Jump Cut by Ted Staunton Page A

“Jackfish is on toward Terrace Bay. We’ll stop in Marathon tonight, rest up and be there in the morning. Just the way I promised.” She looks at us, as if we’ve been whining all day.
    â€œAnd what are we going to do in beautiful Jackfish, Gramma?” Two days on the road haven’t left AmberLea any too perky either.
    â€œUnfinished business. Believe the living and bury the dead.”
    â€œI’ve heard that before,” Al says.
    GL nods. “My big line in Shadow Street. Just because it’s from a movie doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” She looks back to AmberLea. “You’ll see tomorrow. A little secret between you and me.” She turns to me. “And we can’t forget Spike’s kiss for his Grandpa David, can we? Then”—she waves a hand like it weighs forty pounds—“Al can hightail it to Grand Portage or Fort Frances and duck into Minnesota if he wants.”
    â€œWhat I want”—Al waves his phone—“is to find out if things have cooled off in Buffalo. I got a business to run.”
    â€œAnd I’m sure it needs all those baking supplies in the trunk,” says GL. “Maybe you’d like to drive us back then. You can thank us for saving you when you say goodbye.”
    â€œYeah, how do we get back?” I say. “You told me to say we’d be home tomorrow.”
    â€œI may have been a little hasty on that,” says GL. She nods to the rest of the room. “On the other hand, I’ll bet not many of these fine young men would turn down a little old lady and her lovely granddaughter if they were hitchhiking. I’ve done it before.”
    â€œ Really ?” says AmberLea. “Gramma! When?”
    â€œWhen I was your age. If it wasn’t the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, it was close to it.” GL pats me on the arm. “I’m sure they’d make room for our personal photographer on the bumper or the trailer hitch. Don’t worry, Skeezix; just kidding. If Al doesn’t want to go back, we can easily get a bus ticket. Or we could just get a cab.”
    Before I can even begin to wonder if she’s kidding, the waitress arrives with the food and GL digs out all her pills as the food is put down. When the waitress leaves, GL says, “Screen me.” She empties her water glass into the pot of plastic plants behind the booth; then out comes the gin bottle from her straw bag, under the table. She glugs some gin into the glass and whisks the bottle back into the bag as the waitress comes by with ketchup. “If you have to take pills,” says GL, “it might as well be fun.” She gets down to it.
    She’s a little wobbly on the way out to the car. Once she’s in, she settles herself as if she’s dozing again. But I’m driving, and from the side I can see behind her sunglasses. She’s watching every inch of the way.

TWENTY-THREE
    Not long before we get to Marathon, GL stirs herself. She roots around in her bag and gets busy fixing her makeup. Then she insists we pull over and put the top down on the car. “I want to make an entrance,” she says.
    â€œTo Marathon?” AmberLea says.
    â€œIndulge me. I’m an old lady.”
    There’s no real reason why not; it’s still a bright, sunny evening, even if it’s cooling off. Down goes the top. GL settles her hat and gets a cigarette pose going. We roll into town in style: a ninety-year-old bombshell, a blond ankle-scratcher with a vanishing chin, Buffalo’s King of Cannoli, a Chihuahua and a movie-geek chauffeur with bent glasses and a big need for a shower, all in a dented white Cadillac with stolen plates, a bullet hole, five big bags of something that might be icing sugar, and its own helium supply. It’s not four gunslingers riding into town, but it might be the closest I’ll get.
    â€œDamn,” says GL, as we roll past two kids bending over a