by J. L. Fynn
The Waiting Game
J.L. Fynn
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author Ebook
Copyright © 2014 J.L. Fynn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
This is a work of fiction.
Any resemblance it bears to reality is coincidental.
To Steve. The man, the myth, the legend.
CHAPTER ONE
I SAW HER before she saw me. I knew what she was after, so I shoved my nose farther into my book, trying to look busy. I was only pretending to read because, by this point, the words on the page had gotten too difficult to make out by the light of the flickering neon sign above me. The sign once read “Run In & Go,” the name of our truck stop for the evening, but the “in” kept blinking out, making the resulting “Run & Go” seem like an ominous warning.
I would’ve gone into the travel trailer attached to the back of my shiny 1990 Silverado, but Jim was using it for his own purposes at the moment. Instead, I tried to make myself comfortable on the side steps of the trailer. Jim liked to make fun of me for how shabby my trailer looked compared to the flashy new truck, but I figured that a man needed to splurge a little. Better to drop a handful of money on a truck than to drop a fortune on some huge house I’d only live in five months out of the year.
Jim and I’d been out on the road since April, and it was the end of October, which meant the end of the season. We should’ve been heading back already to make the clan’s back-from-the-road party, but Jim had wanted to stay out an extra couple of weeks, and I didn’t have the energy to argue with him.
Thinking of Jim made me wish I could go back into my trailer. He was entitled to have a little fun, but I was starting to get cold, and I was ready for a beer or two. Fun—or a version of it at least—was exactly what the woman coming toward me had in mind as well, but picking up a random lot lizard didn’t top the list of things I wanted to accomplish this evening.
“Hey, baby. Looking for a date?”
I glanced up from my book and took in the woman standing before me. She looked somewhere between twenty-two and thirty-five, her age difficult to determine through caked-on layers of makeup. She wore cut-off jeans so short I could tell what religion she was and a red belly shirt torn at the hem. Her hair was bleached-blonde straw that looked in danger of breaking off in a moderate breeze. Her hands fidgeted with her belt loop in a manic way.
I gave her a thin smile. “Not tonight, darlin.’” The moment after I said the words, I regretted using my impression of a slow Georgian drawl. Should’ve gone for a New Jersey accent. Much less sexy.
“Oh, come on.” She moved closer to me, positioning herself between my legs. “You got this nice trailer right here. Think of all the fun we could have.” A grunt escaped the trailer and the girl’s eyes widened. “Oh, I see. You already got a friend in there. Well, I don’t mind waiting my turn.”
I coughed, choking on the smell of alcohol and stale cigarettes the woman emitted from every pore. She smelled like a Traveler man on a bender, just before his wife intervened to make him take the pledge. Definitely not appealing.
I stood up awkwardly, leaned my back against the trailer’s door, and rolled around to get out of the woman’s grasp. “I appreciate the offer, ma’am,” I said, sticking with my southern accent. Had to commit to it now. “But I have a wife at home.” The wife was a fabrication, but telling lies was what being on the road was all about.
“What she don’t know can’t hurt her.”
Other than STDs, I thought. I decided to keep that gem to myself.
“Sorry.” I shoved the book in my face and tried to look engrossed again.
“Ten bucks to see my tits? You can even touch ‘em.”
I didn’t know whether to be annoyed or impressed by the woman’s persistence. A hustler has to respect a good hustle.
“Actually, I better run and call my wife.” I jogged toward the phone booth by the side of the truck stop. “Good luck finding someone else to have a good time with,” I called over my shoulder.
Jim would laugh when he heard this story. First of all, he’d probably call me a pussy for not getting mine when the opportunity was literally throwing herself at me. And then he’d laugh at me for not just telling her to fuck off. Jim was my best friend, and a great guy once you got to know him, but he had a strong policy of telling it like it is.
I walked into the phone booth and pulled a couple of quarters out of my pocket. It’d been a while since we’d checked in at the Village and we hadn’t yet told them we’d be coming home late. If nothing else, it was a good excuse to stay shut up in the phone booth for a while. Pop liked everyone out on the road to call in at least twice a week in case there was any big news: reports of cops catching on to us in some town, places that were ripe with gulls, something happening back home. He didn’t want anyone out of the loop.
“Hello.” Old Mary Costello’s voice rang through the line. She was an advisor whose job it was to sit by the phones all day and know everything that was going on. The old women of the clan needed something to do with their time.
Even though we shared the same last name, we weren’t any close relation. Most members of the Village were at least distantly related, but I was the only branch remaining on my side of the Costello family tree.
“Hi, Mary. It’s Tommy. I was calling to see if there was any news.”
“Tommy. Why haven’t you called in? It’s been over a week.”
