Stormy

Chapter 3 Tex #3

"There's always a form." He pulls a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. "Sign this so I can tell my boss I did my job and then we can skip to the part where I call you an idiot and you agree with me."

I take the paper and sign it against the side of the building.

Mickey watches me, and then his eyes slide past me to Stormy, who has gone completely still and two shades paler near the ladder.

He's holding a hammer at his side and he's looking at Mickey's uniform with an expression I can only describe as terror.

Quiet, contained, but there. His eyes move from the badge to the gun on Mickey's hip to the cruiser in the parking lot.

I can practically hear the gears turning in his head. Exits, distances, options.

"Who's your new friend?" Mickey asks.

"This is Stormy. He's hanging out here and helping me prep for the storm."

"Stormy." Mickey looks at me with an expression that says we'll talk about this later. "That a first name or a last name?"

"It's a special Big Tex name. You know how I am."

Mickey knows exactly how I am. He's watched me name stray cats, bar regulars, and a heron that hangs around the parking lot every summer. He nods and turns to Stormy.

"Nice to meet you, Stormy. I'd tell you to talk some sense into this man but I've been trying for twenty years and it hasn't worked yet." He extends his hand to him.

Stormy looks at the hand and goes dead still. He doesn't take it. The moment stretches just a beat too long, and then he whispers, "Hi," without moving.

Mickey, to his credit, drops his hand and doesn't make it a thing.

I love Mickey for that. He reads people almost as well as I do.

"Alright," Mickey says, turning back to me. "You've signed the form. You're officially no longer the county's problem. I'll check in when I can but after six, we're pulled back to inland operations. No rescue, no response. You understand that?"

"Perfectly."

"You've got food? Water? Batteries?"

"All of the above. And plywood, which is what we were working on before you showed up with your paperwork."

He shakes his head. "Your daddy was just as bad." He claps me on the shoulder. "Take care, Tex. I mean it. Call me. You know I'd come even if I'm not supposed to."

"I will."

He heads back to the cruiser, and I hear him mutter "stubborn damn fool" before he closes the door. Same thing Sheila said. They're not wrong.

I turn back to Stormy. He's still standing by the ladder, gripping the hammer, and the tension in his body has only dropped a little since Mickey pulled away.

"That's Mickey," I say. "Known him since seventh grade. He's good people. Also terrible at darts, which he blames on the fact that he's left-handed, but I've seen left-handed people throw darts just fine so I think he's just bad."

Stormy doesn't laugh, but the tension in his shoulders releases a fraction.

"He's a cop," Stormy says.

Not a question. A statement. Flat and careful.

"Yep, he sure is. Also, my best friend since before either of us could grow facial hair, which in his case was ninth grade.

In my case was about last Tuesday because I've had this beard so long, I don't remember what's under it.

Could be anything under here. Another, smaller beard. A chin I'm not proud of. Nobody knows."

Nothing. Not a flicker. But he's not gripping the hammer like a weapon anymore, so I'll take it.

We work through the afternoon. We get every window boarded up, move the pool table bumpers and the framed photos and everything else I can't afford to lose up to the second floor.

Then we wrestle Stormy's bike up the stairs, which is exactly as much fun as it sounds.

The bike is heavier than he is. I do most of the lifting while he guides it, and when we finally get it parked on the second-floor landing, I'm dripping sweat and breathing hard.

"If anyone ever asks me how I stay in shape," I huff, bent over with my hands on my knees, trying to remember how lungs work, "I'm going to tell them I carry motorcycles up staircases for fun. It's my CrossFit. I call it CrossHarley. It's terrible. Nobody should do it."

Around five, I call it. We're done. The bar is as ready as it's going to get.

"I don't know about you," I say, wiping my face with my shirt, which is a lost cause at this point, "but I could eat a cow. How do you feel about burgers?"

"That sounds good."

I fire up the flat top in the bar kitchen and pull two patties from the walk-in.

Hand-formed, half-pound each, seasoned with my dad's recipe, which is salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a secret ingredient that I will take to my grave.

I told Sheila once and she said it was just onion powder, and she's right, but it's the onion powder that makes it.

"My daddy invented this burger recipe," I say, pressing the patties onto the grill where they hiss and pop and fill the kitchen with smoke that smells like heaven.

"Back when he first opened this place, he spent three weeks straight trying to perfect the burger.

Three weeks. He'd make a batch, take them out to the parking lot, and hand them to whoever was walking by.

Bikers, tourists, the mailman, it didn't matter.

He'd hand them a burger and say, 'Rate this on a scale of one to ten and don't lie to me because I'll know.

' He could always tell when someone was being polite.

He didn't want polite. He wanted ten out of ten. "

I flip the patties and start slicing tomatoes. "The mailman finally gave him a ten. My daddy picked that man up off the ground and hugged him. Full bear hug, lifted him right off his feet. The mailman didn't deliver to our address for two weeks after that. I think Dad scared him."

I glance over. Stormy is sitting on a prep stool near the door, watching me cook with those blue-green eyes. He's got his arms crossed over his chest, which is his default position, but his shoulders are lower than they were this morning. Not relaxed. He's a long way from relaxed. But lower.

"Anyway," I say, laying cheese on the patties, "the recipe hasn't changed in thirty years.

