Lions by Bonnie Nadzam Page B

said. “You’re working with successive approximations of facts. Work with what you know. And what you don’t know, don’t guess.”
    â€œOK.”
    â€œDon’t tell yourself a story about it.”
    â€œI wasn’t.”
    â€œMake your own observations. Don’t take my word for it—or anybody else’s.”
    Gordon closed the shop door, his stomach clenched. It was wrong shutting the place up on a perfectly good workday. His eyes stung as he started up the truck. For the first time in his life, regret was alive in him, making his face very still, his movements wooden. He was a block past the only stop sign in town before he realized he’d driven straight through it. His thoughts went to Dex and the short baseball player, but he knew better than to assign them responsibility for the choice he’d made. Gordon had not been there for what might have been his father’s last days in the shop. Days he could never have back.
    He pulled over at the Lucy Graves. The lights were up and he could see May behind the counter, and Boyd, and a ­customer—trucker traffic from off the highway—perched on stools with small brown ceramic cups of coffee in their hands. May was frying up breakfasts as she prepped for the lunch hour. Four loaves of plastic-bagged white bread were out. Pink stacks of frozen ham, frozen salami, frozen bologna, filaments of waxed paper floating between each slice. A canister of mayo, an industrial-sized jar of bread-and-butter pickles, and ten pounds of frozen crinkle-cut french fries. On the stove behind her, several cans’ worth of corned beef hash simmering in an oversized skillet. Dozens of her own hens’ brown and white eggs lined up on blue dishrags beside the range.
    â€œGordon,” May said, when he came in and rang the bells on the glass door. She dried her hands on her apron and went to him and kissed his cheek, then set her hands on his shoulders, surveying his face. “Your dad hanging in there?”
    Gordon hadn’t slept; his eyes were ringed with shadow. “Don’t really know.” He kept his gaze pointed at the floor as he spoke.
    â€œBad season,” Boyd said to no one in particular.
    â€œOh, sweetheart,” May said to Gordon, then furrowed her brows at Boyd to be quiet. She brought Gordon to the counter. “What can I get you guys?”
    â€œNothing that’ll get cold, I guess,” Gordon said.
    â€œStarts cold and stays cold,” she said, “coming right up.” She turned around and stooped into a cooler. “Your dad eating too?”
    â€œJust me and mom.”
    â€œYou want an egg and toast while you wait?”
    â€œNo, I’m OK.”
    â€œNonsense, let me make you an egg and toast.”
    â€œYou should let her,” Boyd said, “she does it really good.”
    She set a slice of bread over the butter and onions and cracked an egg open beside it. “Poor Georgie,” she said, then she sang it again a few times, like an old song everybody knew. In three minutes Gordon had a buttered, browned slice of toast topped with a thick slice of red tomato fried in bacon fat and an egg over easy, with a cup of black coffee. He thanked her. She glanced at the customer and then again at Boyd, both bent over dishes of peppered eggs.
    â€œYou boys set?”
    â€œAll set, ma’am,” the truck driver said.
    Boyd winked at her, and May gave him a stern look, shifting her eyes quickly to Gordon. She set four slices of white bread on the stainless steel counter.
    â€œSorry about your dad, Gordon,” Boyd said.
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œHell of a good man. There’s anything I can do you come ask me.”
    â€œThanks, Boyd.”
    â€œBologna?” May asked.
    â€œSure.”
    â€œJam?”
    â€œWhatever you think best.”
    â€œGood boy,” she said, opening a jar of her own chokecherry preserves.
    â€œTell you what,