Truth or Beard

I groaned, seething, and glanced at the darkening sky over their heads. Why were we still talking about this?

Meddling brothers. Goddamn chickens, the lot of them.

“She wants a temporary interlude, so what?”

I gritted my teeth, crossed my arms, and decided to wait for Cletus to talk himself tired. But then, surprisingly, his next statement caught my attention.

“Everything is temporary, Duane. This,” he gestured to our surroundings, “this is temporary. Even mountains fall. Nothing lasts forever. You got a chance at happiness, even for a week, a month, a year? You grab it and you hold on to it for as long as it lasts.”

“Exactly.” Beau nodded vehemently; now he was frowning, looking as serious as I’d ever seen him. “You have a chance to be with her, even for a short time? You take it. Because when she leaves, you’ll still have that.”

I shook my head, not liking the cast of their words. “You want me to settle? That’s fucking pathetic.”

“No. I want you to seize.” Cletus dropped his hand on my shoulder and gave me a little shake. “You seize that woman. You make her yours.”

I examined Cletus as he spoke. I liked the words seize and make. Those were action words I could appreciate, words that made me re-think my earlier conclusions. I glanced between my brothers and actually allowed myself to consider the possibility of taking what I could get from Jess, for as long as I could get it.

She didn’t want to stay in Green Valley, nothing could keep her here. Fine. I could accept that. It was her life. But…

I wasn’t going to beg. No fucking way. I wasn’t even willing to ask nicely at this point. I didn’t rate on her list of priorities, and why should I? If she wanted no strings with me—and it was clear she was beyond interested in an arrangement that included the physical—what was keeping me from setting my own terms and pushing her outside of her comfort zone? Defining the timetable? Taking a bit of her pride and heart and spirit before she left?

Some unrealistic and idealistic dream from my adolescence?

She was here. I was here. We were adults. Mutual want, hot and desperate, existed between us. Why was I denying myself taking what I could?

Fuck that shit.

Cletus gave my shoulder another shake, pulling me from my internal pep talk. His next sentiment echoed my thoughts, solidified them.

“You take happiness, Duane. You conquer it.”

“That’s right. Conquer it.” Beau pointed at me and swiped his hand through the air with violent emphasis.

“And, when or if the time comes for her to leave,” Cletus shrugged, “you be the one to walk away first, with no regrets, because you captured that flag. You seized the day.”

***

Half of my bad mood and unnecessary wood chopping was because of Jessica.

… Actually, more like seventy-five percent.

The rest was because of Dirty Dave and Repo’s visit, and what I’d found on the thumb drive they’d given me. But I had to wait for Cletus to wander off before I could spill the story to Beau.

Beau and Cletus helped me place the newly chopped wood into the shed. We decided to grab dinner at Genie’s bar—Cletus liked her chicken wings—as they filled me in on their trip to Nashville and Cletus rambled for an hour about how he’d helped the district law enforcement office unjam their mail sorter. And then he paid a call to all the local police stations to assist with mail sorter maintenance.

He was very proud of his work with mail sorters. He’d been doing it for years, pro bono, and had a strange affection for the machines.

“They’re like the pre-Internet Internet, connecting the world and directing traffic.”

He was a nut.

It took both Beau and I several attempts to steer the conversation back on track. Turns out the car they’d set out to claim, a 1963 Mustang, was in better shape than we’d thought. As well, the junkyard owner had another Mustang about the same age, in much worse shape that we could strip for parts.

They were able to rent a vehicle carrier and load it up with a few other prospects as well. All in all, it was a productive trip.

On the drive back from dinner, Beau pointed out that one of us was going to have to negotiate a price with Jessica for her Ford F-350. We were bringing in enough vintage body work that it also made sense to buy a large carrier as well.

“Should we talk to Drew first, do you think?” I glanced over my shoulder at Beau, who was riding in the back of Cletus’s piece-of-shit Geo Prizm.

“I don’t think we can wait that long.” Beau shook his head. “It’s the middle of November now. He’s not getting back from the trek in the Appalachians until right before Christmas.”

