Empire Falls

Dad?”
    “No, I’m talking to Jimmy Minty. Go ahead if you want.”
    Miles caught the eye of the waitress and signaled for the check.
    “Jimmy here may not have been gifted like you, but I bet you he understands what I’m saying.”
    Minty’s brow furrowed even deeper at this second reference to his intellectual limitations, even though Max had safely located these in the past.
    “You see, Jimmy, I asked my son to let me help him paint our old church, so I’d have the money to go down to the Keys, but for some reason he won’t hire me. I can still climb like a monkey, too.”
    Having slid a five-dollar bill onto the table, Miles stood to go. “You’re sure you don’t want a lift home, Dad? I’m not coming back for you, so don’t bother calling me at the restaurant.”
    “I don’t intend to call you,” his father assured him. “Besides, Jimmy Minty here can give me a lift in the cruiser.”
    “Actually, that’s against the rules,” Minty said. He was looking even more boxed in now that Miles had vacated his side of the booth. That left him and Max sitting way too close, and he knew how this would look to other people, two men crammed together like that on the same side of a small booth, one of them with crumbs in his beard.
    “Hell, I can understand that,” Max conceded, waving good riddance to Miles and looking like a man who had no intention of moving. “Rules are rules. They may be dumb, and the people you hire to enforce them may be dumber yet, but what can you do? The law’s the law. There’s no law says a man’s own son can’t help him out when he needs it, that’s all I’m saying. Ain’t no law against that.”
    O UTSIDE , Miles got into the car and turned the key in the ignition, determined to ignore the knocking on the window of the donut shop. His father, having made his point, now decided to unmake it, since the truth was that he probably did want a lift somewhere. Besides, he hadn’t hit Miles up for a loan yet. Sitting in the Jetta, pretending not to hear the frantic knocking, Miles supposed he understood his father’s thinking better than Max did himself. The thing to do was put the car in reverse, back out of the parking space and drive off. Teach the old man a lesson. Maybe because he was grateful to Max for giving Jimmy Minty such a hard time, he gave up the pretense and acknowledged hearing the knocking on the window. He was immediately glad that he did, for the scene framed in the window was priceless. In order to rap on the glass, Max had to lean across the booth in such a way that his moist, fragrant armpit was practically covering the policeman’s face. Miles couldn’t help but smile. He was grateful for his father’s existence, just as Minty had told him he should be. Sighing, he waved for Max to come along, which the old man would do, Miles knew, in his own sweet time.
    His feet flat on the floor beside the Jetta’s pedals, Miles felt some give in the metal beneath the worn carpet, which suggested that the rust was eating away at the chassis. Minty was right about that, too; he should’ve sprung for the undercoating. As he watched the two men slide out of the booth, he realized that Jimmy Minty hadn’t been telling the truth about light reflecting off the donut shop window. Everything on the other side of the glass possessed the stark clarity of an Edward Hopper painting, which meant that Jimmy had pretended to be unable to see what had been plainly visible. A silly lie. A lie so small and to so little purpose that it suggested to Miles a way of life, a strategy for confronting the world, and this was further reason—if any was needed—to doubt the truth of everything the man had said inside. As Minty paid the bill at the register and Max bought a pack of cigarettes from the machine, Miles tasted something on the back of his tongue. Too much coffee mingling with stomach acid, probably. Either that or anger mingling with fear. Miles swallowed hard, forcing down whatever it was.
    The two men pushed through the door onto the sidewalk, and Miles noticed that both had acquired toothpicks. “You’re okay, Jimmy,” Miles heard his father say. “I’ll tell you the God’s honest truth. I’d rather have a complete idiot for a son than an ingrate.”
    Instead of getting into the cruiser, Minty came around the Jetta and motioned for Miles to roll down the window. “Take a little walk with me,” he suggested, his voice low, confidential.
    “I really need to