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Most of those who live there consider Kentucky – home of the Derby and the McCoy portion of the Hatfield & McCoy feud, the birthplaces of Abraham Lincoln, and Jefferson Davis, known for Fort Knox, bourbon whisky, bluegrass music, fried chicken, and one of the top five global producers of both indoor and outdoor pot horticulture, home to the highest per capita number of deer and turkey in the United States, the largest free-ranging elk herd east of the Mississippi River – the best place to live in the world. Out of those, the people who live in the small towns in Western Kentucky know without a doubt that they occupy heaven on earth, filled with prime hunting ground and the best people in the country.
The people in Lauphin, Western Kentucky, tend to focus on their everyday lives, earning their keep and taking their entertainment where they can find it, usually in the lives of their neighbors.
For one man, sitting outside Daubin’s Feed and watching his corner of the world slide by, this is his entire world.
He barely remembers his arrival, a little over three years ago, heavily dosed with painkillers, over ninety percent of his body covered in casts and bandage-wrapped burns. It had taken a good six or seven months before he’d even cared about anything other than alleviating the pain.
But now he sits, feet dangling off the loading dock, one leg longer than the other, absently watching the people walking past, nodding back to the ones now used to the scars. He checks the beat-up watch on his good wrist, noting that his ride is over twenty minutes late. It doesn’t really bother him, though, since his niece has never hidden the fact that she resents having to pick him up in the first place. He doesn’t really blame her; he’d probably be pissed off at having to be seen with someone like him too if he were seventeen. On the other hand, her picking him up gives her a reason to take the car out and spend some forbidden time with her secret boyfriend. Considering that, she actually should be a little happy about picking him up now that he thinks about it. He grins a little at the thought, the skin on his face tightening up the way it does.
He hears them before he sees them, the roar getting louder like an urban version of trumpets heralding an important arrival. Not long after, he sees them, two men riding into town on impressive looking motorcycles. They seem masterful, almost regal, he thinks, as they slowly drive down the small street, and he wonders why they’re there, if they’ve come to town before, when he was out at the farm. He dismisses that thought, though, because he would’ve heard about it from every gossip in town.
He continues to track them – as do all the other townsfolk who have paused midstep on the sidewalk, Mr. Forby midsweep in front of his store, and all of the ladies mid gossip at the Nail & Hair. He feels Mr. Daubin, the owner of the feed store step up to his left; Toby, Mr. Daubin’s right-hand man, steps up to his right.
“Who’s that?” Frank Daubin asks. As the fourth-generation owner of the feed shop and mayor of Lauphin, he prides himself on knowing everything that happens in his town, and he’s not a fan of surprises. Cattraine Selby, the owner of Nail and Hair, had mentioned that her ne’er do well niece might be coming to town, and Frank is of the mind that perhaps someone like that would do better with one of Cattraine’s other sisters in another city altogether. But then, Cattraine isn’t one of the most upstanding citizens of the town anyway, he reminds himself.
“Two men on motorcycles,” the gimp known as Charlie says from his seat on the edge of the loading dock, his raspy voice slurring like a drunk the way it always does.
Briefly, Frank wonders what Charlie’s voice had sounded like before he’d gotten disfigured in that terrible car accident, but as always, he returns to things that actively affect him. He’d worked through his mistrust of Charlie once he realized that Charlie was just a shadow of a man, no one worthy of much of his attention.
“Was there a woman with him?” Toby asks. His wife, Junia, sweeps up the floors down at the Nail and Hair, and his son, Junior, works in the stockroom down at the Piggly Wiggly. Between the three of them, they know everything that happens in town, because none of the white people ever pay attention to the coloreds working around them. They’re careful to keep their knowledge hidden, but the surprise at the motorcycles’ arrival makes him slip about knowing about Miss Selby’s niece. A quick glance at Mr. Daubin’s distracted face has him exhaling quietly in relief.
“Naw,” Charlie says. “Just two men.”
Charlie is a bit of a puzzle, because Toby is relatively sure that one time Bobby Fagin mentioned being the only child of two only children, making it difficult for him to have a cousin, estranged or not. But Toby likes Charlie. Once he got over the weird voice and the scarring and the dead arm and the limp, he found Charlie to be a nice guy who always gives Toby a crooked smile and a small hello when they see each other. Charlie always notices when Toby’s around, and Toby finds that more disturbing than anything else.
They watch the motorcycles slowly pull into the angled parking just past the Hair and Nail, turning off the machines and pulling off their helmets.
In a tornado of curlers and smocks, the women at the Nail and Hair practically plaster themselves against the large picture window. It’s been a long time since anything exciting and male has entered town, and two of them arriving on motorcycles is going to be the subject of every conversation for at least the next two weeks.
