“Hey!” George’s voice stopped him cold. “Just hold on a minute. What do you have there?”
“An apple.” Jared held it up for him to see. “That all?” Jared nodded.
“I don’t want to catch you drinking any beer around here, kid. You want to do that with your friends, away from home, fine. But not here. You got that?”
Jared felt a flush creep into his cheeks. “I don’t drink beer.” George Paulsen’s chin jerked up. “Don’t get smart with me!” “George, he can’t!” His mother glanced hurriedly at Jared. “He can’t drink alcohol of any kind. You know that. His medication doesn’t mix with alcohol.”
“Hell, you think for one minute that would stop him, Enid? You think it would stop any kid?” George drank from his own can, draining the last of its contents. “Medication, hell! Just another word for drugs. Kids do drugs and drink beer everywhere. Always have, always will. And you think your kid won’t? Where’d you check your brain at, anyway? Christ almighty! You better let me do the thinking around here, okay? You just stick to cooking the meals and doing the laundry.” He gave her a long look and shook his head. “Change the channel; I want to watch Leno. You can do that, can’t you?”
Enid Scott looked down at her hands and didn’t say anything. After a moment she picked up the remote and began to flick through the channels. Jared stared at her, stone-faced. He wanted her to tell George to get out of their house and stay out, but he knew she would never do that, that she couldn’t make herself. He stood there feeling foolish, watching his mother be humiliated.
“Get on upstairs and stay there,” George told him finally, waving him off with one hand. “Take your goddamn apple and get out of here. And don’t be coming down here and bothering us again!”
Jared turned away, biting at his lip. Why did his mother stay with him? Sure, he gave her money and bought her stuff, and sometimes he was even halfway nice. But mostly he was bad-tempered and mean-spirited. Mostly he just hung out and mooched off them and found ways to make their lives miserable.
“You remember one thing, buster!” George called after him. “You don’t ever get smart with me. You hear? Not ever!”
He kept going, not looking back, until he reached the top of the stairs, then stood breathing heavily in the hallway outside his room, rage and frustration boiling through him. He listened to the guttural sound of George Paulsen’s voice, then to the silence that followed. His fists clenched. After a moment, tears flooded his eyes, and he stood crying silently in the dark.
Saturday night at Scrubby’s was wild and raucous, the crowd standing three-deep at the bar, all the booths and tables filled, the dance floor packed, and the jukebox blaring. Boots were stomping, hands clapping, and voices lifting in song with Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, Travis Tritt, Wynonna Judd, and several dozen more of country-and-western’s favorite sons and daughters. The mingled smells of sweat and cologne and beer permeated the air and smoke hung over everything in a hazy shroud, but at least the air-conditioning was keeping the heat at bay and no one seemed to mind. The workweek was done, the long awaited Fourth of July weekend was under way, and all was right with the world.
Seated in the small, two-person booth crammed into a niche between the storeroom door and the back wall, Derry Howe sat talking to Junior Elway, oblivious of all of it. He was telling Junior what he was going to do, how he had worked it all out the night before. He was explaining to Junior why it would take two of them, that Junior had to be a part of it. He was burning with the heat of his conviction; he was on fire with the certainty that when it was all said and done, the union could dictate its own terms to high-and-mighty MidCon. But his patience with Junior, who had the attention span of a gnat, was wearing thin. He hunched forward over the narrow table, trying to keep his voice down in case anyone should think to listen in, trying as well to keep Junior’s mind on the business at hand instead of on Wanda Applegate, seated up at the bar, whom he’d been looking to hit on for the past two hours. Over and over he kept drawing Junior’s eyes away from Wanda and back to him. Each time the eyes stayed focused for, oh, maybe thirty seconds before they wandered off again like cats in heat.