Chapter 2 – CASH
CASH
“S omebody stole my truck nuts.”
“What?” Brice calls up from where he’s bracing the bottom of the ladder.
I take the nails out of my mouth, peer over the side of the roof, and holler down. “Somebody stole my truck nuts.”
Brice cracks up. Bends over, slaps his knee and everything. “Your truck and the dogs got something in common now.”
“Ain’t funny. Cost twenty-eight bucks.”
“Who’d you do wrong?” Brice wanders over to pop a squat on the log edging the flower bed. He takes a figure from his pocket and flicks open his pen knife.
“I don’t do anyone wrong.”
“You pissed off Mom when you wouldn’t stay for dinner last week.”
Shit. I did? “Did you tell her I had to run into town for my bow?”
“She don’t care what you do.”
“She really mad?” I gotta drop by the Carrolls after the roof gets done. Take Miss Tasha some elk steaks from my trip out west. I can’t have her upset.
“You know Mom.” Brice shrugs.
I sigh. I better bring her some jerky, too.
“You think she came down the mountain to cut off my truck nuts?”
“Dude. What do you think?”
I think Miss Tasha only goes into town for church. For some reason, she drives all the way to Shady Gap to do her shopping. And she thinks my truck nuts are tasteless, so I don’t think she could bring herself to snip ‘em off. She has the balls to do it, though. No doubt.
“Am I still invited to dinner tomorrow?”
“You gotta ask?”
I don’t. The Carrolls have been feeding me since Brice and I stumbled onto each other up on Harrow Ridge when I was eight years old, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. Brice is my brother, same as John, Kellum, and Jesse, just darker complected.
“What are we having?” I ask.
“You gonna have me take her some of that elk from Montana?”
“I was.”
“Then elk.”
“Think she’ll put it in the smoker?” Miss Tasha does magical things with her smoker.
“I ain’t putting in a special request for you.”
“She’s real pissed, eh?”
Brice smirks. “Better send some jerky, too.”
I didn’t have a real good reason to not stay for dinner. Normally, I do. But I’d been up the mountain for a few days, and I was gettin’ antsy to get back to town for a minute.
Not that I don’t love the mountain. It’s why I’m building this cabin. Once I’m done, I’m gonna set up outbuildings for my hunting and fishing guide business, a dock down by the river, a pavilion to dress meat, a shooting range, a little shack to sell gear. The end goal is to move up here full time.
I’m like the Carrolls. We belong on the mountain.
But I still get the urge to go to town. Hang out. Cruise down Main Street. See what’s going on.
I keep my apartment mostly for the weekends so I have some place to crash when I’m drunk. I had a house full of people when my truck nuts got stolen. Wasn’t even the early morning hours. Best I can tell, they lifted my nads around nine-thirty in the evening. The audacity.
Granger comes trotting up, sniffling at Brice for treats. Of course, Brice has got a chew in his pockets. He’s the softest touch with animals. He’s just a very gentle dude overall. An artist. He carves tree stumps, but not like bears and eagles and shit. Real art.
He does people kind of emerging from the wood. Mostly, he uses Miss Tasha and his sister Deja for his models. Sometimes he’ll do Grandma Carroll or his Pop. Or himself. Those are the best.
You can look at ‘em all day and still not figure it out. And then you wonder why you’re trying to figure out a tree stump and not just enjoying it.
He ships ‘em all over the world. Charges upwards of a hundred thousand dollars a piece. Some folks collect ‘em. They’re in museums all over the world—Germany, Dubai, New York, and a place down in Georgia. That’s the only one I’ve visited, on a hunting trip.
Georgia’s where his people are from originally. The Blue Ridge Mountains.
In terms of size and variety of game, Stonecut can’t compare, but it’s got its charms. Great hunting. Very few people. Good neighbors.
Granger gets bored with begging for treats and comes over to sniff the ladder.
“Don’t let him knock it over.”
Brice squints, and I see the moment his eyes light up. He’s got an idea. We’ve kind of had a prank war going for fifteen years. I’m losing. Brice is just more creative than me. On account of being an artist and all.
“Whatever it is, don’t even think about it.” I go back to nailing shingles where I lost a few to a storm last week. The sooner I’m done, the less time he has to execute whatever plan just occurred to him.
“I’m not gonna let Granger knock a ladder over and conk himself on his head.”
“I didn’t say you would.”
Brice grins. “I’m not gonna move the ladder and leave you stranded on the roof.”
“I’d jump down.”
“I know.”
“And bust my ankle.”
“Most likely.” He’s grinning like the Cheshire Cat now.
A thought occurs to me. “Did you cut off my truck nuts?”
“You know I don’t go down to Stonecut.”
He doesn’t. He’ll come to dinner at my folks’ place sometimes if I bug him, but that’s about it. He has a thing against town.