As a business owner, Cattraine Selby refrains from pushing herself against the window, choosing to stand close to the glass door while she slowly folds the smock she’d just pulled off of eighty year old Miss Gunderson – the same Miss Gunderson who has elbowed her way into the front of the window and who is currently eyeballing the strangers and making lewd comments about their potential masculinity.
“Does that one have a scar?” Miss Gunderson asks.
“Which one?” Marvelle Sampson manages to press even closer to the window.
“The taller one.”
“I think it’s a dimple.” Marvelle says after squinting for a few seconds.
“But he’s not smiling. You can’t have a dimple if you’re not smiling.”
“I think you can,” Marvelle says tentatively.
The room goes quiet for a second as everyone digests the fact that Marvelle just contradicted one of the oldest and most established women in town.
It’s a scar,” Miss Gunderson decides decisively, and no one contradicts her this time.
They watch as the men, talking quietly to each other, walk by. As soon as they’re just past the shop, the women begin to chatter excitedly and return to their stations. Cattraine wishes she didn’t have to finish Miss Gunderson’s hair, because she’s sure she could come up with an excuse to walk down the street, maybe eavesdrop on what the men are talking about. As it is, the fact that she saw them arrive means that she has a story she’s going to be able to tell and embellish for weeks to come. However, it’s the same story that every other woman in the shop can give. All she would need is something more – even a smile and nod from one of the men – to make her story a more interesting than anyone else’s.
Not that she cares, really. She’s not a gossip like Marvelle or a pretender like Miss Gunderson, who Cattraine’s been told sits in the front pew at church on Sunday but talks scathingly at the shop while Cattraine does her hair. She knows that some people think she’s a little wild, but at least she’s not a freaking hypocrite.
Absently shoving the mangled smock at Junia, she returns to her station and tests the heat of her curling iron before adding the finishing touches to the octogenarian’s hair.
The two men walk down the street, fully aware of the gazes that follow them.
“Damn small towns,” the taller one says, his accent considerably different than those living around him.
“Yep. They’ll probably be talking about this visit months from now.” The one with the bright blue eyes says.
“Think this was a good idea?”
The other snorts. “Since when have we used that as a reason for anything?”
They chuckle quietly for a few seconds before the taller one slows, just enough for the man beside him to notice. “Up to the left,” he mutters.
“Yup.”
They continue walking until they start to draw close to the feed store. To them, it looks like something out of an old movie. Old white man standing slightly in front of an older black man, scarred disfigured man sitting with his legs dangling off the loading dock.
“So, hungry?” The accented man asks, pausing a few steps before they reach the curious men.
“Famished.” The blue eyed man says.
“Think this place has a diner or something?”
The shorter man squints as his gaze travels over the square, its quaint gazebo unimpressive in his eyes. “Don’t places like this have shit like soda fountains?”
The other man turns his eyes to his partner. “How the hell would I know? It’s your fucking country.”
“This might be America, but it’s like Andy Griffith’s world here, shit from black and white TV shows.”
The man stops. “Who the fuck is Andy Griffith?”
The shorter man stops as well and sighs. “We’re gonna have to take a night, show you some vintage Americana TV shows. “Happy Days”, “Laverne and Shirley”, “I Love Lucy”.”
“Is that gonna get me fed anytime soon?” The man with the scar asks, pausing for a second for the silence to resonate. “No? Then why don’t we table this discussion until we eat.”
“The people in this town have to eat out sometime.” The man pushes curly hair out of his face and turns to the three men on the dock. “Do you have anything resembling a diner in this town?”
The black man and the mangled man both looked to the white man, who eyeballs them for a second before saying, “We got one down yonder. Just a couple of blocks away.”
“Is it any good?”
Another pause. “Good enough, I suppose.”
It was the bikers’ turn to pause. They give each other small smiles, the one with the accent saying, “So that’s Southern hospitality.”
The scarred man is the only one of the three who grins. It looks a bit maniacal, but the strangers kind of like it.
They direct their attention to him, and the curly haired man asks, “You holding up that dock?”
The man blinks slowly, worried that he’s misunderstanding the question. It still happens, usually when he’s tired, but he always has problems when people seem to change the subject quickly. He tries to answer as best he can. “I work out at my brother’s farm.” It’s true that with his bad hip and leg and dead arm, he can’t do much, but he does his best to help out however he can.
“So you got time to show us this diner?”
Still confused, he stares at them. “You want me to take you there?”
The one with the accent looks concerned. “Does it hurt to walk?”
Charlie shrugs. There’s manageable pain, which he deals with on a regular basis, and there’s the kind of pain that he’d felt when he’d first arrived, the kind that makes a person pray to go to sleep and never wake up again. “Doesn’t hurt any more than sitting here.”
The one with the bright eyes tilts his head toward the diner. “We’ll even spring for lunch.”
Looking at his watch – his niece is now almost half an hour late – he decides that a piece of pie and a cup of coffee might go down kind of nice. Doc says he still needs to gain a little weight, and he finds himself curious about the strangers. He doesn’t know why they even noticed him, but he appreciates the distraction.
