Cash snorts. “He’s been too busy practicing procreation to ever get around to actually doing it. At Fort Bragg he was known as the Bayou Banger.”
“Wow.” Maggie makes a face, and I can feel the tips of my ears heat. “That…uh…gets filed directly under TMI.”
“What does?” Eva comes around the corner.
“Never mind,” I tell her, determined to head this topic off at the pass. And then, you know, send it stampeding over the nearest cliff. “Maggie May says you’re leaving.” I take her hand. “It’s a shame to see you go. We didn’t get a chance to talk.”
“There’ll be other times. Maggie will make sure of it.” She smiles, and I can see why she graces the covers of magazines. Her heart-shaped face is pure perfection.
“I’ll walk you to the door,” Maggie tells her.
Eva shakes her head. “I know the way. Besides, you better stay here and keep these two company, or the flock of vultures will descend, and there might not be anything left of them but their bones by the time you get back.”
Maggie laughs, and Eva waves her goodbyes before turning to find her way out of the house. Cash looks after her longingly.
“Y’all should take off too,” Maggie says, accurately reading Cash’s expression. “But thank you both for coming. I know it meant the world to my aunts to see y’all again. And it means a lot to me that you’d get all dudded up and spend the better part of an afternoon in a room full of women.”
“We were thinking of heading over to City Park,” Cash says at the same time I insist, “We’ll stay and see this thing through.”
Cash gives me the evil eye. But before I can return his look, Miss Bea lifts her voice above the excited chatter of dozens of conversations. “Attention, ladies!” She’s standing beside an open wall panel. When the soft, classical music that’s been pumping from the speakers in the ceiling disappears, I realize she’s switched off the sound system. “Ladies!” she shouts again. “Quiet! Something’s come up!”
That does it. Every head turns in Miss Bea’s direction.
“It seems Ellie’s son, Jim, was in a car wreck about an hour ago.” A collective gasp is heard around the room. A matronly looking woman, whom I assume is Ellie, hastens to a table to retrieve her purse. Her cell phone is plastered to her ear, and she’s talking in hushed tones. “No! No!” Miss Bea pats the air. “He’s fine. But he did break his leg and sprain his wrist.”
Calls of support and condolence follow Ellie as she hustles toward the back of the room. She waves to the gathered group of well-wishers before brushing past us.
Miss Bea waits long enough for Ellie to get out of earshot before getting down to brass tacks. “Now, as y’all know, Jim was supposed to be one of our bachelors. Since there’s no way he’ll be off crutches before the ball, this means we have a vacancy to fill. Charlene? Would your nephew Stew be willing to help us out again this year?”
“His law office sent him to Savannah for the next two months,” a woman in a dress as red as the devil’s underpants answers. “They’re opening a new branch there.”
Miss Bea nods. “That’s wonderful. Be sure to tell Stew congratulations from all of us.” She glances around the room. “Della? What about your cousin? What is his name?”
I look for a pile of red hair and a slinky pink dress. Della was one of the women who slipped me her number. A year younger than me in high school, she hadn’t seen fit to give me the time of day back then. That she’s itching to do so now that I’m acne-free and a “big, strong war hero” doesn’t sit well.
“His name is Grady,” Della says. “But he’s in graduate school up North and his momma told me he has no plans to make it home until Carnival season.”
“We’re in a bit of a pickle here, ladies,” Miss Bea says to the room. “Anyone have any suggestions?”
“I’ll do it!”
I turn slowly, blinking at Cash in astonishment.
“Thank you, Cash!” Miss Bea beams, clasping her hands in front of her chest. “You’ve saved the day!”
A chorus of thanks are thrown in Cash’s direction, but I don’t pay attention to any of them. I’m too busy studying Maggie’s face.
There it is. That wobbly smile.
“Yes. Thank you, Cash,” she reiterates quietly.
If he wasn’t already suffering from a brain injury, I’d shake him until his teeth rattled. I mean, what the hell is he thinking?
