Excerpt: The Fabulous Summer of Freddie Tickner

THE FABULOUS SUMMER OF FREDDIE TICKNER

You want sweet tea with that, hon? Just push that outta the way. Ok, where were we? You wanted to know about that summer, huh? That was one magical summer, I’ll tell you. Bright and hot and every damned day so golden you hated to close your eyes on it. Funny though, when I think about it, it actually started in the spring, not in the summer at all. One of those April days so cold and bitter you think the Ice Age is a-happenin’ all over again.

What happened was, I was on my way back from Stollings, that’s where I come from. Freddie, he was from Logan. Close? Oh, yeah. Very close. Same-same alike, only different. Hell, everything would be close in West Virginia if it weren’t for the mountains. We went to the same high school, Logan High, that’s where we met. Had a little rock band there for a while. Anyways, I came off 23 at a truck stop just above Chillicothe, you know the one. Yeah, where they busted all them dudes last month. I only had another couple hours to drive but I was hungry and they got a pretty nice diner there. Clean restroom, too. I come off the highway and I remember passing this here hitchhiker. Well, he wasn’t hitching, he was just walking down toward the end of that ramp, but he had a big ol’ backpack on, looked like it’d seen better days, and he’uz carrying what looked like a bed roll. Had some toboggan or other pulled down on his head, big beard, and that’s all I saw. I remembered thinking he had to be froze to the bone because I had the heater running full out and my toes still felt cramped from the cold.

I parked by the diner and went on in and they put me in a booth by those big windows that fill up a wall right down to tabletop level. Helluva draft coming off there, I’ll say that. Little bitty snip of a waitress, you know the kind? Thinks she’s cute but’s got a brain ‘bout the size of a peanut and a bottom like a – oh, hell. I’m sorry. You ain’t interested in that. So what happened was, I ordered some coffee and I’m worrying over the menu, trying to decide whether I’d do better to cut out the fat or trim the carbs. My coffee ain’t coming anytime soon, it looked like, so I had time. Went and had a piss, came back and finally settled on ordering some chili when I notice that that same hitchhiker is walking past the window, and this time I can kind of see his face. And I thought, “My Lord, it can’t be!” But just for a second his eyes – green eyes, green as grass whenever it’s overcast like it was that day – his glance met mine and kind of slid away off, you know, like a shy person’s might. Or like some scuzz-bucket up to no good, or even some lunatic. But in this case it wasn’t either of those things. Thinking back on it now, I know it was humility. And some embarrassment. Because Freddie recognized me, just like I recognized him. Only he kept on walking.

Life had done that to him, you know. Made him too scared and humble and embarrassed to come inside and greet an old friend. I ‘bout knocked Miss Snip the waitress over getting outta that booth and out the door.

“Freddie!” I called. “Son of a bitch, Freddie! Where the hell you been, hoss?”

And his face just opened up like – I mean, it radiated, like a sunflower, you know?Beard and all. I had the impression it had been a long time since he’d met with a friend.

“Christ o’ Pete, it’s freezin’ out here. Come on inside and I’ll buy you lunch,” I urged him.

But he hung back.

“Naw, I better not. Like as not, they’d only ask me to leave anyway.”

Well, he did look like a street bum, that was true, and for sure Miss Snip was giving me the eye out the window, like, ‘you better not think of bringing that dirty tramp in here!”

“Take my keys,” I said, and dug’em out of my jeans, “and go start up the car. That little bucket of bolts over there, the Ford. Fire up the heater and I’ll be right back.”

I wasn’t, o’course. Took twenty friggin’ minutes to get coffee and chili to go. I finally get out to the car and get in behind the wheel. Freddie’s sitting in the passenger seat and the first thing hits me is the smell. I’ve never figured out how it is humans can learn to stand their own smell. I s’pose it’s only natural, other animals don’t seem to mind each other when they don’t bathe, but it sure as hell don’t smell natural to me.

“Criminitly, Freddie, you’re makin’ my eyes water! How long since you had a bath?”

His slow grin showed he took no offense as he took the Styrofoam cup of coffee from me.

“I dunno.” He pried off the plastic lid and blew on the hot liquid. Christ, I was glad that breath wasn’t coming at me.

“Where you going?” I pulled the cups of chili out of the bag and set’em up on the dash, then put the spoons alongside.

“Oh, me.” He was silent for a long time, like he either didn’t know or didn’t want to say. Then he said in that sweet drawl, “I’m on my way back up, Daryl. I don’t know where that is, but I really do think I am. On my way back up.” He nodded and slurped cautiously at the coffee.

“No place to stay, huh? How about at your momma’s place? You want, I’ll take you back on down to Logan?”

Ugh. I hated the thought of driving back down there again, the drive is pretty close to being unbearable even on a good day, and it had been snowing when I left that morning. But Freddie, they was just always something about him. At least to me there way. He always needed somebody lookin’ out for him. I don’t mean he was helpless or ignorant or anything like that. It just always seemed like, if they was two ways to do things, one easy and one hard, well, Freddie always seemed to choose the hard way. Maybe it only seemed that way, though, because looking back, even when he chose the easy way it turned out to be the worst possible choice anyone could make. He wasn’t lucky, Freddie wasn’t. And there I was, fair eat up with good luck. I don’t know whether I deserved my luck but I know damned well Freddie didn’t deserve his.