Slowly, he slides closer to the edge of the platform until his good leg is as close to the ground as he can get it. He leans against his good arm and slides the remaining few inches until his foot touches the ground, slowly dragging the other leg behind him.
He takes a few seconds to catch his breath and looks up at the men, still uncomfortable with all of the attention. He knows that Mr. Daubin and Toby have seen him awkwardly stand a multitude of times, but it feels awkward in front of strangers.
The men just stand there, pretending to wait patiently. The one with the scar has to force himself to relax, keep his hand loose, remain still, when all he wants to do is reach out and hug his long lost brother, help the man gain his footing. But he knows firsthand the importance of a man standing on his own feet using his own power.
Besides, the broken man in front of them wouldn’t welcome help from a stranger. Even without his memory, he still obviously has his pride.
The bright-eye man, on the other hand, isn’t quite sure how he feels. He’s used to seeing the man in front of him strong, walking with the swagger of a person who knows his place in the world. Even when his life turned to shit, he’d still managed to do what needed to be done and saved his brothers. Now this man, his brother, limps ahead of him, dragging his bad leg behind him, one arm a useless lump. His face, once so handsome that Luanne’s girls at CaraCara all would’ve bedded him with the crook of a finger, is now filled with so many scars that they pull down the left side of his mouth and the corner of his right eye. The stranger can’t help but wonder if they did him a disservice, if death would’ve been preferable to this. But, he supposes, this is why they’re here.
They walk slowly, the bikers matching their steps with the third man, slowing the traffic as the townspeople pause in their cars to take a look at the strange sight. They commit what they see to memory so they can talk about it later to those who aren’t around to see it for themselves.
The Lauphin Café, whose name is written inside a large coffee cup sign, seems pretty boring from the outside. Neither biker is hopeful that they’ll even get a decent cup of coffee, but that’s not their reason for coming. Well, it’s not their main reason for coming. They rode a long distance and are pretty hungry. They follow the man inside, taking his lead when he sits in a chair at a table for four.
“It’s tough to get in and out of booths,” he explains.
The man with the accent shrugs as he sits in the opposite chair. “They’re a pain in the ass to get in and out of for everyone.” He holds out his hand, careful to use his left. “I’m Tig.” He shakes the man’s good hand and tilts his head toward his fellow biker. “This is Chibs.”
Chibs nods and grins.
“I’m Charlie.” He looks at Chibs. “I like your scar. It looks serious, but I bet the women love it.”
Chibs laughs. “It doesn’t turn them away.” He debates for a second then thinks fuck it and says, “Yours are a helluva more serious. What happened?”
Charlie doesn’t take offense. In fact, he wishes that other people would ask him matter-of-fact like that instead of whispering behind his back, but he has come to accept that this is small-town life. Once it crossed his mind that it might have been one of the reasons why he never visited his cousin, but he really has no way to prove it – and it doesn’t matter anyway – so he let the thought go. “I had a really bad accident, camper versus mack truck. I’m lucky to be alive.” He knows his sarcastic tone makes it sound like he doesn’t believe that, and sometimes, when he’s in a lot of pain, he kind of doesn’t.
Both of his dining companions pick up on it, and Tig says, “It kind of sounds like maybe that’s up for debate.”
Penny Sampson says a hasty goodbye and hangs up on her sister Marvelle once she turns around and sees the men her sister was just telling her about walking into the diner. She’s working the early mid shift for her cousin, Bea, who’d called her to switch because Bea was too hungover to smell bacon and eggs all morning. Penny’d planned on doing her nails and watching her soaps before she was scheduled to come in at four, and she really doesn’t want to be here so soon. But the diner closes at eight, so she has a longer shift this way. She’s saving up to buy her boyfriend Red’s cousin’s Chevelle, so she really needs the money.
And it’s not like the work is that difficult; she sees the same customers who come in every day and who order the same thing. The only problem is that it’s boring – at least until Gimpy Charlie comes limping into the place with the two strangers.
Marvelle was right; they’re both very sexy. But as much as Penny hates to admit it, that snobby Miss Gunderson is also right. It’s a scar on that one man’s face. It makes him look dangerous, the kind of dangerous that comes from actually living in the world, not pretending to like Red.
As she sidles up with her notepad, she gets a look at the other one’s bright blue eyes and has some thoughts that Red wouldn’t appreciate being directed in someone else’s direction. He looks dirty-naughty, and she hasn’t had that kind of fun since she Marvelle, and Bea snuck out and spent a weekend in Atlanta.
“Can I take your order?”
Gimpy Charlie looks at her, and she thinks he might be trying to smile at her, but she’s not sure. He’s always creeped her out, those bright eyes in the middle of such scarred skin. She feels a little bad about it, because he’s never done anything to anyone – even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t have the strength.
