34. 1980s
“Jasey, it’s been weeks. You aren’t hiding out from those boys down the street again, are you? They haven’t come around, so I assumed you were square.”
“No, Ma, I’m not hiding out. I’ve just been”—Jason sighed into the receiver of the payphone outside Oklahoma City—“busy, Ma. Just busy.”
“Well, you’d better get back here. Have you gotten my messages? I’ve been leaving them all over the place. Texas, Tennessee—”
“I’m not welcome in Tennessee anymore.”
“California. Even the motel in Ohio said they haven’t seen you in a week. What’s the point in me leaving messages if you never check ’em?”
Jason’s mother, the ever-persistent Eleanor Young, was probably pacing in her nightdress, smoking the menthols the coroner would eventually have to pry from her cold, dead fingers.
“Jesus H. Christ, Ma, I told you, I’ve been busy. I—I have a job offer.”
He heard the puff on her cigarette, the blowing of smoke. “A job? An honest-to-God job, Jasey?”
“Yeah. Yeah,” he said, hoping her hopes didn’t get too high. If she knew what the job entailed, she’d reach through the phone and wrap the cord around his neck.
“That’s great, hon,” she exclaimed. “Tell me about it.”
“I can’t, I’m almost out of change. What did you need? Why all the messages?”
“Oh, right. Jasey, are you in trouble with the law?”
In which state?
“Have the cops been coming around?”
“Not the cops. A lawyer. Hoity-toity fellow. Wears a bow tie and everything. He’s been calling for weeks, and he just shows up yesterday, serving papers.
” Another hasty puff of menthol and exhale of crystallized smoke.
“Not like you have to go to court, I don’t think.
He had this big yellow envelope, and he said he couldn’t leave it with me, only with you.
He said it was very important that he meet you in person. ”
“He say why?”
“If I knew why, I’d tell you. He gave me his number. You got a pen?”
Jason pulled one from his inside jacket pocket and a piece of paper with a faded phone number he couldn’t read from someone he couldn’t remember. Flipping it over, he said, “Sure, go ahead.”
She relayed the number, adding, “His name is Whitman or Whitcock.”
“Whitcock?”
“No, no, it’s…” Another puff. She wasn’t going to live another year at the rate she smoked. “Whitlock. That’s it. Aldus Whitlock. Call him. It might be good news.”