Turas

Wolf Hound

"What can I get y'all to drink?" the smiling woman with blue eyeshadow brandished a pen poised over her notepad.

"Root beer," Finn said, frowning at the menu. He couldn't quite see it, so he hunched his shoulders and squinted. "For us both."

When she came back with the sparkling brown drinks, she whipped out her pad again with warrior like zeal. "Y'all know whatcha want?"

"Chicken fried steak please," Osheen said.

"And?" Finn raised his eyebrows at him.

"What?"

The waitress stopped mid scribble, looking between the two, slightly amused.

"Get a vegetable."

"What?" Osheen shook his head.

"We haven't had a green thing between us for a week now. You can't eat nothing but oreos."

"Christ," Osheen glared down at the menu again, his cheeks flaming.

"Y'all can get a side," the waitress offered.

"How about okra? That looks green." Osheen said a tad sullenly, looking at Finn over the rim of his cup as he took a sip.

"What the holy hell is that?" Finn muttered, squinting at the picture of fried okra. He cleared his throat and pointedly ordered a salad with fried chicken.

Finishing up their meal with a plate of biscuits, Finn crumbled one in his hand. "She was a good bread baker," he said, studying the fluffy white bits.

Osheen looked up with surprise.

"Among other things." Finn popped the last bit into his mouth.

"Can you remember?"

Finn frowned at the biscuit for a moment, then shook his head.

"Write it anyway." Osheen said, pulling the yellow notebook out of his backpack and opened it to the front. Finn flipped to a blank page not far in, and scribbled something down.

They stopped at a grocery store, the biggest sprawling box of a building in town. Apples, milk, bread, hotdogs, peanut butter, another couple packages of oreos, another turn with the plastic card.

They sat under the shade of the car's open back door in the parking lot, Finn looking over an unruly blanket of a map. While he muttered and squinted, Osheen chewed a hangnail and looked for something to watch.

Seagulls attacked each other over a soggy, overturned red card box of fries, screeching like their lives depended on it. A woman in denim jeans with white embroidery on the pockets walked a creaking shopping cart to its pen before driving away cautiously in a baby blue minivan. An old man in creased khakis and a slowly retiring Veteran baseball cap made his way to the mammoth sized doors, hand in hand with his powder haired wife. It was strange to see people go about their business without even glancing at the towering slopes just behind the grocery.

And two stray dogs were staring at him from underneath the awning of the cart pen.

Osheen squinted at them. He couldn't place the breed, but they were very large, their backs reaching about to Osheen's waist if he was being conservative, wire haired and shaggy. He couldn't tell their real color, their fur was so matted with mud, wet and drying. They hadn't been there a moment before, when he'd watched the woman with the cart.

As he studied them, he could swear they were looking him over, too. One almost seemed to take notice of his gaze, and jerkily started to chew his paw, looking around innocently.