“I’ll have a cheeseburger, fries, coke,” Blue eyes says, giving her a smile that makes her insides tingle.
“The same,” Scar says, and holy Hannah, he has this accent that sounds like his tongue is curling inside his mouth. She wonders how it would feel curling inside of his.
“Mini hamburger, chocolate shake, please, Penny,” Gimpy Charlie says, surprising her. At first she feels scared that he remembers her name, though she doesn’t know why, but then she remembers that it’s on her nametag, and of course he can read.
“You want fries, G – Charlie?” She hopes he doesn’t catch her slip. He might make her nervous, but he’s always polite. And hopefully these two men will leave a good tip if she gives them a good dining experience.
“No thank you,” Charlie says, happy that she’s even looking at him, even if it’s only for a few seconds. He knows he scares most people, and while it doesn’t really bother him, he likes it better when people treat him like he’s not mentally deficient. He may not remember anything about his past, but his brain works just fine otherwise.
Penny leaves, and Charlie feels the two strangers’ eyes on him. He knows that they’re staring at his scars, but he doesn’t mind it. He understands curiosity; he’s spent quite a few hours looking at himself in the mirror. Of course, he’s usually trying to find something he recognizes, the look in his eyes, the corner of his face that isn’t scarred… it feels like if he could just find one memory then all of it would come back to him like a ball of yarn unraveling on the floor. The doctors have told him that the damage was too severe, that he’s lucky he’s not brain damaged. But he can’t help but want more, part of the human condition, he figures.
The one with the bright blue eyes that put him on the edge of feeling uncomfortable when they focus on him, Tig, leans a bit on the table. Charlie has to stop himself from automatically leaning back. “Do you wish they hadn’t put you back together? I mean, you’re kind of like Frankenstein, right?” He looks at his friend and coughs as he sits back. “No offense.”
Stunned, Charlie stares at Tig in silence. Then he opens his mouth and says, “You mean Frankenstein’s monster. Frankenstein was the name of the doctor.”
Around his own shock at correcting a complete stranger, he absently feels a sense of satisfaction that he’s surprised the two men. Once he’d been able to focus on more than just his pain management, he’d found himself unable to sleep and ended up raiding his brother’s bookshelves, where he’d found quite a few classics.
“What my rude friend is asking is if sometimes you wish that they’d just let you die?”
“Okay, how is that question any nicer than mine?” Tig complains.
“At least I didn’t compare him to a monster,” Chib says.
The food arrives, giving them all a chance to collect themselves while Penny hands out the plates. Charlie thinks about what they’re asking and realizes that he doesn’t feel upset at what they’re asking him. In fact, he likes that they acknowledge that he has the right to choose his own life. No one ever asked him if he wanted to be healed, if the pain he felt all those months – and still now, if a little less – is worth just being alive.
But, he supposes, he can’t be upset about no one asking him if it’s a question he’s never asked himself. He just assumed that if you’re breathing, and your brain is working, then you do everything you can to survive. The idea of giving up had never occurred to him.
He picks up his burger, taking a small bite. Because of his internal injuries, he has to be careful about what he eats and how much he eats. Because of the impairment to his hand, he tends to eat food that only requires one hand. So the miniburgers work well for him, and he enjoys the cool feel of the shake as it goes down his throat. He likes fries, but only with ketchup, which presents a problem. He doesn’t like to work with the ketchup bottle in public; the last time he had fought against one had been in his brother’s kitchen, the bottle shooting out of his grip and landing on the floor. His sister-in-law had had to clean up the mess, making him feel guilty. So he just decides to bypass the fries altogether and stick with the easy stuff.
“Did we piss you off with our questions?” Chibs asks.
“No,” Charlie says, “but no one has ever asked me that, even me. I had to think about it.”
“And what’d you decide?” Tig asks, popping some fries in his mouth as he sits back in his chair.
“I think that now that I’m as healed as I’m gonna get, I’m glad to be alive. I may not be able to do much, but I help where I can, and I try to appreciate every day.”
“What do you mean ‘now that you’re as healed as you’re gonna get’?” Chibs asks.
“At first the pain was… all encompassing. It hurt to breathe, to move, even to think sometimes. If you’d asked me then, I probably would’ve told you to just let me die. But I made it through all of that, so I think that maybe there’s a reason why I’m still here.” Charlie shrugs. “Before the accident, I was estranged with my brother, and now I’m living in his house.”
“He treat you okay?” Tig’s eyes seem to glow with intensity, despite his calm tone.
Charlie nods. “Bill’s a really good guy, and he and his wife, Maxine, have been really good to me.”
“They have kids?” Chibs asks.
“Three. Malachi is eight, Darren is ten, and Ca’Trena, their oldest, is seventeen.” He eyeballs them. They don’t look like family men to him, but maybe they’re just different kind of family men. “Do you two have kids?”
