by A W Hartoin
Janet frowned and said something to Barney. The greetings for Steve and Jeanette were a lot less enthusiastic and chairs were offered. Big Mike introduced me and Raptor.
“Stop looking at her,” demanded Jeanette.
“I’m not looking at her.” Steve leaned over the table to me. “Can I have your autograph?”
“Well,” I said.
“You are a pig,” said Jeanette. “I’ll beat you to death with a bat.”
“I want a damn autograph. You want one from that stringy singer.”
“I want a divorce.”
“Fine by me.”
Steve leaned over to me. “We’ll talk later.”
Swell.
Raptor was smiling. That’s how you know you’re screwed.
“Ah, crap,” said Jeanette.
“Jeez, woman. What’s your problem now?” asked Steve.
Jeanette pointed at the stairs. A group of women came up, wearing shirts that said Gold Star Brigade. They saw us and weren’t happy about it. One of the women with short silver hair grabbed the arm of the woman beside her and tried to steer her back down the stairs. The dark-haired woman wouldn’t go and shook off her friend’s arm and made a beeline for the table next to ours.
“Oh, great,” said Robert, scooting closer to Raptor as if to shield her.
“Is that her?” asked Barney.
Hal glanced at me, mournful as a funeral director. “Yeah.”
“Who is it?” asked Raptor.
“Nobody,” said her Grandpa. “Don’t talk to her.”
“Why not?” I asked.
Grandad shot me a look. He’d never shot me a look in my entire life. I was silenced. The waitress came over, smiling broadly. “I found you a nice chardonnay.” She gave Grandad his glass of white wine. Barney and Robert got their shots and beers. Grandad’s wine glass looked silly next to margaritas and shots.
“Good old Ace,” said Big Mike. “You don’t change.”
“I stuck with perfection,” said Grandad and the table roared.
The Gold Star Brigade at the next table wasn’t laughing.
Big Mike sat down and I feared for the chair. “This round is on me.”
“Ace, it took us years to get your bony butt here,” said Robert. “It’s time you join the club.”
“Oh, no. I’ll stick with my wine,” said Grandad.
“The hell with wine,” said Robert. “It’s time. I’ll pay.”
“I’m not drinking that swill.”
The waitress gave Big Mike his change, but he refused it. It was a nice tip. “I’ll have a rum and Coke. Hold the rum.”
It took her a second and she smiled. “Anybody else?”
“I’ll have a scotch on the rocks,” said Hal. “Hell, make it a double. This is a special occasion.”
Robert held up a finger and then pointed at Grandad, “And Nancy here will have a Malört.”
“Malört? Is that a mixed drink?” asked the waitress.
“No, sweetheart,” said Grandad. “It’s disgusting.”
“Ace, come on, my brother. We’ve all done it,” said Robert. “It’ll put hair on your chest. You gotta do it.”
Grandad shook his head and Hal said, “I’ll do it.”
“You’ve done it,” said Robert.
“Nope. Never did. You’re thinking Cally from the first.”
“Oh yeah. You two could’ve been twins.” Robert looked at the waitress. “Two Malörts.”
She shrugged. “I still don’t know what it is.”
“It’s wormwood liquor that looks like piss and tastes worse,” laughed Robert.
“I don’t know if we have that.”
“You do. Ask Foster at the back bar.”
She looked at Hal and he smiled. “I gotta do it.” Then she looked at Grandad and he said, “I don’t.”
“I’ll bring one and we’ll see how it goes,” said the waitress.
Everyone laughed and razzed Grandad until the dark-haired woman pushed her way between Hal and Steve. “Having a good time?” she yelled at us.
A woman with faded red hair and a snub nose pulled her back. “Cheryl, please.”
“Please what, Jennifer? Be nice to them? I don’t think so.”
Another woman wearing a cowboy hat said, “They’re not worth it.”
Cheryl’s lip quivered. “But he was.” She turned away and ran down the stairs.
