Chapter Nine
“Damn it, Carl, if you had just left well enough alone, this wouldn’t have happened,” Jaxson said, looking up at the leaking pipe.
Everything had been working. There was no leaky pipe.
No bad circuiting. It was good work, and now Carl had to go and play with the main water pipe underneath the sink, and not only had to work it loose, but destroyed several parts that made up the structure.
He had to stop the leak, otherwise the old man wasn’t going to be able to wash dishes until he got a new part for it.
“You kids don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything made in this day and age is too flimsy. It has been made to break.”
Jaxson gritted his teeth. “No, it has been made to be fixed, and durable. You need to stop messing with my work, Carl. I mean it.”
“And you need to stop messing around with those two girls.”
This made Jaxson freeze. There had been a lot of accusations thrown his way over the years. Carl usually was the kind of man to praise him for getting out there and having a lot of fun.
Jaxson lifted his head from under the sink. The tap was still dripping, but he was not going to let that slide. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Tillie and Kate. The whole town is talking about how you’re playing those two girls. Some even believe Kate and Tillie enjoy being with you as a threesome.” Carl shook his head. “Both of them are good girls.”
Jaxson pressed fingers to his head. “What the fuck?” He lifted up from the sink, because he must have been inhaling some kind of toxic chemical. “Please tell me I didn’t just hear that right, and you’re talking about some goddamn lie?”
Carl’s eyes went wide. “I’m only talking about what the whole town is talking about.”
“Oh, right, and now, because the whole town said so, that means what? They know everything? Please, the town doesn’t know jack shit if it came up and slapped them on the behind. Fuck me, I can’t believe this.”
“So, you’re not sleeping with Tillie and Kate at the same time?” Carl asked.
Jaxson ran a hand down his face. “Fuck, no. Where do you hear all this shit?”
“People talk.”
This just blew his mind. “Well, people need to learn to keep to their own business rather than getting up in mine, because that is seriously going to start pissing me the fuck off.” He was not in the mood to be listening to that kind of bullshit.
Just thinking about that kind of nonsense getting back to Tillie or Kate pissed him off.
He was not fucking Kate, but she was a sweet girl who didn’t need that kind of gossip, nor did Tillie, for that matter.
“Is that why you messed with your fucking plumbing? To get me up here so you could give me a serious talking-to?” he asked.
From the look on his face, that was exactly why.
“For fuck’s sake, Carl, you don’t need to go messing around in your house like this.”
“You won’t come any other time,” Carl said.
This made Jaxson stop. Carl was not his father. He had his own parents, but one look at Carl, and he didn’t know why, but it seriously bothered him to think of the man being alone. In fact, he hated it.
He sighed. “You know what?” Jaxson pulled himself back up and grabbed one of his business cards, writing down the number for his personal cell phone.
“If your hands are getting itchy or some shit, before you decide to start touching my handiwork, I want you to call me. You want to talk, or for me to come and visit, or just have a beer, call me, and I will come.”
Carl took the card from him, and Jaxson couldn’t believe he had done it.
“Thank you.”
“I should warn you, I’m not exactly a social butterfly,” Jaxson said. “You might regret this.”
“I appreciate this, Jaxson. Thank you. Your dad raised you right.”
“Are you saying you didn’t raise your son right?” Jaxson asked jokingly.
“I raised a son who cares about business. I didn’t show him how to spend time with family, and now I’m paying the price,” he said.
Jaxson saw the sadness and regret.
“It’s good to be hardworking. Especially in this day and age. First of all, everything costs a fucking arm and a leg. Secondly, it keeps everyone out of trouble, always working.”
“There’s always time to rest, Jaxson. Trust me, you can work and make millions, but we all know the Grim Reaper’s not going to give a fuck what you take to your grave. You can’t take anything with you.”
Jaxson couldn’t argue with that. His own father had always had a balance, understanding he could do more, but he only ever earned enough to make a good living, to be able to spend time with his family.
Jaxson, over the past few years, did nothing but work.
Even on Sundays, he worked. It was something he and his father disagreed on.
“No amount of working could save my girl,” Carl said.
Carl’s wife had died a few years ago from breast cancer. Jaxson was aware that Carl had spent a lot of money trying to find a cure, or to keep his wife alive a lot longer. Jaxson reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, trying to offer him some comfort.