They both get looks on their faces, and Charlie wishes he’d never asked. He opens his mouth to change the subject, but they start talking.
“I had two girls,” Tig says, a faraway look in his eyes.
Charlie notices the verb and says, “I’m sorry.”
Chibs swallows and says, “I have a daughter over in Ireland.”
Charlie suspects that he doesn’t get to see her much, and maybe that’s why he looks kind of sad.
“What about you?” Chibs asks after a few seconds.
Charlie blinks. “I don’t think so, but everything in my camper was destroyed in the fire at the accident. Since I wasn’t close to Bill, he doesn’t know about the life I led before. He hired a private detective who found out that I traveled a lot, and I was never married. He didn’t find my name in hospital records listing me as the father to any babies, so I don’t think I have any.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have kids, just that no one put your name down as the father,” Chibs points out.
“That also means that they can’t go after you for child support without a whole lot of trouble,” Tig says with a definitive nod that makes Charlie think that maybe he’s had some experience in this area.
Chibs laughs, throws a fry at Tig. “You don’t have to worry about impregnating anyone else anymore.”
Tig gives him a look, but he’s thankful that his brothers have been accepting of his love. He only admits to himself that he’d been worried about it. Everyone knew Venus of course, what with all that went down, but knowing and helping her and accepting that she’s Tig’s woman are totally different things. Some of the guys had been a little hesitant, but Chibs totally had his back, and the others take their cue from him.
Tigs truly believes that Jax would’ve been happy for him as well.
Chibs hadn’t been sure about Tig’s relationship with Venus until he realized that his second had become more settled with his relationship. They haven’t had to deal with Tig’s dick making them cover for him in quite a while. So Chibs finally decided that if Tig’s happy and better adjusted, his crazy muted not erased, then who was he to tell Tig who to love? He started teasing Tig about it in front of the others, making it just a part of their lives, and the others came around pretty quickly.
Besides, Venus is a badass, and Chibs genuinely likes her and her kid.
Chibs refocuses on Charlie. “You’re still young enough. You could still have kids.”
Tigs nods, then looks at Charlie. “The gun still shoots and fires more than blanks, right?”
Charlie blinks. “Yeah.” As far as he knows. The pills and the pain have taken away pretty much any inclination for him to handle his business on his own. “But I’m not really much of a catch anymore.” He thinks for a moment. “Don’t know that I ever was.”
The private detective’s report had revealed a man who wasn’t interested in establishing relationships or romantic ties, a man who frequently moved around and worked for short periods of time around the country. He lived in his camper, parking it close to the places he worked, and once he got antsy, he left.
It doesn’t seem like much of a life, living without attachments like that, and Charlie wonders if he’d ever been happy. He wonders what kind of experiences turned him into someone like that, but Bill didn’t have any answers for him. The private investigator could only provide the details he found in government paperwork filed.
Tig stares at Charlie, fascinated. He’s a totally different person, a little tentative, quiet. But Tig can see the man he used to be underneath, little flashes like the quirk of the corner of his mouth when he starts to smile or the intelligence in his eyes. The voice is a little scratchier, a little rougher, but still with a familiar inflection.
Tig looks over at Chibs, who gives him a look back like he understands.
“How’re things going over here?” Penny stops by with a pitcher of soda, filling up Chibs and Tig’s drinks. She slides a glance over at Charlie before focusing on Chibs, whom she’s decided she likes best. “We have pie for dessert. With ice cream.”
Chibs thows her an easy smile. She’s not his type at all, way too young and impressionable, thinks she knows her way around the world when she’s probably never even step food out of the state. But he likes the feeling her admiration gives him, like he’s twenty-two again, cocksure and full of his oats. There’s no harm in enjoying it a little. “What kind of pie would you recommend?”
“Elderberry pie, definitely.”
“Three pieces then, love, if you please. With ice cream.”
Charlie opens his mouth to decline his piece, but then he thinks better of it. He loves elderberry pie, and the doctor says that he needs to eat more so he can gain weight, especially since the physical therapy exercises he was given take so much out of him.
“So what’re your plans?” Chibs asks.
Charlie blinks, not understanding the question. “My plans for what?”
“Your life,” Chibs explains.
“I don’t really have any,” Charlie admits. “I help my brother as much as I can out on the farm and come into town twice a week for my physical therapy. I guess if I had to admit to one, it would be to stay alive until the next day. It’s as far as I’ve gotten.”
“And you’re sure that the doctors say that you won’t get any better?”
Penny stops by the table with three plates expertly balanced on her arm and slowly places down each one, trying to listen to Charlie’s answer. As it is, she’s going to be pretty popular in town, because she’s been talking to them. But if she can get some information on Charlie, who’s always a subject of conversation because of how little is known about him (and the rest of his family, unfortunately, seem pretty closed mouth about him too), then that will put her over the top. Even snooty Miss Gunderson might have to acknowledge her presence. She’ll never be invited to Breezy Point, the Gunderson home, but even a politely spoken word in her direction by Miss Gunderson would earn her points.