“Maybe someone just wanted to touch your balls,” he says. “First time for everything.”
I flip him the bird, but he probably can’t see from where he’s sitting.
“Did I tell you that I pranked Glenna Dobbs?” I chuckle.
It wasn’t as satisfying as it could have been since I didn’t get to see the end result, but I got a dozen texts afterwards telling me she was pissed.
“I unscrewed the lids on all her sugar jars. She was there the whole time. Didn’t even notice. ”
Brice shakes his head. “You need to leave Glenna Dobbs alone.”
“Why should I?” I’m not mad about her blowing off my sister in the seventh grade anymore, but she’s too much fun to mess with.
She never says shit, but she gets these devil eyes, and her nose with that little ring flares.
And she gets her own back. She wrote “Dumbass” on my cup at the coffeehouse. Thought I didn’t notice.
“Not right to kick someone when they’re down.”
“That takedown shit is yesterday’s news.” Uncle Del’s my godfather. He says they’re tying up loose ends, and he’ll be back in the office by Harvest Day.
That’s good news. We lost my Uncle Van in a home invasion not too long ago—before that, there was a bunch of accusations and messed up shit that’s not ever gonna get settled now that he’s dead—and the family’s been having a hard time. We can’t lose Uncle Del too ‘cause he screwed up some paperwork.
It’s also good ‘cause folks can settle down about it and stop talkin’ shit about the Dobbses. I don’t know why everyone’s paying attention to the Gazette all of a sudden. No one I know reads it; we use it to wrap fish.
“I don’t mean about Del Willis.” Brice’s forehead wrinkles as he chips away at his lil’ bit of wood. He’s gonna ruin his eyesight.
I drop my hammer and cautiously step closer to the gutter. Granger’s chasing a rabbit down the knoll now, ears floppin’. Best dog ever except for Brice’s Red Tail. They’re pretty much tied for first place. They did come from the same litter.
“What do you mean then?” I lower myself to my butt. Despite what my coffee cup said, I’m not stupid enough to prance around on the edge of a steep pitched roof.
“You know. ‘Cause she got dumped by that dude with the ponytail.”
“Shut up.” I lean forward too quickly, shifting back to my heels as I feel my center of balance tip. It feels like I got whapped in the face. Blood roars in my ears. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Deja.”
“Who’d she hear it from?”
“I don’t know. School, probably.”
My abs clench. Everything clenches. There’s no way. Glenna’s been with Toby forever.
“Why’d they break up?” It’s a demand.
Brice smirks. “Well, you know. The spark wasn’t there anymore. He was working late all the time. She was lonely, but never alone.”
Huh?
“How the fuck would I know, Cash?” Brice plucks a pine cone off the ground by his feet and chucks it overhanded at my head. I duck. He misses.
“Deja said he dumped her ?”
“Yeah.” Brice is grinning, enjoying the hell out of this, but I don’t care.
Glenna Dobbs finally got rid of fucking Toby Guilfoyle.
I hate that dude. In high school, basically whatever I was doing when he walked past, he’d always mutter “toxic masculinity” under his breath.
Wrestling practice. Shoving some asshole in a locker for hassling Dina. Cheerleading at the powderpuff football game.
Toxic masculinity.
I asked Dina to explain, but I couldn’t pay attention past the first few words.
I have punched Toby Guilfoyle one million times in my imagination, and it’s never satisfying, ‘cause even in my imagination, he won’t punch back.
“You gonna finally ask her out now?” Brice whistles for Granger, and he comes bounding up from the wild flowers, all sorts of burrs and leaves stuck to his fur.
“Oh, wait.” Brice’s laugh goes high pitched like it does when he’s about to fall out of his seat to annoy me.
“You just pranked her good, didn’t you? Don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll get over it.”
Brice scritches behind Granger’s ears, and my dog flops on his butt and lolls his tongue, the traitor. “And I’m sure she’s over the time you hit her in the face with a basketball after you called her Glen Davis in gym class.”
“She was fine.”
“She had a black eye.”
My gut aches worse and worse, and Brice has got it wrong. I wasn’t trying to hit her. It was a rebound, and she reached for it, and she caught it with her face.
“That was a classic deep cut, by the way. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.” Brice and I were obsessed with the Celtics back in the day. Kevin Garnett. Ray Allen. Paul Pierce. I probably told the joke ‘cause he was there.
“She didn’t have a black eye.” I’d have felt like shit. I felt like shit anyway, even though it was an accident. I should have kept my mouth shut.
I’ve never been able to help myself around Glenna Dobbs. You breathe on her, and she gets flustered. She’s so awkward and grumpy. It’s freakin’ irresistible.
I adjust my cock. It’s pressing against my zipper.