Clark’s head popped up from the blurred words of his newspapers at the loud shouting of a stranger. He whipped his head around just in time to see a flash of a red-scarfed woman dash out of the door and a desperate man sitting at the diner counter. Clark was aware of small-town manners. A good citizen would have invited the freshly liberated man to join him for breakfast, but Clark wasn’t a good citizen, and even if he was, he didn’t think anyone in Miller’s Point would particularly want to share a meal with him.
“Can you believe her?”
It took at least fifteen seconds for Clark to realize the other man was talking to him. He focused on an article about a high school track meet. Apparently, this small town dominated at the recent district meet, held at Christopher Woodward Stadium. He wondered if they’d keep the name now that his uncle was dead, or if they’d turn it into the Christopher Woodward Memorial Stadium to acknowledge his legacy or whatever.
“I wasn’t listening. Sorry.”
Apparently, to the man at the counter, this was all the invitation he needed to join Clark for breakfast.
“This seat taken?”
No, but it isn’t open either. Please leave me and my pancakes in peace. Clark fought to keep the snark at bay. There was nothing he wanted less than company at the moment, especially when the entire town was afflicted with candy cane fever. He didn’t want any of that foolishness rubbing off on him. But it didn’t seem this guy was in the mood to take no for an answer.
“Go ahead.”
“Thanks.”
Balancing his array of half-finished plates across his forearms, he plopped into the seat, rattling the table. It took longer than a polite minute for the man to arrange his extensive breakfast, which only added to the heat flaring up the back of Clark’s neck. His lips flattened into a thin line of displeasure when Mel appeared with a piping hot plate and mug. He placed them on the table, and Clark pulled them close, grateful for the distraction. He couldn’t decide what the stranger across from him wanted, but if he thought he could convince him to change his mind about the festival, he’d be just as disappointed as Kate. Did these people have some sort of committee, dedicated to twisting the simplest of business decisions into a city-wide ordeal?
“One order of pancakes and bacon. And a black coffee. Syrup’s over there. Can I get you anything else?”
Clark started to say no, but was cut off.
“Can I get some more coffee, Mel? Oh, and one of those blueberry muffins.”
“They’re about two days old.”
“Can you pop it in the microwave for about thirty seconds, then?”
His easy intimacy with the diner owner put Clark’s transactional replies to shame. Without the protection of his newspaper, Clark had to actually interact with these people. His worst fears realized.
“You got it, kid.”
Mel departed. As Clark dug into his pancakes, he hoped the only frustration he’d have to deal with was the treacle-sweet music pouring out of the juke box, but his new guest proved him wrong.
“You’re that Woodward guy, aren’t you?” he asked through a mouth of biscuits dripping with gravy.
“Clark.”
“I’m Michael.” Clark nodded once, an acknowledgment that he’d heard the introduction, but his new companion took his silence as an invitation for more conversation. “Some people call me Buddy, but I’ll answer to anything, really.”
The urge to roll his eyes was unbearably strong. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to be called Buddy when Michael was perfectly suitable. Buddy wasn’t a name for a man. It was a name for a puppy or a background character in a Flannery O’Connor novel.
“Small towns,” he muttered.
“Buddy was my grandfather’s callsign during the invasion of Normandy. He won a Medal of Valor.”
Clark choked on his bacon, ready to splutter out some kind of tense take-back of the insult, but he was awarded with uproarious laughter from the man across the table.
“I’m just messing with you, Dallas. Buddy used to be my nickname, but getting a medical degree changes how people see you. I mostly just go by Michael now. How’re the pancakes?”
“Good.”
“Mel makes the best pancakes in the whole state, I think. On Christmas morning, he sets up an assembly line in the town hall and a bunch of volunteers chip in to help him make, like, two thousand pancakes so everyone in town can have breakfast before the festival starts. The 25th is our busiest day of the year.” Michael’s hurried excitement tapered off when he realized a tradition would be ending. He got a hollow look in his eyes, which Clark did his best to ignore. “I mean, he did. And it was. When the festival was still on.”
The festival. He was tired of hearing about the festival. If these people loved the festival so much, why didn’t they put it on themselves instead of using his family’s money? Better yet, why didn’t they raise the price from a measly $10 a person to $25 a person? A fifteen-dollar increase meant big things for their bottom line, yet when he’d proposed it to Carolyn, the Director of Operations, she’d assured him she’d rather quit the whole thing altogether than keep poor families out and only cater to rich folks. She then glared at him as if the mere suggestion of raising ticket prices cheapened the entire heart of her operation.
Clark said, “Listen, Michael. I’m not really looking for company. I’m fine on my own.”
“Yeah. Of course. I was just thinking I could maybe show you around, you know, give you the lay of the land since you’ll be here for a few days. I can show you everything. Library, bank, even the parking lots so your car doesn’t get towed again.”
News travels fast. He’d only told Kate and the tow truck guy about his car; twelve hours later, everyone knew. If I walk around with you for twenty minutes, will you leave me alone? Something in this town’s water must have made them especially persistent. As with his first interaction with Kate, Clark saw no other way to get rid of this guy than giving him a little bit of his time.
“Sure,” he agreed, trying to hide his displeasure behind a half-hearted smile, only to be practically blinded by Michael’s blinding one.
“Mel! Make my muffin to go!”
What Clark hoped would be a brief twenty-minute introduction became an almost three-hour walking tour of the most important historical and contemporary sites Miller’s Point had to offer. By the time Michael ran out of steam, Clark knew more about the remote ranching village than he’d ever known about Dallas. For example, he’d had no idea his family founded Miller’s Point outright. He assumed they’d settled and prospered here, not set up the first encampments of ranchers.
At the first half-hour mark of the extensive tour, Clark considered bailing out and begging off to his office, but he couldn’t actually find it in himself to do it. Save for the workers taking down the decorations in the town square (as he’d instructed the night before), the town was empty and Michael was every bit the enjoyable host. Not that he ever let on, but he actually had a good time walking around the town and taking in its sights, provincial though they were.
But he drew the line at a cemetery tour. Close inspections of ghosts and tombstones where Jesus wore cowboy boots did not fit his description of an acceptable way to spend a morning. He checked his watch.
“I have to go to my office. I have things to do,” he said, curt and direct as possible. The tour may have been a fine diversion for a few hours, but it couldn’t last all day. He needed to be in the office, taking care of work, even if no one in this town seemed to understand the concept.
“Great! I’ll walk you there.”
“I’m