American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,39

of some warm, cozy nirvana. Everyone here has been ordering the same thing since forever, and asking the same questions about the family and receiving the same funny little answers, and they’ll all keep doing it, over and over again, and that’s just fine with Mona. She’s almost disappointed when Gracie arrives with her food, which breaks the spell.

“What’s in this coffee?” Mona asks her. “It’s like… chocolatey and piney, or something.”

“It’s probably the pinyon nuts you’re tasting. We mix them into the grounds. It’s sort of a New Mexican specialty.”

“Well, it should be a specialty in a hell of a lot more places.”

“You’re new in town, aren’t you?” asks Gracie.

“Yes,” says Mona, who already knows what’s coming next.

“Not to be rude, but I think I heard about you. Are you the—”

“The lady from the funeral,” says Mona. “I am. Word travels fast.”

“It doesn’t have to travel far, here. Why are you visiting, if you don’t mind my asking? We don’t get much through traffic.”

“Well, I’m not sure if it’s a visit.” Again, she has to explain about the house. She’s going to have to incorporate this explanation into all her introductions around here.

“Oh,” says Gracie. “I’m so sorry to hear about your dad.”

“Really?” says Mona. “I wasn’t.”

Gracie smartly sidesteps this subject. “So your dad lived here?”

“My mother. A long, long time ago, I guess. I don’t think she was born here, but I guess it was her hometown. I don’t know. You wouldn’t happen to have known much about any Alvarezes? I’d expect not, since you’re so young.” Gracie shakes her head, but Mona gets an idea. “Say—you wouldn’t happen to know where the hall of records is around here, would you? I’d like to try and find out more about her.”

“I know where it was,” says Gracie. “Though it burned down before I was born. It was one of the buildings that got struck by lightning in the storm. They never got around to rebuilding it. It’s just a vacant lot next to the gas station.”

“I heard about that storm,” says Mona. “It sounds like it was a disaster.”

“I guess we think of it that way. There’s a memorial to the people who died in it just down the block, where the city park begins,” says Gracie. “It’s a tree that was struck. About half of it is still there. They lacquered it so it stays the way it is and doesn’t rot.”

“I just might have to see that.”

“It’s that way,” Gracie says, and points out the front windows.

As Mona looks, she sees she’s being watched: there is a man in the corner booth in a blue-gray coat and a white panama hat. He looks a little like a Native American, with angular, tough features and long, straight black hair. Despite the meal steaming in front of him, he is sitting with his hands in the pockets of his coat, and he stays totally still. If he cares that Mona has spotted him, he doesn’t show it: his dark black eyes just stare right back at her.

“Is that so,” says Mona softly. Then she thanks Gracie and begins to eat her meal, though she’s a little less hungry now.

When she is done Mona pays and leaves, looking to the side as she walks out. The Native American is no longer there, but his plate remains, the food untouched, though it’s stopped steaming. Once outside she looks up and down the sidewalk but does not see him.

She counts the vehicles again. They’re all there. She wonders if he somehow set off her little mental alarm, or if it was something else.

She walks up the street to the park with the huge white geodesic ball. She finds the memorial opposite the courthouse. It is a tall, splintered tooth of dark, gleaming wood, and it sits crooked in the lush green grass, about thirty feet tall. She sees there is a dark blush that starts at the top and curls down around the old bark. It looks almost like modern art.

She walks up to it and reads the plaque at the bottom:

IN MEMORIAM

IN LOVING MEMORY OF THOSE TAKEN FROM US

ON JULY 17TH 1983

WE LEAVE THIS TREE AS A TESTAMENT TO OUR LOSS

It doesn’t feel right to Mona to leave this tree as a memorial, really. This is not a pleasant memento at all. Wouldn’t they want something more inspiring, more hopeful? And…

She stops. Thinks. Then she reads the date again.

July seventeenth, she thinks. Nineteen eighty-three… she knows that date. Of course