Chapter 4 #3
I thought about law school and the last seven years.
I thought about the bar exam I knew in my bones I’d aced, and every exam and paper and project that had gotten me this far.
I’d worked my ass off to become Robert James Merritt, Esquire, and to leave Bobby Merritt behind in a trailer park in Buchanan County.
But maybe I liked Bobby Merritt. Maybe I even missed that guy a little.
I thought about Granger, who was the only guy who could call me Bobby without making it sound like an insult, and how I’d been dumb enough to think that had to mean something, because so much for that, right?
I went and found a rake and got to work. My shoulders loosened. My head stopped spinning. The ache behind my eyes dulled to something manageable.
Lucille followed me around the yard, pecking at whatever I uncovered.
“You having fun?”
She honked, except she was so little it came out more like a squeak.
By the time Jim got back, I’d mowed the lawn, raked the leaves, stacked the branches by the fence, and cleaned the mud off the porch steps. I was sitting on the top step with Lucille in my lap—she’d climbed up there herself, which was epic—drinking a glass of water.
Jim stepped out of the back door. “Kid?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you mow my lawn?”
“It needed it.”
He walked over and looked at the yard, then at me, then at Lucille. His face was hard to read. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
I set Lucille back down on the porch and stood up. Lucille honk-squeaked at me.
“You got somewhere to be?” Jim asked me.
Yeah. I was supposed to be in Richmond, in a shitty apartment I couldn’t even properly afford.
I was supposed to be working at Phar-Mor while I waited for my bar exam results and applying at law firms for jobs.
I was supposed to be striding forward into a future I’d spent half a lifetime building—the payoff for the years of work I’d done—except now I didn’t know if I even wanted it. “Not really.”
He shrugged and gave me a lazy smile. “Then I guess you’re staying for lunch.”
I guessed I was.
We ate sandwiches in the kitchen and he told me about the horse—it had a twisted gut, but Jim caught it in time, fixing it in some way he explained to me but I didn’t understand a half of. I told him about Lucille and he laughed.
“So what do you do?” he asked.
I stared at my sandwich. “I’m supposed to be a lawyer.”
“Supposed to be?”
“I just sat the bar exam. Nailed it too, I reckon.” I stopped. Cleared my throat. “Anyway. That’s the plan.”
Jim chewed thoughtfully. “Is that what you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded. “That’s okay.”
We sat in silence for a while. Lucille peeped urgently by my feet. Then, because I liked Jim and because I was still hungover, and probably because I didn’t care enough about my own safety to not say it, I said, “He broke up with me.”
Jim didn’t ask who. He just said, “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
I helped Jim with a few more things that afternoon.
I fixed a loose board on the fence and replaced a washer in the kitchen sink.
I liked the work. I’d always liked using my hands, but maybe what I liked the most was the satisfaction of fixing something that was broken.
Fences and sinks were a hell of a lot easier to handle than everything else in my life.
Than Granger, and everything I loved and hated about him at the same time, and the sheer goddamn unfairness of the fact that here I was tied up in knots about how I felt about him and he didn’t give a single shit about me.
Okay, so maybe I was leaning more toward anger, and it felt pretty okay.
By the time I’d done with the faucet washer, it was getting toward suppertime, and Jim didn’t bother to ask, just dished up two plates. “You staying the night, kid?” he asked once we’d eaten.
“If that’s okay,” I said.
“Sure. I might have a couple other jobs for you tomorrow, if you like. How are you with a paintbrush?”
“Passable for fences, terrible for portraits.”
Jim laughed and I found myself smiling. I liked the idea of hanging around and helping out while I got my head on straight.
I slept in Jim’s spare room and spent the morning of the next day painting his porch railings with Lucille trailing behind me, peeping her opinions at everything and pecking at my ankles if I ignored her. She’d attached herself to me, no question, and I wondered again what would happen to her.
The whole time I was painting there was a steady stream of people coming and going from the vet clinic, with cats in cages and dogs on leashes, and once there was even a man with a rabbit, and they all nodded hello or stopped to say hi.
It reminded me of the things I missed about living in a small town.
I thought again about what was waiting for me in Richmond.
