Chapter 4
Mace
I wasn’t sure what made the guy with the tight ass and great eyes different from the many men who came through the saloon doors every day. Most were more rugged and rough. Your typical manly men. The kinds of guys I was normally attracted to.
A lot of those men snuck out of the house, making excuses or straight out lying about where they were going to spend their time. Just being away from the nighttime duties of home life had a way of lightening up their mood, getting the mental break they needed.
Those same kinds of men, through the generations, were how the bar had stayed operational for all the years.
But today there was something different in the air, an energy I didn’t understand.
I felt unsettled, something I couldn’t shake.
Something that stuck with me for the rest of the day and apparently into the late afternoon too.
“I’ll do it,” Manny, an older man and part-time help, said reaching for the industrial-size bucket and mop I was haphazardly swiping around the bar’s floor while lost in my thoughts. I should’ve stopped Manny from taking the mop, but I was so off my game that it was beginning to mess with my head.
“Thanks,” I murmured. “I filled the ice and stocked the bar. You should be set for tonight. We’re not expecting too many people here. I think everyone’s at home recoverin’ from the weekend.”
“Yeah, I know. You get one night off, so go home. I got it,” Manny said, doing a far better job mopping than I had.
“Lori said you sold the last two chairs.” His scratchy voice came out a couple of decimals louder than necessary.
Manny’s eyes lifted to mine, the mop never stopping the back and forth swish.
“Better get busy makin’ more. They fly out of here. ”
“I think I’m gonna take a break for a month or two,” I said, tucking my hands into my pockets. “I didn’t expect I’d get the boom in sales this weekend.”
“I told you that you needed to sell them for more than fifty dollars. Lori told me a customer bought those two for four hundred dollars. Wildflower would sure be proud of your donation,” Manny mumbled, his focus back on the floor.
“You’re a good guy, Mace. You’re wastin’ your youth.
” Words Manny had spoken often. “You need to rebuild your life, son. It’s been long enough. ”
“I’m not ready,” I said quietly, a rare moment of honesty.
“Life happens. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, but you gotta keep goin’, lookin’ forward. Doesn’t mean you forget the past. You’ll take it with you for the rest of your life. You were such a dynamic kid. It’s hard to watch you stuck in second gear.”
Only in an attempt to be funny, absolutely not wanting to have this conversation again, I said, “You’re just wantin’ my job to get more hours.”
He chuckled, which was the response I had tried for and let that be enough, pivoting around, refusing to allow the past to take me low, like it always did. “If you need anything, call me.”
“Mace, we’re ready,” Lori called from the back door.
Past Lori, I saw her husband, Max, tying down the chairs in the back of my old pickup truck.
“I thought I’d just let you handle it. Max can take my truck,” I called, taking several strides out the door, standing in the middle of the parking lot, truly mortified with what I was seeing.
“I’ll hang out here and wait for y’all to get back.
” As I spoke, Max leaped out of the bed of the truck, lifting the tailgate to snuggly shut, both chairs in place.
“I’ll work on the doorbell while you’re gone. ”
“Can’t,” Lori said, startling me from behind. “We’ll follow you, because you acted weird while they were here, but after that, we have to go to Max’s mom’s house to get the kids. We won’t be comin’ back this direction.”
“They’re tied down. Shouldn’t move. Follow us, Lori knows the way,” Max said, tossing my truck keys to me. “It’s hot as hell.” Max wiped a sheen of sweat off his brow while heading to his semi-new Dodge pickup truck. A far cry from the classic 1980’s Ford truck I drove.
My thoughts zigged and zagged as I tried to come up with any suitable reason to get out of going, but nothing came to mind. I mean not one scrap of information to build an excuse on. My brain had gone numb. “Lori, you should take the chairs,” I said lamely.
“Why?” she said, her tone frustrated and cutting, her annoyance with me showing clearly. “They’re your chairs, and he paid you four hundred dollars. He deserves our personal customer service. Quit bein’ a baby.”
I stared at her. This brain numb thing held tight, giving me absolutely zero comebacks to her argument. My arsenal of throwbacks I always kept at the ready had packed up and left me.
