Saving Grapes

by J. T. Lundy

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Emerald Book Company

  Austin, TX

  www.emeraldbookcompany.com

  Copyright ©2015 J.T. Lundy

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.

  Distributed by Emerald Book Company.

  For ordering information or special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Emerald Book Company at PO Box 91869, Austin, TX 78709, 512.891.6100.

  Design and composition by Greenleaf Book Group

  Cover design by Colleen Lanchester-Raynie

  Front cover image credit: ©Shutterstock/iralu

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-937110-76-5

  Ebook Edition

  For Renée, Calvin, Cooper, and Colin

  CHAPTER 1

  My ex-wife had been aiming for me all morning. Laura’s old high school friends, Sheila and Erin, had been gunning for me, too. I wasn’t bothered, though—not a bit. These three showed up every Wednesday at Eustace’s Tees and slugged range balls my way as I drove the caged ball-picker back and forth, scooping up the evidence of golfers’ frustration and glory. I ignored them, mostly, as they hit away and laughed. I’m good at ignoring things, which is probably one reason Laura left me in the first place. That, and she found some big-time bond trader whose lucrative career looked more attractive than my personality or prospects. No, they could shoot at me all they wanted.

  Perfectly synchronized, Laura, Erin, and Sheila each took a mighty swing in my direction. I couldn’t actually see the ball, or balls I should say, as they sailed, camouflaged through the gray Illinois sky, so I paid no mind and lazily cruised along. I was preparing to turn the picker around when the three white spinning projectiles arrived at once, pelting the wire cage with enough force to shake the coffee cup out of my non-steering hand.

  “Hey,” I shouted, knocked out of my self-control and faux nonchalance. Hot coffee spread on my green maintenance coveralls. I looked to the tees and saw Laura bent over laughing. Erin and Sheila high-fived. Laura straightened up and they all embraced, celebrating the miracle shots that had jolted a reaction out of me. The underside of my skin tingled.

  I took a deep breath and tried to relax. Laura had deserted me, and I blamed her, but I guess logically I shouldn’t have. Bond-trader Tom was in the fast lane. Ball-picker Jason was thirty-two and still mowing grass. For the most part, though, Laura and I had remained friends.

  The happy threesome smiled and waved teasingly. So what, they got me. I should have waved back and shrugged it off, but there’s only so much humiliation a man can take, and my range bucket was full. Week after week, all summer long, these three former prom queen wannabes took out their aging frustrations on me. It was fall and there were only a few weeks left in the season, but their affable taunting had finally gotten to me. I gripped the steering wheel and my arms trembled. I stared at Laura and tried to regain control, but then, in the parking lot behind the tees and jeering ladies, I saw a tow truck dangling my 1985 red Pontiac Fiero from its hook and chain.

  The bank was finally calling my bluff. They were going to repossess my ride.

  “Stop!” I steered the range picker toward the tees and raced for the parking lot. Laura, Erin, and Sheila grabbed their clubs and scattered. I hit the tees without a thought of braking. Ball baskets and tee mats went flying. A ball washer went down.

  “Asshole!” Sheila cried.

  I raced by the shocked women and headed for the tow truck. My Fiero moved toward the exit. The truck driver flipped me his middle finger out the open window. I couldn’t catch up. The truck clanked out of the parking lot and dragged my sham sports car filled with memories, more bad than good these last years, down the road and out of my life.

  “You’re fired, Jason!”

  I turned around. There he stood. Eustace Small, the miserly owner of Eustace’s Tees and my former stepbrother. He was in front of the white wood-sided office in a very un-golf-like suit, his hands smugly on his hips. If there was a person who could get my ire up more than Laura, it was Eustace, and he was an easier target. I don’t know why I did what I did—years of frustration I guess.

  I whipped the picker around and back over the tee boxes toward Eustace. He looked at me in horror. I drove straight at him. Eustace ran, and I chased. The ladies whooped and clapped and cheered on my destruction.