“Sorry, I hadn’t realized it’d been that long.” Of course that was a lie, but you didn’t want to cross Old Mary. She was a tough one.
“Is Jim with you?”
“Yeah.” True, more or less.
“Well, good. Pop Reilly has something he wants to tell him. I’ll have him call you back in a few minutes. Stay where you are.”
I hung up the phone and tapped my fingers nervously on the side of the glass box. I looked over toward the trailer about a hundred yards away. I wondered
if I could get over there, pound on the door for Jim, and get back here before Pop’s call.
I thought better of it. The call center where the old women worked was in the back of Pop’s house, so there was every possibility the phone could ring any second, and Pop would not be happy if I wasn’t here to answer his call.
Ring. There he was. Even though Jim had been my best friend since we were small and his father had treated me almost like one of his own, talking to the man still intimidated the shit out of me.
Ring. I couldn’t imagine what would be so important he couldn’t have passed the message along through Mary. Pop never spoke to us while we were on the road. He usually left us to it.
Ring. What was wrong with me? I needed to suck it up and pick up the goddamn phone.
“Hello?”
“Jim?” Pop’s raspy voice asked. Pop Reilly was one of the few Travelers who’d never smoked a day in his life. Ironic, since he always sounded like he was on the verge of needing an iron lung.
“No, sir. It’s Tommy.”
“Where’s Jim? I need to talk to him.”
“Sorry, sir. He’s a bit…indisposed right now.”
“Indisposed, huh? I bet he is.” Pop didn’t sound amused.
“I could deliver a message if you like.”
“No. There are some things a man needs to be told directly by his father. You tell him to call me the second he’s…more disposed. You hear that? The very second.”
Pop didn’t wait for a response and hung up. The phone blared out a dial tone, and I put the receiver in its cradle. I started back toward the trailer, and when I was no more than halfway there, the front door swung open.
A short man, much shorter than Jim, stepped out and tipped his baseball cap at me as he walked by, not seeming the least bit embarrassed. He looked like a trucker. He was much less obvious than the bleached-blonde who’d come up to me earlier, but the two of them had quite a bit in common. I couldn’t help but wonder what this man’s life must be like—or that woman’s.
What a strange thing. Living at a truck stop. Catering to the needs of men on the road.
Although, I guess our life wasn’t much more normal, so who was I to judge? I gave him a nod and slowed my pace, wanting to make sure that Jim was put together before I made my way in to warn him about whatever horrible news he was about to get.
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN I FINALLY walked into the trailer, Jim was smoking a cigarette at the small pullout table, looking at a newspaper. I hated it when he smoked inside and he knew it, but he never seemed to be able to stop himself after he’d been with one of his “friends.”
Although, maybe it was better that way. The smoke cleansed the place.
“Did you see this?” Jim said without looking up. “There was a huge storm over in Kansas last night. Hundreds of roofs were damaged. We could drive through the night, unload the trailer at a campsite, and drive the truck around for the next two weeks. We could make fifteen or twenty more before we go home. I told you staying out was a good idea.”
“Sounds great,” I said with little emotion. I grabbed a plastic cup from the cabinet, poured a tiny bit of water in it from the sink, and put it in front of Jim for his ash. I knocked a cigarette out of the soft pack sitting in front of him, and lit it. I only smoked from time-to-time, but something told me that whatever Pop had to say was going to make me want a cigarette. “I called back to the Village.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, and I talked to Pop.”
“Why?”
“Mary Costello answered the phone and I asked for the usual report, but she told me your dad wanted to talk to us.”
“Well, what did he have to say?”
“I don’t know. He said that whatever message he had was for your ears only.”
Jim took one last, long drag from his cigarette, then dropped it into the cup. “Damn. That doesn’t sound good.”
“Doesn’t sound good at all,” I agreed.
We both sat in silence until I’d finished my own cigarette; then we stared at each other for a long moment, neither of us knowing what to do. Finally, Jim put his palms on his upper thighs. “Well, I guess we better do this then.”
“We? Your dad said he wants to talk to you.”
“And you’re not going to go over there with me? I thought we were a team, pal.” Jim’s tone held a hint of gallows humor.
“Fine,” I said. “Let’s get it over with then.”
We walked to the phone booth, and Jim dropped in a handful of quarters. “Hi, Mary. It’s Jim. My dad wanted to talk to me?”
He hung up the phone.
“What was it?” I asked, growing more anxious by the second.
“I don’t know yet, dipshit.” Jim smacked me in the back of the head. “He still has to call back.”
A few moments later the phone rang. Jim answered. “Hello?”
Pause.
“What is it?”