“Gawd, Mace. Get your ass in the truck. I’ve got to get the kids.” Lori dismissed him with a fling of an uncaring hand as my heart thumped against my rib cage.
“Okay,” I finally agreed, walking with a slow, defeated stride to my truck. “We’ve gotta be fast. I gotta get home.”
“No, you don’t,” she said with disgust, climbing into Max’s truck. “You don’t have a life. There’s literally nothing waitin’ for you except Bud Light.”
She forgot the case of Heineken.
Why weren’t the neurons popping the comebacks off inside my head like normal? They usually never gave me a break.
Maybe I freaked my own self out with the primal response I’d felt every time I closed my eyelids and saw the sparkle of those amber eyes. I’d never forget the depth of the guy’s stare.
By nothing more than rote, I climbed into the driver’s seat of my truck and pulled my sunglasses in place.
A quick glance in the rearview mirror stopped me short.
The constant in and out from air conditioning to the extreme heat had the sweat drying, my hair going every which way.
The loose curls were already hard to tame…
With a disgusted huff, I admitted I was lying to myself again. I never looked in a mirror long enough to care about my appearance. Yet right now, I recognized the layer of dried, gritty dust spotting my face, creasing in my neck. I instantly used my fingers to do my best at pulling myself together.
My whole approach to grooming came once a year when I scheduled a buzz cut and then let it grow until the next year when I did it again. I was a solid month behind on my annual calendar.
Shit. Based on the reflection in this dumb rearview mirror, nothing I did helped put me together.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.
The perspective helped. I put the rearview mirror back in place then shoved the key in the ignition, starting the truck with a whimper.
I didn’t want to do this.
It was a really bad idea. Yet, I followed my sister and Max out of the parking lot and onto the road. At this point, I could only hope for my truck to throw a rod to keep me from having to deliver these chairs.
=?=
Slade
Bent with his head inside the refrigerator, Wyatt tossed one can after another of Bud Light around the kitchen to where all five guys stood around the large center island, watching Scout expertly season the steaks.
I skillfully grabbed the can from the air and weighed the options of opening the beer after being shaken while airborne.
Since I lived on the edge of life, I twirled the can a few times on the counter and risked it, popping the tab.
Luckily, the contents didn’t shoot out everywhere, enabling the long swig I took of the cold brew.
Bud Light reminded me of home, good times, and these guys.
“Is Old Man Jones still kickin’?” I asked, anchoring a hip on the counter as I reminisced about the aging man who’d stand on the bleachers, barking out orders while they played football for their high school’s varsity team.
Since Wyatt was the only one who’d stayed in the area, these questions were the general updates they received every year.
“Before you answer that, it’s been twelve years since he’d stand in the bleachers, yelling at us, play-by-play. I thought he had to be at least ninety years old back then. No way he’s still around,” Bryce said.
“And he still looks exactly that old,” Wyatt commented, popping the top on his can as he took a seat on a barstool on the other side of the kitchen island from me.
“Mom says he’s in his late eighties. I couldn’t believe it.
I made her prove it. He’s in a wheelchair now.
Always sittin’ on his front porch when I drive through town, yellin’ at the vehicles or whoever walks past. He’s an ornery old coot. ”
“I saw him when I came home for the Willis family reunion,” Scout said.
“I stopped by and talked to him for a couple of hours. He’s still mentally there.
He remembered us all by name.” As he spoke, he continued taking special care with the beef I purchased today.
Apparently, his special, secret marinade was an award-winning proprietary blend—at least award-winning in the military’s special-teams annual cook-off.
He took home the first-place prize making him akin to Gordon Ramsay. According to him, anyway.
“He went to State with us. Even when we made it all the way, he still kept yelling we were gettin’ the plays wrong. I’ll never forget hearing his booming voice all the way down on the field,” Gray said.
“I know, right. His voice is still just like that. In my truck, I swear I can hear that man yellin’ at me about somethin’ I’m doin’ wrong.
Did you hear that Carolyn finally got married?
” Wyatt asked, more to Gray than anyone else.
They’d been high school sweethearts up until the very day he’d gotten caught with another guy.