Passengers for flight EIN-108 to Dublin, please go to Gate X.
“That’s you, then,” Paddy said. Seamus heard the tremor in his brother’s voice and realised there wasn’t a hope for either of them getting through the departure without bawling their eyes out.
“Aye, that’s me. You look after your—” He got no further than that; Paddy’s bear hug was his undoing, and all that was left was sobbed, indecipherable mumbles that likely were about keeping in touch, coming to visit soon, and all of those other things people say when goodbye is too much to take.
“I’ll be bleachin’ the pot meself, then?” was the last thing Paddy called after him as Seamus passed through the entrance to the security area. They were over Canada before he got his head together again.
The car park was near empty, and he parked close to the warehouse, grabbing a flat-bed trolley on his way in. There were more staff than there were customers, which made for a quick job, with one of the sales assistants shadowing him all around the place, darting off to fetch bits and bobs from Seamus’s list and then returning for his next instruction. Seamus wasn’t the sort to grumble, and in any case it would be ridiculous to complain about getting too much assistance, but he had hoped to stretch the trip out a while longer, and the eager beaver tearing up and down aisles on his behalf had done him out of at least a half-hour of browsing for distraction.
Tacks, tiles, shower hose, fuses, three double sockets, two five-litre pots of white emulsion, a double-glazed door and a Mars Bar later, Seamus was back in the car, stereo on and cranked up full blast. The Cranberries were one of his mam’s favourite bands, and listening to them usually made him feel cosily nostalgic, but the last thing Seamus needed right at that moment was a song about people not moving on. Sometimes things aren’t meant to be. Sometimes…
Marie was right; he really could do with his mammy’s guidance right about now. In truth, she would have been thrilled he’d come ‘home’. She didn’t want to leave in the first place, but Dad—well, he was always more pragmatic, sensible, and there was no work in Ireland back then, the North or the South. There wasn’t much more to be had now. You gave up running a ranch to supervise cabbage picking? What the hell were you thinking, son? Whether the judgement came from the afterlife or simply resided in Seamus’s imagination, it got at him just the same. He pushed it from his mind while he put his supplies inside the house and decided the weather would hold long enough to pop up the lane for a glass or two. It was lunchtime, so.
“Afternoon, Seamus. Your usual?”
“Aye, that’d be great, thanks, Jon.” Seamus planted his rump on the closest bar stool and picked up the newspaper on the counter, absently flicking through the pages while Jon pulled his pint. Someone had already filled in most of the crossword, with half of the letters redrawn to correct errors, and the racing pages were covered in asterisks. Behind him, Seamus could hear a couple of men talking form. It was all very drab Saturday afternoon. He sighed and closed the paper. “No Marie today?” he asked.
“Not till this evening. You don’t like my ugly mug, no?”
Seamus grinned. “Oh, you’re not so bad really. My dog’s thrown up worse.”
“You’ve got a dog?”
“No.”
Jon left the pint to settle and took Seamus’s money. “You know old Barry’s got a collie he’s after retiring.”
“Has he now?”
“Aye. She’s a smasher, too. Only four years old, he said, but she had a bad do a while back. Something spooked her and she’s no use to him now.”
“I need to have a chat with him anyway. See if he’s got any jobs.”
“Our baby works for him, you know, and he pays buttons.”
“I don’t care. I swear to God, if I see another feckin’ cabbage…”
Jon laughed. “Do you mean the lads?”
“Some of ’em are shocking, though there’s a couple are all right.” By a couple, Seamus meant just the one, and he was a little worried how young Michael would fare with a change of supervisor, but the work was starting to get Seamus down. Hell, everything was getting Seamus down, and it just wasn’t like him at all. A pint glass appeared in front of him, and he once again shook off the misery.
“Cheers,” he said, taking a swig that half-emptied the glass. It went down a treat. Another customer arrived, robbing Seamus of his company for the time being, not that he and Jon knew each other outside of their bartender-patron interactions, but he was feeling quite desperate for things to fill his mind.
