Grace 20 #2
“Marcus. The one who did two years up in Wisconsin?”
“Yeah.”
“He told Cody that the reason he went in wasn't actually the thing they said it was. That he saw something he wasn't supposed to see and someone made a call and that was that.” A beat. “He said it was a Beaumont call.”
The chickpeas were very interesting.
“Marcus Treme is full of shit,” Jessie said, but she said it quietly.
“Maybe.” Brie opened her bottle. “You remember Danny Arceneaux? Billy's cousin?”
“He moved.”
“That's one word for it.” Brie's voice dropped further. “Cody said he and Judah had some kind of—”
“That's enough of that.”
Thibodaux Senior's voice came over the shelf.
The girls went quiet so fast it was almost funny.
I set down the chickpeas and picked up my basket.
“Yes sir,” Brie said, small-voiced.
Nothing else.
I came around the end of the aisle and set my items on the counter without hurrying. Jessie clocked me the second I came into view — that fast girl-math, the quick calculation. New face. Adult. How much did she hear.
I gave her my most pleasant, most useless smile.
I heard enough.
She looked like she wanted to evaporate.
“Find everything?” Thibodaux Senior asked, already running items through.
“Everything I needed,” I said.
Behind me I heard Brie breathe something and Jessie hiss back and I didn't turn around. Paid. Took the bag. Walked out into the heat.
Danny Arceneaux. Billy's cousin.
Cody said he and Judah had some kind of—
And Thibodaux Senior, who had not looked up from his newspaper for the entire twenty minutes I'd been in that store, had cut it off.
That was something worth a ponder.
I walked back toward the church with the bag on my arm and the heat pressing down and that half-sentence sitting in my chest like a swallowed thing.
The sensible thing, I told myself, is to leave it alone.
I was very sensible.
I was going to be so sensible about this.
The bar, Randy’s Saloon, Darlene had mentioned in passing.
“There's a bar on Decatur if you ever need to decompress,” she said, without looking up from the volunteer schedule. “Nothing fancy. Dice runs it. Good girl. Doesn’t bite if you don’t cause trouble.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that I almost missed it. Darlene, who had a Bible verse on her desk and organized the church's food bank like a military operation, casually recommending the local bar. I filed it away and didn't ask questions.
By Friday I was desperate enough to go.
Randy’s Saloon was exactly what the name promised. Narrow front, dark inside, a neon Budweiser sign in the window doing its best. A dead honest thing if you asked anyone. I was a sucker for honest things.
I pushed open the door.
The smell hit first — stale beer, something fried, some cigarette smoke from years past — and a dozen different colognes and perfumes mingling. Three men were sitting at the far end of the bar, none of them looked up. A jukebox in the corner played something old and rock.
Ceiling fan. Sticky floor.
Behind the bar was the most aggressively red hair I'd ever seen on a human being. She was maybe five-two, probably less, with sleeve tattoos that went all the way down to her knuckles and a crop top that said Only Fans in block letters across the chest and had a picture of — you guessed it — fans. She was making a drink in a beat-up shaker so effortlessly she might’ve been born into the job, I thought.
She looked up when I came in.
“You're the church girl,” she said, voice husky. Either a bad cold or a long cigarette habit.
“News travels fast, I see.”
“Babe, this town's got a population of fuck-all and no Netflix.” She set a glass down and leaned on the bar. Sharp green eyes, eyeliner smudged, a small hoop through her septum. She couldn’t have been older than thirty. “What're you drinking?”
“What've you got?”
“Everything… that doesn’t require a blender.”
“How about…” I scanned the blackboard menu with the smudged names written in colorful chalk. “Whiskey. Whatever doesn’t come in a green bottle.”
She reached for a bottle without looking, poured two fingers, slid it across. “What do you have against green?”
“Don’t like the color.”
“Green?” Dice cocked an eyebrow.
“Yeah.”
“Huh. Okay. I’m Dice,” she said.
“Mercy.”
Dice frowned, shifting her eyes from the glass to me and back. “Babe, I gave you the good stuff.”
“No, I — my name’s Mercy.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Your daddy must’ve loved God more than he did you.”
You have no idea, I thought, but didn’t say it out loud. “So. This a cool place,” I said, gesturing around.
“It’s a shithole,” Dice said, leaning in, arms on the counter. “So, tell me. How's the Lord's work?”
“Five days in. Ask me again in a month.” I took a big mouthful. The drink burned — that first sip didn’t want to go down. Stubborn.
“Oh, trust me. I will.” She grinned and drank. “So, did our Darlene send you?”
“She mentioned the place,” I agreed.
“She does that.” Dice refilled my glass before I'd asked. “Every new hire. Figures if she sends them to me first, they won't find somewhere worse on their own.”
“Does it work?”
“Mostly.” She shrugged one shoulder. “The ones who can't hang with me definitely can't hang with St. Frankenville.”
“Frankenville?” I laughed.
“You’ll see.”
