Chapter 2 #3
“Once, a different guy was working.” Then he went on to describe Max very accurately, from his height (six-one) to his sallow skin (yes, he was a smoker who needed to get more sleep). “He also looks like you so I figured him as your brother, although he doesn’t work the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re always moving, always doing something. I saw him leave three times while I was eating and once, he sat down at a table to check his phone.”
“That’s my brother,” I agreed. “My older brother, Max. I have an older sister, too. Do you have siblings?”
He did, including an older sister who was still in Arkansas. “She lives next door to my parents. And you live with yours?”
“Did I say that?”
“No, but when I suggested that I could pick you up, you told me that it would be easier to get away if you drove. It made me think that someone would be making you stay. Maybe they’d be wanting you to work.”
“It’s a family business,” I said, quoting my mom. “My brother is going in today and sister is supposed to work sometimes, too.”
“She doesn’t do her share?” Shane suggested.
“Why do you think so?” I glanced over again and saw him shrug.
“You sounded annoyed just then.”
“I am annoyed at both of them,” I admitted. “My brother is usually off doing God-knows-what, and my sister is just…I don’t know what she’s doing. Somebody has to help my parents.”
“They could hire someone.”
“No, it’s a family business,” I told him again, emphasizing the word “family” just like my mom always did.
“My great-grandpa started it and all of us have always worked there. Most of us,” I amended.
“My uncle took off and moved to Chicago and we never see him, and I have cousins and other relatives who don’t want to touch it. ”
“I don’t know much about restaurants.”
“I wish I didn’t, either,” I said. “Did you always want to be a football coach?”
“I’m a scout,” he reminded me. “I may end up as a Woodsmen coach. Maybe.”
He didn’t sound very confident or enthusiastic. “Is that your goal?” I pressed.
“No. Maybe,” he repeated. “Before, I thought I’d play professional football for a few years and then I’d have a career outside of the game.
” He waved one hand in a circle, like he was stirring the air.
“It was all a little nebulous. It was going to be a great job that I enjoyed, working with fun people, and I’d be a big success. ”
“That sounds perfect,” I approved, and he nodded.
“If you know of a career like that, pass it on.”
“I’m trying to figure out what I can do myself,” I said.
“You’re not going to take over the restaurant?”
“We’ll see,” I responded, also nebulous. “Do you know if the Woodsmen are hiring?”
“No, sorry.” He looked out the window. “Are you taking us to the lighthouse?” He didn’t seem to have objections to that.
“Can you cancel your snowshoe rental?”
He worked on it and I worked on coming up with another way to bring the Woodsmen back into our conversation and lock down a meeting with them.
One thing that had always worked on my brother, if I had the strength to force myself, was flattery.
If you flattered Max, you could get him to do anything. Adulation was key.
“You must have been pretty good at football if you thought you could go pro,” I mentioned. “Really good, I should say.”
“I was all right.”
“I think the Woodsmen players are all right,” I stated blandly.
“No. They’re first-class, abnormally talented, freaks of nature,” Shane corrected me. “That’s what it takes to play at their level.”
“So, you couldn’t hack it?” Oh, damn. This had turned from adulation into flagellation. “I didn’t mean ‘hack it,’” I said. “It must be close to impossible to be an abnormal freak of nature.”
“I had physical issues that took me out of football,” he stated. “Otherwise, I tell myself that I could have made it. Who knows?”
“That’s too bad.”
“It’s part of the game,” he answered.
We were just as far as ever from him introducing me to Woodsmen players.
I thought about how to bring them up again as we navigated the snowy landscape.
He was apparently thinking about our surroundings, because he started talking about playing in the snow in Colorado and how he’d been totally unprepared for prolonged low temperatures.
“Arkansas has winters but when we get a lot of snow, we just stay home. I expected that college life would be canceled, no class or practice, and my teammates thought that was hilarious,” he told me. “And the Junior Woodsmen play outside all winter long. It’s terrible.”
“At least they get to play a game for a living,” I pointed out.
“I bet you would have liked that, if you hadn’t been injured.
” Damn that flagellation! “But you must enjoy scouting,” I quickly added.
“And after a while, you’ll get to know the guys on the real team, the Woodsmen.
You could become friends, for example. You might have a party and invite them over, or go to some of the bars downtown with them. That would be fun.”
He was fully staring at me. “Would it?”
“Yes, for sure,” I told him. “They all seem great when they come into the restaurant over the summer but, um, I don’t ever get the chance to really meet them.
It would be fun to really meet them.” I tried to imbue the words with meaning and significance, so he would understand that he was supposed to introduce me.
“For sure,” he echoed. “What’s the real story here?”
The real story of why I was trying to force a meeting with a Woodsmen player? The real story of what was happening in my family business, like why I wasn’t getting paid?
I took a breath. “What? What do you mean?”
“You’re driving us out into the middle of nowhere to see a lighthouse. Why? What’s so important about it?”
Oh, the lighthouse! “It’s a significant feature of the shoreline,” I informed him. “Michigan has more lighthouses than any other state. Do you know how dangerous the Great Lakes are for shipping traffic?”
“Tell me about it.”
I should have schemed a little more about how to get him to introduce me to the Woodsmen players and I also should have looked up our destination.
I searched my brain for more information from the fourth-grade field trip we’d taken out here.
“Hundreds of hands went down every year up until the nineteen-seventies,” I said.
“No one knows how many ships have wrecked in the lakes, mostly because of unpredictable weather.”
“Really?” Shane sounded interested and I stuck to delightful topics like death and destruction as we continued our drive.
At least he was learning more about the area that he now called home, and maybe I would have more fun tonight when I went out with the next guy.
I congratulated myself (mentally) for being a woman with two dates today.
The first one clearly sucked. The second one would be much, much better.