9 Letters

by Austin, Blake

  Looked up, saw Nathan putting in conduit boxes in the wrong places. Three of them already.

  “Hey,” I yelled. I stood up. Nathan looked up at me. “Are you stupid or something? That’s not where those go.”

  “Alright,” Nathan said, then turned away like he was afraid of me. He started fumbling with the box he was holding, not sure how to fix the problem.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

  “Luke, what the hell are you doing?” Morris walked up, looked down at the empty page in front of me. “You need to cool it.”

  He was right.

  I was angry for no goddamned reason except that my continued existence was literally punishment for my sins.

  So I went back to knocking nails, framing timber. Lucky for me, Georgia had the nail gun, and I got to line them up and drive them home. Started putting up some of the interior walls.

  Wasn’t paying a damn bit more attention to that than I’d been to the conduits.

  “You know what 90 degrees is?” Morris said, walking up to me.

  “What?”

  “Besides a balmy day. Ninety degrees is what one wall should be from the other. This one here, this one’s body temperature at least. Maybe even has a fever.”

  The wall wasn’t straight. Not by a decent bit.

  “Why don’t you go home,” Morris said. “Take a break.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “I don’t need this.”

  “Alright.” He put his hands in his pockets, rocked back on his heels, and took a long look at me. “Maybe it’s best then if you don’t come back at all.”

  Georgia drove me home. Said she was heading into the city anyway, and didn’t mind doing only a half-day’s work.

  I sat shotgun in her Volvo while the cornfields ran past the window, and she didn’t say a word to me. She just let the preacher on the radio do the talking.

  I tuned him out. Watched the farms, instead.

  Should have been born a farmer.

  Should have been born anyone else, anyone but me.

  King hadn’t eaten the place up, but when I opened the door he ran up to me and jumped up and forgave me for leaving him there half the day. He probably forgave me because dogs are morons. Also because he had to piss and he needed me to take him outside.

  I got the harness and leash on him, grabbed a beer, and took him for a walk around the block.

  The walk helped us both, but I decided he needed more than that. Decided I needed more than that. So he loaded up into the passenger seat and I took off for north Kansas City, to the dog park.

  It’s not like I was looking for Rae. Though I wasn’t really not looking for her either. As soon as I got to the park, I let King off the leash. And I started staring at every female stranger I saw, hoping it was her.

  I made it to our bench, in the back corner, sat down alone. She wasn’t there. There’s no reason she would be. It was around noon, and I knew she sometimes came at noon. That was all I was going on.

  Then I remembered Derek, and I figured, no matter how bad I got, I wouldn’t be that bad. I might hope to run into Rae, but if she told me I was out of her life, or that she needed space, or anything like that, I’d be out. There’s no way I’d do something like he’d done.

  I felt like I understood Derek, though, in a way. He disgusted me, but the things he said? That he loved Rae, that there wasn’t no one else in the world but her? That’s how I’d felt about Emily. It’s just that Emily had felt that way about me too. Derek was like the poisonous, fake version of what I’d had.

  And me, it’s not like I could go calling Emily or crashing her birthday party. There was no way I could see her at all without some drastic measures that I knew I didn’t have in me. In a twisted way, I was a luckier man than Derek. Because I had to learn to let Emily alone, and he had to learn to let Rae alone, but it wasn’t possible for me to slip up.

  Rae wasn’t anything like Emily. I don’t know that Rae would know the front end of a horse from the back end. And Emily, from that first day, she’d been open. She’d let me in. She’d helped me open up to let her in. If she was mad, you knew it. If she was happy, you knew it. If she loved you, there wasn’t any doubt in the world. Emily wore her heart right there on her sleeve.

  Hell, I’d talked her out of getting a horse heart tattooed on her bicep on her eighteenth birthday. She wanted it because she loved horses, she figured that was her way of wearing her heart on her sleeve. I didn’t talk her out of it because it was a bad tattoo, but because my brother had talked me out of getting a tattoo on my eighteenth birthday and I’d figured that’s just what you do when you love someone. You convince them to wait until they’re twenty. Worked on me, I’d never gotten one at all.