When I got a job in law—and I would, no question—I’d doubtless spend my days running into Nate Bynow-Madsen and his ilk and their smart-ass comments and sideways glances that made it clear they didn’t think I belonged.
And then there was Granger. I’d been dumb enough to think that maybe we’d work together and keep doing what we’d been doing. But I’d been so wrong, and now every time I saw him and he ignored me, that knife in my gut would twist fresh.
But I really didn’t have any other options.
The next morning after breakfast I spent some time wandering around town.
Goose Run might have been a nice town once, but now it had an air of neglect that matched my mood.
The main street was filled with cute little buildings, but most of them were empty.
Faded FOR LEASE signs were propped up in dirt-streaked front windows, and rusted beer cans rattled back and forth in the breeze.
Straggly weeds poked up through cracks in the sidewalk, hanging stubbornly onto life.
Kind of like the town—and me, I guessed.
I made my way down to the park at the end of Main Street and sat there for a while, watching the three ducks that lived in the pond there.
It looked as though it had been a nice space once, but now the paint on the railings of the rickety gazebo was faded and peeling, and the grass was half-dead from the summer heat.
It made me sad to think of all the wasted potential.
Sometime in the past, someone had built this town from the ground up, and now it had been forgotten.
Or maybe that was just my shitty mood bleeding through, and it really wasn’t that deep. Maybe once I was back in Richmond, I’d get my sense of perspective back. Along with some of my pride too, hopefully.
That night over dinner Jim said, “Listen, kid, I gotta go to Richmond in the morning. You’re welcome to stay here for a while longer if you want, but if you need a ride home, I can take you.”
It was time to get back to reality, even if it sucked. Short of some kind of miracle, what else was I gonna do?
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Thanks, Jim.”
I didn’t sleep that night. My guts were in knots, thinking of going back to Richmond.
Of running into Granger somewhere—our social circles weren’t the same, but our professional ones would be—and having to smile and shake his hand like seeing him meant nothing.
Like whatever we’d had, whatever he wanted to call it or didn’t, really had been nothing.
In the morning, the rings around my eyes so dark I’d give a panda a run for their money, I climbed into Jim’s truck and we headed out of Goose Run.
“You’ll have to come back and visit Lucille, of course,” Jim said, eyes crinkling when he smiled. “Not sure she even likes me.”
“She likes you just fine.”
“Bobby, she bit me when I tried to feed her.”
“I think that’s just geese.”
“Is it?” he asked.
“Hell if I know! Aren’t you supposed to be the expert?”
We stopped for gas at Goose Run Gas, and Jim filled up the tank while I went inside the store to buy a soda.
I stopped at the rack of ugly shirts I’d seen the first time I was here.
They were still fantastically awful, and it occurred to me that Granger wasn’t here now to tell me what I should and shouldn’t wear, or do, or say, or be.
In fact, there was nothing stopping me from being who the hell I wanted. Maybe there had only ever been my own expectations and insecurities in the first place. And I might hate Granger for not having the guts to admit who he was, but was I really any better?
Maybe it was time to step up and be Bobby.
I grabbed the shirt and my soda and took them to the counter.
The cashier looked at the shirt doubtfully before ringing up my purchases, and I pulled out my wallet to pay.
When I opened it, tucked away behind my last twenty was the lottery ticket he’d given me last time I was here.
I handed it over along with the cash and said, “Wanna check that for me?”
He gave a bored shrug and held the barcode under the scanner.
The machine beeped.
The guy blinked and checked the ticket again.
“Did I win somethin’?” I asked.
The guy nodded, his eyes wide.
Well, at least one good thing had come from this shitty week. “Is it enough to cover Jim’s gas?” I asked, nodding toward the pump where Jim was still fueling up.
The guy lifted his head from where he was staring at the screen, and his face split in a wide grin. “Fella, you’ve won enough to buy this whole gas station.”
“What?” Blood pounded in my ears, and I was sure I must have heard him wrong. “Say that again.”
He held out the ticket, his grin widening. “You won big. Hell, it’s probably enough that you could buy the whole damn town if you wanted.”
I blinked and then, when that didn’t clear anything up, I blinked again.
What?