Page 88 of Moonshine Lullabies
I thumbed the switch and twisted the throttle and a cheer went up through all of us when she started up like a fuckin’ dream.
“What d’ you say, honey? Take a ride with me?” I called over the burly chug of the engine.
“Hell yeah!” she called and she was grinning with pride and excitement.
We went for a ride, just her and I, and while I felt naked without my colors, it didn’t much matter. Not when she had her arms wrapped tight around my waist and was so snug against my back.
We rode out the way of her and her folks place.
We stopped in at her place first, to check on the progress of the contractors and shit, putting her an’ Cy’s place back together.
Cy turned around when we pulled into the front yard, and he had a grin from ear to ear.
“Well, alright now! Look at you!” He clapped his hands. “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”
“She works!” Jessie-Lou called as she got off from behind me and I heeled down the kick stand.
“Of course she works, she had a Gaudet’s hands on her!” Cy put an arm around his sister’s shoulders and shook some damn sense in her.
“Y’all don’t mind, I’m gonna go check my tanks,” she said and both Cy and I shook our heads. She handed me her helmet and wandered off around the side of the house toward the detached garage.
“She’s excited about the fox skull,” I said and Cy turned to me and raised an eyebrow.
“Where the hell she get one of them?” he asked.
I raised my eyebrows and said, “Spotted a dead one week before last on the side of the road. Must have been hit by a car or something. She pulls her ass over, I shit you not, grabs a machete out of the back of the truck and a pair of gloves out her pocket, chops the damn thing’s head off and comes running back across like she just picked a damn flower outta the ditch.”
Cy’s shoulders were shaking with laughter and I shook my head.
“She had me get the hell out of the truck and help her with a damn dead deer the week after.”
“Leave it to my sister.”
“Right? Couldn’t pick me a woman who just liked shiny stones out of a creek bed. No, I gotta pick the one with a fascination with bones.”
Cy doubled over, laughing his ass off as I just sat there and shook my head.
“So, how’s it going around here?” I asked.
He sighed and said, “Well, most of our furniture and shit is out there.” He pointed to the garage and I looked over. Only the third bay door where Jess kept her big glass tanks and crates of bones was open. Cy’s truck was parked outside the garage along its front side out here.
“I was wondering what was up with the new arrangement over there.”
Cy shook his head.
“Got it tore out to the studs in here, makin’ sure none of the electric took a bullet to start a fire and shit. Might as well do it all right.”
I nodded and looked over the house from out here. The windows were replaced and whole swaths of the shake exterior siding.
“How’s the back look?” I asked.
He jerked his head in the direction of the house and said, “Come on in and look.”
I gave a low whistle when I went on in the front door. It was a definite, almost total gutting in here. The only wall that wasn’t ripped out to the studs was the one facing longways from the door, separating the living room from Tate’s room. The wall that the television and entertainment center had been up against.
The carpet was gone and the padding that’d been up underneath and I looked at the hardwood floors.
“They covered this up with carpet?” I asked a little incredulous.