Tig notices the waitress hovering, and looks up at her. She’s so focused on trying to seem like she’s not eavesdropping that it’s obvious she’s eavesdropping. He finds it funny and grins at Chibs, who obviously isn’t as amused and rolls his eyes. Charlie doesn’t seem to notice, but Tig figures it’s because he’s so focused on using his left arm to eat. Tig knows it’s not his dominant hand, and he also knows that Charlie’s had to relearn such simple things as holding a spoon, so he figures the guy’s doing pretty good.
“Thanks, darlin’,” Chibs says pointedly, ready for her to leave. He knows about small –town gossips and has never much cared about them, but he doesn’t have to live here, and it’s not his story that he and Tig are trying to learn. He’s noticed the stares and the looks and figures that Charlie probably gets either ignored or stared at with a bit of fear. He and Tig have come there to see for themselves that he’s doing okay, and if they leave feeling better about the decision they made that day, then it’s the whipped cream on the icing on the cake.
Penny nods and leaves, wishing she could find another excuse to stay close. But she’s good at what she does, unfortunately, and all of the tables around them are already clean, the ketchup and mustard bottles full.
“So about the doctors,” Tig says before he takes a bite of the pie. “Hey, this is really good. How come we’ve never had elderberry pie before?”
“I’m sure there are tons of delicious pies out there we’ve never tried,” Chibs says.
“There should be a show, you know, on that food channel, where a guy travels around the country eating pies.”
“You go ahead, send in that suggestion,” Chibs says, returning his attention to Charlie. He takes a piece of pie and is distracted a bit, because damn if Tig isn’t right about the pie, before he refocuses. “The doctors?”
“They say that I’m about as good as I’m going to get, but I still have exercises I do at home everyday, and I a physical therapy appointment here in town twice a week.”
“This town has a physical therapist?” Chibs doesn’t try to keep the doubt out of his voice. He doesn’t imagine that the town has much call for one, and it seems like any decent physical therapist would want to live in a bigger town.
Charlie tilts his head. “She’s the town nurse, but she was given the instructions and everything.” He’s not really focusing on the discussion, because it’s really hard to get a bite of ice cream on his spoon. The stuff is so damn slippery. But he doesn’t want to point their attention to how awkward it is, so he’s trying to act like he’s just playing with it a bit.
“Does she even know what she’s doing?” Tig’d had to go to a physical therapist a few times after he had gotten shot. While he’s still not sure if she helped all that much, she’d been really kinky and had been a pretty good lay.
“I think so,” Charlie says, giving up on the ice cream and focusing on the pie. “There were things I had to be able to do before they let me leave the hospital, and I have to go back every month for an evaluation. They seem to be okay with my progress.” He likes Nurse Baker. She’s very professional as she massages his hands and legs, checks the scars on his face and the rest of his body. He likes her firm touch and the way she looks him in the eye when she talks to him. She praises him when she can tell that he’s been working hard at his home exercises, which he does more to see her smile about them than to help himself. She’s the brightest spot of his week. She’s not the most beautiful woman in town; her nose is large on her face, making her eyes look a little too small, and she has thin lips, but she doesn’t seem to care about that. She never wears makeup, and there are some days he thinks she didn’t even comb her hair. But he likes that about her, that she doesn’t care about what others think.
He hears the gossip down at the feed store. They always forget he’s there, and he doesn’t have anything better to do, so he listens. He hears how much they like the bad stories, ones like how Nurse Baker’s husband has taken up with a woman in a neighboring town and how he goes out with her to places like the Piggly Wiggly and doesn’t care that everybody knows. They say that she’s ashamed and embarrassed, but she doesn’t seem that way to him. Maybe it’s because she’s focused on doing her job when they’re together, but sometimes when she’s stretching out his bad leg, and it doesn’t hurt so much that day, he’ll look at her face to see if maybe she’s been crying, but never sees anything in her face.
He hopes she’s not sad or lonely, because he is sometimes, and he thinks she’s too nice a person to feel that way. Sometimes he’ll stare down at the top of her head as she’s massaging his hand and have to bite his lip to keep from telling her that he hopes she’s happy. He knows that it’s none of his business.
Chibs nods. “PT can be a real pain in the ass. I’ve had to go through it a time or two myself.”
“It’s not so bad,” Charlie says. Sometimes, though, after one of his sessions, he’ll go home and sit in one of the chairs, and he’ll need his brother’s help to get out of it. It’s not as embarrassing as it was at first.