  I only wanted to scare him, and I was about to turn away when Eustace picked up the high-pressure water hose and pointed. A jet of water flooded onto my head. I instinctively lifted my hands to protect my face and the picker veered, slamming into an aluminum fence post. I pulled the picker back and stopped.

  A metal creaking sound filled the air.

  The top of the post teetered, and then it fell, pulling the fence with it. The post and fence crashed into the next post, and a giant chain reaction began. Posts toppled like dominoes, and the one hundred-foot-high mesh that encased the range tumbled to the ground.

  The water barrage ended, and I regained control of the picker. I looked at Eustace. His hair was a straggly mess. Water dripped from his suit. He threw a golf ball at me, but it bounced harmlessly off the cage. He ran to the one-hundred-yard marker, removed the flagpole, and threw it at me like a javelin. It darted through the cage’s steel mesh, zipped by my nose, and hit the back roll bar, where it stopped.

  I tried to push the flagpole, but it had bent and wouldn’t slide out. Eustace ran and grabbed a flagpole at the fifty-yard marker. He held his new weapon like a spear and charged. I kicked the accelerator and dashed across the range. I looked back. Eustace chased, but he couldn’t keep up. In a final effort he launched his flagpole javelin high into the air, but it landed harmlessly behind me.

  The one-hundred-yard marker protruded out the cage’s front as I crossed Route 57 and drove into Brentwood Estates, the city of Kankakee’s most exclusive subdivision.

  What to do? Stumpy. I’d go to Stumpy. Generally he was an idiot, but sometimes he gave me good advice. I hugged the street’s side, half the picker on the road, half on the parkway.

  An old man walked from his house toward the street. I smiled and waved and unintentionally ran over the newspaper at the end of his drive, mangling it beyond saving as it flipped into the hopper.

  The old man shook his fist. “Criminal!”

  I rounded a corner and turned onto Chicago Avenue, a busy stripmall mecca. Cars honked and people yelled. I drove two blocks and then bounced over the curb and came to a stop in Little Caesar’s parking lot.

  Inside Little Caesar’s the air was thick with heat and the yeasty smell of dough.

  “Jason!” Stumpy, short and squat with bowl-cut straight hair, stood next to a stainless steel counter in the back, tossing pepperonis onto a pizza.

  “Stumpy,” I called. “You’re the pizza master.”

  Stumpy laughed and overshot a pepperoni to the floor.

  “That pizza for me?”

  “If you want.”

  “For both of us. Throw that pie in the oven.”

  Stumpy looked at the oven uncertainly. “I’m not supposed to go near the oven anymore.”

  “Okay, well, come ring me up, then. Five ninety-nine, right?” I shoved my hand into my coverall’s leg pocket. I was pretty sure I had a ten folded up down there somewhere.

  Stumpy just stood there looking embarrassed, somewhat guilty even. “I�
�m not allowed to use the cash register anymore either.”

  “Hey,” I shouted toward the back. “Can I get some service here?”

  “Jason, please.”

  “Don’t worry, man, just keep tossing them pepperonis on our pizza. I want extra, extra, pepperonis.”

  The nineteen-year-old string bean of a manager came out of the back office scowling at me. “Stumpy breaks in five minutes. You can wait outside.”

  “I’m a customer. One pepperoni pizza, good sir.” I plopped down my coffee-soaked, crumpled up, ten-dollar bill.

  Stringbean reluctantly rang up the total on the register.

  “Are you hiring?”

  He closed and opened his eyes slowly and shook his head. “We tried that already.” He turned his head toward Stumpy with a disgruntled employer’s glare, which quickly turned to shock. “What are you doing?”

  Stumpy stopped humming and looked up. He stood before a pizza piled high with well over a hundred pepperonis.

  I laughed. “Yeah. Pepperoni paradise!” I looked back to Stringbean. “Could you put our pizza in the oven?”

  He was ready to cook us both, but I did some fast talking and negotiated our extra, extra pepperoni pizza price to my entire ten dollars, which he was not very happy with, but what choice did he have?

  When the pizza was done, Stumpy took his break and we sat on the sidewalk curb, stretching our feet into the parking lot in front of the ball-picker.

