“Summer folks take the highway. Anything walking the grade after the leaves drop, you lock your shed and leave the porch light on.”
— Overheard at the café counter, Jeffers
Part I
The man came in with the late October leaves on a blustery wind.
Jacob White couldn’t rightly say whether it was those leaves skittering across the station’s gravel apron or the chattering of his teeth brought on by the chill in the air that rattled in his head.
It were cold. No debate in that.
His breath said so and, if that weren’t proof enough, the frost-kissed leaves caught in the nooks of the gas station’s fifties-era painted stucco were enough to give tell. He was glad Mavis had forced his coat on him, though he had waved her off out of habit. He had never cared for mothering, not from his own mother and sure as hell not from his wife.
Jacob was reasonably certain the lanky ragamuffin of shadow flapping towards him were a man, anyway. Or a woman built like one. It were hard to know for sure, what with a ragged hood around the face leaving only a pale jawline to say.
He didn’t much care if folks played at lady or gent, so long as their credit card were good after he had gone and filled up their tank.
Jacob wondered if this were one of them hobos nursing time by the tracks while centerbeams and boxcars banged together. Their type rarely wandered out as far as the station, but it happened on occasion. This one weren’t local. He wondered if a call to A-1 Towing were needed, though most visitors passing through had a cell phone these days.
Folks always passed through Jeffers. No one accused the town of being a destination since that old copper mine flooded back in forty-three. Those who could move on, did. Jacob might have moved on when he was younger if he hadn’t caught a case of cabin fever and ended up getting married in the courthouse.
By now, his visitor had come close enough to warrant the courtesy of a greeting, though there were no one to mark the omission and Jacob had decided on “friend”. Neighborly. Safe.
“How’s by you, friend?” he asked, offering more a raised hand than a wave.
The stranger looked up, surprised to see Jacob. They drew back the hood. Underneath: layers of pilled wool sweaters, threadbare thermal shirts, flannel peeking from an army-surplus peacoat.
The stranger’s facial features went all soft and fuzzy. Whatever shape were there got lost in that smile, bright where all else were dark. It were mostly teeth, from what Jacob could see.
“Fair enough, I expect. And you?” Voice pitched deep, but might have passed for some women. Jacob’s Aunt Cynthia had a voice like that.
“Eh, I’d be about the same.”
They both stood a spell, not saying a thing while Jacob stared at those teeth.
The stranger nodded towards the station.
“Might you have a spot of coffee to chase away this cold?”
The smile the smile the smile.
“I can pay,” they added, before he could ask.
Jacob shook away the cobwebs that filled his head. “Yah. Just brewed up a fresh batch.”
Perhaps Jennie Corbin were able to bat her eyelashes at Jacob for a free cup of joe on her way to work in what passed for downtown in Jeffers, but this person — whether man or woman — weren’t wearing the skirts that showed off Jennie’s mighty fine legs, now were they?
The smile.
“Buck-fifty a cup tho’, no refills.”
The stranger chuckled, though Jacob didn’t see anything funny.
“Is it black as sin? Or are you selling what they’ll be handing out in church basements?”
That made Jacob laugh. “Ain’t been a churchgoer for a number of years now, so I’ve been spared that dishwater they have the indecency to call coffee.”
“Then that’d be a fair ask for a cuppa.” They gestured towards the blacktop gone white in the autumn frost. “Might pick up a second for the road at that.”
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