by Penny Reid
“Hank, let me tell you something.” Duane’s voice took on an instructional air that cracked me up, likely because it sounded like an imitation of our brother Cletus. “If you’re looking to pledge your troth to a woman within sixty miles of Green Valley, you might as well assume she’s had a thing for my brother at some point in her life.” Duane tapped the neck of his beer against Hank’s. “Welcome to the club.”
“I’m the founding member of the club, Duane.” Hank’s tone was dry and sour.
“And what club would this be?” I tapped my bottle against both of theirs just to be obnoxious.
“The Beau gets all the girls club. And, speaking of which, what’d you do that has Patty bringing you free drinks?” Hank gave me a pointed look.
“I didn’t do anything for Patty, not directly. Genie wanted to get rid of two old refrigerators, but couldn’t find anyone to come pick them up. I took them off her hands last week. No big deal.”
What I didn’t say, because it didn’t require saying, was that no matter how nice Patty was—and sweet, and pretty—the moment Hank stated his interest in the woman, she became off limits. Just like Jess had been off limits since Duane and I were teenagers.
It was unspoken, but I’d expect the same from them, if or when I ever told them about Darlene. Or—if things didn’t work out with Darlene—anyone else I might be interested in courting.
If there is anyone else . . . I scowled at the thought, uncertain of, and unsettled by its origins. Of course there will be someone else if things don’t work out with Darlene. Plenty of fish in the sea.
“What’d you do with them? How’d you get rid of the fridges?”
“Oh, I know,” Duane answered, like he was just now putting two and two together. “Those were the refrigerators you gave to Reverend Seymour today, right? The ones you fixed up at the shop this week?”
I nodded, surprised he’d noticed. He’d been busy with Jess, preparing for his big trip and leaving all of us. I hardly saw him at all.
Glancing over my brother’s head to the dance floor, a flash of long red hair caught my attention and raised my hopes. When I realized it wasn’t Darlene, I swallowed a gulp of my beer and my disappointment.
Typical for a late summer night with nice weather, the place was crowded with locals. Duane and I had left together after work, leaving Cletus and Shelly at the shop to finish up.
I’d hoped Darlene would be able to make it back to the Valley this weekend, but she’d texted me earlier in the day that she couldn’t. She was busy. Two years older than me, she was in her third year of medical school and her schedule was crazy.
I understood.
Nevertheless, I hadn’t been able to shake off my disappointment since receiving her message.
Not helping matters or my mood, Shelly Sullivan had ignored all my attempts at making peace. I wouldn’t say I’d gotten used to the woman yet. More like I was starting to tolerate her, but just barely. She hadn’t spoken more than three words to me in two days. On the bright side, ignoring me meant she hadn’t made any more comments about how grotesque she considered my appearance or how stupid she thought I was.
I let my eyes linger on the woman with red hair. She was taller than Darlene and her curls were a fiery red, not strawberry-blonde. Unexpectedly, the woman turned, caught me staring at her. Recognizing her as Christine St. Claire—old lady of Razor Dennings, the president of the Iron Wraiths motorcycle club—I immediately averted my gaze. I didn’t want any trouble.
“You know that’s tax deductible, right? Donating to the church? I hope you got a receipt.” Hank was always quick to point out when something could be written off. Take his boat, for example. He’d written it off as a business expense because he used it to take customers fishing on Bandit Lake.
“I did. I gave the receipt to Genie when we got here.” I kept my stare fixed on Hank as a slight whisper of apprehension tickled my neck.
I sensed Christine St. Claire's eyes still on me and I braced myself. The woman was equal parts crazy and dangerous, or so my daddy used to say when we were kids. And he’d know, because he was equal parts crazy and dangerous, too.
My mother and father didn’t agree often, but I knew for a fact she didn’t like the woman much either. She’d always kept Duane and I close to her skirts at the Iron Wraith’s family days and picnics, giving Christine and the Wraith’s MC president a wide berth.
