The Spark by Vi Keeland
CHAPTER 8
Donovan
Being in the old neighborhood over the last week reminded me it had been too long since I’d stopped by to see Bud. Bud—real name Frances Yankowski—was the closest thing to a father I’d ever known. If I’m being real, he was pretty much the closest thing to a mother, too. So the following night, rather than go home after leaving the office, I headed back to Brooklyn and stopped in at a local business to find out where Bud set up shop these days. I walked into a corner deli that had been there since I was a kid, though I’d never seen the woman behind the counter before.
“Hi. Can you tell me how to get to Bud’s Flower Shop, please?” That was code for Where is Bud squatting to feed the community tonight? All of the local businesses knew the answer and never minded helping spread the word. At least they didn’t mind sharing the information with people who seemed like they could use a free meal.
But the cashier looked me up and down and frowned.
Yeah, I know. I didn’t change out of my work clothes. Most people judge you because you wear hand-me-downs with holes in them, but not in my old stomping ground. Walk in looking like you shop at Brooks Brothers, and you’re bound to piss someone off.
“Four sixty-two Carnie Street.” She lifted her chin to the aisles behind me. “You look like maybe you can afford to bring some dessert or something.”
“Good idea.” I smiled and grabbed half a dozen packages of cookies off the shelf and brought them up to the register to pay. “You have a good night.”
When I arrived at the address the woman had given me, people were walking in and out of a dilapidated house with boarded-up windows, so I knew it was the right place. Bud served a community dinner seven days a week in whatever abandoned building or parking lot he could find. Sometimes he got to stay at one location for months, other times he’d get kicked out after just a day or two. The people who usually made a stink about him were the landlords who’d let the building get so run down it was no longer rentable, or the bank who’d repossessed the property. Cops looked the other way for Bud. Over the years, I’d even seen them drop off people they’d picked up who needed a meal.
For his day job, Bud owned a Boar’s Head provisions route. Every morning he delivered fresh meats to delis, restaurants, and supermarkets, but he also picked up their soon-to-expire food, which he turned into a daily feast to feed the hungry and homeless of the community. But no one ate for free more than once. No exceptions. You had to work for Bud in order to continue to be fed, whether you helped tend his garden, loaded and unloaded his truck full of supplies, or pitched in and did lawn work for the restaurants that helped him. Bud was the heart of this community, and he was also the only way I’d eaten a decent meal most of the time when my mom took off.
Entering the rundown house, I walked over to the row of tables where Bud was dishing food out of battery-operated hot plates. He might be close to seventy now, but he was sharp as a tack and never missed a thing. I hadn’t thought he’d noticed me come in, until he grumbled without looking up.
“Jesus Christ, you look like a narc.” Bud waved the serving spoon in his hand, motioning to my suit.
I chuckled. If I were wearing a French maid outfit, I’d get my balls busted less around here. “Nice to see you, too, Bud.”
He nodded toward the empty spot next to him behind the serving table. “Get an apron on, kid. I could use help. But I wouldn’t want you to mess up that monkey suit.”
Thirteen or thirty, it didn’t matter. I did whatever the old man said. So for the next hour, we served dinner side by side, shooting the shit as we dished out pasta primavera, broccoli, and day-or-two-old bread that he’d turned into garlic toast. I asked him about his beloved plants, and he rattled on about some new variegated tomato seeds he was growing that were developed in Mexico. The way he said it told me I was supposed to be impressed by that. At seven thirty sharp, we turned off the hot plates, which were dragged in and out every day so no one could steal them, and we took two plates of food outside to the front stoop and sat down to eat ourselves.
“So what’s new in the land of movers and shakers? You get off any of those Ponzi-scheme idiots who rob people of their retirement savings lately?”
“Luckily, no.” I shoveled a heaping forkful of pasta into my mouth. It was probably the best-tasting thing I’d had in months. Bud didn’t screw around when it came to cooking or his plants. I wiped sauce from my mouth. “How’s your knee doing?”
