Fifty-Six
I SPEND MOST of the afternoon in the fields with Charlie and Les, watching Charlie look for reasons to go find holes to dig and brush to clear so he can operate my new Bobcat like it’s his new toy.
I finally leave him out there and walk back to the main house and punish myself with another ballbuster of a workout, continuing to dial things up for myself on a daily basis.
When I’m finished, after more than an hour in there, I shower and change and go downstairs and sit with EJ on the front porch in wicker chairs that I think might be older than the house itself.
The sun sets in the distance as she drinks the old-fashioned she occasionally fixes for herself at the end of the day, and I’m working on an ice-cold Boone Creek Blonde, one of my favorites from the Appalachian Mountain Brewery.
It’s my favorite time of the day as much as it is my grandmother’s, because of the spectacular way the sun can sometimes look on the other side of the property, but even more because of the company.
It is as if the world just looks right from this vantage point.
From this place. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can see my father’s truck coming up the drive, just with him behind the wheel instead of me, country music blasting out of the open windows and all the way to the sunset.
“We haven’t had a chance for you to tell me about your meeting with Briar,” she says.
I turn to look at her, in her mint-colored sweater and her faded jeans, little legs folded underneath her in a chair that looks as if it might swallow her right up if she’s not careful.
The old-fashioned, I see, is a nice, rich, dark color today, which means she’s given herself an even more generous pour of Blanton’s, her favorite bourbon, than usual.
“He offered me a job,” I tell her.
She turns to me as if she couldn’t possibly have heard right.
“I’m sorry, hon,” she says. “I think something must have gone a little haywire with my hearing aids because I thought I heard you say that Briar Crockett had offered my grandson a job.”
“You don’t use hearing aids,” I say.
“Well, if I did,” she says, and sips more bourbon.
I take her through most of my conversation with Briar then, all the way until the end, his remark about Burt and Taylor’s dinner party.
“He’s afraid of you,” EJ says when I’ve finished.
“He doesn’t act as if he’s afraid of anything,” I say. “Or anybody.”
“He was afraid of your daddy, I’ll tell you that right now,” she says. “And now he’s afraid of you.”
“He came to listen to my speech,” I say. “I saw him.”
“And he heard you, loud and clear,” she says. “He always thinks he’s the smartest one in the room, and I mean any room, but now the dumb bastard thinks he can buy off a Tucker.”
She gives a quick shake to her head.
“You know what I think?” EJ says. “I think he knew he was wasting his time with that offer, and the point of the breakfast was to let you know that he had eyes on you and me and everybody else. Like he’s the one who’s got us under surveillance.”
We sit in silence now. I’m more fixed than ever on the sun, a truly brilliant combination of red and orange today, still floating above the horizon like a balloon. I toast it with my beer.
Neither of us speaks for a long time, comfortable with this silence and with each other. It occurs to me all over again how comfortable my father was with silences like this, as if his thoughts were enough.
“I hate that man,” EJ says finally. “I hate him and his sons and don’t give a damn about this second chance to be a better person that he thinks he has because he’s got girls now. It won’t make him a better person because nothing ever will.”
“They’re bad people,” I say. “Him and Roof and Lynyrd.”
“Worse than you think,” she says.
She gets her legs out from underneath her, like it’s one of her yoga moves, then carefully reaches down and places her highball glass on the ground. She stands up, her back to me, those little-girl hands stuck in the back pockets of her jeans, and stares out again at the end of the day.
“I’ve never told you this,” she says, “because I knew I couldn’t prove it, and because I was afraid of what you might do if I ever did tell you, especially after you grew up to be the big man you are, in all ways.
Or maybe, and more likely, I’ve always been afraid of what might happen to both of us if I ever said it out loud. ”
She turns back around to face me.
“But I believe it was Roof Crockett who shot your father,” my grandmother says.