A few months back, little Malachi and Darren had been playing like they normally did, and Charlie hadn’t been paying any attention to them until he heard Darren say, “Mal, I need your help” as he sat on the floor. He reached his arms up. Malachi walked over and pulled him to standing, saying, “I gotcha, Bro.” It had taken a few seconds for Charlie to realize that they’d just been mimicking him and Bill, and he started laughing and couldn’t stop for a good two or three minutes. He’d eventually composed himself, wiping the tears from his eyes, to find the boys staring at him with quizzical faces and Maxine staring at him from the kitchen entryway, smile on her face.
“It’s easier to walk, and a few months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to slide off the dock like I did.”
Penny drops off the check and asks, “Anything else I can do for y’all?” She pictures the man with the scar motioning to the back with his eyes, silently asking her to meet him behind the building. She’d nod slightly and then take her break. She imagines him not saying a word, just taking her quickly as he pressed her against the side of the building, his breath hot on her neck as he ground into her. The thought excites her more than Red has lately.
“We’re good, thanks,” Tig says, his focus on Charlie. He absently catches Chibs dropping money on the table as he tries to decide if he should ask if Charlie needs help getting out of his chair. He doesn’t want to insult the other man, but he just can’t stand there and watch Charlie fighting to stand.
In one swift motion, Chibs reaches underneath Charlie’s good arm and brings them both to standing. “Thanks for having lunch with us. We were starving.”
Charlie blinks for a second, trying to understand how Chibs had made helping him seem natural. He’s needed help from so many people, and this is the first time it doen’t feel awkward. Chibs is acting like they do it everyday, and a part of Charlie feels like if he stayed around the man, it would stop feeling so awkward with other people. “Th-thanks for asking me.”
Chibs leans forward and whispers, “You okay with being the subject of gossip around town?”
Charlie smiles. “They already gossip about me. This time, everyone’s going to want to know all about you.”
Tig smiles. “People always want to know about us. We’re pretty cool that way.” He slips on his glasses. “We ready to go?”
Charlie’s making his way to the door when he sees a familiar figure stomping toward the diner, plastering itself in the front window, hands framing the eyes to see inside the building. “That’s my ride.”
He hears Tig mutter something that as Ca’Trena’s uncle he’d probably have to take exception to if he’d heard it clearly, but he ignores it as he opens the door.
“Where have you been?” Ca’Trena asks, clearly annoyed. “I’ve been looking for you all over the place.” She’s thin and blonde, beautiful with a ponytail that she likes to swing from side to side. She knows she’s a looker and uses it to her advantage. Charlie can’t fault her for it, although she’s smarter than she thinks. She thinks she’s going to make it out of town by staying with her boyfriend, but Charlie knows that she’ll probably end up pregnant and stuck in this town just like most of the other women who’d been popular in high school. She’d do better to focus on her grades and get a scholarship to a college out of state, but Charlie knows she won’t listen to the man she considers at best a burden, at worst the half-wit she’s forced to pick up from town at least twice a week.
“He was having lunch with us. I’m afraid we shanghaied him. We’re sorry if we put you out.” Chibs says, laying on the charm, his accent strong, his smile remorseful. He can feel Tig trying not to laugh and ignores the man as he focuses on the girl. She’s so easy to read, another self-centered, small town girl with big city dreams. She probably sees her uncle as a waste of her family’s time.
Ca’Trena smiles a little, unprepared for the way this man and his accent makes her feel. She touches the tip of her ponytail and tilts her head in the way she knows makes her look cute. “It’s okay. I was just worried.”
Charlie doesn’t sigh, although he kinds of wants to. He’s walked past her room when her door was open and seen her practicing that move. “Mr. Daubin knew where I was.” In fact, before they’d even entered the café, pretty much everyone probably knew where he was. She’d probably known before she’d left her boyfriend, the biggest evidence being the fact that she’d parked right outside the café.
“Uncle, aren’t you going to introduce us?” Ca’Trena asks, using her deeper voice that she thinks makes her sound like Jessica Rabbit from that old movie.
“Tig and Chibs, this is my niece, Ca’Trena. ‘Trena, Tig and Chibs.”
“Are y’all staying in town long?” ‘Trena asks, smiling.
“Actually, we just stopped by for something to eat. We’re heading out now,” Tig says, taking off his glasses. He’s feeling a little left out and knows that his eyes will detract some from Chibs’ stupid accent. And he’s right. ‘Trena lets out a small sigh when she sees Tig’s eyes. He makes a mental note to rub it in Chibs’ face the first chance he gets.
“Yeah,” Chibs says. He turns to Charlie, holds out his left hand. “Thanks for keeping us company for lunch.”
Charlie shakes Chibs’ hand. “It was my pleasure.”
Tig taps Charlie lightly on the shoulder. “Take care of yourself, man.”
Charlie limps over to the car, easing into the passenger seat and putting on his seatbelt. Chibs closes the door, tapping it once with his fingertips before stepping away.
Chibs and Tig watch as he car drives away and start the walk back to their motorycles, both immersed in their own thoughts.
“What do you think?” Tig asks after a few seconds. “Did we make the right decision?”
