The Last Orphan -
Chapter 65(The End)
To call Mixed Blessing a dive bar was to insult dive bars.
Evan still didn’t fully register that he’d come here. It hadn’t felt like a conscious decision, more like an inevitability driven by some subconscious urge that refused to poke its head above the surface. After flying back to Aragón’s home in Eden, Texas, he’d noticed that Blessing was a mere four-hour drive away.
This was the town where the man he thought to be his father had used his credit cards as recently as a few months ago.
Evan stood inside the dim bar. The fan, missing one paddle, spun lazily, providing entertainment for a haze of flies. A few good ole boys were shooting pool, a drunk woman in a wheelchair was throwing darts with surprising precision, and Willie was spinning on the jukebox, apologizing that he’d been blind.
Evan walked over to where an ancient barkeep wearing biker leathers mopped at the varnished wood with a rag the color of urine. He looked up from beneath a red bandanna tied around his head, no doubt in keeping with the Shotgun Willie theme.
“I’m looking for Jacob Baridon,” Evan said.
The barkeep bobbed his head. “He in some kinda trouble?”
“No,” Evan said. “It’s personal.”
“You a friend of his?”
“No,” Evan said. “But not an enemy either.”
The man kept mopping, though at what Evan had no idea. Perhaps he was using the bar to clean the rag instead of vice versa.
“Go right outta the lot. First right, second left, ride ’er to the end.”
“Thank you.”
On the crackling jukebox, Willie bemoaned all the things he should’ve said and done.
Evan stood a moment longer and then withdrew.
The long dirt road ended not so much in a cul-de-sac but at an arbitrary spot where the sunbaked terrain reasserted its dominance over civilization. The double-wide manufactured home seemed about six hundred square feet. Foam showed through cracks in the cement boards, the roof was partially caved in at one corner, and the black trash bag covering a broken window snapped angrily in the wind. The house had been pale pink once, though the gritty wind had sandblasted off most of the paint. The mailbox was knocked over.
No one was home.
Evan stood a moment by the Jeep that Aragón had lent him, staring back at the residence.
It made him feel.
It made him feel sad.
He got back into the Wrangler.
What now?
He had no idea.
It occurred to him that he should’ve asked the barkeep if he’d seen Baridon lately. Evan didn’t particularly want to hang around Blessing to try again.
Maybe it was fate.
Or whatever passed for fate.
Whipping the Jeep around turned up the volume on the ache in his left shoulder, but he didn’t care. He sped back up the narrow dirt road. No nearby homes, no neighbors. He wondered what kind of man would live like this.
Spotting an approaching truck, he veered to the shoulder and slowed. It got closer.
An ancient Ford F-150, chipped dark blue paint, rust over the wheel wells.
The driver didn’t slow and didn’t look over.
Through a dust-clouded window, Evan caught a flash of whiskered cheek.
He pulled over and watched in the rearview.
The truck didn’t turn on the sole fork in the road behind Evan but continued on straight for the house.
There was nowhere else the man could be headed.
Evan remained staring ahead at the road back to Eden, the Jeep idling roughly.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there.
But then his hands were spinning the wheel for a U-turn, his foot on the gas, everything moving with that same fated inexorability he’d felt before.
He drove back.
Sure enough the empty truck was parked on a slant in front of the double-wide. No signs of life through the functional windows.
Evan parked and climbed out once more. His shadow lay across the hard, flat earth, and as he turned for the house, it pulled back beneath his boots, swallowed up.
He felt numb, not entirely present and yet fully aware.
The splintered planks of the porch creaked under his weight.
He gathered himself.
And he knocked.
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