“When does Jethro get back again?” I asked.

“After Thanksgiving I thought,” answered Beau.

“Drew won’t care about the purchases. We have the capital and he’s been in favor of all our investments so far,” Cletus chimed in. “The man is a Ph.D. biologist and a federal game warden. I’m sure Drew has things on his mind other than our purchase of a vehicle carrier. Besides, he likes being a fully silent partner and trusts me to make important decisions.”

Beau and I shared a look.

“You mean, he trusts all of us to make important decisions,” Beau sought to clarify.

Cletus laughed—actually, he guffawed—as we pulled into our driveway. I wasn’t really offended as I watched Cletus wipe tears from his eyes. “That’s funny, Beau. Real funny.”

Cletus parked, still shaking his head as he exited the small car, puffs of laughter following him as he walked to our porch. Beau unfolded from Cletus’s clown car and made to follow him into the house, likely wanting to argue the point. I stopped him with a hand on his upper arm and a staying look.

Beau gave me a questioning frown and I shook my head, indicating he should be quiet. We waited, listening to Cletus as he mumbled to himself until the sounds of his trailing hilarity were cut off by the front door closing.

I counted to three, then I turned back to Beau. “I need to talk to you.”

“What’s up?”

“Not here. Let’s go to the hangar,” I whispered and lifted my chin to the Quonset hut some paces from the house.

I led the way, not waiting to see if he’d follow. I knew he’d follow. We could discern even the subtlest changes in each other’s expressions, so I had no doubt he recognized the urgency in my voice.

A little known fact about the Winstons, we can see at night. My momma told us we were part Yuchi Indian on our daddy’s side, and local legends said the tribe could see clear as day even during the blackest of nights. I had no idea if this was truth or fiction, made up to feed little boys’ imaginations. Regardless, we could all see just fine in the dark.

Thus, neither of us had a problem finding the path to the hangar and navigating the obstacles along the way.

Once inside the hut—which we called “the hangar” because it resembled a small airplane hangar—I flipped on the overhead lights, and navigated around the arbitrarily strewn tools and oil containers. At some point we were going to have to clean this place up. An orange 1965 Dodge Charger 273 sat ignored in the middle of our mess.

It was the car we’d been working on in August when we found out Momma was sick. We’d planned to give it to her for Christmas, after it was all fixed up and painted sky blue. Even Billy was helping with the engine work. But she’d died the first week of October. No one had touched it since.

I moved to a cluster of chairs at the back of the space and reached inside the small refrigerator to one side. Thankfully, it was still stocked with beer; I popped the top off a bottle and handed it to Beau, reserving the can of Guinness for me.

Drink in hand, I took a deep breath and tried to organize my thoughts.

“So, what’s going on? Why are we hiding out here?” Beau asked.

“I had visitors on Wednesday; Repo and Dirty Dave.”

Beau lifted a single eyebrow, his lips curving in to a sneer. “Those two morons? What did they want?”

I gathered a deep breath, not liking that I had no choice but to involve Beau in this. “You better sit down.”

He sat down. I didn’t. I paced while I drank my beer and related the story of their visit, their demands, as well as my trip into Knoxville for the disposable laptop.

“Damn,” he said on an exhale, shaking his head as he absorbed the facts. His expression mirrored my own anxiety. “What was on the thumb drive? Or do I not want to know?” Beau looked like he was imagining the worst.

“You need to know. Besides, it’s nothing…violent or disturbing. It’s traps.”

“Traps?” Beau’s forehead wrinkled with confusion.

I stopped pacing, most of my restless energy spent, and faced my twin. “Yeah. Traps. The thumb drive has a video of Jethro. A camera is following him around a garage I don’t recognize, as he shows some unknown person the location of secret compartments he installed in several cars, how to access them, how to keep them concealed.”

“Oh. You mean, like those vanity compartments? Like on that old MTV show, Pimp My Ride?”

“When have you ever watched MTV?”

“When you were off running around the woods and playing baseball with the Valley kids, I was over at Hank Weller’s house watching MTV and playing Grand Theft Auto on his PlayStation.”