Chapter 23 #2
Inwardly, I cringe. Redundancies kill me. Make my ears bleed. Don’t know why. My own personal quirk, I suppose.
“It’s not a big deal.” Hopefully.
“I wouldn’t think so, but you’re sure as…you know, blazes, acting like it is.”
“I am not. I just don’t go around announcing things like that to every soul I meet.”
“I know you don’t, because you’re not a pompous…son of a gun. But come on, man, at some point, stuff like that’s just part of the get-to-know-you process.”
Don’t know who gave Cliff the right to trample into my personal life. I mean, knowing me since kindergarten only goes so far.
My dirty scalp itches, and I reach up to scratch. “Look, I never intended to hide anything, and by the time I realized there was an omission I needed to rectify, it felt like a big deal. But I’ve tried, trust me, and every time I open my mouth, we get interrupted.”
He pats his hand over the pocket of his work shirt and makes a phony baloney coughing sound. “Lots of interruptions in that motel room, I imagine.”
Gripping the armrests, I glare. “Help yourself to the sludge in the break area next time, Roberts.”
He laughs, shamelessly unrepentant, and sips the rich Italian roast he doesn’t deserve.
I’ve said all I’m going to say about Saturday night, that’s for sure, but Cliff does in fact receive a special dispensation when it comes to irritating me. “Man, Sunday morning I started to tell her, and out walks her mom waving us to come inside for breakfast.”
“Did you stay and eat?”
I pick up the closest pen and tap it. “You know I’m not the guy to pass up a homecooked meal.”
“For freaking crying out loud, Knox, you don’t think that might have been a good time to work some info into the conversation?”
“I didn’t want to drop it on her in front of her mother.”
“It ain’t a bomb, Herd. Might even help your cause with the parentals.”
I stare up at the high window that’s not good for much, except in the summer months when I stuff an AC unit through it.
“Ohhh.”
I snap around. “Oh what?”
“That’s the problem, part two, isn’t it?”
Lunch debris litters the space in front of me. I pick up the wadded wax paper from the sandwich and transform it from a loose wad to a tight ball.
“This is about that bimbo in college. I get it now.”
Bimbo is a bit too—no. Not too strong. I’m embarrassed I ever fell for Isabella even a little.
What can I say? I was young, and she was model-perfect with a mesmerizing smile.
The way her hair flowed down her back when she tilted her head in laughter?
Well, I succumbed to her spell as much as any guy on campus.
The feeling was not mutual. Three times freshman year I asked her out, and I’ll never forgive my stupidity for it. One rejection should have been sufficient.
Three strikes and out is a good rule, generous even. But me? Idiot me rolled over like a lovesick puppy when, during sophomore year, she asked me for a date.
A month later I learned the reason for her miraculous change of heart.
Unnoticed in a stall, my buddy’s girlfriend overheard Isabella talking while she primped in a restaurant bathroom.
“His daddy owns some big company and his own jet. Can you believe that? Oh my gosh, if I’d known when Knox asked me out the first time… ”
I may be dumb, but I’m only occasionally a moron. I shook free of that woman’s claws but fast. I knew then and there I’d take vows and join the clergy before I ever settled for a life with a woman who wanted me for anything other than me.
Funny, though. The joke would have been on her.
Rand may be partial to flash, but in general, the Herds are the most down to earth people in the Midwest. The jet was a ten-year-old model Dad purchased so he could be home more for us kids, most especially for my football games because he was the ultimate sports dad, in all the best ways.
It wasn’t a vanity purchase. That isn’t the Herd way.
The darned thing is expensive to operate, though it does get dusted off increasingly lately as the business expands and Rand is partial to it.
But no one is jetting off to Maui or the Greek Isles on fly-by-night whims.
Truth is, LHS—Lawrence Herd and Sons Construction—gained its name once both Rand and I graduated college and joined the company.
Yes, Dad was generous in how he cut both of us into ownership positions, but to be clear, he built the company.
Not me, not Rand, although Rand has the fire in his belly that will keep LHS in growth mode for the foreseeable future.
Dad has taken a step back. Mom and Dad aren’t old, but they’re beginning to think in terms of enjoying life.
Most of my upbringing was pretty middle class.
Comfortable middle with some perks like great family vacations.
LHS hadn’t hit the bigtime yet. The thing with Isabella caught me off guard because I’d never seen myself or my family that way before.
It wasn’t until I was a junior in high school and the company landed the contract for a ten-acre business complex that LHS turned the corner into becoming a major player in commercial construction in the state of Missouri.
Today, we’ve worked in more than a dozen states, mostly in the Midwest and South.
Rand relished the doors our family’s growing wealth opened.
Me, I determined there’d be no second round for that kind of nonsense when it came to women.
With Becca, the money didn’t seem to be a factor.
We were introduced by friends at church, and sparks flew.
We had already dated a couple weeks before I mentioned my ownership stake with the company.
Now, I wonder at her motives all along. Maybe she knew from the start and finagled the introduction.
And maybe I was her foot in the door with Rand.