“No matter what she says, you never let her take you, okay? And always keep an eye on Duane,” Momma would say. “You’re older, he’s your responsibility. I’m counting on you. You keep him safe. Make sure he doesn’t go anywhere with that woman.”
“You gave the tax receipt to Genie?” Hank had been about to take another drink of his beer, but stopped, the bottle suspended from his fingers, his tone edged with disbelief.
“Yeah, they’re her refrigerators, aren’t they?” I rubbed my neck.
“But you fixed them up.” Hank set the beer back on the table. “You went through all the trouble of moving those things, fixing them up, and taking them to the church. And then you give her the donation receipt?”
“Yep.” I ignored Hank’s stare and searched my mind for a subject change. “We still going fishing next Wednesday? Cletus wants to come.”
“We always go fishing on Wednesday. The only reason we didn’t go this week was because I had to be in town. And stop trying to change the subject.” He shook his head, sounding and looking like he considered this topic highly amusing. “You just proved my point.”
“What point? What are we even talking about?” I sighed tiredly, glancing to the side and noting with relief that Christine and her entourage were leaving the bar.
“I’m not surprised much by what you did for Genie. But framed in that context, why’re you still pissed off at that woman mechanic?”
“It’s ’cause she’s real pretty.” Duane scratched his jaw thoughtfully, peering at me.
I opened my mouth to object—not because I didn’t think she was pretty, but because that’s not why I was pissed off—but Hank cut in, “What do you mean, real pretty? How pretty is she?”
“Like, fancy supermodel pretty.”
“Oh man, I’m going to have to check this girl out.”
“And what about Patty?” I gave Hank a pointed look.
“Nothing wrong with looking, Beauford.” He smiled around a drink of his beer.
“She’s not a girl.” Duane took a pull from his beer, and then added, “She’s older than us. I think she’s at least thirty.”
“That doesn’t matter to me, and it certainly doesn’t matter to Beau.” Hank lifted his chin toward me. “You know he likes his women older.”
“Have at her.” I waved my friend off. “And good luck.”
Duane’s eyes grew unfocused, like he was debating weighty thoughts. “She’s almost too pretty, you know?”
“Too pretty?” Hank shook his head, his eyes moving from me to Duane. “No such thing.”
“Yeah, there is,” I said flatly. “You know, like when someone has a talent, like they’re too good at football, or they’re too smart? All they focus on about themselves is how smart they are? They’re nothing but smart? Same thing goes for people who are too pretty. Her talent is what she looks like.”
“She’s good at fixing cars.” Duane pointed his beer at me before taking a gulp.
“So, she’s real vain?” Hank addressed this question to me, but Duane answered.
“No. She’s not vain at all.” My brother looked puzzled as he said this. “Not as far as I can tell, anyway. She gets covered in dirt, grease, and sweat like the rest of us, and doesn’t seem to mind. She’s just . . . too pretty. It’s hard to look at her.”
I knew exactly what Duane meant, she was hard to look at. Her beauty was too harsh, too flagrant. Even though I didn’t like the woman, meeting her eye still sent my wits straight out of my brain.
Hank continued to look confused. “So, what’s she like otherwise? Is she nic
e?”
Duane shrugged. “Not particularly. She’s businesslike, to the point. Cletus calls her efficient.”
“Duane and Cletus would know.” I indicated to my brother with my beer. “She’ll talk to them, but she still doesn’t speak to me.”
“So, Miss Too Pretty ignoring you has your boxers in a bunch?” Hank looked like he was stifling a laugh.
“Like I said, it has nothing to do with her looks. And she can keep on ignoring me. I don’t care about that. But you’d be irritated too if someone you didn’t know told you your face was distorted.”
“She didn’t say your face was distorted, dummy.” Duane rolled his eyes.
I pointed at my brother. “She said your face was perfectly symmetrical and my face was wonky. And that—plus I’m an idiot—is how she could tell us apart.”