“Why did you have to be here?” asked Jennifer before chasing her friend.
The other women just shook their heads and turned away.
Raptor leaned forward and yelled as the band started playing a Metallica song, “What was that about?”
“Never mind,” said Robert.
The waitress came back, trailed by a couple guys wearing Steelers jerseys. Steve took one look and dragged Jeanette away from her discussion with Janet. Janet heaved a relieved sigh. I’d seen interrogations that were less intrusive and Janet leaned over to me. “She makes me want to drink.”
Hal got his Malört, took one sip, and set it down. “I can’t do it.” That brought jeers of laughter.
I handed Janet my margarita and she took a sip as one of the Steelers jerseys jostled Robert. “I thought it was you. Who else would order that crap?”
The waitress reached out to give Hal his scotch. One of the Steelers knocked it out of her hand and it splattered Big Mike. He jumped up and grabbed the guy by the neck. “What are you doing, Shorty?”
“Sorry, Mike. I didn’t mean to hit you. Honest to God.”
“Yeah,” said the other one. “We meant it for these other losers.”
Grandad was out of his seat before I could blink. He dragged me and Raptor out of our seats and pushed us to the stairs. “You girls go dance.”
“I don’t dance,” said Raptor.
“Janet!”
Janet jumped up and pushed us. “Yes, you do.”
Janet was tiny, but she got us down those stairs. I only got a glimpse of one of the Steelers guys smacking Hal upside the head before six bouncers ran past us. We were on the dance floor doing the Macarena when they escorted the Steelers guys out of the bar. I had the weirdest feeling that we’d be seeing them again and it wouldn’t be a good thing.
After the Macarena, Janet went to find a bathroom. Raptor and I went for the stairs. One of the women wearing a Gold Star Brigade shirt pushed her way in front of us. “Do you know who you’re going out with? Do you?”
“They’re our grandfathers,” I said. “Not our dates.”
She pulled back, the angry leer falling off her face. “Oh.” She darted past us.
Raptor took ahold of the stair rail and paused for a second.
“Do you know anything about those Brigade women?” I asked, knowing that if I asked her if she was okay, she’d probably spit on me.
“They’re widows from the war,” she said.
“Why are they mad?”
She shrugged. “Some people survived. Others didn’t.” She went up ahead of me. It was an explanation, but not a good one.
Sitting back at the table, the waitress was taking dinner orders. I was told having a salad was not the thing in Sturgis, so I ordered deep-fried steak, fries, and coleslaw.
The waitress looked at Grandad.
“I’m going to split hers.” He inclined his head toward me.
“No, you’re not,” I said and not just because splitting wasn’t part of his diet plan. I was freaking starving.
“We’ll split.”
“No, we won’t.”
“You want me to leave you at another truck stop?”
“Go ahead and try it, old man,” I said.
Big Mike gave out a big, booming laugh. “Come on, Ace. Eat some damn food. You’re not taking anything from the rest of us. Look at me. I’m not wasting away.” There was a smile on his face, but it didn’t quite match his eyes that time.
Grandad looked ashamed and ordered the same thing as me. He even ate a good portion of it when it came while dar
ting looks at Big Mike, who appeared to be over whatever had passed between them and was downing his rum-less Cokes and ordering shots for the rest of the guys. Barney’s head hit the table at midnight, but the old guys kept going shot for shot or in Grandad’s case, chardonnay for shot.
The whole group danced. Big Mike could jitterbug and Grandad knew the Achy Breaky Heart. It was disturbing but fun.
Raptor, Janet, and I kept dancing while the vets sat down, swapped lies, and laughed themselves hoarse.
I had a second margarita and lost count of how many toasts were given and to who. We toasted lost comrades, lost love, and survival. Survival came up a lot. Raptor tried the Malört and nearly barfed. But somebody drank it. I got the feeling those guys would drink anything and had.
At two, I headed for the bathroom with Raptor trailing behind me. She was pretty tipsy and kept bumping into people.