“It’s holding up. The humidity’s been low, so that helps. I have no idea why Florida is the land of old people. Dry heat is so much easier on old bones.”
Bud caught me up on all the latest neighborhood gossip—who was feuding with who, and who got caught doing what. I told him I’d stopped down to see Dario the other day, and before I knew it, we were the only two left at the house.
“Welp…” He stood. “Guess we better be going before the druggies get annoyed we’re hanging out in their crib.”
I smiled. “I’ll load your van.”
I packed up all of the serving supplies and locked the back of Bud’s van with the same rusted chain and padlock he’d been using since I was a kid.
Still holding it, I said, “I think it might be time for a new lock.”
“Why? Is that one broken?”
“No, but it’s rusted to shit. One day the key isn’t going to turn it anymore.”
Bud shrugged. “Then that’ll be the day I spring for a new lock.”
We shook hands next to the van. “If you’re not busy this weekend,” he said, “I gotta turn over the garden. Could use an extra set of hands.”
“Saturday or Sunday?”
“Saturday. Got plans with my lady friend on Sunday.”
Shit. I needed to work on Saturday—keep my billing up. I’d have to go in at the crack of dawn, but I’d figure out a way to pull it off. “What time?” I asked.
“Two sounds good to me. When you’re done, you can help me prep for the night’s dinner service.”
I nodded. “Sounds good. See you Saturday.”
I started to walk away, but turned back. “Hey, you mind if I bring someone?”
Bud shrugged. “He got arms and know how to use a shovel?”
“He’s got arms, and I can teach him how to use a shovel if he doesn’t know. It’s a twelve-year-old client of mine. Sadly, the kid reminds me a lot of myself at that age.”
“Oh Lord.” Bud shook his head. “Not sure I can handle two of you. But yeah, fine. Bring ’em.”
***
“Shovel? You just told Mrs. Benson at Park House we were going to your office to talk about strategy.”
“Well, that wasn’t a total lie. I consider wherever I am to be my office, and I did want to discuss your case for a few minutes at some point today.”
“But why are you going to shovel someone’s dirt?”
I glanced at Storm and back to the road. “I’m not.”
“You just said we were going to some guy’s house to dig up his old garden so he can get ready to plant a new one. Isn’t that digging in dirt?”
“Yes, but you asked why I was going to shovel dirt. I’m not. We are.”
Storm looked at me like I had two heads. “I’m not shoveling dirt.”
“You wanna bet?”
“What the fuck?”
I pointed at him. “Watch your language. Bud will have you chop a dozen onions, even if he doesn’t need them chopped, if you talk like that. Plus, have some respect. I’m older than you, and I’m also your attorney.”
“If you’re my attorney, you should be getting me off instead of taking me to dig dirt.”
I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. This kid was sooo me at twelve. Which was why I knew he needed a man like Bud in his life.
“Do you know about the free dinner that’s open to people in your old neighborhood?”
“You mean the old man who feeds the crackheads?”
“His name is Bud, and he doesn’t just feed people with addiction problems. Anyone who’s hungry can go and eat a hot meal from him every night. That’s whose garden we’re turning over.”
Storm shrugged. “Whatever. Why do we have to help?”
“Because if you don’t help plant the trees, you don’t deserve to sit in the shade.”
His face scrunched up. “We’re planting trees, too?”
I smiled. “No. I just meant you have to give back to people who give in life.”
“Why?”
“A lot of reasons. It helps others who need help. It’ll make you feel good about yourself. It teaches you values.”
Storm pretty much tuned out. He looked around the front of my car. “Is this real wood?”
I nodded. “It’s walnut.”
“So you help plant trees and then you make people chop ’em down to put inside your fancy car.”
I couldn’t hide my smile this time. “You’re a wise ass.”
Storm pointed his finger at me. “Watch your language, or you’ll be chopping onions.”
This was going to be one long-ass day.
***
“So what’s his story?” Bud stood at the back window of his house, watching Storm as he worked in the garden.
