Chapter 3 Tex #2
I plate everything up. Four eggs, six strips of bacon, four slices of toast on each plate. His plate maybe has a little more bacon than mine. Maybe the toast is cut a little thicker. He probably won't notice. I set the plates on the stainless-steel prep counter and pull up two stools.
He sits down and looks at the food like he's not sure it's real.
Then he picks up his fork and starts eating, and there's this thing he does where he tries to eat slowly, tries to pace himself like this is a casual breakfast and he's not that hungry.
But his body betrays him. His hand moves faster than his brain wants it to.
He finishes a strip of bacon and his eyes flick to the plate to check how much is left, the way you do when you're used to food not being a guarantee.
I don't say anything. I just eat my breakfast and talk.
"So let me tell you about the last time we boarded up this place.
Hurricane Michael, 2018. I was young, dumb as a box of rocks, and convinced I knew better than every meteorologist in the state of Florida.
My buddy Hatchet came over to help me board up and he brought his cousin, who I swear to God had never held a hammer in his life.
This man nailed plywood over the front door.
Not a window. The front door. Sealed us inside the building.
We had to take it back down and start over, and Hatchet laughed so hard he fell off a ladder and bruised his tailbone. "
Stormy is listening. He's not reacting, not laughing, but he's listening. His eyes are on me and his fork has slowed down. But he's in the room with me, and he's not cowering, which is about all I can ask for right now.
"The cousin also brought a case of beer for the job, which ordinarily I'd be fine with, but it was nine in the morning and he'd already had four by the time he nailed the door shut, so in hindsight the signs were there."
I take a bite of toast and keep going. I tell him another story about Preacher and his fourth-bourbon sermons, including the legendary one about how manatees are proof that God has a sense of humor because he made an animal that looks like a couch cushion and gave it the soul of a philosopher.
I tell him about the time a tourist's parrot got loose in the bar and spent three hours on the ceiling fan yelling obscenities it had learned from its owner.
Nobody could get it down until Sheila climbed up on the bar with a slice of garlic toast and said, "Come here, baby," in the same voice she uses on drunk bikers, and the bird landed on her shoulder like she was a pirate.
Stormy's plate is empty. He's cleaned it without realizing, I think, because he looks down at it with a flicker of surprise. For a few minutes he forgot to monitor his own survival and just ate.
"More bacon?" I ask.
"No. Thank you. That was..." He pauses. Swallows. Closes his eyes and tries again. "Really good."
"Wait until you try my brisket. It'll change your life. Now come on, we're burning daylight and that bastard Peter's not going to wait for us."
We start with the windows. I've got sheets of plywood stacked against the side of the building, already cut to rough sizes from when I measured the windows last hurricane season.
But the bar has a lot of glass on the front side, big picture windows that look out toward the water, and every one of them needs to be covered.
The heat hits us like a wall the second we step outside.
It's barely daylight and it's already ninety degrees, the air so thick with moisture that breathing feels like drinking.
The sky is a weird color, that yellowish gray that means the atmosphere is loaded and ready to dump.
Storm bands are rolling in from the south in waves, ten minutes of sideways rain followed by twenty minutes of brutal sunshine that turns the wet pavement into a steam bath.
I grab a tape measure and start marking plywood. Stormy holds the other end without being asked. He's quick and careful and he pays attention. When I show him how to line up the cuts, he does it right the first time without needing to be told twice.
"You've done this before?" I ask.
"No."
"Could've fooled me. You're a natural."
He doesn't respond, but his posture shifts. Straightens, maybe. Just a fraction.
We work. I strip off my shirt about thirty minutes in because the sweat is running down my back in rivers and the fabric is sticking to me like a second skin. I can't swing a hammer properly when I'm wearing a wet blanket.
"Fair warning," I say, tossing my shirt over the railing, "this is not a Magic Mike bachelorette party situation. Nobody's throwing dollar bills anywhere. This is just a large sweaty man trying not to drown in his own shirt. Very different energy."
I catch Stormy glancing my way. It's quick. His eyes move over my chest and arms and then snap away, fast, like he touched a hot stove. I don't read into it. I'm a big guy, covered in tattoos, swinging a hammer in the heat. People look. It doesn't mean anything.
