Page 9 of Clear Path

“Please don’t tell her, Dot,” Joey pleaded, attempting to sit up. Bodhi placed a steadying hand on his shoulder.

“Take it slow,” he advised. “The Narcan blocks the opiates, but it can wear off before they do. You need go to a hospital.”

Joey shook his head emphatically. “No hospital. Can’t afford it.”

“What about the clinic up in Clarksville?” Camden suggested.

“That closed last year,” Dot informed him grimly.

Bodhi helped Joey into a seated position with his back against the wall. The young man was thin but not emaciated, his clothes worn but clean. Despite Sal’s warnings about homelessness and addiction on the trail, Joey was clearly a local.

“You live around here?” Bodhi asked.

Joey looked away. “Sort of. Been staying with friends since I got evicted.”

“He was the assistant manager at the hardware store on the square,” Dot supplied. “Lost his job when they turned it into a sip and paint craft shop. Then his rent went up. You can guess the rest.”

He could. Down on his luck, with no opportunities on the horizon, Joey had decided to escape his troubles in one of the few ways available to him.

“There’s nothing here for guys like us anymore,” Camden said. There was a bitter edge to his young voice. “You gotta have money to spend in those tourist places, or you gotta have money to open one. If you don’t have either, you’re screwed.”

Joey nodded his agreement. “I’ve been applying everywhere. Even in Pittsburgh. I haven’t gotten a single interview or a call back. I started using to take the edge off. Just sometimes.” He studied his shoes. “Then it got to be more than sometimes.”

Bodhi understood both Joey’s immediate crisis and the systemic one it pointed to. This story wasn’t unique to Clayton Falls. He’d seen variations of it in Vermont and in Florida, small communities, once overlooked, where so-called progress created winners and losers with little, if any, middle ground.

“You need to rest,” Bodhi told Joey. “And youreallyshould seek medical attention. As I said, the spray’s effect is temporary.”

Joey nodded without conviction, and Bodhi knew his advice would go unheeded. He reached into his pack again and retrieved the remaining doses of the spray.

“Do you know how to use these?” he asked Camden, who nodded.

“They taught us in health class last year.”

“Good. Keep them with you.” Bodhi handed over the doses, then turned back to Joey. “This isn’t a solution. Just a second chance.”

“What am I supposed to do with a second chance around here?” Joey asked the question with genuine bewilderment.

Bodhi thought of Gracie and her cat, of Dot’s struggling diner, and of the gleaming shops in the town square that might as well have been in another world.

“First, you survive,” he said finally.

The onlookers drifted away, and Camden settled on the ground next to Joey with his back against the brick wall. A Black woman wearing blue scrubs under a cheerful red coat walked toward them and addressed Bodhi.

“I’m a nurse practitioner. I can stay with them for a bit. And maybe convince Joey to get checked out.”

He smiled in relief. “Thank you.”

She placed a hand on Bodhi’s arm. “No, thank you. You probably saved his life.”

“You’d have done the same.”

“Rae,” Dot said to the nurse practitioner, “You be sure to stop in for a slice of pie and a cup of coffee on the house before you head home for the night.”

Rae nodded.

Dot and Bodhi walked back toward the diner as the shadows lengthened and dusk fell around them.

“Joey was always a good kid, but he’s floundering.”

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