“Now that the crisis has been averted,” he says to Maggie, looking mighty pleased with himself, “come with us to City Park. We have something to show you.”
She looks at the big, gold-plated clock (no doubt antique and expensive) on the far wall and shakes her head. “I can’t. I have to go home and take Yard for a walk before my shift at the bar starts at seven.”
“That’s almost three hours away,” Cash cajoles. “We’ll drive you home to pick up Yard, and then all of us can head to the park.”
She hesitates a moment longer, but eventually nods. “Okay. That sounds like fun, actually.”
Ten minutes later, we pile into Smurf, me in the driver’s seat, Cash in the passenger seat, and Maggie in the middle. Just like old times.
Well, except for the flask Cash pulls from his breast pocket.
Chapter Fifteen
______________________________________
Cash
Sometimes the past is like that whole objects in mirror are closer than they appear thing. The trick to forgetting is simply not to look.
That’s pretty much how I’ve spent the last ten years. Studiously not looking. But today I’m forcing myself to take a peek. Today is all about remembering.
When Luc glances my way, I gather my courage and form it into a smile. He doesn’t smile back. Instead he glares at me and wipes the sweat from his brow. “You’re about as useful as an ejection seat on a helicopter,” he grumbles.
He’s ditched his sports coat, rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt, and is using a spade to dig at the base of the Singing Oak, while I sit on a bench and watch Maggie hurl a tennis ball for her butt-ugly, three-legged dog.
The sprawling branches of the tree provide welcome shade from the power of the setting sun, and the ripples along the top of the lake flash silver in the light. An artist painted a bunch of wind chimes black and strung them in the tree’s branches. Their symphony is eerie, if you ask me. Less a singing oak and more a moaning oak.
“You sure this is the spot?” Luc points to the base of the tree.
“I buried it. I should know,” I assure him.
“Then why aren’t you over here helping me dig?”
“And deny you the satisfaction of a job well done? What sort of friend would I be?”
He mumbles something unkind about the matrimonial state of my parents at the moment of my birth before he gets back to work using the spade.
Shading my eyes, I watch Yard scramble after the tennis ball, catch it on a bounce, and run back to Maggie, tail whipping side to side in canine ecstasy. She scratches behind his ears, telling him what a good boy he is, before rearing back and sending the ball flying again.
While we were at her house, she exchanged her dress for a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt—apparently, that’s her standard wardrobe for working at the bar. And while both of her cats ignored me in typical cat fashion, they couldn’t stop rubbing themselves against Luc’s calves.
I accused him of hiding catnip in his socks.
He claimed they can sense which of us is a fan of The Big Bang Theory.
Maggie turns to me and her eyes outshine the sky behind her. When she gifts me with a radiant smile, it hits me like a punch in the heart. I manage a wave and wait until Yard snags her attention before unscrewing the cap on my flask and letting a long stream of Gentleman Jack slide down my throat.
This afternoon nearly killed me. By the time we left Miss Bea’s house, I thought my head might explode. Boom! Gray matter and blood oozing from my ears. Eyes x-ed out like some sort of cartoon chara
cter.
Would like to blame my condition solely on the problem with my brain and the damned din of fifty high-pitched female voices. But neither of those things can explain why my hands shook or why beads of sweat rolled down my back in a fully air-conditioned ballroom.
Withdrawal symptoms.
That I’m feeling much better after polishing off half the contents of my flask is proof positive.
In case you’re wondering, the answer is no. I’m not surprised. Nobody can drink like I do without developing a problem. But this is the first time I’ve had to stare the truth in the face.
Wish the pain meds worked. I truly do. After all I’ve been through, no one would look twice if I popped a pill or two. But the prescriptions are complete and total dick cheese. They might take the edge off, but they also take me out of commission.
Can’t afford to be taken out of commission. I have too many things to do and not enough time to do them.
