The Waking by H. M. Mann

bridge onto Front Street and head through a town with no building taller than five stories. I want to ask why, but I’m getting tired of not knowing things. I bet it has something to do with floods.
    The truck screeches to a halt opposite the Time Out, a bar that looks like every other bar, I guess. Big picture window, lots of neon beer signs, cigarette butts littering the sidewalk outside, an alley running beside it. All but the driver and another guy get out, and the truck rolls away toward that steamboat I saw before. Slade and I are left standing on the sidewalk, the others streaming into the Time Out, which just happens to be open this early in the morning.
    “ That’s the American Queen ,” Slade says. “A very nice boat. Goes all the way from here to New Orleans. I think it even starts out in Pittsburgh.”
    “ It looks familiar.”
    “ We sometimes pass her in the night, and that is something. She’s like a lit-up birthday cake on the water.” He claps his hands. “Ready to shop?”
    “ I’m ready to eat.”
    “ Sure, sure.”
    We cross the street and go into Brownie’s Donut & Pastry Shop, and before I can finish looking at all the pastries, rolls, and doughnuts behind a glass case, Slade calls out, “A bag of pepperoni rolls.”
    I’m staring hard at some freshly glazed doughnuts. “And a dozen of these.”
    “ Make it two,” Slade says. “And a six-pack of Coke.”
    We take our “lunch” down Front Street to the wharf where the American Queen lies tied to a pier at the bottom of a bricked walk, and we lounge on the grass just above the Marietta sign. The American Queen is glorious. I count six decks, American flags rippling in the breeze on the top deck, a massive red paddlewheel in the back, two black smokestacks sprouting in the front like torches.
    “ Incredible,” I say as I finish my fifth doughnut in five minutes.
    “ Careful now,” Slade says, munching on a pepperoni roll covered with mustard. “You’re liable to get addicted to sugar next.”
    My stomach makes all sorts of noises, but I don’t want to stop. Sugar just tastes sweeter now. “Sugar isn’t addictive.”
    He winks. “Depends on what kind of sugar you’re talking about. Bet Mary’s sweet.”
    “ Yeah.”
    “ What do you think she’s doing right now?”
    I see her still sitting on the bottom step. “Hating me.”
    “ Ah, Manny, you got to start thinking positively. The worst is over, right? You’re healing up, and at the rate you keep putting away those doughnuts, you’re gonna be fattened up in no time.”
    “ Maybe.” My stomach groans some more. Maybe it’s groaning for more, I don’t know. I stop after my sixth doughnut. “You know I can’t go back with you.”
    “ Cap’n told me.” He smacks his lips and licks the mustard off his fingers. “Still, we made it last five days. What are your plans?”
    “ Not sure.” I take a swig of Coke, and my eyes water from the carbonation. When’s the last time I had a cold can of Coke?
    “ Thinking about going back?”
    “ All the time.” It’s like I’ve been through the Middle Passage or something, and the ship is finally on shore. “But, I don’t know, I’m … not sure I should go back just yet.”
    “ You’re worried you’ll go right back to it.”
    In a hot second. “Yeah. My body may be over it, but my mind isn’t. When the captain gave me that roll of money, the first thing that popped into my head was getting a bundle and some works and shooting up somewhere. The first thing that popped into my head. I ain’t ready to go back.”
    “ I hear you.” He wipes his mouth with a napkin. “Back in Pittsburgh, you had to have a job, right?”
    “ Yeah. Repairing houses mostly.”
    “ Yeah? You good with your hands?”
    I laugh. “I can replace a mean toilet, but only if it’s Chinese.” I spend the next ten minutes explaining that one to Slade, and he can’t stop laughing.
    “ Does your job keep you from thinking about it?”