Page 36 of Back in the Saddle

Raye was passing me, so I asked, “What’s that about?”

“Obviously, I have no idea,” she answered coolly.

No thaw there, then.

Whatever.

I was throwing some dirty plates in the bus bin when Tito’s voice came at me, making me jump.

“If you could follow me, Jessie,” he requested.

I looked to him.

I looked to the girls who were all in the vicinity, watching us.

I turned back to him and nodded.

We went through the kitchen to the staff room and then the back door.

Tito opened it and walked out. I followed and stopped in my tracks.

Homer was loitering at the door, and he was with a scruffy, youngish (about my age, maybe a bit older (I was thirty-three)) Black man who was shifting foot to foot.

“Homer,” I greeted, shocked. “How did you get here?”

“Walked,” Homer replied.

I quickly had to get over the fact they’d walked probably a good ten miles to get to the back door of The Surf Club, because Homer was sunken into himself. Not in his safe space, exposed, vulnerable. The King of the Encampment was a memory. Although I recognized him visually, everything else about him had changed.

My heart crunched, and I offered, “Let’s go sit in the garden.”

He shook his head curtly and said, “General Grant has something to tell you.”

“General Grant?” I asked.

“Ulysses S. Grant,” the Black guy said, jerking a thumb at himself.

My heart crunched more at a Black man referring to himself by a dead white president’s name, because I seriously doubted at his age that was his real name.

“Hey, Mr. Grant,” I said.

“GeneralGrant,” he corrected.

Totally not his real name.

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

Tito said nothing, but remained close and got closer when Homer did.

“Iraq,” Homer muttered. “Afghanistan,” he went on. “Decorated sniper. Now…this,” he finished.

My ticker couldn’t take much more as I turned to a veteran of this great country wearing filthy clothes, sporting nappy hair and dancing foot to foot.

Homer looked to Tito. “You need to leave, or he won’t talk. She’s ours. You’re not ours. But she’s safe with us. None of us would harm Jessie.”

Tito tipped his head to look up at me through his shades, and I saw his bushy white eyebrows rise over the frames.

“I’m good,” I assured.

---