“You’ll be up for that, will ye, Seamus?”
“Hm?” Seamus turned to the man standing next to him.
“Line dancin’.”
“What now?” Seamus acted ignorant.
“Don’t you be trying to tell me you don’t know how to line dance. A big feller like you in Texas—”
“Kansas.”
“Same thing. It’s in your bones, so it is.”
“Not a chance, mate. See those?” Seamus pointed at his boots—cowboy boots—and gave himself a mental kicking for not putting on his riggers. “Two left feet.”
The other man grinned and went back to his conversation with Jon, which really was about a line-dancing evening. Seamus made a note to self not to be in The Village Inn that night.
Line dancing.
Too much alcohol.
Walking home in a thunderstorm.
“Dee loves the thunder.”
“Do you need to get back for her?”
“No. She’s at a friend’s. She’d have loved the dancing tonight. Put us all to shame.”
“I thought we did great, considering we’re hammered.”
“True enough. So…a nightcap is out of the question, I guess?”
Seamus finished his pint and waved the empty glass at Jon, who nodded and set about pouring another. It would have to be his last one, however tempted he was by the prospect of drowning his sorrows, or at the very least muddling his thoughts enough to stop him from revisiting his decision to move back to Ireland.
If he was honest, he hadn’t thought it through, or not recently, because the decision to ‘go home’ was made almost as soon as the plane touched down in the US, ten years ago. And it wasn’t that he hated the place. Quite the contrary. After all, what seventeen-year-old lad would turn his nose up at all that cheap junk food? Within a fortnight of arriving in Pennsylvania, Seamus must have eaten going on for twice his own body weight in pizza, but the novelty of fast food ‘on tap’ soon wore off.
Not so the attention he got from the girls. Apparently, it was the combination of the accent and the fact that he was what his mam referred to as a ‘strapping lad’ that made him attractive to the opposite sex, although as a teenager he always felt like something of a clumsy, half-finished prototype. His younger brother Paddy got the red hair, green eyes, and freckles to the point that there was more of them than skin between, almost as if their parents had used the lessons learned from Version 1.0 to avoid making the same mistakes again. Moving to the States had put paid to Seamus’s insecurities once and for all, and he’d had a lot of fun at college…
But always in the back of his mind was Colm: the black-haired, brown-eyed boy from high school in Ireland—Seamus had never considered his education in the US as ‘high school’—who sat next to him in every class, smelling of aftershave, always casual and confident, with his already-broken voice so deep and gravelly—the sound of it alone made Seamus’s skin tingle. The attraction came on thick and fast, and for two years Colm was all Seamus thought about. His face, his scent, his body, touching, kissing: the things he had imagined doing to Colm, having Colm do to him, were the stock of his fantasies. He replayed them so many times that he was no longer sure whether he had also imagined the kiss.
Whether he did or not was irrelevant now, for it was a crush, and it diminished as quickly as it had erupted. Soon after the real/imagined kiss, they moved to America, where Seamus discovered girls, lots and lots of lovely girls, with their soft
curves, delicate flowery perfumes, plush lips, gentle hands…he definitely went for a type.
And then there was Chancey, dark-haired, brown-eyed, so casual and confident…
No aftershave, though. Just the smell of a hard day’s work. Fresh sweat, worn leather, earthy…no. They all stank to high heaven, but Chance… There was no dismissing this as a meaningless teenage crush.
Shite.
“How are you getting on with the cottage?” Jon’s timing was impeccable.
“Oh, grand.” Seamus nodded assuredly. Jon smirked. “I’ve been and got me supplies this morning.”
“All right, so, you’re fuelling up, is that it?”
“Absolutely.”
“Another?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Chapter Four:
Teenage Drama
Chancey laid on the horn for a second time and watched as his teenage daughter shot him a dagger-eyed look from across the courtyard. Yeah, well, Deidra, we’ve got places to go, and if you don’t want to be late… But she was socialising with her circle. Quite literally. A group of five girls and two boys, were standing around chatting near the front steps of the school, and apparently this middle-school huddle was much more important than making it to Miss Aubrey’s in time for warm-ups.
