South of Superior - Ellen Airgood [114]
He went right back to slicing mushrooms. Every day was hard to get through now. Every year by this time he toyed with the idea of closing and going back downstate, and every year he got a second wind and soldiered through. But maybe there was no sense in that. Maybe he was missing too much that mattered. All of his sisters had children, kids he barely knew. He had a nephew in Iraq, which felt strange and impossible. Tommy had been a skinny ten-year-old when Paul left, and now he was a soldier? He probably went by Tom and not Tommy now, and it was a sure bet he no longer messed around in the kitchen making weird snacks the way he Used to. There was a bad and very real chance he’d get killed over there and the next time Paul would see him would be at his funeral. This idea was so wrong that Paul couldn’t think about it.
“Earth to Paul,” Madeline said. She cut her eyes toward Greyson.
Paul forced himself to smile, to put the knife down, to crouch down to Greyson’s level and give him a hug. Greyson returned the hug in spades, and Paul stood Up with Grey dangling from his neck and laughing with a glee that made Paul’s heart swell.
But then Madeline and Greyson had finished their pizza and gone home, and Paul’s spirits sank once again. Not long after they left he turned the sign to “Closed.” It was hours early, but for once he was doing himself this favor. He turned off the coffeepot, shut down the lights, shoved the components of his Unfinished sauce into the cooler. He slid into a booth and leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and rehashed it all in his head again. The season was over and he had just managed to break even. Every time he thought he might make an extra dollar, something went wrong—the coolers, the truck, always something.
Yesterday he got a notice saying the water bill was going to be four times higher starting in January. The Village hadn’t put any money into the system in years and now they were going to make Up for it. He wondered if Madeline realized. Everybody who was commercial was going to pay a steep price, motels and hotels in particular. Well, she must’ve gotten the same notice he did, so good luck to her.
There’d been a note from the bank, too. His mortgage rate was going Up and there was nothing he could do about it. It’d be expensive to refinance and with the shape things were in, he might not even get approved. Also there was a notice from the Feds claiming he hadn’t paid his taxes on time and they were going to penalize him for it. He had paid the taxes, but someone had gotten something screwed Up. Paul had no idea how to fix it, but he’d have to figure it out because he was the person in charge here.
How great to be your own boss. He was working a hundred hours a week and only halfway making it because of the paycheck from the prison. Without that he’d be in a bad way. With it he was in a bad way. He was running like a rat on a wheel, and for what? He couldn’t even tell anyone any of this.
He’d felt for Madeline, that night she was tipsy and spilled out all those miserable little truths you really had to keep to yourself in a place like this. Paul knew how he would’ve felt after—like a fool. She’d pretended ever since that it never happened and he did too. It was exactly the way he would have played it in her shoes.
Now there was a job offer back downstate, and he couldn’t talk to anyone about that, either. He was on his own to decide, take it or don’t. His high school buddy Jim had a construction business and had won a bid on building a school. He wanted Paul to come work with him. The money would be decent, it’d beat working in the prison (wouldn’t it?), and Paul thought he could do it. It wouldn’t be easy, the way his leg was, but running this place was hard too. Between Garceau’s and the prison, he was on his feet fifteen hours a day, and it wasn’t like he was going back to school to learn how to do some desk job. It was a little late for that, and he wouldn’t want to anyway. No, if he worked for