Hank barked a laugh.
I glowered at my friend. “And I’m the one who needed to apologize?”
“Now see, I don’t think you needed to apologize for mistaking her for a stripper. I think you needed to apologize for suggesting she take off her clothes. There’s the difference.” Duane nodded at his own words.
“Technically, I didn’t suggest she take off her clothes. I suggested she keep them on.”
Hank rubbed his chin. “You shouldn’t have made any reference to her clothes at all, especially since you’ll be working with her for the foreseeable future. That’s just unprofessional.”
“Unprofessional?” I couldn’t believe the words out of my friend’s mouth, especially considering his practice of sending strippers to welcome me home was what caused this mess in the first place.
“Don’t look at me like that. I work in a strip club; you work in an auto shop. Of course I have to talk to my employees about their costumes and such.” Hank gave me a keen look as he brought the beer to his mouth and said before taking a sip, “The only stripping you should be discussing with this woman is salvaging for car parts.”
3
“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
* * *
*Beau*
“Hey. It’s me. Beau.” I glanced at the back lot of the auto shop, rubbing my neck, not sure what to say and finally settling on, “When you get this, give me a call back . . . bye.”
Lowering the phone from my ear, I examined the screen. I hadn’t heard from Darlene except for the single text yesterday when she told me she wouldn’t make it to her parents’ house for the weekend.
I was not a fan of uncertainty. I didn’t much like surprises—the good kind or the bad kind—and now I was discovering that an exclusive relationship—or potentially exclusive relationship—between two people apparently came with a truckload of uncertainty.
A strange and persistent pinch in my lungs had me taking a deep breath as I tucked my phone in my back pocket. Not paying particular attention to my surroundings, I strolled into the garage and back to Mrs. McClure’s Honda Accord. She’d dutifully brought it in for the 240,000 mile service, and I was in the middle of changing her timing belt.
Next up was the air conditioner for Naomi Winters’s Corolla, then Mae Evans’s bent flywheel, Joseph Fletcher’s radiator, and so on.
And then finally, hopefully, when all the real work was done, I’d be able to work on the shop’s new 1958 Plymouth Fury, the one I’d spotted in the parking lot earlier in the week but didn’t recognize. Someone in Knoxville had come by out of the blue while I was in Nashville and sold it to Duane, needing the cash.
It was a matching numbers car, a real beauty of a ride, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on her. A matching numbers car is the term we classic automobile aficionados use to describe cars with original major components, or major components that match one another. Matching number cars are extremely rare, especially sixty-year-old Plymouths with less than sixty thousand miles on them.
I had some ideas on how to fix the problem without introducing any new parts.
Distracted, I didn’t immediately catch the sound of voices until one of the speakers shouted, and it sounded angry. Sitting up, I leaned around the propped hood of the Honda and scanned the front of the garage. I spotted Shelly first, standing ramrod straight with her arms crossed, her chin tilted defiantly, and then Drill—a senior full member of the Iron Wraiths motorcycle club—in front of her, hollering so hard his face was red.
“. . . do you think you are, you crazy bitch? Do you know who you’re talking to?”
Now, I’d had similar thoughts about Miss Shelly Sullivan on Monday upon first making her acquaintance. But I was admittedly hungry and tired at the time. Shame on me. She was my employee and my coworker; more than that, she was a human being.
Besides, calling someone a name in your head in the heat of a hangry moment is a lot different from screaming it at their place of work.
I jogged to them and heard Shelly say, “I don’t need to know who you are to comprehend you're a waste of blood and organs. If you were any more inbred, you’d be pastrami.”
“What? Pastrami?”
“You know, ‘in bread’ like pastrami. In a sandwich.” She said this slowly, like he was dumb as dirt.
I winced at that, especially at her delivery. I was also amused by the insult. The woman was as clever as she was cold. Yet, being cold didn’t mean she deserved to be harassed by Drill.
