Shallow Creek

“I’ll try to be on time, but I’ve been gone for a while and you know how it is.” Grant winked for effect.  “I can only do so much to keep her paws off me; I’m just a weak man.”

Brendan detected nothing other than gross machismo in his brother’s expression, but the parting words haunted him while he scraped and scrubbed his shame away.

Chapter 24

Brendan walked into Trish’s Place five minutes early and immediately spotted the same bartender behind the counter as always.  Did that woman ever take a night off?  His mom had agreed to finish cleaning up the mess in the kitchen so that Brendan could get here before Grant, but to Brendan’s surprise, his brother was already sitting in a booth along the wall.  He swung past the bar to order a pair of Shiners, opened a tab, and then transported the beers to the table.  Grant had apparently polished off his first already, because he started on the next beer as soon as it hit the table.

“You struck out?” Brendan asked.

“Ha, yeah,” Grant said with a rueful smile.  “Something about a screaming baby really kills the mood.”

“I bet, I bet.”

The two brothers focused on drinking their beers and paying more attention to patrons at other tables than to each other.

“Thanks for the beer.” Grant touched the bottom of his bottle to that of Brendan’s.  “And thanks for saving Michelle’s ass the other night.”

“It was nothing.”

“No, I really mean it,” his brother continued ardently.  “That could’ve been really bad.  I don’t even know what I would’ve done.  What we would’ve done.”

“Anytime.” Brendan picked a little at the scabs still remaining on his knuckles.  Punching people in the face was never as clean as they made it out to be in movies.

“I still don’t get what they were after, though,” Grant mused.  “Or what the pair of you were doing behind the bar.”

Brendan desperately wanted to ask about what Michelle had told him exactly, but knew that was a bit suspicious.  A little piece of the truth could probably hide the more dangerous revelations behind it.

“Scott Fisher and his boys beat me up the other day over some stupid crap.  Michelle felt bad and took me out to Schmidt’s.  I wanted to make up for her paying the bill and brought her here for a drink.”

Grant watched him like a hawk deciding which side of the throat to attack.  “Go on.”

“Okay, well, uh, I maybe said something stupid that pissed her off, and she ran out the back of the bar.”

“Something stupid?  Like what?”

It was time to test the deceptive waters.

“Honestly, Grant, I asked her if you’d ever hit her.”

Grant’s steely expression hid little of the rage behind his eyes.  “And why’d you ask something like that?”

“Because you’ve got a short fuse and I wanted to make sure you’re good to your wife,” Brendan said, matching his brother’s intensity.  Now Grant was in a precarious position, because if he flew off the handle, he’d only be proving Brendan’s intentions both correct and valid.  After a moment’s restraint, Grant’s features softened.

“I’m a changed man now,” he said, smiling again.  “A couple of bad experiences were all I needed to reform my ways.”

“Glad to hear it.” Brendan slowly turned the bottle in his hands.  “You know, it’s a bit weird you didn’t ask me why Scott and his crew would want to kick my ass.”

“So tell me.”

“I was trying to score some meth from him.”

“Why would you do that?”

“To prove he’s dealing in that crap.”

The waitress cruised past and Brendan put two more beers on his tab.  When she’d gone on her merry way, he asked Grant if he knew anything about the drug problems in town.

“Not really.”  Grant leaned forward across the table conspiratorially.  “I hear about break-ins, robberies, some muggings in town, but that’s about it.”

“Mom or Dad tell you some ass-wipes broke into their house the second night I was here?”

“No,” Grant seethed, eyes boring into Brendan’s.  “What night was that?”  His brother’s knuckles turned white around his beer bottle.

“Last Monday.”

“Anyone get hurt?”

“Just them,” Brendan said, a little proudly.  “I probably broke one guy’s arm with the poker from the fire.”

“They take anything?”

“No, but Mom almost took my head off with the shotgun.”

Time skipped a few beats before Grant suddenly lightened up.

“You guys must’ve done a good job patching the place back up,” he said.  “I didn’t notice anything earlier.”

“You know how Mom and Dad are about appearances.”  Trying to steer conversation away from family matters, Brendan asked his brother what he does for work.

“I’m the county’s best and brightest agricultural supply salesman,” he announced with overacted prowess.  “If you need cattle feed, pesticides, fertilizer, you name it, I’m your man.”

Grant promptly launched into a prepared pitch about his rank in the district, and how his numbers are so much better than some other guy’s, and what his top secret plan for next year is.  Brendan promised not to tell, honestly not giving a crap about any of it.

“You travel a lot with your job?” he asked.