  Except Emily should have gotten it anyway, because I’d told her that tattoos last forever but that just isn’t true. They only last until you die. Scarcely even a few years, in her case.

  Every way that Emily was open, it seemed like Rae was closed off. Maybe that’s just how it was. If she wasn’t going to let me in, I wasn’t going to pry.

  I heard King growling, just then. This asshole German Shepherd—any dog that messes with my dog is an asshole, that’s just how it works—was nipping at King, and it looked like there was going to be fight. Owner wasn’t anywhere around. Which was probably good, because the mood I was in, I might have started a fight myself.

  Instead, I strode towards the dogs, stared that asshole Shepherd down, and he backed off. King came running up to me.

  “I ain’t always going to be around to protect you like that,” I said. “You’re going to have to look out for yourself.”

  King just looked up at me with his dumb handsome doggy eyes.

  “Ah, I know you had it handled,” I said.

  He licked my hand.

  “And I’ll always be around.”

  If Rae was going to push me away, then maybe that was okay. I mean, she was smart as hell. She had a good heart, knew how to handle herself and other people, and was funny in a dumb way that I loved that no one else seemed to, which made her twice the catch. And she was pretty, for what that was worth. She turned heads. But maybe all those weren’t enough. Because at the end of the day, there was nobody else in the whole world like Emily.

  Maybe I just had to accept that.

  Maybe I was just a widower now. Forever more.

  I gave up on hoping Rae would show up, because let’s be honest that’s why I was at the park, and King and I headed back home. Almost stopped at the grocery store for produce. Almost.

  Got home and made a sandwich. That wasn’t enough, so I cooked up some bacon, ate it right out of the pan. Gave half of it to King.

  If I worked it right, I knew I could probably spend the whole damn afternoon and evening lying on my ass on that couch. Maybe noodle on the guitar, probably watch some bad movie on Netflix. I had a lot of experience doing that.

  I gave it my best shot, too. But after a half an hour, I was antsy. Got up, paced. I’ve never paced. My dad always paced.

  I wasn’t turning into my dad, though. I knew that much.

  My dad was happy. And married.

  I started to clean, obsessively. Scrubbing at spots that weren’t there, washing clothes straight out of my drawers, anything to keep busy. When I’d cleaned the house before, it’d felt good. It’d been purging, it’d been getting my life on track.

  This was just one of my mom’s neuroses.

  But I wasn’t turning into my mom, any more than I was turning into my dad. My mom, after all, was also happily married.

  I gave up while I was halfway through scrubbing the inside of the fridge, and I threw all the groceries haphazardly back in. Honestly, that left the damn thing more cluttered than when I’d started.

  I looked over at the table. Nine letters. I’d opened six. Hadn’t done the last one. Hadn’t called Natalie. And there it was, still hanging over me this whole time.

  I took out my phone, opened the contacts. I had about three
numbers saved for Natalie after all these years, and didn’t know which one she was using. Sure, I could scroll through my recent calls until I found the last number she’d contacted me from. But then I’d have to sit and listen to the ringtone, let the anxiety wash over me, that and the knowledge that I was about to get an earful from someone who basically hated me, who still blamed me for her sister’s death. That’s what was in store if I tried to talk to Natalie. She’d never given me a break, and I’d never given her a reason to. This’d be no different. And the truth is, I blamed myself for Emily being gone just as much as Natalie did. Maybe it’d always be that way.

  “Screw this,” I said.

  I grabbed my coat, put on my hat, and went out.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The real bar was just down the street from Warren’s. It was called Lou’s. A sports bar. Didn’t serve nothing for food that wasn’t breaded and fried, and the beer out of the tap tasted like beer.

  Not that I wanted beer.