He took a drag off his cigarette.
“But Dee,” he muttered to the empty car. “Didn’t you throw an epic tantrum when I got you there five minutes late last time?”
And then in Dee’s voice he sighed and said, “Gosh, Dad, you don’t know anything. It’s only obnoxious when it’s your fault. And FYI, this will be your fault too.”
All right, kiddo, he thought, and pushed open Layla’s door. The old red Ford, named after the Derek & the Dominos song (or the Charlie Daniels Band cover) had seen Chancey to and from work for the better part of two decades.
Dee didn’t see him walk up behind her—but her friends did. A couple of them he recognised: Jennifer and Sasha, friends his daughter had made only this year. She’d had them over a couple of times. Then there was Stills. Her full name was Quinn Stills, but for as long as she’d been Dee’s partner in doubles, Chancey had known her by her last name. The other girls looked vaguely familiar, though he couldn’t have put names to them, and the boys he didn’t know at all.
“Y’all friends of my daughter?” He met the gaze of the two young men who seemed to cower under his not-altogether-pleased expression. He had a strong suspicion these weren’t middle-school boys, and there was no reason for them to be standing around talking to the girls. They straightened a little bit.
Dee turned, her eyes wide—shocked. How did you get from there to here? those eyes seemed to ask. He’d crossed the sacred barrier of the courtyard and spoken to the high school boys. Probably ruined her and her friends’ lives. He’d hear about this. Oh, there might even be a formal complaint lodged with the Council of How Fathers are Meant to Behave.
“You can’t smoke that on school grounds, Daddy,” she hissed at him, breaking out of the group.
For a moment the circle held its form—a gap left for her return—and then one of the two boys decided, hey, this shit’s getting old, let’s get out of here… And suddenly pieces began to break away. Dee shrank into herself, embarrassed, and for a moment Chancey felt sorry he’d embarrassed her. Then he saw one of the guys get into his car and drive off, and he realised, yep—way too old to be hanging out at a middle school.
Stills called after Dee. “See you at practice!”
No one else said anything. He watched as his young daughter shifted her backpack higher and marched ahead of him, a ball of seething teenage fury. Yeah, well, he was none too pleased himself.
She slammed the passenger door as she climbed inside the truck and then threw herself against it, pouting.
“Who were they, Dee?”
She said nothing.
So the silent treatment was going to be his punishment, huh?
Chancey put Layla in gear and headed for Miss Aubrey’s. If the traffic light gods were kind, and if he went five over, they could probably still make it there on time. If not, it was only going to add to the storm clouds building over his daughter’s head. He sped up a little.
“I’m pretty sure no student at your school has their driver’s licence—unless that one young man was held back.”
Dee sighed audibly. The you’re so stupid, Dad sigh. He’d had one of those once. Used it a time or two on his old man and saw the back side of the bastard’s hand for it. He’d never have laid a finger on Dee, and never would in a million years, but God, he wished they could go ahead and skip from thirteen-and-moody to twenty-and-friends-again.
Chancey remembered a great conversation he’d had about it one night down at Rack ’Em. It was him and Shay after a long day working at Tina’s, drunker than two fish, talking about being thirteen.
“I dunno, Shay. S’like one minute she was the sweetest angel that ever walked the Earth, and the next minute she’s a time bomb…that sometimes turns back into a sweet angel.”
“Have to love that, eh?”
“Were we like that, y’think?”
“Mouthy? Sure.” Seamus threw back his drink and slammed the glass on the bar. He was motioning the bartender for a refill, but Chancey could tell the man was considering cutting them off. “But Paddy and me—at that age we mostly got up to mischief. Is she mischievous? Your Dee?”
“Nah, nah…she’s a good girl.”
Chancey glanced over at his daughter, who was leaning her head against the window. Funny that she looked more like her mother than ever when she was sullen—the way she narrowed her bright eyes to dull slits and crinkled her nose, which was already button-ish as it was. She was a good girl, all told.