I washed my hands at the kitchen sink. “Lives at Park House. Very smart. Useless parents. Uses his fists to get out his anger.”
Bud’s eyes met mine briefly before he returned to looking outside. “Sounds like a boy I used to know.”
Drying off my hands, I filled two glasses with cold water and went to stand next to him at the window. “Yeah.” I handed him a glass. “He could definitely use some direction.”
Bud chugged his water. “Drugs?”
I shook my head. “Weed. Nothing else that I’m aware of.”
“Well, that’s good. Any family to speak of?”
“Mother’s alive. But she didn’t even show to visit on his birthday. She’s an addict.”
Bud frowned. His daughter had been an addict. He lost her to an overdose the same year I was born. It wasn’t something he talked about often, but I knew it was part of how he’d started feeding people. He used to drag her out of the type of buildings he spent his nights in now. Often when he’d gone looking for her, he’d seen hungry kids sitting around while their strung-out parents used what little money they had for more drugs. Him feeding the neighborhood and spending time in the places he did always felt like part punishment and part penance to me—for not being able to save his daughter.
“He has a social worker he seems to trust,” I said. “Autumn.”
Bud nodded. “It’s good he has someone. Though we both know the people down at social services tend to rotate in and out pretty fast. One day they’re here, the next they’re gone, and then a kid like Storm feels abandoned all over again.”
I knew that to be true, so I refrained from mentioning that his social worker had already left a kid like Storm feeling abandoned—me.
Storm finished up the last of the garden turnover while Bud and I started to prep for his nightly meal service. Once all three of us were done, I stepped outside to call Park House and let the manager know I was going to take Storm to dinner and I’d have him back after. Of course, she was fine with it since lawyers were on the list of approved visitors who could take kids out of the building. It also left her one less person to worry about.
When I went back inside, I asked Storm to help me start loading Bud’s van. “I thought tonight we’d help serve dinner with Bud.”
Storm shrugged. “Fine.”
He’d never say so, but I was pretty sure he’d actually liked working in the garden this afternoon.
“What’s Bud short for?” he asked as we walked back up the path to the house. “Budrick or something?”
“Bud’s name is actually Frances. Everyone just calls him Bud because of his garden—bud as in plant buds. The man can grow anything.”
Storm shook his head. “Frances is worse than Augustus.”
I ruffled Storm’s hair as I opened the door. “Go wash up, Augustus.”
***
The day had gone even better than I’d expected. Storm had let down his guard, and I was pretty sure he was shocked to see a few people he knew at dinner service, including one of his buddies from the neighborhood.
I pulled up at Park House and parked the car. “I told the manager I spoke to earlier that I was taking you to dinner,” I said. “I didn’t mention where we were going to eat.”
Storm smirked. “Are you telling me to lie?”
“Absolutely not. If anyone asks, you tell them the truth. I was just letting you know that I didn’t elaborate on where dinner was, so if it doesn’t come up, it doesn’t come up.”
Storm’s smile widened. “So…don’t lie, but omit some of the details.”
I shoved his shoulder. “Don’t be a pain in my ass.”
He chuckled. “I’m going to tell Bud you said ass so you’ll have to chop onions.”
We got out of the car and walked toward the entrance. “Be nice. Or you won’t have the opportunity to take Bud up on his offer.”
Bud had asked Storm if he might be interested in an old bike he had in his garage in exchange for painting his backyard fence.
“Can you take me over there next weekend so I can start painting?”
I nodded. “Let me talk to Autumn and see what she says.”
Inside Park House, I checked Storm in at the front desk. He surprised me when he extended his hand. “Thanks,” he said.
I smiled as we shook. “No problem.”
On my way back to the car, I felt pretty damn good. It had been too long since I’d spent time with Bud. Plus, I’d gotten the feeling that maybe Bud could use a Storm in his life almost as much as Storm could use a Bud.
Then there was the added bonus—I had a reason to call Autumn tomorrow.