  I told Stumpy about my Fiero, and the ball-picker joyride. “What am I going to do?”

  “You know what I think?”

  “What?”

  Stumpy shoved a whole gob of the pepperoni glacier into his mouth until his cheeks bulged. He looked at me with serious wide eyes and garble-talked insensibly as he chewed on the mouthful of pizza.

  I laughed. This was an old tactic Stumpy and I utilized whenever we had something important to discuss. I shoved the meaty dough into my mouth until I could barely breathe and then gurgled an appropriate response to Stumpy’s remarks.

  We started laughing until our eyes watered. My breathing became dangerously stifled. I stood up and began spitting chewed pepperonis onto the pavement.

  Just then, a siren wailed and the sheriff’s car whipped into the lot. No great escape for the J-man. The ball-picker bandit was run down in under an hour. Just fabulous. Aunt Clara, Eustace, even Laura, all the pissed-off people in my pissed-off life would have something to say about this. Did it matter? Really, after all, did it matter any more?

  The sheriff stepped his large frame out of the car and stood before us in his tan uniform. “Your brother, Eustace. He’s real pissed off.”

  “You mean his stepbrother,” Stumpy said.

  “Former stepbrother,” I said.

  I stood up, cheese dripping down my chin, and put my hands together in front of me. The sheriff looked almost bored as he removed a pair of handcuffs from his belt and latched them over my wrists.

  CHAPTER 2

  Eustace was droning on. “The season’s almost over. I need money. Jason has to pay.”

  So I sat, later that night, discussing my fate with Aunt Clara, Eustace, and Aunt Clara’s attorney, William Hammersmith III, at a Denny’s, because it was Aunt Clara’s favorite.

  Aunt Clara looked upon us with authority. She spoke in her thick French accent. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen.” Since the three of us were indebted to Aunt Clara in one way or another, she was pretty much calling the shots.

  “Eustace. You will not press charges.”

  “I’m a grown man, Ms. Clara.”

  “You’re a grown ass,” I said.

  Eustace grabbed his fork and raised it up my way like he was going to skewer me.

  “Boys!” Aunt Clara slapped Eustace’s hand down. “Stop it.”

  “Yeah. Stop it, you forker,” I said.

  Aunt Clara pinched the skin between her eyes, and I thought for a second she might be trying to stop herself from crying. “Boys, I was mother to you both for a short time. It ended badly between Eustace’s father and me, but I like to think we were a nice little family for at least a while.”

  Mother. Ha. A mother that made me call her Aunt Clara, so I wouldn’t forget I was not her son. And the Eustace era was all a terrible time, the way I remember it. I don’t think Eustace’s father, the philandering rat, ever loved Aunt Clara, but she, nevertheless, fawned all over Eustace, as if proving her worth would help the situation.

  Eustace put his hand on Aunt Clara’s shoulder. “Living in your house was the best time of my life.”

  Aunt Clara looked kindly at Eustace. “If only your father was as sweet as you.”

  Oh, please! What nonsense. I slapped my hand on the table. “You always liked Eustace better than me. Is that what we are here for? To compare me to Eustace?”

  Aunt Clara grabbed her spoon and smacked my knuckles. “Have some gratitude. This is about us saving you from jail—and for the last time! Next time you’ll simply be cut out of everything. I’ve already put it in writing.”

  Aunt Clara nodded to Hammersmith, who nodded pompously back. “Mr. Hammersmith and I just finalized my last will and testament.” Aunt Clara’s eyes never left mine, even as I looked around. “I love you, Jason, but this is your last chance.”

  Aunt Clara had raised me since I was a baby, but the only times I ever heard her talk about love, it was always followed by a threat.

  She looked us over. “Jason, you can move back into the house and I’ll provide you room and board. You will then work for free and help Eustace rebuild the fence. I will loan Eustace some money to tide him over.”

  I had to stifle a groan.

  “Mr. Hammersmith will write up an agreement, and we will all behave amicably and present it to the judge tomorrow and hope he lets Jason off.”