“Let’s just say I’m not regretting the money spent, Jaxson.
I’m regretting all that time I stayed behind and didn’t come home for dinner,” Carl said.
“I even worked it out, the extra hours equated to two years spread out across a lifetime. Two years where I chose work over my woman, and she was gone before me. That is what I regret now. If you get the chance, don’t take another appointment.
Go home, be with your woman. Hold her. Because you never know how long you’re going to get with her. ”
Jaxson felt a lump in his throat. Carl was always a nasty piece of work, but now he saw the truth. Carl, even after all these years, was grieving his wife. He missed her.
He sighed, then got back under the sink. This was going to have to be a temporary repair. He stopped the water from leaking, which would buy him some time to get the parts he needed.
Once he was done, he cleaned up the mess, and as he looked at the fridge, he couldn’t help but notice the picture on the front.
It was of Carl’s wife and his son, and Carl was not in the picture.
Jaxson already figured that Carl was either working or behind the camera.
He was more inclined to believe he was working based on their conversation.
Writing up the receipt, he handed it to Carl, told him to keep his hands to himself, and left. He did so, knowing a little more about Carl.
Getting into his truck, he made his way toward Cruz Moore’s ranch, and he drove down the long driveway which seemed to have more holes in it than last time.
He’d gotten the call from Cruz that it was an emergency and he was needed at the ranch when he’d been arriving at Carl’s.
Cruz was not a nice guy, at forty years old, the man was one of the worst-tempered men Jaxson had ever seen.
That made Cruz a serious problem. He was not the easiest man to get along with.
The moment he pulled into the large parking space, where there were already plenty of cars from his ranchers, Cruz was there, stepping out of his home.
“What took you so fucking long?” Cruz asked.
Jaxson knew it was going to be a long morning once he got the call before dealing with Carl. Cruz didn’t like calling anyone for help, least of all him.
“You’re not my only customer.”
“When I call, I expect to be jumped to the top of the fucking queue. I pay you enough.”
“You pay me exactly the same as everyone else. You’re not special, so don’t even try that game. Unless it’s a health hazard, I will get to you, but there is no jumping the line. Is it a health hazard?”
Cruz looked like he wanted to kill him. It wasn’t the first time they had this disagreement. He didn’t like Cruz, and Cruz didn’t like him. He was more than okay with that.
“It’s in the kitchen,” Cruz said.
Jaxson grabbed his box of tools and followed Cruz into the kitchen. That was where he saw Kate’s mom standing, with an apron, looking white as a sheet.
“Fix it,” Cruz said.
He stepped inside the kitchen, and the smell of electrical wiring and burning were easy to detect. He hated the smell, and he looked past Kate’s mom and toward the wall, to see the problem.
“I need to turn off your electricity to the kitchen,” he said.
“Do what you must, just get it fucking done,” Cruz said, and stormed out of the house.
“Don’t mind him, he’s just been a little out of sorts lately,” Kate’s mom said.
“Yeah, because he’s usually a bucket of fun.”
Jaxson had told him about the old electric wiring, that it needed to be updated years ago, but Cruz told him to fuck off, and he wasn’t going to spend money that didn’t need to be spent. From the looks of it, that time had finally come.
He had no intention of overcharging Cruz. In fact, he didn’t overcharge anyone, not even Carl, for tampering with his work. He charged everyone a fair price, mainly so people wouldn’t start to look elsewhere.
Even though at times some of the jobs pissed him off, that didn’t mean he didn’t want to do them.
He just didn’t want the town to know he actually enjoyed being an electrician and a plumber.
There was nothing like leaving a town you thought you hated, to live someplace you hated more, and realized how much you actually loved your small town.
Especially when that small town had one special reason to stay.
****
Tillie tried her sauce, and it had the right amount of garlic and onion. It wasn’t too tangy from the tomatoes, nor too rich from the cream. She sprinkled in the chopped basil and gave the sauce one final stir.
She didn’t read the recipe right, so instead of having a couple of chicken breasts dredged in flour, she diced up the chicken and followed the recipe with those few tweaks.
The pasta water was ready, and she hadn’t salted it yet. She was going to wait until Jaxson came home, and then she would make the final preparations. Overcooked pasta was okay, but she knew it wasn’t perfect, and she wanted this meal to be great.