Empire Falls

red Camaro parked out front. On any such occasion Jimmy would assure Miles that he was doing all right for himself, despite having been denied opportunities like college. If he kept his nose clean, he didn’t see any reason he shouldn’t be the next chief of police of Empire Falls. His son, Zack, though— he was going to have it made.
    “That your dad I saw with you?” Jimmy wondered now, nodding toward the men’s room.
    “You know it was. You sat right there”— Miles nodded through the window at the cruiser—“staring at us.”
    “The light was reflecting off the glass,” Minty said. “It could’ve been anybody.”
    “Hell of a guess, then.”
    “Sorry about yesterday,” he said, apparently in reference to the young police officer who had interrogated Miles on Long Street. “New kid. Still learning the ropes. Good thing I happened by, though. You talk back to him or something?”
    “Not even remotely.”
    Minty shrugged. “Well, you pissed him off somehow. Good thing I turned up when I did.”
    This second reference to his good fortune, Miles realized, was intended as another chance for Miles to express his gratitude. That he should fail to take advantage of it was visibly disappointing, but Jimmy seemed determined to get over it.
    “Breaks your heart, doesn’t it?” he said. “The old neighborhood?”
    Miles tried to navigate their talk into the calmer waters of generality. “The whole town, for that matter.”
    Jimmy Minty’s surprised, even hurt expression suggested that he considered this indictment of Empire Falls far too sweeping. “I still like it here,” he said. “I can’t help it, I just do. People say there are better places, but I don’t know.” He paused in case Miles wanted to rattle off a list of supposedly better places. “Long Street, though. That’s different. I get called up there all the time these days. Nothing but wife beaters and drug dealers anymore.”
    “Wife beaters aren’t anything new,” Miles reminded him, since Jimmy’s own father, William, had been known to settle marital differences in this fashion.
    Jimmy ignored him. “Hell, the place you were parked out front of is the biggest drug house in town.” He lowered his voice now. “We’ve been monitoring who goes in and out for a while. I guess Officer Pollard thought you were there to make a score.”
    Miles couldn’t help smiling. “Somebody should tell him he’ll have better luck, evidence-wise, if he waits until suspects come out, instead of busting them on the way in.”
    “That’s what I told him. You gotta admit, though, that Jetta of yours does look like a drugmobile.”
    “Really? How’s that?”
    Minty shrugged. “No offense, but it’s the kind of vehicle the owner won’t mind that much if it’s impounded.”
    “I’d mind. It’s the only car I own.”
    Jimmy Minty looked like he could just kick himself. “Damn. I guess I hurt your feelings.”
    “Not at all.” Miles smiled.
    The other man puzzled over how this could be for several full beats. “You want to know a secret?”
    The honest answer to this was no, so Miles said nothing.
    “What you were doing over there yesterday? I do the same thing, sometimes.”
    “What’s that?”
    “You know. Just drive over, sit in the car and try to figure it all out.”
    “All what out?” Miles asked, genuinely curious.
    Minty shrugged. “Life, I guess. The way things turn out. I guess some people would think it’s pretty weird, me ending up a cop.”
    “Not me, Jimmy.”
    Minty studied him carefully, perhaps suspecting an insult. “My dad and all, is what I meant. It’s true. He did slap my mom around a little. That’s what you meant a minute ago, right? And I guess we did have a freezer full of meat out back that wasn’t always taken in season. Shit like that. But I miss him anyway. You only get one father, is the way I look at it, even though now, looking back, I can see where he crossed the line. Anyway, a cop’s what I turned out to be, weird or not. God probably had a hand in it, I guess.”
    “I suppose it’s possible.”
    Jimmy nodded. “Take you. If your mother hadn’t got sick when she did, you probably never would have come back here at all, am I right?”
    Miles allowed that this, too, was possible.
    “That’s what I mean. Sometimes I drive over to the old neighborhood and just sit there.” He paused. “I always think about your ma. Pretty awful way for anybody to die.”
    “Can we change the