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”
“If?” Dee exclaimed, sitting up so suddenly that a man with less experience handling a teenage time bomb might have been startled. “You just walk up in your boots and hat, smoking, and drive off Denver and Kell like they’re some kinda…perverts?”
“What’s wrong with my boots and hat?” he teased lightly, considering how to deal with Mr. Denver and Mr. Kell.
“Nothing,” she said dramatically. “Why did you do that? They’re nice guys and you…you…made me look stupid in front of all my friends.”
“You wanna tell me what high school boys are doin’ sniffin’ around the middle school?” There it is, Grandma, he thought, the accent’s come out full force. Chancey Bo Clearwater. Ign’rant.
“Those are Natalie’s brothers!” she cried, her pitch rising painfully. “They pick her up after school.”
“And Natalie was…?”
There was a long pause then.
“Which one in the group, Deidra? ’Cause if I saw right, they drove off and seemed to have forgotten to take their sister with ’em.”
“She wasn’t here today,” Dee muttered tightly.
<<< >>>
Idiot…idiot…idiot…he thought in time to the trilling ring of his Skype app. Chancey held the phone close to his ear and closed his eyes. He was torn, half wanting Shay to answer, half wanting him to ignore the call. If he ignored it… Well, that would be it then, Chancey wouldn’t call anymore. Hell, he shouldn’t be calling now! After all, it was Seamus who’d left, and since then he hadn’t initiated a damn bit of contact.
Annoyed, Chancey pulled the phone away from his ear and ended the call right as he heard a voice greet him by name. There was a momentary ping of regret. Shoulda stayed on the line…
But nah, this was better. Finishing off his cigarette, he ground it out in Layla’s ashtray, rolled up the open windows, and climbed down to the street.
Usually, Dee liked it when he came inside, and sat with the other parents to watch practice—so he’d always made a point to do that for her when he could. But that was before one of the mothers, and goddamn if he could even remember her name, had taken a strong liking to him.
Didn’t matter where Chancey sat,
she always seemed to find a way to sit next to him. She’d even asked to trade with another parent so she ‘could see her daughter better’, then spent forty-five minutes chatting him up.
Chancey wasn’t altogether unused to others being interested in him, being in his early forties and what Dee’s mom, Kaylee, called ‘the ruggedly handsome sort’.
“What does that mean?” he’d asked her.
“Like the Marlboro man.”
“So I’m gonna die of cancer?”
“Probably. But damn, baby, you look hot.”
It was just that he’d never been comfortable when people turned their attention on him—especially if they were as aggressive as the dance mom. Chancey was much better solo. Or had been…
“Chancey Clearwater? What are you doin’ out here? You’re missin’ Dee’s practice.”
God, even think of the Devil and he’d come calling for you. The mother was petite with bleached blonde hair, perfectly manicured nails, a denim jacket over a sundress, and cowboy boots. She was young, she was pretty, she was not his type even if she did look like a plastic version of his ex-wife.
“Having a smoke,” he said, minding his accent. Hers was so thick it made it hard not to slip back into a drawl.
The dance mom waved her left hand through the air. No ring. Had she done that on purpose, or was he jumping at shadows now? “I gave up ciggies about five years ago. I’ll tell you what though, I miss the hell out of a good smoke. Now I only have one after sex.”
With an unabashed smile she stepped a little closer.
“You do that?” she asked.
“What?”
“Smoke after sex?”
God, woman.
“I smoke all the time,” he said flatly—because he was put out with her flirting, and because her question had triggered a photo flash of images in his mind of the first time he’d smoked a cigarette after a sexual encounter. Twenty years old and Tommy Heddermen gave him a hand job in the showers after football practice. Hadn’t been planned. He and Tommy had been eyeing each other for a while, and then bam, Tommy’s hand was on Chancey’s cock in the deserted showers. When it was over, he’d gone outside and smoked his way through half a pack. “I need to get inside now.”
Seeds of Tyrone Box Set Page 24