Page 58 of Moonshine Lullabies
“She knows, buddy. That’s just how your mom is when she gets stressed. Always goes super serious on us.”
I raised an eyebrow and gave my brother a cold look, demanding, “What happened to you?” His bottom lip was split and swelling like mad and he had some blood on his white undershirt which was peeking over the collar by a good bit of his black overshirt.
He touched his lip and gave a one-shouldered shrug, sayin’, “Fundamental difference of opinion with your new boyfriend.”
I set the book I had in my hands aside on the window seat and practically leaped to my feet and said, “John-Paul Mercy Gaudet!” using his first, middle, and last name the way our mamma always did when we was in trouble.
“Oh, crap,” Tate muttered and went pale behind my brother. My son looked this way and that, and said, “I have to go to the bathroom.” He went in and shut the door tight.
“I swear to the good lord above, you hurt him, I’m gonna kick your ass!”
Always infuriating, John-Paul just chuckled at me and said, “Relax! He’s fine, I’m fine – not that you’re too worried.” I gave him a look like he was bein’ damn stupid because he was. Ain’t nothin’ out there alive could hurt my brother in a hand-to-hand fight. But then what he said next surprised me, “An’ besides all that, your boy won.”
“What?” I narrowed my eyes.
“Hell yeah, you heard me, he won. An’ there you are standin’ there all worried about him. Ow!”
His ow was from me pickin’ back up the hardback book and me chuckin’ it at his big dumb head.
“Why you always gotta be throwin’ shit?” he demanded.
“An’ get inside your reach, you big dumb ape?” I crossed my arms. “An’ just what was you fightin’ about anyway?” I demanded.
“You, of course.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need you defendin’ my virtue,” I told him. “Besides that, in case you ain’t noticed, you’re close to fifteen years too damn late for all that!”
“I know,” he said, giving me a look that damn sure did look like he was a whole lot of sorry, which took me aback.
Did Collier...?I dismissed the thought almost as swiftly as the suspicion had formed. He wouldn’t. He wasn’t like that. Besides, if he had, even dollars on the fact that Cy wouldn’t be able to contain himself about it. He’d be up here yellin’ at me somethin’ awful about sayin’ anything like that about Hamblin. Ol’ Nuckie Ham Bone as we’d always called him could do no wrong as far as my daddy an’ my brother was concerned and it wouldn’t be a leap for either one of ‘em to go from slut to liar where I was concerned.
Cypress saw somethin’ on my face, I guess, because he dropped his head and looked at the floor, his mouth twistin’ like he was tryin’ to make a big damn decision on what the right thing was to say in this moment.
“I’m sorry, Jess,” he said.
“For what?” I asked as he bent and picked up the book, closing it; but not before makin’ sure the pages was alright. Looked like I’d managed to teach him a thing or two. Every once in a while, somethin’ did manage to get through that thick skull of his.
“I can’t make it up for not bein’ around so much, an’ I damn sure can’t make it up to you fer those jackals shootin’ up our house,” he said and he sort of shrugged a little helplessly and continued with, “I don’t know where to even begin on tryin’ to make it up for you an’ for Tater. All I can do is tell you, ‘I’m sorry’ an’ I know it ain’t enough an’ I don’t like that.”
I sighed and dropped back down onto the window seat and said, “I love you, you big dumb ox.”
I turned and looked down on the clubhouse across the street, at the small knot of brothers. It looked like Axe, Chainsaw, and Louie, down inside the fence, smokin’ and drinkin some beers, talkin’ and laughin’.
I sighed, and he said behind me, “But?”
I shook my head. “Ain’t no ‘but,’ brother. I just love you, but you sho’ don’t make it easy sometimes.”
I sniffed, my eyes welling, and he sighed and came over, sitting next to me and taking up most of my field of vision. He looked down at his hands and scratched at a thick callous at the base of his fingers on his palm.
“Ain’t a single Gaudet alive that makes it easy to love ‘em,” he said, and I had to smile at that.
“Y’ ain’t wrong there,” I said.
“Y’know there are rules to this life, right?” he asked, and he looked out the window with me down on the club and his brothers down there.
I shook my head. “I don’t, really. That’s always been your thing and you ain’t talk about it much.”
“That’s because it’s a dangerous life, an’ you can’t get in any kind of trouble should the law come knockin’ if you ain’t know anything.”
