Page 49 of Small Town Hunter

She hisses, “Sorry.I was busy trying to get rid of Robert E. Lee over there. He kept calling me abeautiful chocolate drop.And these serving ladies won’t even look at me.”

“What else did he tell you?”

“I have no idea. I don’t speak redneck!”

The servers are all gossiping in a pod near the bar. I slam my hand down on the little podium. Immediately one of them breaks off and comes over. “Um, yes?”

“We’d like a table for two,” says Trina, speaking up, luckily, before I do. “With somebody thatisn’tafraid of me.”

“Um,” says the girl. “Right this way.”

I order a steak,mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli and Trina gets chicken fingers, a salad and a chocolate lava cake. Ihave to talk her out of ordering a large black coffee or she’ll be climbing the walls all night.

“I can’t believe in this day and age people are still racist.”

“Ignorance thrives where people allow it,” I shrug. “We’re all human beings at the end of the day. Don’t bother me, I don’t have a problem with you. I wish everybody thought like that, but what can you do?”

She raises an eyebrow over a spoonful of chocolate cake. I never saw somebody eat dessert before a meal.

“What if we had kids, and somebody started bullying them in school? Calling them the N-word?” She presses me.

“Ifwehad kids.”

“I mean, you know. Say your wife was black or something…”

“And I woke up in another dimension…”

“I’m serious. What would you do?”

“I’d handle it, or I’d make him handle it, depending on the situation.”

She takes a big bite of cake. “So what do you think about the election?”

I grin. “Hard pass.”

When the real food comes it’s like we both lose our appetites. Trina picks at her salad as I tell her why I have to get back to Virginia.

“It starts with my friend Zacky,” I explain. “Going back a decade or so.”

She nods.

“Zacky and I were from the same town. We joined the service together. He came from a good family– real uptight army folks. His dad was a Colonel, had all these medals– damn proud of it, too.”

“You were in thearmy?”

“Yeah,” I say, hoping she doesn’t bombard me with questions. “We were stationed, er, somewhere together, me andZacky, which was lucky, both bein’ from the same town. We’d always been cool with each other, playing on the basketball team in school, all that.”

Trina nods.

“I can’t tell you the details of the mission,” I say carefully, “But Zacky and I were called to a special task force involving a high profile manhunt.”

Trina’s eyes get huge. “Seal Team six?bin Laden?”

“Ah, no.”

“Oh.”

“During the mission shit went sideways, and while under heavy fire Zacky saved my life but was badly wounded. He spent about a month in our ICU, and they tried to send him home but he insisted he was better. He didn’t want to face the disgrace, you know, with his family. They put a lot of pressure on him to finish his tour.”

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