Redemption Song (Daniel Faust) by Craig Schaefer

Author:Craig Schaefer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Demimonde Books
Published: 2014-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Four

The air changed around Richfield, and that was when I knew they were onto me.

I’d headed out of town on I-15 North with the Barracuda’s engine purring and the duffel bag on the passenger seat. The car felt like a caged panther, flexing its sleek muscles and aching to sprint. I crossed the border into Utah, driving through St. George and Cedar City, the desert slowly giving way to scrub pine and towering rocks. I kept my eyes on the road.

About three hours out of Vegas, I merged onto I-70 heading east toward Denver. I felt strange, long before I hit the border. At first I chalked it up to a shift in elevation or temperature, making my ears feel stuffy and my nerves off-kilter, but that wasn’t all of it. The air tasted different. I felt like an astronaut, taking off my helmet on a planet with an atmosphere almost, but not quite identical to the one I came from.

It was three in the afternoon by the time I rolled into Richfield. My stomach and the Barracuda’s tank both edged on empty. The town couldn’t have been any more middle-American, a sleepy burg in the middle of Utah surrounded by farms and factories, about a hundred miles from anywhere in particular. I fed the car first, rolling into a gas station that hadn’t changed its look since 1955. I asked the attendant to recommend something that would stick to my ribs. He pointed me toward Norma’s, a corner diner about two blocks away.

A little chime jingled over the door as I walked into the diner with the duffel bag slung over my shoulder. It was that twilight hour between lunch and dinner, so the place was far from crowded. Judging from the parking lot, I figured most of the patrons were long-haul truckers, grabbing a bite when and where they could. A girl with an acne-spotted face and a sunflower yellow dress, looking sixteen or seventeen, gave me a wave from the counter.

“Welcome to Norma’s! Sit wherever you like. I’ll be over in just a minute.”

I made myself comfortable in a booth by the window and sat the duffel bag next to me with the zipper in easy reach. A laminated menu lay on the Formica table. I flipped through it until the girl came over with a pot of black coffee.

“Just what I needed,” I said, sliding over my empty mug. “Guy at the filling station said this place is world-famous for its pancakes. That right?”

The girl smiled. “Don’t know if they’re talking about us in Paris, but the food’s good and we serve breakfast all day long.”

“Good enough for me. I’ll have a full stack with a side of sausage, please.”

I nursed my coffee and watched out the window, not sure how nervous I needed to be. The heart of Utah was a long way from anything I called home.

The pancakes came out piping hot and dripping with butter. I drizzled fresh maple syrup over the fluffy stack and dug in.

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