Same burger, same seasoning, same everything.

People drive from Destin to eat these. I had a man tell me once that he scheduled his vacation around our open hours.

I thought he was joking and then he showed me his calendar and there it was.

'Big Tex's burger, Wednesday' written right between 'beach' and 'parasailing. ' I've never been more honored."

I plate the burgers with fries and slide one across the counter to Stormy. "Eat. That's an order. And don't you dare call me sir, because you're already on dish duty from this morning. I don't know if you can cook and I'm not ready to find out the hard way."

He looks at the burger and then at me. And then the corner of his mouth moves. Just the corner, just the left side, barely a millimeter, and it's gone as fast as it came, but it was there. A ghost of a smile. I've heard of mysterious ghost smiles. Now I've actually seen one.

I turn back to the grill so he doesn't see how much that pleases me.

We eat and I talk.

I tell him about the couple who got engaged on our little stage during open mic night, and the groom was so nervous he dropped the ring. It rolled under the pool table and six bikers got on their hands and knees to find it, and when they did, every single person in the bar cheered.

I tell him about my dad's tradition of putting up Christmas lights on the bar in August because, as he said, "It's my building and nobody can stop me," and how the tradition stuck. Now Big Tex's Roadhouse is the only bar on the panhandle that has Christmas lights glowing year-round.

Stormy eats his entire burger and all his fries. When he's done his plate is clean and there's color in his face that wasn't there this morning.

"Good, right?" I ask.

"Great." He pauses. "Thank you."

"Thank the recipe. I'm just the delivery system.

My daddy did all the hard work." I start cleaning up and he jumps up to help me.

"Alright, we should get some sleep. Peter's coming tomorrow night and we've got another full day of moving stuff and battening down whatever's left.

It's going to be a long couple of days. Or depending on what happens with the hurricane it could be a few long weeks. "

He nods.

"I mean it about the food," I say as we head upstairs.

"Anything in the kitchen, any time. You get hungry at three in the morning, you wander downstairs and eat.

You don't have to ask. Like I said before, the only thing I ask is the alcohol.

You want a drink, you come to me first. Not because I'm trying to control you, just because I don't know your situation.

I've been doing this long enough to know that booze and bad situations don't mix. "

"I don't drink much," he says. "Never really."

"Neither do I, believe it or not. A beer now and then. I'm around it all day so the novelty wore off about fifteen years ago."

We reach the third floor. The hallway is narrow, just the two bedroom doors and the bathroom. I'm aware that I take up most of the available space. I try to give him room so he doesn't feel cornered. I don't know why I'm so conscious of it, except that I am.

"Get some rest, Stormy. We earned it today."

"You too." He's standing in his doorway and I'm standing in the hall. The wind is picking up outside, rattling the windows in a way that says tomorrow is going to be a different world.

I duck into the hall closet and pull out a couple of clean towels, thick ones, the kind Sheila insists I keep stocked even though I'd survive just fine with the thin, cheap ones.

"Here," I say, holding them out. I'm careful to extend them at arm's length, not to step closer. I'm learning. "Bathroom's all yours. Go ahead and shower first. I'll go after you."

"Thank you." He takes the towels without our hands touching. I don't know if that's deliberate on his part or mine.

"Night, Stormy."

"Night, Tex."

Tex. Not sir. Just Tex. We're making baby steps.

He steps into the bathroom and closes the door, and I hear the lock click. Not the soft click of habit. The deliberate, firm click of someone who needs a locked door between himself and me.

Yeah, he's scared of me.

I've known it since the truck. I've seen it in the way he tracks my hands and measures the distance between us and flinches when I get too close. But hearing that lock engage, hearing him seal himself behind the only working lock in this apartment, makes it land in a way that's heavier.

Something bad happened to this kid. The kind of bad that makes a grown man flinch at hands and lock a bathroom door against someone who's done nothing but help him.

I don't know what it was. I don't know who did it. But someone taught him that big men behind closed doors are dangerous. Now he's locked in my bathroom making sure I can't get in.

The thought could hurt, but I don't take it personally because I've seen the fear in him.

I go to my room and close the door quietly.

I sit on the edge of my bed and listen to the water run through the wall and think about that flinch on the ladder.

The way he pulled away from me like my hand was a threat.

The way he watched Mickey's gun. How he said "I can clean" at five in the morning because he'd probably been awake all night, because he was afraid to close his eyes.

I don't know his name. I don't know what he's running from. But I know what scared looks like. I've seen it walk into my bar a thousand times, wearing a thousand different faces, and I've never been wrong about it.

This kid needs someone in his corner. He needs someone who isn't going to hurt him, and he needs time to figure out that person is me. The only way he's going to figure that out is if I don't push, don't do a single thing that gives him a reason to run.

So that's what I'll do. I'll give him space. I'll give him food and work. I'll talk enough for both of us and I won't ask questions.

The water shuts off. A few minutes later, the bathroom door opens and his footsteps pad softly down the hall. His bedroom door closes.

No lock on that one. I know because the push-button's been broken for months and I never fixed it. Damn, the poor kid might never get any sleep.

I shower and get into bed. I lie there listening to the wind build outside. The storm is coming whether we're ready or not.