It was her bright idea to leave Chicago and move to Los Angeles. I just went along with the program. I didn’t particularly care for L.A., even though I got on with the school district driving a bus. But since neither one of us wanted to be movie stars and Viola wasn’t too crazy about most of my people ’cause she said they was too country, too loud, uncouth, and just plain nasty (she had a point), and being around ’em was embarrassing as hell, so, when Daddy died in ’78 and left me a little something from the farm, we couldn’t thank of enough good reasons to stay in California. The kids was grown and gone and I heard we still had a handful of decent kinfolk left in Vegas, so we took a chance on the desert and bought us a little tract house here. All five of them relatives was dead before we opened the first Shack, ’cause that’s the same year Viola made me take her bowling, that much I do remember.

Everybody, including me, always thought Vegas was all bright blinking lights and casinos. Strip joints and the Strip. But real people live here. In regular neighborhoods. And it wasn’t all that pretty. It was dry and flat and bare and mostly brown. Now, with all the building going on, it’s new housing developments everywhere you turn. It’s still dry and flat and bare, but some people got grass and shrubs and flowers, and quite a few trees done managed to grow. But not in our yard.

The first year after we got here, Viola convinced me to take all our savings and put it with Daddy’s money and we opened up our first barbecue joint. They grew to three, ’cause we knew how to smoke the meat just right (like they do in Texas), and my barbecue sauce was a family secret. Everybody said I shoulda bottled it up and sold it, but I didn’t feel like being bothered. Hell, between loving Viola, driving a school bus for another thirteen years, and running the Shacks, when I took early retirement almost two years ago, I was tired. Tired of living like I was waiting for something else to happen. That’s what it was beginning to feel like. Like I was missing something. Like this ain’t it. Like my life should add up to more. Every day was starting to feel like it do when I call a professional business and they put you on hold for a long time and you forget who you called but you know you shouldn’t hang up, so you just hold the line, listen to that recorded music, and wait. When they come back on the line you pray that you remember why you called and that they have the answers to all your questions. But they never do. So then you start thanking if you just look a little further ahead you might find them missing pieces. But how far can a man see? And what if you don’t know exactly what it is you looking for?