Looking back, there were signs things weren’t right. She gravitated toward luxury and…flash. Yes, definitely Rand’s ballpark, hard as it is to acknowledge.
Honestly, I’m worried for my brother and what he’s getting himself into.
As for me, I’ve been a knucklehead too many times. I won’t fall into the flash-over-substance trap again. With Everly, I have no fear that I have.
Liar. That’s the real reason you haven’t told her.
Okay…maybe.
What if I choose her because she’s the most amazing woman I’ve ever met…and find out later the reciprocal isn’t the reason she chose me?
I snort, pick up the balled wrapper, and launch it for a three-pointer toward the trash can I set in place across the room for this precise purpose. It bounces off the rim. I track its ricochet while Cliff’s knowing look stays stuck on me like high-grade adhesive.
He groans. “That’s what I was afraid of.” He palms the hard hat hanging on his knee.
Talk about grime under the fingernails.
“Come on, man. If you can’t tell the difference between either of those good-for-nothing women and cute little Miss Everly, then I don’t know whether to start praying or go ahead and start heaping dirt on you.”
I scowl. “First, you don’t pray. Second, we got bulldozers and backhoes aplenty out there, dude. You start being nasty like this and I won’t have any trouble throwing dirt on your cold soul.”
His older eyes bug just before he throws his head back and guffaws like he’s on a night out at a comedy club.
Glaring, I tap my pen. “Speaking of ladies, looks like Marlene has worked her magic on you.” I swear Cliff went without smiling for a full year, maybe even two, after Cheryl died. And laughter? Forget about it.
His slow wink is loaded with suggestion. “Magic is the right word. You should give it a try sometime, kid.”
Shoot. Don’t need inuendo to raise my temperature when thinking about Everly. My belief system, particularly my moral compass where women are concerned, is something Cliff accepts but doesn’t comprehend. In moments of doubt, I too wonder sometimes why I put myself through the suffering I do.
“Then again, you been holding out this long. Guess you might as well wait ’til the ring’s on her finger. Marlene says Everly’s the type to go for that kind of thing.”
On the subject of Everly, he’s telling me what I already know. Knew it within minutes of meeting her. Okay, maybe a day or two, since our introduction was about not paying bills and losers like Mike. As for prayer…
I do my best to look deeper than Cliff’s words and the expression on his face, an expression that’s shifted and not entirely familiar despite the many years of our acquaintance.
Both the years he’d tell me dumb knock-knock jokes when I visited jobsites as a kid and the years I learned at his side how to do my job.
“You’re off on the praying part, by the way.” He drums his fingers on his jeans.
“Do tell.” The chair squawks as I rock back and cross my booted ankle onto my knee. He looks uncomfortable, but him being on the hotseat is preferable to me burning my backside on it.
Not very altruistic of me, I guess. Especially not when Cliff is scratching around the edges of faith. I’ve prayed for him for years. “What’s up, man?”
It’s his turn to stare blankly at the good for nothing window. He shrugs. “Been a rough couple a years, you know?”
I do. Cheryl was his person. With a faith foundation thrown in, theirs was the kind of marriage I aspire to.
“With her gone, things got pretty dark for a while. Didn’t really want to keep going.”
I sensed that for a time and prayed all the harder. “But you didn’t do anything about it…”
He slowly shakes his head. “I was ready to check out one night, but instead…” he tugs his gaze from the window and looks at me, “I prayed.”
The desk chair creaks with my forward motion. I clasp my hands on the desk. “You’ve never mentioned this.”
Cliff snorts. “Wasn’t any of your business.”
I chuckle. True enough.
He strokes his hand over the silvery strands of his beard. “I mentioned kind of offhand to Marlene I’d thought about trying a church some, and you know what that crazy woman said?”
“What’s that?”
“‘Let’s go’. Said she’d been thinking the same thing for a while. The lady’s been done wrong by more than one loser.”
Cliff is my second dad. Nothing would make my soul happier than to see him find Jesus—and what better time than the Christmas season?
“That’s…awesome, man. Can’t tell you how happy this makes me. Look, if you ever want to talk about anything, you know, or advice on finding a church or—”
He waves me off with a single flip of his palm. “Hold your tractors there, kid. I’ll let you know when I need your advice—and I’ll tell you right now, that’s going to be the far side of never.”
I laugh. This is the Cliff I know and love like a father—or like my own crusty uncle. “Got it. Lips are sealed.”
He grunts, his grumbly response so familiar, but he cuts it short and laser focuses on me.
“Now. On the subject of sealed lips, don’t clam up with this woman, Herd.
I mean it. You’re being an idiot, and it’s going to come back and bite you.
Listen to this old guy: I know a fraud when I meet one, and I knew all I needed to ’bout both that college girl and Becca within five minutes. Everly isn’t like them.”
I scowl. “Had ’em pegged, did you? Nice of you to have shared that info.”
He stands and mashes the white hard hat over his warped hair. “Shoot, kid. Don’t pretend you’d’ve listened.”