Jim listened for a long time. At first, his expression seemed confused, but soon it turned angry. I could hear the rumble of Pop’s voice coming through the telephone’s speaker, but I couldn’t make out any of the words.
“You can’t just spring something like this on someone,” Jim said, his face reddening. “I’m not—”
Jim got cut off, presumably by something Pop said.
“Yeah, but I’m a grown man.” His tone had turned from angry to desperate. Theories as to what Pop could be saying raced through my head. Had we gotten in trouble for something? Were the police onto us? Was Pop calling us home? Were we being dragged? Oh God. My reputation in the clan was bad enough. I mean, it wasn’t terrible, but I was all on my own. Sure, Jim’s family had been nice enough to take me under their wing, but without family of my own, I wasn’t exactly the most eligible bachelor. In our community, if you didn’t have family, you had didn’t have anything. And now there was something else? Goddamn it. I wished I could hear what Pop was saying.
“I can make my own decisions,” Jim continued. “I haven’t even—” And then it dawned on me. What if someone in the Village had found out about Jim? As far as I knew, I was the only one aware of his…proclivities. It never bothered me any. So what if he liked to mess around with country boys out on the road? Most of the men messed around with country girls from time to time. What was the difference?
But of course others in the clan wouldn’t see it that way. If anyone else ever found out about Jim, he’d be ruined. Probably forever. Clan-leader’s son or not.
“Couldn’t it wait, at least?” Jim rubbed at his face. I looked away. I hadn’t seen any tears, but if there were any, I was sure Jim wouldn’t want an audience. Men weren’t supposed to cry. Especially not because of something their daddy said.
“Fine. We’ll come home right—” Pause. “Yes, sir. I understand. Tonight. We’ll be home by tomorrow afternoon. You happy?” Pause. “Inoc na Dalyon.” Jim said the traditional cant goodbye, ‘blessings from God’ without an ounce of feeling. Apparently the conversation was over.
When I turned back, emotion seeped out of Jim like a tire with a slow leak. What that emotion was—anger, sadness, fear—I wasn’t sure. Part of me didn’t want to know what his father had said, but all of me knew that I needed to hear it.
CHAPTER THREE
“WHAT IS IT?” I asked when we were sitting at the table back in the trailer. Jim pulled out his cigarettes, but his hands were shaking so hard he couldn’t get one to come free of the pack. I took it from him and shook out two cigarettes, lit them, then handed one to Jim. At this point, I didn’t give a damn about smoking inside the trailer.
“I need a drink.” Jim stared blankly at his hands. I grabbed a bottle of whiskey out of the cupboard and poured two fingers for each of us. I handed the cup to Jim, who finished the drink in one gulp. I poured him another, then sat down across from him.
“What is it?”
Jim shook his head, breathing out a bitter chuckle, but it was his only answer.
“Seriously, Jim. You’re starting to scare me. What? Did we get pinched? Are we being dragged?” He didn’t move at all to respond, but his laughter grew louder. “What!” I yelled, finally losing it. He was upset, fine, but it wasn’t okay to leave me hanging like this.
Jim’s laughter took on a hysterical quality. “It’s nothing like that,” he said through gasps for air. He took the second shot I’d handed him and calmed down some. “In fact, Pop says that this is news I should be happy about.”
I gave him a look that told him to hurry up and spit it out, whatever it was.
“I’m getting married, Tommy boy.”
All the tension I’d been holding in my shoulders whooshed out of me. “But, wait. That’s great! Who is she?”
“Some Irish girl.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down much,” I said sarcastically.
“No. She’s from Ireland, dumbshit.” Sometimes Jim could be a bit blunt, but that’s what I liked about him. With Jim, what you saw was what you got. Well, for the most part. “Apparently her granddad was over visiting some relatives in the Village last month, and he set things up with Pop then.”
“Well, that isn’t so bad, is it? We’re both getting a bit old not to be married. You go much past twenty-five and people wonder what’s wrong with you.” I smiled at him, trying to raise his spirits, but his expression was still black as mud.
I felt a pang in my chest and realized quickly it was jealousy. Jim had made it clear over the years that he wasn’t anxious to tie the knot, but I would’ve loved to get married. Bride prices were steep, though, and while I’d put away a good bit of money, there was no way that without parents to help, I’d be able to afford a wife for another couple years. Why did it always seem that the guy with the money didn’t want the girl and the guy who wanted the girl never had the money?
Jim slammed his glass back down on the table, jarring me from my thoughts. He threw the remainder of his cigarette into the ash cup and got up on unsteady feet to pour himself more whiskey. He grabbed the bottle off the counter, and after fumbling around to unscrew it, he poured enough whiskey to nearly reach the top of the glass. I guess I’d be the one driving us home tonight.