Inside, Mr. Ching had concluded resupplying the candy rack and was engaged with small bags of salty snacks. I introduced Bridget as Vanessa and Sparky as her uncle Vernon, and I sounded pretty slick if I do say so myself. For a long moment, Mr. Ching stared at her with astonishment, and then regarded me for two seconds, and then looked at her again as he said, “Only in America. Excuse my saying so, Vanessa, but you do not look like Winkelville.”
“Maybe not,” she said, “but I much prefer it to Vulture’s Roost.”
Ching Station did indeed cater to dog owners no less than to grumpy, grizzled old coots who needed ammo and liquor. We selected a nice red collar and leash, a can of tennis balls, and a white lamb squeaky toy for Winston, as well as a packet of teeth-cleaning chews and a case of gourmet dog food.
A pretty teenage girl worked the small deli section that offered three homemade soups, potato salad, macaroni salad, cakes, cookies, and sandwiches. She said her name was Taylor Ching, that the sandwiches were made fresh every morning and stored in a cooler, that they sold out every day by two o’clock, and that she thought my sister, Lisa, deserved better treatment than she got from me.
If I’d just used a name from The Family Guy, no one would have known, and the Chings wouldn’t have had so much fun at my expense.
Sparky paid for everything with drug-gang money, and Mr. Ching said he hoped to see us again, once we’d moved to Winkelville and took up life along the Little Snake River.
We sat in the Explorer, with the air conditioner blasting, to eat our submarine sandwiches—Italian cold cuts for Bridget and me, chicken for Sparky—and wash them down with cold bottles of flavored water.
As we ate, we brainstormed ways to find one of the three men who had rescued me back in the day. We could drive thirty miles to the Indian casino where Caesar Melchizadek had been a blackjack pit boss and see if he still worked there. We could check out the wind farm where Bailie Belshazzer had repaired the expensive equipment that suffered regular, grievous damage from the thousands of birds that threw themselves so recklessly into the giant, chopping blades. We could go to the county office of the power company to learn if Hakeem Kaspar was still living out the Glen Campbell song.
“Or,” Bridget said, “we could save a lot of time and just ask Mr. Ching about one of them. After all, he must know everyone from Sulphur Flats to Vulture’s Roost to Tarantulaburg.”
“There’s no town named Tarantulaburg.”
She said, “I find that hard to believe. So we don’t want word getting out that you’re poking around here, and suddenly the ISA gets wise to us. We can’t ask Ching about all three men, because he surely remembers the baby being found on the highway, and he seems like a guy who can read the stitching on a fastball with his eyes shut.”
From the back seat, Sparky said, “Our story could be that I’m an old friend of Hakeem’s, I lost track of him years ago, and I’m hopeful of getting in touch while we’re here, see if he has any advice about Winkelville.”
I said, “That sounds simultaneously ridiculous and workable. Go ahead and give it a try.”
“Not a good idea,” Sparky demurred. “Ching is an intuitive guy. He kept giving me suspicious looks, like he knows my kind.”
“You mean he suspects you were once something, then something else, and then another something that you don’t talk about.”
“Precisely.”
“That’s amazingly intuitive,” I said. “As if he has a nose on him more sensitive than Winston’s.”
“Grandpa has incredible intuition of his own. I’d trust him on this, Quinn. Bart.”
“Anyway,” Sparky said, “son, you’re the only one who has any kind of established relationship with Ching.”
“Relationship? We aren’t going steady, for heaven’s sake.”
“But he likes you,” Sparky insisted. “You amuse him. Go in there and amuse him and get an address for Hakeem Kaspar.”
When I went inside once more, John Kennedy Ching was moving large bags of water-softener salt from a cart onto a display near the front door.
I said, “We wanted to tell you that those sandwiches were absolutely delicious.”
He cocked his head like a bird looking at something curious. “You seem surprised. I would have thought, considering all that the good people of Winkelville had to say about Ching Station, they would have especially praised our sandwiches.”
I was no match for this guy, so I stopped trying to be clever. “The thing is, my future father-in-law, Vernon, fell out of touch with an old friend of his who lives in this area. He’s hoping to find him while we’re here, pick up where they left off, share some stories about the old days. We thought you might know him, where he lives now.”