“I swear.” Maggie plops down beside me, bringing her unique aroma of wildflowers with her. Even now, all these years later, when I kiss a woman, I long for that smell. “That dog would chase a ball until he collapsed from exhaustion.” She rotates her shoulder and smiles affectionately at Yard, who has gone to investigate the lake’s edge. Then she squints at Luc laboring under the tree. “Mind telling me what he’s up to?”
“It’s a surprise. You’ll see in a—”
I’m cut off by the sound of Yard yelping. He’s gotten too close to one of the lake ducks, and now the water fowl is out of the water, wings flapping, bill quacking. Poor Yard’s ears are pinned back against his head and he yelps in pain when the duck goes airborne and bites him on the ass.
“Shoo! Shoo!” Maggie is up and running toward Yard. A momma off to save her furbaby.
The duck, sensing it’s met its match in the crazy lady with the waving arms and the streaming black hair, changes directions and flaps back to the lake. It lands in that amazing way of its species, skiing for a few seconds on webbed feet before gracefully sliding into the water.
Maggie falls to her knees, crooning and smoothing Yard’s ruffled fur.
Just when I think the chaos is over, a squirrel from a nearby tree decides to make a move. It goes bounding across the ground no more than ten feet from Maggie and the dog.
Yard lets loose with a happy bark, and the chase is on.
“No!” Maggie yells. “Yard! No!”
The dog’s impulse to hunt makes him deaf to her command. He’s gaining ground on the squirrel and doing it with a big, sloppy grin.
Thought mutts were supposed to be smart, safe from the idiocy that comes from too much inbreeding. But Yard proves he’s dumb as a box of rocks by getting himself out of one bind and straight into another.
Not that the squirrel he’s chasing is Bill Gates or anything, but still. What does Yard think he’s going to do once he catches the thing? He has to know it has teeth and claws. And yet here he is, opening his mouth to take a bite out of that fluffy tail.
The cute rodent, sensing imminent danger from behind, isn’t paying attention to what’s in front. It suddenly finds itself at Luc’s feet. Deciding between the lesser of two evils, human vs. canine, it wisely chooses Luc and scampers up his leg, does a diagonal across his chest, and finally uses his head as a springboard to launch itself onto the tree.
If you’re thinking Luc is standing still through all this, you’re dead wrong. He’s jumping and dancing and cursing so loudly I think the people across the lake can hear him. To add insult to injury, no sooner does the squirrel leave Luc’s head than Yard launches himself after the creature, hitting Luc square in the balls with a stiff-legged paw.
Luc collapses to his knees.
Three seconds later, Maggie is kneeling beside him. She has a hold of Yard’s collar, and now that the squirrel is safe in the tree branches, the silly dog thinks Luc is playing a game. That game is? Lick Luc’s face until all the skin falls off.
I. Am. Dying.
Tears leak from the corners of my eyes. Don’t even care that it makes my head pound. Haven’t laughed this hard in years.
“Keep yucking it up, asshole,” Luc growls, “and I’ll make you take over the digging.”
“Sorry,” I gasp, raking in great gulps of sunshine-scented air, forgetting for a moment that nothing is as it should be and that I’ve got a long row to hoe before it is. “If you could’ve seen all that from this perspective…”
“Luc, I’m so sorry.” Maggie makes a face when Luc winces and blows out a breath, still cupping his balls. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Get that damn dog away from me before I contemplate homicide.”
“Think it’s called canicide when you’re talking about a dog,” I inform him.
“You’re not helping!”
“Right! Sorry!” I do my best to control my laughter. And fail miserably.
Maggie pulls Yard toward the bench, sits down, and commands the dog to sit and stay. Yard flops onto the ground at her feet and immediately starts chewing all the felt off the tennis ball she gives him.
“I sooo wish I had that on video.” My chest is shaking with suppressed laughter.
She nudges me. “Hush. He’s over there digging and working, and here you are laughing your head off.”
“You’re one to talk. I can tell you’re biting the inside of your cheek.”
When she turns to me, her eyes glint with humor, and I want to kiss her so bad all the air gets sucked out of my lungs.
I turn away before she can see the desperation on my face.
