The Hummingbird's Cage by Tamara Dietrich

customers.
    Simon set two plates on the table—one in front of me with a cheeseburger and fries, and an identical plate on the other side. He left and returned with a chocolate shake for me, a vanilla one for himself. He sat down and thumped a ketchup bottle over his fries.
    â€œSo tell me,” he said. “How was your day?”
    I shook my head. “I’m surprised I survived.”
    â€œYou did great.”
    â€œHow would you know? You were back at the grill.”
    â€œI see and hear plenty back there,” he said. “And careful—you have a limited quota of discouraging words before you violate the menu.”
    I blinked at him. “What?”
    He flipped over a menu and ran his finger along a line at the bottom:
Seldom is heard a discouraging word.
    â€œOlin’s idea,” he said. “To keep folks civil. And if they aren’t . . .”
    â€œYou kick them out?”
    He paused, considering me carefully. “For you, a new rule,” he said. “You’ll have to drop a coin in the jukebox over there and play any song I choose.”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “You might have rotten taste in music.”
    â€œI happen to have swell taste in music. And every record is crackerjack.”
    â€œAre those real vinyls? Forty-fives?”
    â€œNot just forty-fives,” he said. “Some are seventy-eights—all of them requests from customers. Jessie orders them special.Sometimes people would just like to hear a song that means something.”
    â€œWhat’s your favorite?”
    He smiled at me over his burger. “One of these days, I might tell you.”
    I pegged him for country-western. A ballad, though, not a rowdy bar song. Nothing about cheating—Simon didn’t seem the type. And not a patriotic anthem, either. Not after what Jessie had told me about his war experience.
    Jim had a particular taste for country-western. I’d listened to song after song about whiskey and beer and pickup trucks, true lovers and cheaters. After a while, it all ran together like manic-depressive white noise.
    A few years ago, though, Jim took a break from music. All of it. That was after a country band came out with a song about a wife who’d had enough of her abusive husband and decided to get rid of the problem—rat poison in the grits and rolling out the tarp . . .
    One day Jim came home from work and caught me listening to it. I hadn’t planned to—it just came over the radio as I was cooking. But as it began, as I listened, it stopped me in my tracks. Jim caught me standing there, so focused, so fascinated. Maybe he thought I was taking notes. Maybe I was.
    He yanked the power cord from the wall, then slammed the radio against my head.
    It was cheap plastic and splintered easily, so it didn’t do as much damage as you’d think. Jim must have thought so, too, because for good measure he took the pot of stew cooling on the stove, stood over me where I lay stunned on the linoleum and poured it on my back. I was five months’ pregnant with Laurel then.
    â€œIs something wrong?” Simon asked.
    I couldn’t look at him.
    â€œIf I ask you something,” I said, “will you answer it?”
    â€œI don’t see why not.”
    I swallowed hard.
    â€œThat day . . . that day you found us. I don’t remember it. Any of it. And I need to know what happened.”
    â€œIt’s no mystery, Joanna. I was driving down the road here, heading toward the highway. Once you’re over that hill, it’s all steep curves toward the interstate, and soon enough you hit desert again. I saw buzzards circling half a mile or so from the road. And on the ground right under them, I thought I saw something move.”
    His tone was mild. Matter-of-fact. Almost indifferent. When he said the word “buzzards,” I looked up to lock eyes with him.
    I didn’t see