Rivers to Blood by Michael Lister

highway, but here I was again, walking through the door at a little after nine.
    Rudy’s Diner served Southern fried food just like all the no-name cafés in small Southern towns, but it didn’t look like one. With stools and a counter fronting a grill and booths next to plate glass windows it looked more like a welfare Waffle House than anything else.
    Jake and Fred Goodwin were in a booth in the back on the opposite side of the restaurant from the booth I considered mine. I was sure they had just come in from the woods and were probably talking about the search or the weather—anything but the election, but it looked conspiratorial, as if Jake were somehow betraying Dad.
    Next to them four men I recognized from the prison but didn’t know were laughing loudly when not shoveling grits, eggs, bacon, and toast into their mouths. Across the room, Carla’s boyfriend slouched in a booth with a group of guys his age, their posture conveying how bored they were with life. Todd and Shane sat in a booth next to them, and at the counter in the center Sandy Hartman sat alone, his head down, shoulders hunched, sipping coffee.
    Beyond him, Carla, hair fallen, face drawn, fatigue obvious, was balancing plates on her hands and arms. She gave me a half smile, then looked away. As she carried the food over to Todd and Shane, I walked over to Sandy.
    “How’s it going?” I asked.
    He looked up at me, squinting against the light above us, frowned, and shrugged. “It’s going.”
    I waited for him to elaborate but he didn’t.
    “You okay?”
    His eyes widened and locked on mine. He then glanced around the room to see if anyone was witnessing our interaction.
    “I’m just fine. Thanks. You?”
    It was a dismissal.
    I nodded then walked over toward my booth, nodding to Carla’s boyfriend, Cody Gaskin, and his friends as I did. They didn’t respond.
    I stopped at Todd and Shane’s table.
    “You gotta concentrate to be that cool,” Todd said, looking at the boys. “Can’t be distracted by nodding or speaking.”
    I smiled.
    What made that funny was the way Todd was just like them when he was that age and wasn’t that much different now.
    Looking down at Todd and Shane I realized again how much alike they looked.
    Todd and Shane had thick necks, crew cuts, and even sitting, bowed out their chests and flexed their muscles against the tight, too small T-shirts they wore. Completing their look of pseudo-soldier, their camouflage fatigues were tucked into their black tactical boots.
    There was one big difference though. Shane was nearly twice the size of Todd. It was as if Todd was a smaller version of Shane, a to-scale model that maintained the exact proportions in miniature. They even had identical razor wire armband tattoos around their right biceps.
    The boys were talking so low it sounded like whispering, but occasionally I heard a string of words well enough to make out most of a sentence. “If I caught one throwin’ my bitch a bone I’d damn sure do it.”
    Shane was saying something but I was too distracted for it to register.
    “How often you tappin’ that ass, man? She looks like she can hardly walk.”
    Before I realized what I was doing I had stepped back over to their table.
    “That’s because of how tired she is,” I said. “And if I ever hear any of you say anything like that about her again, you’ll be walking funny for the rest of your little lives. Promise you that.”
    “Shit, man, chill out,” one of them said.
    He was a pale, pimply faced boy with a bad haircut and wounded, angry eyes.
    “Stop it, Sean,” a boy I recognized from the football team said. “Just stop.”
    But Sean couldn’t.
    “I’s just kiddin’,” Sean said. “Besides, I wasn’t talkin’ to you.”
    “But I am talking to you,” I said. “And you better listen.”
    “We hear you, okay?” the other guy who wasn’t Cody said. “He’s a dick. We’re sorry. We won’t let him say anything like that