  Dave, my best friend from high school, was sitting at our booth with Damon and a couple of guys we’d picked up into our crew after graduation. There was Holger, a German guy who moved to the States to play college baseball but had found himself happier raising twins with his wife, and there was Lance. I didn’t really like Lance that much, but probably because he looked a little bit too much like me and had actually played ball in college.

  Dave did a double-take when I walked through that door and headed over to the booth.

  “Well how about that,” he said. “Luke mother-fucking Cawley.”

  “You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Holger asked, in his thick accent. He liked American phrases, because when he said them, everyone laughed.

  But Dave stood up out of the booth, pounded me on the back. I gave Damon a fistbump, then nodded to Holger and Lance.

  It’s the weirdest thing, when you change but the world you left doesn’t.

  “I haven’t seen you in here since the day after the funeral,” Damon said.

  “I’ve been busy,” I said.

  “Busy doing what? I seen you working down the street at that high-class joint.” Sure he was giving me shit, but that was how we’d always talked to each other. It’s a guy thing.

  “I’ve just been busy, that’s all,” I said, dodging the friendly insult to my current place of employment.

  “Damn, dude,” Lance said to Damon. “Give the man room to mourn, you know? I bet a year ain’t nothing.”

  I went to the bar, left them arguing. Lou was working. He’d told me to my face he wouldn’t hire me, when I’d asked about a job a year back. Said he wouldn’t do it because he wouldn’t see me waste my life tending bar in some shit hole.

  “Hey, Lou,” I said.

  “What’re you drinking?” he asked.

  “Whiskey.”

  “Straight up?”

  “Just give it to me neat,” I said. I wasn’t going to make him shake it up with ice, I just wanted to feel whiskey on my tongue.

  He poured me a glass, and I shot it, let it burn down my throat, sit warm and pretty in my gullet.

  “Another,” I said.

  He side-eyed me, but he poured, and I left my card on the bar and rejoined my friends. Knocked back that second shot while sitting at the end of the booth.

  “Hell yeah,” Dave said. “Luke’s back, man.”

  “What’ve you been doing?” Damon asked. “Hell, how’ve you been doing? You holding up?”

  “I’m holding up,” I told them. “Got a job at Warren’s, yeah. And it’s kept me busy, which I guess is all I needed, right? Stay busy, don’t starve. But I don’t know, when you work in a bar and your life is a goddamned mess and you don’t want to see people, well, after three or four shifts a week you’re all tapped out. I’ve missed you guys, I just couldn’t hang.”

  The guys nodded. The pitcher was empty, so Lance went to the bar to refill it and grab another glass.

  “That’s real,” Damon said.

  “I’m sorry I ain’t come to see you guys.”

  “Or answer your phone ever,” Dave added.

  “Or answer my phone ever,” I said.

  Lance set a glass down in front of me, poured it full of something pale. I took a long swallow.

  “How come none of you all ever came to see me at Warren’s?” I finally asked.

  Everyone shuffled in their seats.

  “It’s just hard, is all,” Dave said.

  I didn’t push it. I got it. There were four of them. They didn’t really need me. And maybe they thought I was too good for them over there at Warren’s, or maybe they were afraid that sadness is contagious. I’ve run across that one a lot. For everyone I’ve had to shut out because they reached out too much after the funeral, there were three or four people who just started avoiding me like I had the Spanish Flu or something.

  I started into my drinking pretty heavily, pretty quickly. The whiskey made a nice base, and I just poured beer down to follow. When they’re sober, people will tell you that they drink to forget, or they drink to numb the pain. But that’s not true at all and no one really thinks that. You drink because you want to tease out the pain, drive away the numbness. You drink because you want to feel something intensely, whether it’s happy or sad or pissed or anything like that.

  Done right, it’s like drawing out an infection. Done wrong—and let’s be real, it’s almost always done wrong and I was definitely doing it wrong that night—it’s just sticking your damn finger into a wound and keeping it from healing up.