“That guy grabbed my butt,” she said as we passed the dance floor where Grandad was doing the two-step. Grandad had moves.
We followed a snaking corridor to the bathrooms and ran across Big Mike leaning on the wall, looking pale and shaky.
Raptor went into the bathroom and I grabbed him as he lurched to the side. “Are you okay?”
“No. I got to throw up.”
I tried to get him to go in the bathroom, but he went out the exit into a sort of alley surrounded by shipping containers and racks of glassware. Big Mike staggered to a corner and heaved. I’ve never heard a water buffalo throw up, but it had to be something like that. Then he sat down in a heap. “Can I have some water?”
I got him a glass and he downed it. “I’m not half the man I used to be. I got to get back to the hotel.”
Raptor heard us and came out. “Are you okay?”
“Just an old man who shouldn’t eat crap and chug Coke. Help me up, girls.”
I don’t know how we got him to his feet or back into the bar, but we did. I wish we hadn’t. The Steelers guys were back and a brawl had broken out. Grandad was right in the middle, trading punches with a guy wearing a marine MIA tee. He was three times Grandad’s size and a decade younger.
Big Mike dove right in, cracking heads and clearing a path to Grandad.
I felt like I was supposed to do something, but what? “Can you believe this?” I asked Raptor.
She yawned. “They’re vets. What did you expect?”
“A trip down memory lane.”
“This is their memory lane.”
“Unbelieveable.”
Raptor did an exaggerated eye roll. “You are such a wuss.”
“I jumped off a bridge like a month ago,” I said.
She snorted. “Oh yeah, you’re a real hero. How much did that outfit cost or did you get it for free ‘cause you’re so pretty?”
“I’ll have you know that I—”
“He’s biting,” she said.
“What?”
“Ace is biting that marine.”
He was biting. My grandad, chardonnay drinker, was biting a guy who looked like he’d done time in prison, hard time. The Steelers guys were losing their minds, throwing chairs and turning over tables. They didn’t seem to have a target, just going for general mayhem, smiling while they did it. I dove into the fray, grabbing a bottle off a table. I don’t know who I was going to bash with it, but somebody was getting hit. Fortunately, I didn’t get the chance. The bouncers and a couple of cops were all over it. Raptor yanked me back and screamed, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Helping!”
“You can’t help. This is what they do.”
“Grandad doesn’t fight. Something happened,” I said.
“Yeah, it did. Fifty years ago,” said Raptor.
The bouncers broke up the fight. I expected somebody to be hauled off in handcuffs. I just hoped it wasn’t Grandad. Bailing out my grandfather was not on my bucket list. The Steelers guys got escorted out of the bar again, yelling about bastards and whatnot. Grandad flashed his retirement ID to the cops. When I walked over, they were talking about life on the job.
An older cop named Anderson held out his hand and said to Grandad, “Thank you for your service, sir.”
“And you,” said Grandad, clapping him on the shoulder before turning to me. “Sweetheart, having fun?”
“Not so much.”
His brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”
I crossed my arms. “You just got into a bar brawl.”
Big Mike lurched over with blood streaking down his face. “Won’t be the first time.”
“Or the last,” said Hal, soaked with alcohol. “Remember Hawaii? That was a time. How many stitches?”
“Twelve, but Harvey had twenty-two and a concussion,” said Grandad, laughing.
Big Mike slung his arm over my shoulders, buckling my knees. I went down, but Raptor caught me without blinking. “It’s time to go, boys.”
Grandad’s buddies laughed and Big Mike gave Raptor a bear hug that left her sweaty and not a little bloody. “You’re the rock now, Raquel.”
Raptor’s lower lip quivered and she quickly said, “Let me look at that cut.”
“It’s okay. I’ll buy the next round.”
“No, you won’t. That needs stitches,” she said. “I’ve got my kit on my bike.”
“Maybe just one more,” said Hal.
I shook my head. “Please, no. I’m exhausted.”