“Now, wait a minute,” I called, stepping between them and trying to force them apart. Drill took three steps backward, the vein on his forehead throbbing. Shelly, however, didn’t move an inch. I felt her body directly behind mine, stubbornly holding her ground.
Drill was a real big fella, bald and beefy, not someone I particularly wanted to fight. But I knew him to be reasonable, for the most part. I had hope I’d be able to diffuse the situation.
“Hey there, Drill.” I reached out my hand, moving my entire body in front of Shelly to block his view.
The big man blinked at me, like it took him a moment to see past his own anger and bring me into focus. At last, he accepted my handshake.
“Beau,” he said tightly.
Releasing his hand, I placed both of mine on my hips. “What can I do for you?”
His stare darted past, his features turning dark. “First I’d like to know why y’all hired this fucking harp—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I lifted my hands between us and shook my head. I could still sense Shelly behind me because she’d just taken a deep breath and released it. I felt the air on my neck and the brush of her chest against my back. “Now, wait a minute. I don’t know what the lady—”
“Lady?” Drill snorted, speaking through clenched teeth. “That ain’t no lady.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s just stop right there.” I gave Drill my most practiced smile, the one I used on Cletus when he got into a tizzy, and turned to Shelly. She still hadn’t moved. I was forced to take a step back in order to avoid stepping on her toes. “Uh, Miss Sullivan? Could you give us a minute?”
The sight of the woman’s glare—which, as usual, gave my brain a quick hiccup—communicated volumes. I half-expected Drill to burst into flames behind me.
Slowly, slowly she shifted her eyes to mine and, thank the Lord, a good measure of her fury dissipated. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have said her gaze softened. She blinked at me, swallowed, and nodded her head once.
Without a word or sparing another glance for Drill, she turned and unhurriedly strolled into the garage.
I waited until she was about twenty feet away before turning back to Drill. “All right, you want to tell me what happened?”
“That fucking—”
I narrowed my eyes on the big man, holding up a hand and quickly shook my head. “See now, that lady works here. She is in my employ, and I can’t have you speaking that way about her, or Duane, or Cletus for that matter.” I paused for effect, shrugging, “Okay, maybe Cletus.”
The joke worked and Drill released a short laugh, rubbing his
face with a meaty palm. “Hell, Beau. Where’d you find her?”
“What happened?” I tried again, quieter.
Drill and I weren’t exactly friends, but we were friendly acquaintances. My family’s history with the Wraiths was long and twisted, and keeping the peace with the local biker gang meant sometimes swallowing our pride when the matter wasn’t life or death.
He paused, giving me a cryptic look, before grumbling, “It don’t matter.”
“It better matter,” I said evenly, not understanding why I was pushing the issue. For some inexplicable reason, a flare of protectiveness for Miss Shelly Sullivan had me adding, “’Cause what I saw sure as hell mattered to me. I’d hate to think you’re going around screaming profanities at random women.”
Drill’s lip curled into a sneer. “You can’t have a woman looking like that, working in a place like this, and not expect someone to notice.”
“What. Did. You. Do?”
“Fine, fine. All right? I might have startled her a little.” He gestured wildly to nothing in particular. “I saw her bent over that bike and—damn, Beau. Have you seen those legs? Hell. And that ass. And, Christ, those eyes. I’ve never—”
“Drill,” I snapped, giving the bigger man a reprimanding glare.
He held his hands up. “I swear, I didn’t touch her. Alls I said was that she had a nice ass and I called her sweetheart. That’s it. And you’d think I’d called her mother a whore.”
“What’d she say?” Now I was just curious.
He hesitated for a moment, then admitted, “She said something about me being as sharp as a bowling ball.”
I lowered my chin to my chest, trying my best not to laugh.
“And there was more.” His gaze dropped to the ground and his eyes widened, as though he was recalling all her insults. “She was real mean.”
I believed him, about everything.
But he was a six-foot-four biker gang heavyweight. And he was near pouting because someone had been mean to him.