  Hammersmith looked back and forth at Eustace and me. “Agreed?”

  Eustace and I nodded.

  “Then shake hands,” Aunt Clara said.

  I shook Eustace’s clammy hand as hard and friendly as I could. He smiled and squeezed back with less enthusiasm.

  William Hammersmith III stood across the aisle and talked chummy-like with Eustace.

  I sat at a wooden table before an ornate judge’s bench in Kankakee’s one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old county courthouse. High ceilings and lacquered wooden tables, seats, and rails brought a gravity and sense of weighty tradition to the room. It smelled of plaster and looked like a country lawyer’s dream.

  Eustace stepped across the aisle and shook my hand. “Good luck.”

  Good luck? What did I need luck for? “I thought everything was set?”

  “Things change.” Eustace looked at Hammersmith and then to me, like what he was about to say was rehearsed. “I’m sorry, Jason, but sometimes life doesn’t work out the way we plan.” Eustace looked almost sad for me. Now I was really scared.

  The bailiff bellowed, “All rise for the honorable Judge Landon Crawford.” The old judge walked in with his black choir-like robe, stood behind the bench like a preacher in a pulpit, and locked eyes with me. I was looking up at the same old guy whose newspaper I had destroyed yesterday with the ball-picker.

  “Would the parties approach the bench,” Judge Crawford said.

  Hammersmith stood between Eustace and me as we all looked up to the judge. “The facts are not in dispute in this case,” Judge Crawford said. “Mr. Barnes admits guilt and my sentence is one year in the county jail.”

  I went numb. “One year?”

  “Vehicle theft, driving an unlicensed vehicle, and damaging property.” The judge looked at his notes. “One year is a light sentence, but still, I’m willing to listen to alternatives.”

  “We had an agreement!” I looked at the judge, then at Eustace, then at Hammersmith. “We had an agreement.”

  “Eustace has changed his mind,” Hammersmith said.

  I looked around for Aunt Clara, but I couldn’t find her.

  “I understand the partie
s are related?” The judge said.

  I regained some feeling and tried to be hopeful.

  “Stepbrothers,” Eustace said.

  “Former stepbrothers,” I said.

  The judge arched his eyebrows in confusion.

  “My aunt was my guardian,” I said. “My parents died in a car accident when I was a baby.”

  “My dad was married to his aunt for six months when Jason and I were ten,” Eustace added.

  “It was six months of hell,” I said.

  The judge pounded his gavel. “To the point.” He looked at Eustace. “You insist on pressing charges?”

  Eustace looked deadpan at me. “Absolutely.”

  “What are your damages?” The judge asked.

  “Sixty thousand dollars.”

  “Wait, what?” My head jerked around and I looked wide-eyed at Eustace. “Sixty thousand!”

  Eustace opened up a folder. “I have all the estimates, plus legal fees, and the standard add-on for pain and suffering.”

  “We’ll see what Aunt Clara says about that.” I bit the inside of my lip, lest I strangle him right there. “Okay, fine. I’ll work it off. I’ll pay him back. That’s what we agreed.”

  “That’s an interesting idea,” The judge said. “What if Mr. Barnes were to repay the damages?”

  Eustace slapped his folder shut. He ran his hand through his thinning black hair. “He deserves a lesson. I’m pressing charges.”

  “We agreed. We shook hands.” I put my hands together as if in prayer. “Eustace, we’re brothers.”

  “Former stepbrothers.”

  “Mere semantics. Perhaps we haven’t been the best of pals, but family should help each other out in times of need.”

  Eustace smiled. “Not this time.”

  I spread my hands wide. “Why the hell not?”

  He pointed at me. “I’ll tell you why.” He pressed his hand against his suit. “I’ve worked hard all my life and watched you slide by. I’m pressing charges.”

  Damn. Why was Eustace being such a jerk? That is, why was he being an even bigger jerk than he usually was? “Please, Eustace. Have some mercy. I don’t want to go to jail. I’m sorry for all the bad things I’ve ever said or done to you.”