RIP HAROLD'S BARBECUE

Harold Hembree keeps a revolver by the register. He covers windows with wrought iron burglar bars. Even the window unit that cooled the dining room in summertime was wrapped with barbed wire. Half mile from the State Pen. Surrounded by check-cashing kiosks, liquor stores, failed businesses. Abandoned, burned-out, boarded-up homes. But come 11 a.m., three-quarters the capitol's Dahlonega gold dome lunched under its leaking roof. Yellow-dog democrats ate pork plates and slurped at green lunchroom bowls of stew, washed it down with paper cartons of Mayfield buttermilk. Pork shoulder sat there on the butcher block, sweating fat. Every order and it gets shaved with a knife older than the skeletal cracker that wields it. White bread toasted on an iron grate burned black by years of fire. Ash and ember below browning bread, heating meat. Sauce shaken from an old ketchup bottle. Sandwich on the plate, coleslaw, pickles, bowl of stew. Hembree tells the folks in line to quiet down; register broke and he's doing his math there on the countertop with pencil nub. Doesn't even look up when the tall thin black kid comes through the door, just takes the revolver up and holds it in air. Kid turns right back around and leaves. You believe the balls on that boy, he says. Ran out twice without payin and then I catch him tryin to cut the AC out the winder.

Harold passed in '08. His kin took hold and drove it down into the dirt. Harold's Barbecue closes May 3---its 65th day in business. I'll miss the dilapidated building and dining room, walls grimed with age, smoke. Patron saint Lewis Grizzard cartoons on the walls. Old awards and recognition from old times. The food---once great, now passable. Last time I ate there I waited 40 minutes in the car for them to open up. No one drives by. Over an hour and a half late for their lunch service. One of the kids come stumbling in, 9mm shoved in the front of his acid-washed jeans. Sat there at a table in the empty dining room and read last week's Atlanta Journal. Waitresses sat at the bar, sipped Cokes, texted, smoked. Took them nearly a half-hour to get my quart of stew together. Kid rang me up, hands shaking, him smelling of beer and cigarettes. Chewing his fingers. Talking about the Falcons. Smiling crookedly. His eyes like pinball tilt. Who gone win the Georgia/Georgia Tech game? he asks, wrapping cornbread in wax paper, setting in the brown bag, sliding it in front of me. No one really wins, I say. Family always divided and no matter the outcome, it's never a good time. Family like that aint it, he says, smiling crookedly. Close the door behind me. Window sign crooked says CLOSED. Drive round back and out, there stray dogs nose the dumpster, ignore the wasting cats perched on its rusted roof staring down, eyes afire.