by Jodi Thomas
“So, you’ve seen the world.” Tyler decided he liked not having breakfast alone. Autumn’s story was sad, but she told it with humor and an honesty he found fascinating.
“I can do pretty much everything but pick men. Some women go for the tall ones, some the wild ones, I go for the bastards. Show me a man who’ll treat me bad, take any money I have, or leave me pregnant and I’ll head straight toward him already puckered up for the first kiss.” She shook her head. “I’m telling you, Mr. Wright, it’s a real dangerous habit bringing stray sons of bitches home.”
Tyler laughed. He’d never been around anyone who talked like she did. He’d never eaten a meal with the cook sitting across from him. He wasn’t sure he felt comfortable, but if she stayed around, he might get used to it.
When she smiled, she looked younger. He knew she was in her early twenties, but right now he would have guessed her age in her teens.
Standing, he said, “You need anything, just ask Beth in the office. She’ll probably be in sometime today to introduce herself. Mrs. Stella McNabb might drop by. She works in the evenings when we have someone here for viewing.”
Autumn looked worried, so he added, “They’re nice ladies. Bake them something sweet and they’ll love you. Bake the guys in the basement anything and they’ll like you. Calvin will talk to you, but Dave never says a word. The other groundsmen come by now and then.”
“So the rule is feed anyone who walks through the kitchen?”
“That’s about it.”
She smiled for the second time. “You know, Mr. Wright, I love to cook. I think I can do this job.”
He was at the door when he turned back and added, “No one is going to treat you badly here, Autumn. No one will ever yell at you.” He’d never said anything like this to an employee, but he felt it needed to be said. “You’re safe here. You’ve my word.”
She looked skeptical. “We’ll see.”
By ten there were hot rolls and butter in the break room, and by noon she’d made soup and corn bread for everyone. When he left to go to the bank, his bookkeeper was running off recipes for Autumn.
Chapter 22
SATURDAY
FEBRUARY 27
BUFFALO BAR AND GRILL
BEAU YATES LOWERED HIS HEAD SLIGHTLY SO HIS HAIR shaded his eyes as he tried to act like he was out of his teens. He didn’t like confronting people, but this time, whatever it took, he wasn’t backing down. If he had to fight his way up, he might as well start with Harley at the Buffalo Bar and Grill. No one in this town believed in him, but Beau knew he had a destiny and it was time he got on down the road a few steps.
“Now I’m telling you boys for the last time, I don’t hire underage kids to perform no matter how good they can play.” Harley Moreland leaned over the bar and yelled at Beau and his best friend, Border Biggs. “You two look like you belong in a country-western bar about as much as earrings belong on a pig.”
“What if we play for free?” Border said. “That shouldn’t be illegal. Or, you could lock us in that cage of a stage you got and we wouldn’t actually be in the bar.”
“Hell, that’s probably more of a crime.” Harley snorted. “I swear, just having you two clowns walk in here is probably breaking one or two laws right now. Why don’t you do us both a favor and get out. Maybe drive over to a big town and see if McDonald’s needs a band in the kiddie area.”
“But . . .” Beau started.
“Ain’t no buts about it, kid. Besides, I’ve already got a man hired to play tonight. He’s been coming once a month for ten years. He’s a drunk, but as long as he can stand, he can play. By nine o’clock, when the crowd gets here, it’s so loud nobody’s listening, they’re just stomping to the beat and calling it dancing. Some nights by midnight the dance floor looks more like drunk foreplay than waltzing.”
“We can play waltzes and ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe’ and lots of the oldies,” Beau promised. “Give us a chance.”
Harley glared at Beau. “You two don’t look like you could play nothing, but when you turn twenty-one come on in. I’ll serve you that first drink.”
Border tried again. “I’ve been learning to play, but Beau here was born with a guitar in his hand. Besides, everyone tells me I look twenty-one.”
Harley looked at Beau. “I don’t remember you. How old are you? You don’t even look like you’re shaving regularly yet.”
“Nineteen,” Beau lied.
“If you’re nineteen, I’m Hank Williams. Get out of here.”
Border yelled as he walked backward, “If your one-man band doesn’t show up, will you give us a shot?”
“Sure, kid, but Eddy Bailey always makes his gigs. Once a month he plays in Clinton on Friday and here on Saturday. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got his van already parked out under the trees, sleeping out the day so he can play the night away. Time was he was good enough to make it in Nashville, but the drinking and drugs got him. Now he’s happy to play one weekend a month.”
Border jerked Beau through the back door.
Beau shrugged Border off. “What’s your hurry? I’m not sure Harley was finished with his preaching.”
“I got a plan,” Border said as soon as they made it to the parking lot. “All we got to do is get rid of this Eddy Bailey.”
“Are you nuts?” Beau said. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make it in the music business. I even taught you to play and that was no easy job, but I’m not willing to murder anyone.”
Border smiled as if Beau had just given him Plan B. “I was thinking more on the lines of being nice. Delivering the man a gift. But I guess killing is an option.”
“What kind of gift?”
“A bottle of good whiskey.” Border reached in the pocket of his leather duster and pulled out the bottle.
