19. Chapter 19
nineteen
Time’s gone still on me. Everything drags. One minute feels like two. One day feels like four.
I can’t sleep. I can’t eat and I sure as hell don’t trust myself to drink. I know what I’m capable of in a mood like this, and none of it’s smart. I’m avoiding the Dust Devil.
Makes for longer nights, staring at the ceiling.
I’m on the loading dock early. The air’s shifted cooler as September drags on, the days shorter, nights longer.
I drag the flat cart up beside the pallet of feed, plant my boots, and start hauling sacks. Fifty pounds each. I grab one, then another, toss them onto the cart hard enough the metal rattles. I don’t bother stacking them neat. I just need the weight. The lift. The burn. Something to push against.
By the time the cart’s piled waist-high, my lower back is screaming, but I drag the whole thing toward the back door anyway. Inside, I start stacking the bags one by one—bend, lift, twist, thud.
Over and over.
It’s the kind of work that’s supposed to shut your mind off, but mine won’t rest. It’s been days. I don’t know if she’s alright. If she’s here or headed back to Nashville—I don’t know anything beyond how empty I feel.
I said I couldn’t live through it again, and here I am, living through it again. And all we shared was one kiss. Think what it’d do to me if we’d really gone there.
Fucking pussy. Grow some stones.
“Calder, line two.” Darla’s voice comes over the speakers. Bookkeeper slash manager.
I trudge to the phone on the wall. “Calder Boone.”
“You ready for tonight?” Rex.
“Not really, but I guess. Did you get a firm to take a look at the stands?”
“Well, hell no, Boone. That could cost up to ten thousand dollars, just for the study. No, I need board approval for that. That’s why I need you.”
“Alright. I’ll go back this afternoon and take a look at the uprights. If I see something bad, I’ll take pictures. I never did that the other day.”
“I appreciate you,” Ray says.
That’ll keep me busy until the meeting at seven.
Good.
A few less hours to stare at the damn ceiling—and just like that, Willie Nelson’s in my head. “Hello, Walls.”
Fucking songs.
“You going to eat your fries?” Tanner’s leering at my plate. The Red Wagon is packed every noon, a server brushing my shoulder as she weaves past with a tray in hand.
“Help yourself.”
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks, as he plucks two fries off my plate and shoves them into his mouth.
“Nothing.”
“There you go again. Nothing. Nothing happened with you two in the parking lot. Nothing happened after I told you about those pictures.”
“Will you just let it go?” Really. I need for him to let it go.
“Just sayin’.”
“Well don’t say.” I fork my chicken-fried steak, my appetite as absent as my heart.
In these long days, I’ve started working on the new calluses. I need my calluses back. It was a mistake to let myself feel anything again.
After eyeing me hard, Tanner has sense enough to change the subject. “What about tonight?”
“I’m going to the stadium when I leave here. I’ll get under it, check the uprights. I’ll know more then.”
“You really not going to eat that?” He helps himself to my steak.
“Damn, man, how long’s it been since you ate?”
“I’m hungry.”
I shove my plate toward him. “I’m not. Have at it.”
“I’m worried about you, man. You expect me to believe nothing happened after I told you about those pictures?”
The hair on my neck prickles. “Dammit, Tanner. Don’t push me. Not right now.”
His face falls. “Calder. Don’t do something stupid.”
“I’m not!”
Heads turn our way, and I stand, shoving my chair back as I do. “I’ll see you tonight.”
I’ve got to breathe. I can’t breathe in here.
I toss my money on the table, enough for both of us. I owe it to him, me being an ass. “I know what you’re trying to do. It won’t help. Nothing helps.”
The stadium’s empty when I pull up, but the football team will be out here before long to practice. I need to get my work done and get out, so I head straight for the uprights on the home side. I haven’t checked the visitor side at all. I’ll do that next.
I put a hand on the nearest upright, brushing the weld seam with my thumb.
No rust. Good.
I tunnel focus on a weld. I’ll be damned. A hairline fracture. Not catastrophic but not good.
I crouch, run my fingers along the base plate where the metal meets the concrete. The footing’s cracked—hairline, running diagonal. Not a break, but the kind of crack that says water’s been getting in for years.
I push against the upright, not hard, just enough to see if it gives.
It does, a fraction. Not wobbling—if it did, that would tell me they need to shut the place down. But there should be no give.
It’s tired. Metal gets that way. You can feel it in your hands if you’ve worked with it long enough.
Next, I check the bolts. Christ. Two of them are rusted to hell, threads eaten but still holding. One washer’s missing. Probably fell off years ago, and no one noticed.
I stand, wipe my hands on my jeans, and look up at the whole structure. It’s not going to fold today. But it’s not right either.
I wouldn’t trust it past this season.
I take out my phone and start snapping pictures—close-ups of the weld crack, the rust, the footing, the bolts. Evidence. Something the board can’t ignore.
I press my palm to the metal one more time. It’s warm from the sun, but underneath that warmth is fatigue. “You’re holding,” I mutter. “But you’re holding on borrowed time.”
And God help me, I know exactly what that feels like.
Next stop is Mercy’s. She’s a realtor. She’s got all kinds of equipment to enhance and print pictures.
I want to be able to give these to each board member so none of them can say, “I didn’t know.
” I’ll prove to them that Ladra’s Longhorn Stadium, that hosts football games and track meets for teams from all over this district, is on its last leg.
They’re going to have to pay the piper.
Walking into Bennett Realty, I don’t get my usual, “Hey, Calder.”
Instead, it’s, “What’d you need?”
“Can you help me print some pictures?”
She tweaks her mouth to one side. “What kind of pictures.”
“Sex pictures, what do you think.”
Her eyes flare.
“Pictures of the stadium uprights. For tonight. I want to give them to the school board.”
Mercy nods. “Sure. Anything I can do to help.” But her face, her eyes, her demeanor is cold.
“What’s the matter with you, Mercy?”
“You’re breaking her heart. Again.”
What the fuck?
“I didn’t break her heart in the first place. Remember?”
How’d this get turned around on me?
“She loves you, Calder, whether you can see it or not.”
“I know she loves me. She knows I love her. But—”
“But what.” She steps into me, her neck craned back, fire in her eyes. “But you’re afraid you might get hurt?” She sneers. “Get in line. Everybody who ever loved anybody takes a chance on getting hurt.”
My blood turns to ice. She doesn’t get it.
“I’ve already been there. Done that. You going to help me do this? Or do I drive to the Walmart in Marble Falls?”
Fuck it. I turn to leave.
“Wait, Calder. Come on. I’ll help. You are so fucking stubborn.”