six DAYS ago

hotel BROWNWOOD

Yaegar sat next to the coffee table. We were in my motel room. I had my lamplights on which gave the room a yellow tint. I had brewed a pot of tea and poured him a cup. I had a bunch of tea bags in a box under the television that I didn't use often enough for it to be considered fresh. An old Entertainment Weekly magazine was on the coffee table and this was what Yaegar was observing as I sat on the edge of my bed. I bit into the apple Yaegar had given me. I reached over for the TV remote on my bedside drawer. I turned it on and flipped through the channels.

Yaegar lost interest in the magazine and looked at me as I scoured through the channels. I flitted my eyes over to him, who wasn't looking at me but rather past me. I turned around, but I knew what was there. A square cut in the wall above the headboard of the bed where I hid my safe. I looked back at him, but he had turned to the television which he could barely see from the side.

I stopped surfing the channels and left the TV on a chef barbecuing brisket, ribs, sausage and the like. Yaegar began to fiddle with something behind the television. It was Suparto's skateboard which he usually rode on instead of his pompous horse. He had forgotten it here and I had forgotten to give it back to him.

"Don't touch that, just watch the TV," I warned. He stopped fiddling with the skateboard. The wheels in particular. I think he was mesmerised by spinning them.

"What?" he asked a few seconds later. I was under the impression that he had heard me on the first round and this had me taken aback because I didn't like saying things twice. But I wanted to see if he really was hard of hearing, or if it was a translation misunderstanding for his German ears, so I said it again.

"The skateboard. Stop touching it. It's not mine, I'm holding onto it for a friend." I chomped down on the rest of the apple and threw the core into the trash.

"Who's your friend?" Yaegar questioned.

"He's more of a student of mine," I said. "I'm training him in wrestling. He has a game this weekend at his school. He's a good kid." The chef on TV flipped all of the meat cuts and began to sear the unseared side.

"I didn't take you for the coaching kind." The meat was drenched in olive oil a second time.

"Yeah, I'm not the one who suggested it. The kid approached me. Why? You wanna lesson?" A timeskip occurred on screen as the chef returned in a fresh set of clothes after messing up his other attire with splatters of grease and a little elbow grease.

"Oh no, I'm not a fighter," Yaegar said. "I'm more of a hunter."

"Why's that?" I asked. "Your pappi took you hunting game?"

"No, I've never been. Germany doesn't have many spots to be hunting for animals.

And I didn't have a father vhen I migrated as a child."

"Why? What happened?"

"He was incarcerated and was killed in a prison riot caused by the pernicious influences of the war," he explained. "The prison was keeping more Americans than Germans, refusing to give up the Americans. This impinged on the minds of the ones inside and the Americans outside and a riot broke out." He continued to spin the wheels on Suparto's skateboard as if it were his chattel. But it wasn't mine as well so I let him have his fidget as he told me his story. The chef plated the charred meats, the black in the burns contrasting against the pure white embroidered in the china.

"I'm sorry," was all I could say. It cut to a commercial break, displaying our own break from talking. I fished my cig pack from my pocket, drew one out, and stepped out to light it.