They joshed me about being the oldest one there and how they were supposed to be the geezers. Whatever. I didn’t care as long as bed was in my near future.
We wandered out into the crisp night air to find the streets still bustling but calm. Apparently, anarchy only happened when our guys were there.
“It’s a beautiful night. Feel better?” Grandad asked me.
“Who are you?” I asked.
He grinned and hugged me. “Your grandad, same as always.”
“I don’t think so.”
Hal interjected. “He’s a lot of people, Mercy. You met our Ace for the first time tonight.”
“Why do they call you Ace anyway?” I asked Grandad.
Barney raised his hand, like he was in class. “Dad told me that Ace was your grandad’s call sign because when he went into a firefight, he always came up aces.”
Grandad protested and turned a shade of red that set off his faded orange hair. “I was lucky. That’s all.”
“We were the lucky ones. You pulled me out…had to be five times before I punched my ticket home,” said Hal.
“Not that many.”
“It was. Bradley still hates you for it. He’d have left me to die.”
They got sober as we arrived at the bikes.
“Is that what the fight was about?” I asked. “The war?”
The vets didn’t answer, but Barney said, “Some things don’t end with a ceasefire.”
“How can you still fight about things that happened over fifty years ago?” I asked.
Grandad helped me into the sidecar. “If you can’t beat the stuffing out of a guy fifty years later, you didn’t care that much to begin with.”
“I guess I don’t care that much about anything.”
He touched my cheek. “You will.” Then he went over to Hal and Big Mike, who were staying in town. Raptor got her kit out from under her seat and walked over to me. “I’m going to stay with Big Mike.” She said it like I was going to argue. Fat chance. I’d have paid her to stay with him.
“Okay. Is the cut that bad?” I asked.
“No, but I’ve got to stitch it and he’s not looking all that good.”
I glanced over at Big Mike, leaning heavily on Janet, who was shaking from his weight.
“He drank something,” I said.
“Big Mike doesn’t drink.” Anger flashed in her eyes. I couldn’t tell if it was for me or Big Mike.
“I smelled it in the vomit.”
Her lip quivered again. “He’s a recovering alcoholic.”
“They bounce.”
“After twe
nty years?”
“Any time.”
She nodded and took over for the exhausted Janet. Grandad came back and got on the BMW.
“Are you okay to drive?” I asked.
He flicked a glance at the retreating backs of Hal and Big Mike. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. My last three chardonnays were Sprites.”
“You’re a badass, Grandad.”
“That’s what I’m telling you.” The bike roared to life. “I could use a night cap. You in?”
“Like what? A whiskey?”
“Hell no. Tension Tamer tea.”
Yep. A real badass.
Chapter Nine
AARON WOKE ME at nine for breakfast. I insisted on taking a shower first and he wasn’t happy. Showers should never put off breakfast in Aaron’s world. He waited outside the bathroom and drying my hair was not an option.
“For goodness’ sake, Aaron,” I said, getting dressed behind the handy screen made of old shutters. “What did you make? Manna from heaven?”
“Huh?”
“Is it going to go bad?”
“Yeah.”
“Fine. I’m coming.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Right now.”
I peeked around the screen. “Get ‘em, Wallace.”
The pug looked at me and then attacked my pillow viciously.
“Ready?” asked Aaron.
“No. I forgot to get my underwear. You want to dig in that drawer and get a pair for me?” I asked.
Aaron trotted out of the room and I heard him pound down the stairs. Sweet. Something got rid of the little weirdo. I’d have to remember that.
I finished getting dressed and pried my pillow from Wallace’s jaws before carrying her down the stairs to find a jittery Aaron at the foot. We went to the enormous kitchen that took up the entire addition that Virginia and Kathleen built on the stone house. The table in front of the big fireplace was set and everyone else was there, looking surprisingly perky.
A timer dinged.
“Done!” Virginia opened the first of the three ovens lined up inside the stone-covered island. “Perfection.”