  Which is to say, I got myself piss drunk and it didn’t do me or anyone else a lick of good.

  I rolled with it, being drunk, for awhile. I just kinda sloppily laughed at what everyone was saying, tried a couple times to be funny. But then I just started in on myself.

  “You know I got a dog?” I said.

  “Yeah?” Eric asked.

  “Even he’s smarter than me,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You know how many times I almost got myself fired from Warren’s? That guy likes me, and he’s still always about to fire me. And then today I went and did get myself fired from a job I didn’t even have. I got fired from volunteering, man. After I told the one girl I was sleeping with I didn’t want to see her, and right before I pissed off the next girl I was starting to like.”

  “You doing alright?” Dave asked.

  “When have I ever been doing alright?” I was shouting a little bit. Maybe a lot of bit, because some huge lumberjack-looking guy from the next booth stood up and walked our way.

  I don’t even know why it happens but I swear I’m always getting myself into fights with guys who could bench press me. At least I’ve never hit no one smaller. Not without them coming at me first, anyway.

  The guy was glaring down at me, so I stood up, one hand on the table for balance.

  “You’ve had enough to drink,” he said.

  I brought my glass to my lips, just to spite him. He knocked it from my hands.

  I spit on him. Well, I tried to spit on him. I wanted to spit on him. Instead, the spit didn’t even make it the two feet to his chest, just kind of fell out of my mouth and onto the floor between us.

  He turned on his heel, went back to sit at the booth with his friends.

  “He’s right,” Dave said.

  “Yeah, I know he’s right,” I said. “He’s still lucky I didn’t knock his teeth loose. Just because someone’s right doesn’t mean they get a say in what I fucking do to myself.”

  I threw on my coat and went for the door.

  “Where you going?”

  “Just getting some air.”

  Another guy was out there smoking. One of the lumberjack’s friends. Damn I wanted a smoke. I wanted a smoke almost as bad as I wanted a car to swerve off the road and run me over.

  Stuck my hand in my back pocket, like I still carried Skoal, and found my phone. That would do. Plenty of bad habits I could pick back up, didn’t have to be smoking. />
  I scrolled through my contacts till I found Maggie. “Maggie Missouri,” was her name in my phone, as if everyone worth knowing wasn’t from Missouri. Jabbed at her name with my forefinger, and it started ringing. Ain’t technology great?

  “Luke?”

  “Hey girl,” I said. Trying to be smooth. Trying not to sound as drunk as I was. “What’re you up to?”

  “Nothing I can’t put down,” she said. Which meant she was on her computer. The only nerd I’d ever met who was always smart enough to drop her keyboard for social interaction. Or a booty call.

  “I’m hanging out at Lou’s, with some of my old friends. They’ve been getting on me to tell them what I’ve been up to, and that made me think about you, and I don’t know, I’m just feeling kind of lonesome.”

  There was a pause, long enough for me to think she mighta hung up. “You want company?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’ll be there in half an hour or something,” she said, then hung up.

  I let the cold air sober me up as much as it was going to, which wasn’t all that much, then I went back inside.

  “Listen, Luke,” Dave said. “It’s good to see you, it really is. But damn, man, you’ve gotta chill out.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You’re cool?”

  “I’m cool.”

  “For real?”

  “No.” But I said it so quiet, I might not have said it aloud. Hard to really know.

  “We’re going to take off,” Dave said. “It’s getting late. You want a ride home?”

  “Nah, I’m good here,” I said.

  “Alright,” he said. They filed up to the bar, closed out their tabs, and took off into the night. I was alone, again. And barely drunk enough to feel it.

  I moved to the bar.

  “Just some water,” I said.

  “Damn right,” Lou said.

  “Aren’t you supposed to have some kind of good advice? Isn’t that why the world’s got bartenders?”

  “You’re a bartender,” Lou said. “What would you tell yourself?”

  “Drink more because the only good thing about life is that it’s short.”