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fact that she flirted with him. He responded mechanically. On those rare occasions when someone tried to engage him in conversation, his basic rule was to go along with it. Easier to stay invisible if he just went with the flow.
    Jack poured cream into his coffee and watched as it turned a smooth caramel color. From an unseen radio Reba McEntire was wailing about whatever man had done her wrong this week, over which floated the usual country small talk: “Whatch’all know good? How’s your mama ’n’ ’em?” From somewhere else he could hear his mother’s voice. “Jackson Landry, please write the word ‘once’ and show me where there’s a t at the end of it. There aren’t many things in life that I can control, but I will not have my boys talking like a bunch of ignorant country hicks.”
    Sherry returned from the kitchen and went down the counter collecting saltshakers. She came back with a handful and stood in front of Jack to refill them.
    â€œSo is it gonna rain?”
    â€œYou’re the psychic, you tell me.”
    â€œSmart-ass.” She smiled as she said it. A plump, dark-haired waitress brushed by Sherry and nudged her with an elbow.
    â€œI gotta talk to you.” The woman disappeared into the kitchen without waiting for an answer.
    â€œThat’s Darlene. She usually works the dinner shift.”
    Jack nodded, although he didn’t know why she felt the need to explain it to him.
    â€œShe probably broke up with her boyfriend for the fifth time this week. Sonny Reynolds, you know him?”
    Jack shook his head no, which he would have done even if he had known the guy.
    â€œHe’s a prison guard over in Jackson.” She leaned down and lowered her voice. “It must not take brains; he ain’t got the sense God gave a june bug.”
    Jack stared into his coffee cup, lest his eyes yield any clue that he didn’t need to be told about prison guards. Sherry prattled on.
    â€œI know she’s no beauty queen or nothin’, but she could sure do better than that ignoramus.”
    The door to the kitchen opened and Darlene stuck her head out.
    â€œSherry.” She gave Sherry a look that meant business and disappeared again. Sherry looked at Jack and rolled her eyes. She screwed the top on a saltshaker and, with an exasperated sigh, headed into the kitchen.
    Jack took the opportunity to survey the breakfast crowd. The usual eclectic mix. Lawyers. Farmers. A couple of housewives and their kids. The janitors from the courthouse. He knew most of them by name—the lawyers and the janitors. He’d gone to school with them. The coffee shop divided into the same cliques the high school had. He’d felt so alienated from them all back then. He hadn’t known anything.
    He then spied his least favorite coffee shop regular—the priest from the postage stamp–size Catholic church at the north end of town—seated a couple of stools away. As usual, “Father” was dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt over a thermal undershirt, sleeves rolled just right, like he thought he was a lumberjack. The guy never wore his collar, and Jack wouldn’t have known who he was except that it was impossible to move to Barton without being the buzz of the coffee shop for a few days. The previous priest had died three or four months ago—of a heart attack, a stroke, liver cancer, or AIDS, depending on which rumor one chose to believe. Father Casual had made his appearance a few weeks later. Jack had heard he’d transferred from New York City and figured he must have screwed up royally to have been exiled to rural Georgia.
    Jack rarely had the emotional energy to hate someone on sight, but he’d made an exception for Father. It was partly the clothes. It was also the John Lennon glasses and too much hair for a guy who looked to be in his late forties. And it had to do with Jack’s aversion to religion in