“Where’d you get that?”
“I picked it up at the bar when Harley was yelling at you and you were telling him how old you’re not.”
“You stole it?”
“Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one wanting to kill the guy. I just want him too drunk to stand. Besides, we can write it off Harley’s payment against tonight’s performance.” He looked over in the trees at the back of the Buffalo Bar and Grill. Sure enough, an old Dodge van was parked on the slope that led down to the dried-up creek bed.
“What do you say we go down and give the man his gift?”
Beau grabbed the bottle. “I’ll deliver it. If he looks out the window and sees you, he won’t open the door.” He took a few steps and grinned back at Border. “You know, this just might work.”
Border shrugged. “What have we got to lose?” He’d shaved his head this morning for luck and regretted it instantly. Even his big brother Brandon told him he looked like the poster thug for most-likely-to-sell-drugs. Border liked people for the most part. He also liked his leather jacket and spiked cuffs. He’d long had the feeling that people could take him like he was or leave him alone. For the most part, they left him alone.
He watched Beau take the bottle to the van and walk back a few minutes later without it.
“What do we do now?” Border asked.
“We go to your place and practice until the crippled neighbor complains.”
Border swung on his motorcycle while Beau opened the door of his old car. “Don’t call him that. Marty’s a good guy. Besides, he’s not home today. He’s always gone on Saturday. I’m not sure where, but I usually hear his car leaving early and he’s never back before dark.”
“He can drive?”
“Sure, you’d be surprised what he can do.”
“You sound like you’re his friend.”
Border shook his head. “I don’t think he wants friends. Sometimes, when my grandmother drops over with a meal, my brother invites him to join us, but he never comes. Once when I couldn’t get my bike started and was just about to go back to bed and skip school, he came out and offered me a ride. I wasn’t too happy about making school that day, but it was interes
ting watching him drive with his hands.”
They started their engines and headed the few blocks to the duplex. After downing half a cold pizza, they went to work. Neither considered whether they looked, or played, much like a country band, but by nightfall they planned to be able to play a half dozen songs. Border had the easy part with chords and Beau could usually play anything he’d heard a dozen times.
They were an odd match for friends. Beau, raised by his father who let him take lessons so he could play in church, and Border Biggs, who’d been wild all his life. When Border checked into Harmony High School two years ago, he’d been picked on and called trash. Beau, who’d never fought in his life, stood up for him and got hit in the mouth for his trouble. After that, Border taught him to fight and Beau taught Border to play music. Since Border had no dreams, he decided he might as well follow along with Beau’s.
By dark, they were standing in the shadows at the back of the Buffalo Bar. Eddy Bailey hadn’t climbed out of his van. As always on busy nights, the back window in the kitchen was open. Beau and Border could hear everything being said. The place was packed. The cook complained that they might run out of wings if the music didn’t start soon. Once couples start dancing, they give up eating in favor of drinking.
The owner, Harley Moreland, came in telling the cook to use the frozen frog legs if the chicken wings ran out. He claimed that after a few drinks, no one could tell the difference and the frog legs had been in the freezer far too long.
A half hour later Harley stormed back into the kitchen and yelled for someone to go get Eddy out of his van.
The kid who washed dishes ran out the back door so fast he didn’t notice Beau or Border in the shadows. They waited in the dark, listening to the kid pound on the van door. After a few minutes, he marched back inside the kitchen.
Beau listened as Harley swore when he learned that his entertainment for the night was too drunk to stand.
“Do we go in now?” Border asked.
“No, we let him stew a few more minutes, and then we go in.”
Border wore a trail in the grass behind the bar before Beau picked up his guitar case and knocked on the kitchen door. “I’m not working for free no matter what you said,” he whispered to Border. “We’re at least getting supper out of this deal or we don’t play.”
“Don’t order the chicken wings,” Border whispered back a moment before Harley opened the back door and jerked them inside.
“You boys got your first gig,” the big man yelled, “but I’m keeping the lights low so no one’ll be able to see you. Stay in the cage. I don’t want you coming out till midnight.”
Beau slung his hair back. “Then you’ll deliver us a meal when we finish the first set?”
Harley looked like he might spit, but he nodded and led them through a back hallway, past the restrooms and storage room, to what everyone called the cage . . . a small stage surrounded by chicken wire.
Border unpacked his guitar and a small keyboard for Beau. “I feel like the world’s largest trapped pigeon.”
Beau lifted his guitar as he glanced around. Prison holding cells were probably cleaned more often than this place. Mud, blood, and beer seemed caked on the floor. The cage had been built to protect the musicians from drunks. Beau had a feeling he might need that protection.
From his dark spot behind the dance floor he looked out. The place was packed with cowboys with their hats shoved far back, bikers in their leathers, and a few men in white business shirts. The women seemed to come in every size and age. Most had their hair puffed too high, their blouses cut too low, and their laughs turned up too loud.
Beau smiled, feeling right at home. The ladies reminded him of his mother, who’d run off with a trucker one night. Someday he’d write a song and dedicate it to Mom. He’d call it “Wild at Any Age,” and then he’d try to find her to play it for her. His Bible-thumping father always said he hoped the Lord would take her in because no man in his right mind would.
