“What’s good here? I’m so hungry my stomach is hitting my backbone,” Buddy Lee said. Ike pulled out his phone and sat it on the table.
“The catfish is good. They got fried okra, too. Don’t mess with the cornbread. It’s hard as a brick,” Ike said. He took another sip of his drink.
“If you invited me up here to apologize for telling me to get the fuck out your office, I accept. I don’t think either one of us are in our right minds these days,” Buddy Lee said without raising his head from the menu.
“I’m not apologizing,” Ike said.
“Alright, this gonna be an awkward date then,” Buddy Lee said. Ike wiped his hands on a thin brown napkin. He leaned on his forearms.
“I need you to know everything I said the other day was true. About being responsible. I built my business from scratch. From nothing. I’m proud of that. I’ve worked hard every single day since I got out, to make a good life for my wife, for my son,” Ike said. He paused. The laughter of a group of teenagers two tables away filled the space the pause had made.
“How you become a landscaper anyway? No offense, but you don’t strike me as a flower lover,” Buddy Lee said. His head was still buried in the menu.
Ike looked down at his hands. At his tattoo. Some white boys in a truck with a lift kit so high they probably needed a ladder to get in the damn thing and a Confederate flag decal in the back window rolled through the parking lot. They left a trail of black smoke in their wake.
“Took it up inside. They had classes on it. It got me out my cell. When they cut me loose I realized it’d give me space on the outside. Nobody wants to make small talk when it a hundred degrees and you got a pole saw in your hands,” Ike said. The Confederate boys parked their truck. They got out and walked to the order window. One of them gave Ike a look, saw something in his eyes he didn’t like, and quickly looked away.
“It got to where after a few years I started thinking it was why I was put here. You know how they say everybody good at something, right? But planting flowers and trimming shrubs, that shit ain’t what I’m here for. That’s not what I’m good at. Not really,” Ike said.
Buddy Lee raised his head.
“You didn’t call me because the catfish here is so good, did you?” Buddy Lee asked. Ike pulled his phone out of his pocket and placed it on the table.
“When was the last time you were at the graves?”
Buddy Lee put the menu aside.
“Eh … I was planning on going this week, but work got crazy. I mean … shit, man, I haven’t been since the funeral,” Buddy Lee said. Ike touched his phone screen and slid it across the table. Buddy Lee closed his menu. He picked up the phone and stared at the screen.
“What the fuck is this?” he said.
“What it look like? The motherfuckers who killed our boys went and pissed all over their graves,” Ike said. Buddy Lee slid the phone back toward Ike. He ran his tongue across his bottom lip.
“You think the punks who killed them did that?”
“Who else would do it? Isiah and Derek weren’t famous. Nobody would know they were … different just by reading their headstones,” Ike said. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Buddy Lee hunched forward and leaned across the table.
“Let me guess. Now you ready to do something about this,” he said. Ike thought he heard the hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“I was all set to let the police handle this. Even though I knew they probably wouldn’t find out who did it. I was willing to let those motherfuckers get away with it because the promise I had made to my wife and my son was more important than getting even. But then they had to go and fuck up his grave. And it was like I realized, what good is the promise if my son is dead and my wife looks at me like she wishes I was the one in the ground? It’s like you said. That cracked-up headstone is my boy asking me what the fuck am I gonna do about this,” Ike said.
He had closed his eyes. Isiah’s face floated up from the depths of his memories. Isiah at four hours old. At seven when Ike had started his bid. At sixteen when he’d gotten his driver’s license. At twenty-seven on the slab at the funeral home with most of his head blown away. He almost believed the line of bull he’d fed Buddy Lee. It would have been beautiful if Isiah had sent him a ghostly message from beyond. But Ike didn’t believe in any fairy-tale paradise in the sky. His boy was dead. He would be dead longer than he had ever been alive. The truth was, deep down inside, Ike had always been afraid it would come to this. Maybe subconsciously he wanted a reason to break his oath. In that case the tombstone was just a convenient catalyst. An unexpected means to an end. After everything he’d said to Buddy Lee last week, he had to feed him that line of crap. Make him think he’d struggled with this decision.