Chapter 68 Dante
The Roadhouse is closed to the public on Monday afternoons. That’s when it shows you what it really is.
At night it’s noise, beer, Big Bertha’s smoke, a hundred people Tex half-knows.
But in the slow gold hours before he flips the sign, it’s just a house where an extended family lives.
Chairs still up on two of the tables. The Gulf bright past the deck rail.
A big rambling house that happens to serve liquor, where the people who belong to it gather at a long table out back and eat before the work starts.
I learned this table in Benji’s worst year. When Mickey was first hurt and everything was coming apart, this was where we ended up, every few days. The odd crew of us. Fed by Sheila, hollered at by Tex, put back together and healing without anyone calling it that.
You don’t get invited to this table. You just look up one day and you’re at it. That’s how Tex makes family. He doesn’t announce it. He sets a plate down in front of you and that’s the ceremony.
Today the crew’s here.
Sheila and Stormy have spent the afternoon ferrying platters out of the kitchen.
The long table’s half-buried in food. Tex comes through the screen door with a bowl of tomatoes he grows himself against the south wall of the building.
Fat ugly heirlooms he’s prouder of than anything he owns.
Sliced thick, salted. He sets them down in the middle of the table like the deed to the place.
Sheila looks at the bowl. “You oversalted them again.”
“You can’t oversalt a good tomato.”
“You can, you just did, and you do it every single time. I tell you every single time. You never once hear me.”
“I hear you fine,” Tex says. “I disagree with you.”
They’ve been running this same argument for years. Neither of them has the slightest interest in winning it. The arguing is the point.
“Deck rail’s got a soft spot by the steps,” Stormy says, to Tex, around a mouthful. “I’ll get at it in a few minutes.”
“You’ll get at it after you eat. The rail will stand a few more hours.”
Stormy’s at the table already, wedged in between Tex’s chair and Benji’s. He and Benji have their heads bent over Benji’s phone, snorting at whatever’s on it, thick as thieves.
“Phones off the table,” Tex says, to no effect whatsoever.
“We’re looking at tomatoes,” Benji says. “There’s an account that rates heirlooms. I’m submitting yours. You could be a very big deal in a very small world, Tex.”
“You’re not putting my tomatoes on the internet,” Tex says, and puts two more slices on Benji’s plate.
Down at the end, Levi’s got a plate in front of him that Sheila filled without asking. She reaches over now and drops another spoonful of potato salad on it.
“Eat, baby,” she tells him. “We’re going to fatten you up.”
Benji is deep in wedding logistics today, which means we all are. He’s got the binder that he smacks down beside his plate and flips through between bites.
“Okay. I need rulings,” he announces to the table.
“The florist says magnolia blossoms in October are ‘not a thing.’ Magnolias. On the Gulf Coast. It’s like being told the Gulf is out of salt water.
” He looks around for outrage and finds Stormy, who nods loyally.
“Thank you, Stormy. So we are doing magnolias anyway, because I refuse to be lectured on what’s possible by a woman who tried to put carnations in my wedding.
Which brings me to Tuesday. Stormy is driving me out to a grower past Pensacola with a field of everbloomers that don’t read calendars.
And if that carnation florist calls this bar asking questions, nobody here has ever heard of me. ”
“Never heard of you,” Stormy repeats, loyal to the end.
“Ruling two. Tex. Big Bertha does the reception, obviously, that was never a question, but I need her lit by noon and I need a number from you. How many briskets for a hundred and forty people, half of them Mickey’s relatives, who I have personally watched eat?”
“Four briskets, two shoulders, and don’t you worry about Bertha,” Tex says. “Bertha’s been ready for this wedding longer than you have.”
“Ruling three. Mickey has two jobs for this event. Show up, and stay unbelievably handsome. He has already succeeded at one of them and the other one isn’t due till October.”
Mickey, without looking up from his plate: “Which one have I succeeded at?”
“Being handsome, babe.”
Then he rounds on Levi, who has the misfortune of being the newest one here and therefore not yet wise enough to keep his head down.
“Levi. You need to help me. You’ve got an eye, I can tell.
” He flips to a tab and spins the binder around so it faces down the table.
“Dante’s standing up with me. Best man. Which means he’s in the black tux, deep lapel, the bit.
And I’m the groom, so I’m in white. But here is the entire question of my life right now.
What color do I put the rest of the party in so that when Dante’s up there next to me, he looks like the second-most important man at my wedding, which he is, and not like he came to park the cars? What’s his color?”
Levi sets his fork down and thinks seriously about it, which delights Benji past the point of speech.
“He’s got warm skin,” Levi says. “Gold under it, not pink. You keep the cold stuff away from him. No icy blue, no slate, nothing washed-out. He’d kill in something deep and warm with red in it.
Wine. A good dark burgundy.” He shrugs, a little shy with the table looking at him.
“You’re getting married in sunset light.
That gold hour you planned down to the minute?
Wine catches fire in it. Put your groomsmen in burgundy and he’ll look like he stepped off a magazine cover.
Trust me on it. I’ve watched people get dressed for a living for eight years. ”
Benji stares at him like he has witnessed a small miracle.
“Bordeaux,” he breathes. He writes it down.
He underlines it twice. “Mickey. Mickey, are you hearing this? We’ve had Levi barely a month and he’s already worth ten of that florist. What are your thoughts on Bordeaux? The color, not the wine?”
Mickey looks up from his plate. “What I’m hearing,” he says, “is my opinion getting asked again. My opinion has been asked four hundred times since June.” He sets down his fork.
