by Thom Whalen
* * *
Utica was back in the other direction. To get there, we’d pass by Wemsley on the highway and then keep going for another fifty miles.
“Don’t forget that I have to be back home by six,” I said.
“Yeah, right. Your big date.”
“It’s after one now.”
“So we still got five hours.”
“Four and three-quarters.”
He glanced over at me and shook his head.
I couldn’t figure out why he wanted me here. So far, all I’d done was stand around and listen to Randal talk to Billy’s mother and brother. And accidentally steal seven dollars. That bothered me.
It was almost two-thirty by the time we got to Utica. Two-forty-five by the time we found the K&B Liquor Store. It was downtown, a block away from Utica College. I’m pretty sure that most of the booze they sold was drunk by under-aged undergraduates.
The liquor was displayed on shelves behind the counter but the beer was kept in a glass-door cooler in the front. Randal grabbed a six-pack of Miller High Life and set it on the counter.
The clerk, an overweight guy who was probably not old enough to buy what he was selling, said, “Dollar-eight with tax and deposit.”
Randal shook his head. “They might call it the champagne of beers but it’s still just beer, you know.”
“And I know that it’s still one dollar and eight cents.”
Randal fished the money out of his pocket. “For that kind of money, you ought to throw in an opener.”
“Dime for a church key.”
Randal looked at me. “You don’t have a bottle opener on you, do you?”
“Nope.”
He tossed another ten cents on the counter and took one of the stamped steel openers out of the box by the register.
“You know a guy named Hadley? Gus Hadley?”
“Gus works nights here. He’ll be in at six.”
“You know where he is right now?”
“Not a clue.”
“He work all night long?”
“We close at two. Nothing in Utica is open all night long. You got to go to the lower end of the state to find the city that never sleeps. Upstate here, we like our sleep.”
“Grab your beer,” Randal said to me.
The clerk didn’t raise an eyebrow at an eighteen-year-old carrying beer out of his store. That was probably their standard operating procedure.
“Looks like you’re going to get to go on that date after all,” Randal said as he pointed the truck back toward Wemsley.
“My beer?” I asked, looking at the cold six-pack between my ankles.
“Nothing to do in Wemsley on a Wednesday night except drink,” Randal said. “Surely you figured that much out.”
Randal made me feel so naïve.
When he dropped me off at my house, he said, “See you tomorrow, Gunner. We’ll go back to Utica after Elsa’s closes.”
“Why are you calling me Gunner?” I asked as I got out of the truck.
“You can’t be Cherry Boy forever,” he said.
I hoped with all my heart that was true.