“I hope so,” Chibs says. “He seems pretty settled, and the doctors say there isn’t a chance that he’s ever going to remember who he is, so he’s safe.” He climbs on to his bike but sits there for a second. “You know –”
“Yeah,” Tig says with a sigh. They can’t afford to return here, so this is the last time they’ll see him. Tig realizes that even though he knew that things could never be the way they were, there was a part of him always expecting to see that swagger come around the corner and hear that familiar drawl. For the first time it hits him that this is it; there’s never going to be a next time.
Chibs reaches over, grabs Tig’s shoulder. There’s nothing he can say. He’d known that there was a chance that they’d end up riding away feeling that things were still unresolved, but he’d had to come and see for himself. He’d hoped that it was going to make him feel better about what had happened, but now he realizes that he’s going to have to sit with this visit for a while before he’ll know if any of the decisions they’ve made about this feel right.
“You know she’s waiting for our call,” Tig says as he puts on his helmet. “She’s the one who decided that he wasn’t going to have to face charges and let us tell everyone that he died.”
“She can still wait,” Chibs says, strapping on his own helmet. “He sat down and told her everything, helped her close a hell of a lot of cases, so it’s not like she didn’t get anything out of it.” He does appreciate what she did, keeping him alive and hidden – and telling him about it all. He’s just not ready to make any decisions yet about his day, and he’s not going to be rushed. Fortunately, they have a long trip back to California, plenty of time for him to figure it out.
“I found him, dad,” ‘Trena says into her phone as she points the car toward home. “He was having lunch with some bikers. Yeah, the motorcycle guys.” She’s glad she can use the excuse, because instead of climbing out of Cliff’s bed when her alarm had rung, she’d dug in a little bit, telling herself that she was just going to lay there a few minutes. She’d fallen back asleep, and Cliff hadn’t been any help, just mumbling and rolling over as she frantically grabbed at her clothes.
It’s easy for Cliff, because he’s an only child, and his parents both work until six. But her parents are always all over her, wanting to know what she’s doing and who she’s doing it with. On top of that, she has to pick up her gimpy uncle from town twice a week.
It’s not that she doesn’t like him – although he did take the big bedroom, which sucks for her. But he’s an inconvenience. Everything takes more time because he’s so slow, and they have to help him when he drops things or has trouble standing up.
And it’s not like she’d even heard about him until her dad told them at dinner that his estranged brother had been in a terrible accident and was coming to live with them after a long stay at the hospital. Her dad had brought him home, and he’d looked scary. She’d been afraid he was going die in the house, and she didn’t know if she could live in a place where someone had died. Cliff’s grandmother had passed, and they’d sold her house even though it was way bigger than the one they lived in.
Her parents think she doesn’t pay attention to things, but she does. She sees how her dad’s been slowly fixing the barn since her uncle arrived, the same repairs he’d been complaining about not having the money to fix. Her mom’s planning on a trip down south to see her sister, and ‘Trena knows for a fact that they don’t have the money for that. She doesn’t know exactly what’s going on, but her parents seem less stressed, which means that they aren’t watching her as much, so she’s taking as much advantage of that as she can.
The kids at school keep asking her questions about Uncle Charlie, about why she hadn’t known about him before. They’ve created all kinds of stories around him, all built around his being some sort of outlaw. Some think that he was a drug dealer who barely survived an assassination attempt by a rival drug lord. Others believe that he was illegally shipping weapons that caused a big explosion when he got into the car accident. And since he can’t remember what happened, he can’t say that any of them are wrong.
Now he’s having lunch with bikers. ‘Trena hasn’t decided if she’s upset about it yet. On one hand, she’s going to enjoy being one of the only people in school – actually, in the entire town – who actually spoke to them. On the other hand, people are going to start asking her more questions about her uncle, just when they were starting to die down after Miss Cattraine’s wild cousin came to town and took all of the attention.
She makes her excuses to her dad for being late, basically blaming her Uncle for all of it, but a quick look to her right shows that he’s not paying attention anyway.
Charlie watches the town slowly disappear in his side view mirror, paying no attention to the blame being thrown his way by his niece. He thinks about the two men he had lunch with and the questions they asked. He doesn’t remember them, but he could tell that they’d come to check on him. He thought about asking them about it, but the more they talked, the more he understood that even if he remembered who he was or wanted to return to whatever old life he had, he can’t go back. He doesn’t need to know any more than that. Whatever came before is before, and this is his life now.
He looks over to his niece, who tells her father that they’ll be home soon and hangs up.
“How’s Cliff?”
She blinks, startled, thinking that he’s been oblivious all this time. “He’s good.”
He smiles, the one side of his face pulling a bit, a feeling that he’s becoming accustomed to. “I’m looking forward to meeting him sometime.”
Because while he might be disfigured, Charlie is far from being a stupid man.
The End