But I notice. I notice everything about him, which is fast becoming a problem.
"Alright," I say, holding up a sheet of plywood against one of the higher windows. "I need you to go up the ladder and nail the top corners while I hold this in place. Can you do that?"
He nods. He takes the hammer and a handful of nails and climbs the aluminum ladder I've leaned against the building. He's light on it, careful. I plant my feet and grip the ladder rails with both hands, holding it rock-steady against the concrete wall.
"You good up there?" I call.
"Yes." A pause. I can almost hear the sir forming and dying on his tongue. "I'm good."
"There you go. See? That wasn't so hard."
He drives the first nail in clean. Then the second.
He's repositioning for the third when it happens.
A storm band rolls through without warning, and a wall of rain hits us like a fire hose, and the ladder rung under his right foot goes slick.
His shoe slides. His weight shifts. I feel the ladder kick sideways in my hands and I react before I think, one hand leaving the ladder to catch him, my palm flat against his lower back, steadying him, holding him in place.
He goes rigid. Every muscle in his body locks up under my hand like I've pressed a taser to his skin. I can feel it through my palm, this full-body flinch that starts at the point of contact and radiates outward, and I pull my hand back so fast you'd think he burned me.
"Sorry," I say. "Sorry for the grabby hands. I just didn't want you to fall."
He doesn't answer for a second. He's gripping the ladder so hard his knuckles are white, and he's not moving, not breathing, just frozen there three rungs up with rain running down his face.
"I'm okay," he says finally. His voice is tight. The voice of someone who is very much not okay but has a lot of practice saying he is.
"Take your time. I've got the ladder. It's not going anywhere and neither are you. I won't let you fall."
He finishes the nail. He comes down the ladder one careful step at a time, and when his feet hit the ground, he takes two steps away from me. Not one. Two. Putting distance between us with the carefulness of someone who measures safety in feet and inches.
I don't comment or apologize again. I just pick up the next sheet of plywood and say, "Three windows down, eleven to go. We're making good time."
We work through the morning. The storm bands keep coming, soaking us and then retreating, and the heat between them is suffocating.
Stormy works harder than he should, maybe, for someone his size who probably hasn't been eating enough.
But he doesn't complain or even slow down.
Every time I show him anything new, he absorbs it silently and does it right the first time.
Around noon, a Bay County Sheriff's cruiser pulls into the parking lot. I know the car before I see the driver. It's Mickey Weaver. He's wearing his uniform and his cop face, which means he's here in an official capacity before he's here as my best friend.
"Oh no," I say, loud enough for Stormy to hear. "The law has arrived. Everyone act natural and hide the drugs."
Mickey gets out of the cruiser and walks toward us through the rain.
He's over six feet, muscular, with tanned skin, close-cropped hair, and the kind of jawline that makes him very popular on the dating apps he's always complaining about.
We went to school together, played football together, and came out to each other on the same night junior year after splitting a bottle of his mama's peach schnapps.
He's been my best friend for going on twenty years.
"You stubborn son of a bitch," he says by way of greeting.
"That's Big Stubborn Son of a Bitch to you. I have a sign and everything."
"I'm here in an official capacity to inform you that Bay County has issued a mandatory evacuation for all Zone A residents, effective immediately.
Emergency services will not be available for rescue operations after six PM today.
If you choose to remain in the evacuation zone, you do so at your own risk and the county assumes no responsibility for your life.
In other words, don't call us if shit gets real and you find yourself hanging onto the roof and floating down the street in a storm surge. "
"Did you practice that in the car?"
"Twice." He smiles, then kills it. "I'm serious, Tex. This one's bad. They're saying it could hit Category 5 before landfall. The surge projections are insane. You need to leave. As your friend, I'm asking you to leave. You can stay at my place as long as you want."
"You know there's no way in hell I'm leaving this place."
"I know you're not leaving. I told the captain you wouldn't leave. He said to come tell you anyway and make you sign a form to cover our ass."
"Are you serious? There's really a form?"