Page 18 of Moonshine Lullabies
“Well now, that’s okay, too.”
“Alright then,” he declared and we sort of just settled into a smiling and comfortable silence.
CHAPTERSIX
Collier…
I don’t think Jessie gave her brother enough credit. I mean, when he’d come in the night before, long after she and the boy had gone to bed, and even after I’d fallen into a light dose, the first thing that he’d asked me about was her. That was after he’d swatted the toe of my boot and scared the shit out of me, waking my ass up.
I’d told him I’d nearly shot his dick off, and dismissing that right away, said that she was doing alright.
I’d sat up and he’d dropped onto the seat cushion beside me and we’d had a long talk. Mostly after he’d opened it up by apologizing tomefor nearly clocking her. I’d shook my head at that and told him I ain’t the one he needed to say he was sorry to. That, and if he ever did somethin’ like that in my presence again, I was gonna throw down with him, whether I got my ass kicked or not, because that shit ain’t right.
He'd made a pot of coffee and we’d talked it out. We were cool, for now, but honestly, that all depended on how he treated the woman from here on out in my presence.
When he’d gone into bed in his room and I’d laid back down on the couch to get some sleep for real, I’d found myself lying awake an’ wondering just why the hell I honestly cared so much.
I still didn’t have an answer, other than I was liking Jessie-Lou and her company, no matter how acidic or sharp-edged she could be. I could tell she had a good heart, and she cared, and that those things ran deeper than deep. She wasn’t no shallow or insipid woman. Another thing I could tell was she had secrets.
I liked that. She presented a good challenge. She wasn’t boring, not by half. That intrigued me and had me thinkin’ that she’d honestly been in plain sight foryearsby now, but she’d had a boyfriend here or there before. They were trash, granted, but I’d been a prospect for a good portion of the time we’d been around each other, which meant I’d been preoccupied too. Then when I’d earned my colors, we’d been busy enough as a club, and mine and her spheres hadn’t crossed paths so much anymore. I kind of wondered what could and would have been by now if they had.
I was kind of wanting to learn everything I could about her. I was kind of low key pissed with myself that I just hadn’t been payin’ attention.
Well, there was no time like the present to change that up than now.
We went to the phone carrier first to get that shit changed over. Then I took her to get some lunch – just a drive-thru, nothing fancy – and we parked in the lot while we ate and she perused used cars nearby, lookin’ for a beater to drop some of the cash in her hip pocket on.
She sighed frustrated, and I asked her around a mouthful of my Po Boy, “What’re you looking for?”
“A small pickup, around the same size as my old one, but nothing near this big. I need it for when I go moving my bones around and pickin’ up roadkill.”
I nearly choked.
“You pick up roadkill?” I asked, and she laughed at me.
“Cheapest and easiest way to get my skulls,” she said proudly. “I chop off the heads and toss the rest out in the swamps for the gators.” She shrugged. “Or just leave it for the road crews.”
“You’re something else, you know that?” I asked.
She shrugged again, more pronounced and took another bite of her sandwich.
“So, how do you get ‘em so clean?” I asked a minute later after thinkin’ about it some.
“Oh, I got a spot in the garage, a big ol’ tank of these beetles – strips the meat clean off of ‘em in five days or less.”
“That’s morbid as fuck,” I said. “But totally fascinating at the same time.”
Her slight frown melted away as soon as I amended myself, and she looked over at me, searching my face to see if I meant what I’d said. I did, even if I did still find it unsettling.
“Tate had a real problem with it when I started,” she said with a shrug. “Then we watched theAddams Family, and he loved it. I guess it made a whole lot of sense to him after that and he thought it was cool too.”
“How old was he?” I asked.
She laughed. “Seven. That was the first year he got to go deer huntin’ with my dad and my brother. He was so proud when he came home with his first buck. My dad wanted to get it taxidermied but not Tate. He near had a full-blown fit and wanted to feed the beetles and have me carve it for him.”
“Is that the skull up on his wall in his room, there?” I asked.
She nodded and smiled. It was a little wan.