“You sure you want to do this?” Border asked.
Beau took a deep breath. They were going to either love him or hate him, but either way he’d play his first gig tonight. “I was born to play,” he answered with a laugh.
As they plugged in, the lights went down and the dance floor came alive with fairy lights reflecting off the unfinished ceiling onto a polished wood dance floor.
“Any advice?” Beau looked at Harley.
“Yeah. Play loud. The less they talk, the less trouble we seem to have. If a fight breaks out, just keep playing. Make sure the first few are fast to warm everyone up and get them thirsty, and the last one needs to be slow so the newly found lovers cuddle up on the dance floor and think of going home or at least to the privacy of the parking lot.”
Beau turned to Border. They held their guitars down like rifles at rest. “Ready, partner?”
“Ready.”
Harley pulled the mic to his mouth and yelled, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome a new band to Buffalo’s. The Partners!”
A moment later the music rolled like a wave over the bar. Loud, fast, and strong. Beau closed his eyes, afraid of what the reaction might be as Harley stepped out of the cage. When he finally ventured a look he was surprised. No beer bottles hitting the cage. No screams for him to turn it down. Only couples moving toward the dance floor far more interested in the touching that was about to happen than the music.
Border’s steady chords became the heartbeat while Beau moved from keyboard to guitar. He slurred his way through a few country songs, then played a few more. No one on the dance floor seemed to notice the difference. They just danced and yelled and bumped into one another. They all thought they were the stars of the show tonight, and he was just the background.
As he played he studied the crowd. Border’s brother, Brandon Biggs, was near the back of the bar. He had a beer in his hand, but he was listening, not drinking. Beau noticed a few girls still in high school. They couldn’t be more than seventeen, but they were dressed up and made up like they were older.
At the end of the night, Harley was the only one outside the cage who looked sober. He’d forgotten about bringing them a meal, but he gave each a hundred dollars and told them they could have Eddy Bailey’s one night a month if they’d learn more than six songs.
Beau thought about telling the bartender that he was probably the only one who noticed, but he didn’t want to press his luck.
Chapter 23
SUNDAY
FEBRUARY 28
MARTHA Q PATTERSON DRESSED ON SUNDAY WITH HER mind set on finally getting her new lonely hearts club in motion. She’d already talked a few people into at least coming to the first meeting. Rick Matheson as an advisor; Dallas Logan and her daughter would come, of course. Dallas never missed any kind of meeting in town that didn’t lock her out. She also had one of the waitresses from the Blue Moon and two guys from the phone company who promised to come. Three widows answered the ad Martha Q had put up in the beauty shop. But they were all over seventy. One had a brother who lived with her, whom she said she’d bring if she didn’t have to bring a dessert.
The numbers were good, but not good enough. Martha Q figured if she could rope in a few eligible men, the women would come. Only problem was, any man in Harmony over twenty and still single had learned to run like a rabbit.
Martha Q was proud of herself for keeping the club rules simple. One, anyone in the club had to think positive no matter how homely they were. Two, draw aim on one prospect at a time—the shotgun approach always leaves you the last one at the dance. Three, practice between meetings—talking, kissing, acting interested.
She picked up the basket of homemade muffins Mrs. Biggs had baked for her and walked to her car. She planned to stop at the fire station first. The men there were a little young, but at least they were single. Then she’d walk across to the sheriff’s office. One of the dispatchers was in his thirties and newly divorced. Finally, she decided she’d stop at the roping corrals where the ranch
hands gathered on Sunday afternoon if the weather was good. They’d be all smelly and tired from roping, but they might like a muffin and an invitation.
Martha Q set off on her hunting trip with great hopes, but by midafternoon, she was tired of talking and her feet, crammed into her good shoes, hurt so badly she was sure one of her toes had died from lack of oxygen and two others had committed suicide in protest.
When she passed the funeral home she decided to stop in and talk to Tyler. He knew everyone in town; maybe he could giving her some advice. Plus, he was single and of a good age for picking.
She went to the side door so he’d know it wasn’t a professional call.
Martha Q knew Tyler lived alone above the business. Kate had told her that his apartment was probably over two thousand square feet and furnished beautifully. Martha Q found that hard to believe. What wife in her right mind would want to live above the business? But then, there had been three generations of Wright women who had, and if Tyler ever married, his wife might do the same.
“If Tyler ever married?” She laughed as she climbed out of her car. Men like him rarely did unless they were lucky and married young. He wasn’t that bad looking or that overweight, but he had the curse. Tyler Wright was too nice. Every woman in town saw him as a friend, a shoulder to cry on, a man to depend on, but Martha Q would bet her pantyhose that not one of them saw him as a lover.
She pushed the bell at the side door. She’d have to ask him to come to Dreaming and Scheming, but she wouldn’t push.
To her surprise a young woman wearing sweatpant bottoms and half of a T-shirt answered the kitchen door. For a moment all Martha Q could do was stare at the bare skin showing from just below her breasts to her belly button.