Sabbath Creek

He slammed down the hood, then elbowed me out of the way, trailing an odor of old sweat and cigars and loud cologne soured in his clothes. He told my mother he would order the part, but it might not arrive for a week or even longer. She asked him if Sabbath Creek had a place where we could stay. "Not really." He squinted at her and scratched under his arm and leaned closer. "There is this place down the road, maybe a mile out of town, old nigger place, but you and your boy don't want to stay there." My mother took a deep breath as if to speak, but she did not. We pulled our bags out of the trunk and climbed into the cab of the tow truck-a tight fit since the man weighed maybe three hundred pounds, and I was big for my age. At nearly fourteen, I was almost the same size I am now, ten years later. My mother sat crushed against the door; she locked it, and she pulled back on the handle as we rode. The Sabbath Creek Motor Court resembled a chickenhouse reconceived as a motel-a long low strip of rooms, most of the windows broken out, the roof charred at the far end, wires sticking up like frizzy hair, no cars parked outside. The man drove away, leaving us standing at the door where OFFICE had fallen off and left the outline of the letters. My mother pushed the doorbell button, waited, pushed it again. She knocked on the door, and it swung open; she pulled it shut, then knocked again, louder, and she opened the door and shouted hello. She stepped inside, and I followed her. The dim room, lit only by a small floor lamp, smelled damp and poisonous. There was a closed door on the other side of the counter, and she walked around and knocked again. "Hey!" she yelled. "You've got customers." I sat on the sofa, which enveloped me in its broken springs and moldy stink, and after a few more tries my mother came over, and the ruined couch swallowed her as well, and we waited there. *** We heard a door thump shut, then the sound of a car driving off, and a moment later an old man came through the door, a tall, thin, dark-skinned black man wearing a baseball cap, tennis shoes, brown work pants, and a white shirt buttoned at the collar. The little bit of hair showing under his cap was as white as the shirt. "Uh oh," he said when he saw us. "Y'all work for the sheriff?" He performed a jerky little shuffle-step as he crossed the room to the counter, where he set down a large brown paper bag. "No, sir," my mother said. "We . . ." "Do I have the right to remain silent?" "Well, no. You see, our car broke down . . ." "No?" the man said. "You mean I got to keep talking? Can anything I say be used against me?" "Look," she said, "we just need a room. Is that possible?" "Say you need a room? All right then, all right. That's good. We got you a room." My mother explained that we might need it for a few days, since our car had broken down and was being repaired. "Repaired? Where at?" "A place back in town," she said. "What was the name? Coleman's?" "Coleman's? Coleman can't fix nothing. What you take it to Coleman for? I could've told you where to take it." She asked him again if he had a room for us. The old man looked down and shook his head. "Coleman's. Last time I left a car over at Coleman's, Richard M. Nixon was the president. I'd have my car towed up to Fitzgerald now-have it towed anywhere-before I let those boys at Coleman's work on it. You might never get that car back." "Well, from the way you're talking," my mother said, "we might be moving in here for quite a while. So maybe you can give us a discount." "Hold on now," he said. "You can't move in. Didn't nobody ask you to move in, did they?" He waited, and we just stood there, and then he said, "So what kind of room y'all want? We only got one kind. Matter of fact, right now, we onlyMitcham, Judson is the author of 'Sabbath Creek', published 2005 under ISBN 9780156032209 and ISBN 0156032201.