Searching for Caleb by Anne Tyler Read Free Book Online Page B

tall and thin like a dandelion. How tall are you, Duncan?"
       "Six two."
       "Double rice for Duncan, Nana!"
       The old lady shoveled a mountain onto Duncan's plate.
       "Rice prevents heart attacks, stroke, and impotence," said Alonzo.
       "It's the thiamine," said Duncan.
       "More slivovitz?"
       "Oh, I might as well."
       Justine ate everything she was given and accepted seconds and thirds, egged on by the approving eye of the old lady who stood behind Alonzo's chair with her hands folded under her apron. Alonzo and Duncan mainly drank, though Alonzo outdistanced Duncan very early and even managed to work in a few slabs of bread stuffed with meat and rice, meanwhile talking steadily. "When I heard you were moving back to Maryland I thought, well then, I can wait. I was contemplating a certain action. But we'll go into that later. I had been thinking, now how will I reach Justine? Then I got your card. It came as a great relief to me."
       He leaned back and laced his hands across his stomach, his face a buttery color in the light of the tent. Alonzo was a happy man but forever complaining, as if hoping to fool any jealous gods. Although he loved his carnival business he said that only a fool would stick with it.
       "Imagine," he always said, "some people suppose this life to be romantic, dancing around the wagons at night. If they were only in my boots! You need to be a mechanic, a lawyer, an accountant. It's all the assembling and disassembling of machinery, and repairs and insurance payments. I'm being robbed by my insurance agency. Disability and liability and major medical and fire and theft and acts of God. Then there is the social security, a headache in itself when you consider all these employees coming and going and the pregnancies and the girls deciding to finish school. And you have to negotiate in every town, some don't allow so much as a ring-the-bottle game, and there's the safety inspectors and the police and the church that wants to put a tray of cupcakes in your hot dog stand ..."
       It was Duncan he talked to; men were best for discussing business. But it was Justine he took away with him at the end of the meal, one large warm thumb and forefinger gripping her upper arm. "May I?" he asked Duncan.
       "Only long enough to say when I'll become a millionaire."
       Duncan said, "Do you still have your mechanic?"
       "Lem? Would I be here if I didn't? He's in the purple trailer. He knew you were coming; go right in."
       Alonzo walked with his head down, still holding Justine's arm. "You must excuse the state of my place," he said. "I have too many people in it now. My wife has left me but one of her children stayed behind to keep me company. And also Bobby. You've met Bobby, my stepson.
       Actually my fourth wife's stepson, her ex-husband's boy by a woman from Tampa, Florida. Would you care for Turkish coffee?"
       "No, thank you," said Justine, and she stepped inside the little green trailer. Although it was crowded it was neater than her own house, with pots and pans arranged in rows in the tiny kitchen and account books stacked at one end of the corduroy daybed. There was a coffee table that had a stripped look, as if he had just recently cleared it. He smoothed it now with both hands. "For the cards," he said.
       "Thank you," said Justine.
       She sat down on the daybed. She removed her crumb-littered coat, although even here it was cold. From her carry-all she took the cards in their square of silk.
       "Where did you get the silk?" Alonzo asked. (He always did.)
       "They came with the cards," she said, unwrapping them. She shuffled them several times, looking off at the blue air outside the trailer window.
       "And where did you get the cards?"
       "Cut the deck, please."
       He cut it. He sat down across from her and looked at her soberly from under curled black brows, as if his future might be read in her