The three men at the end of the bar laughed at something between themselves; Dice didn't look at them, just called out “Last round, boys, I'm not babysitting past eleven” without breaking eye contact with me.
One of them said something under his breath.
“I heard that, John, and your wife's gonna hear it too if you don't shut the fuck up.”
John shut the fuck up.
I liked her immediately.
We were halfway through our second drink when the door opened and two guys came looking like someones who'd already had a head start somewhere else.
Late twenties, maybe thirty. One tall, one not, both oddly complemental with Randy’s decor.
The tall one had a Cardinals cap on backwards and a laugh that arrived before he did.
The other one — stocky, a sleeve tattoo on his right arm, a name I'd later learn was Cole — spotted Dice and spread his arms wide.
“There she is,” Cole announced. “The love of my life.”
“You owe me forty bucks,” Dice said, already pulling two beers.
“That's not a no.”
“It's absolutely a no. It's a no and a debt.” She set the bottles down. “You're late. I almost closed.”
“Time is relative to the observer, Dice,” Cole dropped onto a stool, the tall one beside him. They both nodded at me — clocking the new face.
“This is Mercy,” Dice said. “She works up at Grace Eternal.”
Cole looked at me. Then at Dice. Then back at me. “You work for Beaumont?”
“Apparently.”
He made a sound — short. Picked up his beer. “Good luck with that.”
“Cole,” Dice said.
“What? I'm just saying.”
“Don't just say.”
The tall one — his name turned out to be Reed, and was with one foot into the moderately hammered land — leaned on the bar and looked at the bottles on the shelf — a personal grudge of the sorts, by the looks.
“Nah, it's fine,” he said. “It's a fine place to work. It's a fine town. Everything's fine.”
He said fine the way people did when they meant the opposite but had limited vocabulary to explain it further. And I’m not talking about actual vocabulary.
“You from here?” I asked.
“Born and raised,” Reed said. “Cole too. Grew up two streets over from Judah, actually. Back when he was just—” He stopped. Tipped his beer back. “Back when things were different.”
“Different how?”
Cole shot Reed a look.
Reed shrugged it off. “Just different. He was a regular person. Ran with us. Billy Arceneaux, Danny, the whole group.” He peeled at the label on his bottle.
“Then his old man died and he found Jesus or Jesus found him or whatever the story is, and now he's—” He gestured vaguely at the ceiling, at the town, at everything. “You know.”
“I don't, actually,” I said. “I just got here.”
“Lucky you,” Cole muttered into his beer.
Dice was wiping down the bar, determined this was not her fight.
“You mentioned Danny,” I said, keeping my voice even. “Danny Arceneaux?”
Reed's label-peeling slowed.
Cole put his bottle down.
The shift was small. If I hadn't been watching for it, I might've missed it. But I'd spent my whole life in rooms where certain names changed the air, and I knew what that felt like.
“Where'd you hear about Danny?” Cole asked. I noticed the way Dice’s face changed at the mention of his name. The two had a past, I realized. “I mean, before just now?”
“Around.” I shrugged. “Someone mentioned him in Thibodaux's today. Then someone else shut it down.”
Reed and Cole looked at each other. A whole conversation conducted in under a second.
“Danny moved,” Reed said finally.
“Shreveport,” Cole added.
“Right,” I said.
Neither of them said anything else. Dice had stopped wiping the bar. She was looking at the shelf of bottles with her jaw set, and I thought about what everyone was telling me — Danny moved. Danny's in Shreveport. Danny's fine. But that wasn’t actually what these people were saying.
“He and Judah were close?” I asked.
Cole laughed. Short, no humor in it. “Everyone was close with Judah before.” He picked his beer back up. “That's kind of the thing about him. He's real good at making you feel like you're the most important person in the room.” He drank. “Right up until you're not.”
“Cole.” Dice's voice was quiet. Final.
He held up a hand. “I'm done. I'm done.” He looked at me, not unkindly. “I'm sure it's a great job. Darlene's good people. The food bank does real good work.” He nodded like he was convincing himself. “It's fine.”
Fine again. That word.
Reed finished his beer and set it down and stared at it for a moment.
“Just—” He stopped. Started again. “He's not a bad man,” he said slowly, like he'd thought about it enough times.
“I don't think he's a bad man. I just think he decided a long time ago what he was and what he needed and everything else—” He shrugged. “Everything else is secondary.”
Nobody said anything after that.
The jukebox filled the silence with something slow and sad.
Dice refilled my glass again. Caught my eye when she set it down and held it for a second — that sharp green gaze doing something complicated — and then looked away.
I didn't ask anything else. Fifteen minutes later, I walked back to the apartment at midnight with the heat still sitting on everything and Reed's voice turning over in my head.
He decided a long time ago what he was.
I thought about Sunday. The pulpit. The way the room had held its breath. The way he'd said my name in the small office.
I thought about Danny Arceneaux, who moved to Shreveport, who was fine, who everyone had decided was fine.
I wondered whether I would be fine too.