that said she was an old hand at slinging hash.

      The dusty plate-glass window on Jack’s right offered him a bird’s-eye view of the diner’s empty parking lot, the bank across the street and the post office beside it. With a slight turn of his head, he had a clear shot of the entire downtown area. All two blocks of it. Though he’d spent the last five years in Houston and was accustomed to its towering skyline and traffic-clogged expressways, Jack had grown up in a town about the size of Driftwood, and found the small town appealing, almost peaceful.

      And it had been a long time since Jack had known any peace.

      As he stared at the big, lazy-branched oak that shaded the bank’s entrance, a weariness settled on his shoulders. He was tired of running. Tired of living out of his truck, eating his meals out of grease-stained paper sacks. Tired of the monotony of chasing a white line, his only companion a fifth of whiskey he kept tucked underneath the front seat, while he tried to outrun his guilt, his grief—and when he couldn’t outrun it, drown it. Neither seemed to work. The guilt still weighed heavily on him, the grief a cancer eating away at what remained of his heart.

      He knew he had a home to go to, a business to tend. But the idea of

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