“Bazinga!” Luc crows, pulling a dirty rectangular object from the ground. He wastes no time dusting it off. Thumbing open his pocketknife, he cuts away the outer layer of duct tape and the inner layer of Cling Wrap we meticulously wrapped around the thing ten years ago.
Happy for the distraction, I sit forward when the extra-large cigar box is revealed. It looks as fresh and new as the day we put it in the ground.
“Bring it over!” I yell. “Let’s have a look!”
Luc’s wearing a goofy grin when he heads our way. It’s an old expression, and for a moment the years slip away. We’re eighteen again, gleefully deciding which things belong in the time capsule, laughing conspiratorially at the thought of bringing Maggie here sometime far in the future and watching her face as she finds out what made the cut.
Luc sits beside her, setting the box in her lap. She glances between us. “What in the world are y’all up to?”
I rub my hands together. “Open it.”
“A fake snake isn’t going to spring out, is it?” She gives me the side-eye. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that prank y’all played on me in the lunchroom with the Pringles can.”
“No fake snakes,” Luc swears. “Just open it, Maggie May. You’ll like what’s inside. I promise.”
She eyes us askance for a while longer, but her curiosity eventually gets the better of her. When she opens the box, I chuckle. Sitting on top of a neatly stacked pile of odds and ends are three movie stubs for WALL-E. She gasps and gently, as if handling delicate and ancient artifacts, pulls them from the box.
“How many times did you drag us to see that movie?” I ask.
“Three,” Luc answers before she can.
She bites her lip and giggles, the sound that of her sixteen-year-old self. “And what y’all don’t know is I saw it two more times when I went to visit Eva. I loved that sad little robot.”
“I know,” Luc and I say in unison as she tenderly tucks the tickets back into the cigar box so she can pull out a folded piece of notebook paper.
She places her hand over her heart. I think maybe her eyes are overly bright. Damned if there isn’t a telltale burn behind my eyeballs too.
Going through this time capsule was sure to bring back old feelings. I knew that going in. But I wasn’t prepared for how bittersweet those old feelings would be.
“Is this what I think it is?” Her voice is tremulous.
When
Luc nods, a sound that’s something between a sob and a hiccup escapes her. She carefully unfolds the sheet of paper, revealing three sets of handwriting in a mix of pencil lead and multiple colors of ink. The entire sheet is covered with words, edge to edge, top to bottom.
Our senior year, Luc came up with a brilliant plan that the three of us should keep a running tally of our dreams and aspirations. Those dreams could be silly or serious, completely possible or totally unlikely. The only rule was that we had to add a new dream or aspiration to the paper each week.
A tear trickles down Maggie’s cheek. I want to thumb it away, but I keep my hands in my lap. Have to be careful with her. Play my part just right.
“I always wondered what happened to this thing.” She smoothes her finger over the top three entries. They each read the same thing, “Own a bar in the French Quarter.”
For a while, we’re quiet, contemplating the strange trajectory our lives have taken. Who would have thought that, between the three of us, Maggie would be the one to actually realize that dream? Then Luc laughs and points to one of my entries.
“Jump out of an airplane?” He lifts an eyebrow. “You can scratch that one off the list. Done and done and then some.”
I think back on our brutal HALO training. HALO is the acronym the US military gives the high-altitude parachute jumps performed by spec-ops teams who don’t open their chutes until they’re low to the ground. High altitude because it keeps the plane out of the range of surface-to-air missiles. Low opening because most of these jumps are performed at night. And while it’s difficult for an enemy combatant to see a man dressed in all black and falling through the sky at terminal velocity, it’s not hard to make out a big, open parachute and a slow, lazy descent.
The whole process is scary as shit and dangerous as hell.
“A clear case of needing to be careful what I wish for,” I mutter.
“You got that right,” he agrees.
Maggie makes a face. “I’m not going to ask what y’all are talking about. Sounds like I’m better off not knowing.”
Volume One: In Moonlight and Memories, #1 Page 13