“So here is the one opinion I actually own, and everybody at this table is a witness.” He points the fork at Tex.
“If you talk for thirty minutes, I’m leaving my own ceremony.
I’m the only man on that deck with wheels.
I’ll be at the county line before anybody’s worked out which direction I went.
That is my entire contribution to this event. ”
“My remarks will run exactly as long as they take,” Tex says, which everybody at this table knows is not a number. “And not one minute over.”
“Thirty minutes, Tex. I’ve timed the exits. Both of them.”
“Don’t worry, babe, I’ve had a signal worked out with the harpist since March,” Benji says, patting his hand. “You’re covered.”
“I don’t want the harpist, Benji. I want a stopwatch.”
“Fine. Stopwatch granted. And while we’re taking suggestions—” Benji pulls the binder over and flips to a tab. “The reception playlist. Nine pages. Curated. It builds, Mickey. There are eras.”
“You said my opinion was covered.”
“On the ceremony only. The reception is a separate document.”
“Then here’s my separate opinion,” Mickey says. “Motown. My mother raised me on the Temptations, and a man only gets married once.”
“There is Motown in the arc—”
“A reception with an arc is a seminar with cake.”
“If you two don’t settle a song list by October, I’ll marry you in silence and you can both hum,” Tex says.
Then Stormy speaks, which silences the table all by itself. “Give me the playlist, Benji. I’ll line it up on the jukebox for you.”
“All nine pages?” Benji says, already unclipping them from the binder.
Stormy nods once.
“And the Motown,” Mickey says.
Stormy nods again, takes the pages, stands up, and takes them to the kitchen.
“I love a resolved conflict,” Benji says.
“Settled,” Mickey says, and goes back to his plate.
Sheila comes back out with a pitcher of tea and sets the news down like one more platter of food.
“Two more of them came by this morning, baby,” she tells Levi.
“Press people. One from Atlanta, one wouldn’t say where from.
I told them we’re closed Mondays and I’ve never laid eyes on you in my life. ”
“Either of them leave a business card?” Mickey asks, and the deputy comes up in his voice.
“They’re on the register.”
“I’ll run them after supper.”
Two days back Levi blew his life open. There are reporters from two states hunting for him this afternoon. And just now, he stole a tomato off the serving plate with his fingers and Tex swatted his hand without breaking stride in his story, like he’d swat any of us.
He’s one of us now. He’s not watching the exits with his back against the wall. He’s just here.
It’s Levi who hands Tex the opening, without meaning to. There’s a lull, forks scraping plates. Levi takes the entire table in, the food, the faces. I watch him lock up.
“Thanks for having me,” he says to Tex. “For letting me crash the table like this.”
“Crash the table,” Tex repeats, like it’s the funniest line he’s heard all week.
He sets his fork down. He settles back in his chair, and everybody else at the table settles too.
They all know exactly what’s coming. When Tex has a point to make, he takes the scenic route to get there, and you might as well get comfortable.
“See, here’s the trouble with what you just said.
You think you crashed your way into a place you don’t belong.
You think you’ve been sitting at somebody else’s table, eating somebody else’s food, and any minute now the bill’s gonna come due.
You want to know how long that chair you’re sitting in has been yours? ”
He doesn’t wait. Tex never waits.
“Since the start. We set it at this table a good while back. We left it open. We’ve been waiting on you.
Now, I’ve only known Dante since he turned up here trailing after Benji like a worried mama hen.
That’s not long, I grant you. But I’ll tell you what I learned about Dante inside the first week of it.
That man does not let people in. That day he walked in here talking about some hungover singer he couldn’t quit fretting over, and lets slip he’s put that singer inside his apartment alone, well.
” Tex spreads his big hands wide. “I looked at Sheila. Sheila looked at me. And we knew.”
He picks his fork back up and starts eating again.
I’m watching Levi while Tex talks and I watch a tension go out of him. He picks up his fork. He starts to eat like he believes there will be another meal at this table, with these people, for as long as he wants it.
Benji lets it sit a respectful minute, then he slides the binder down the table to Levi, open to a tab marked SEATING, and taps one square on the chart. “You’re at Table One. Between Dante and Stormy.” He pulls the binder back and flips to the florist tab like nothing happened.
If something God forbid ever happened to me, Levi would not be alone. He’d be at this table next Monday. Sheila would still fill his plate. Tex would still claim him.
He flies to Nashville Thursday. There’s a studio waiting, a stack of his own songs he’s never been allowed to cut, a lawyer’s worth of knots to untangle with Freddie. All of it ahead of us, none of it going away.
We’ve talked it over some. Hard logistics come easy when the hard part underneath is already settled.
I’ll keep doing what I do, Miami to here and back, the business that pays for all of it.
He’ll travel between Nashville and here.
No one is moving into anyone’s high-rise condo or mansion.
The Panhandle, this strip of sand, is the middle we both come back to.
Levi has somewhere to come back to now. A family that’ll be sitting right here, holding his chair, every single time he comes home. He gets to leave knowing there’s a home behind him.
The afternoon goes long and gold. Sheila and Stormy clear the plates, and on the second trip Stormy hands Levi a stack without asking, the way you hand things to family, and Levi carries them in like he’s been doing it for years.
Then he sits back down beside me. Under the table, where no one can see, where no one would care if they could, I find his hand and lace my fingers through it. He doesn’t look over. He just holds on tight and stays.