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The feud had gone on so long, I doubted it was ever going to end. But as I watched Michael head out the door and break back into a jog, a little part of me wanted it to.
Employee of the Month
Michael
“Can you stack that feed?” I called back to Virgil, my cousin—who also happened to be my employee.
“Stack it yourself, asshole.” Virgil was not winning employee of the month this month. Or this century. He and his brother Emmett were bent over the register counter, heads together, with a pad of paper between them and an aura of no-fucking-good wafting off them like thick morning fog.
I dropped a heavy hand on Virgil’s shoulder, pulling him to face me. I had at least thirty pounds on the guy, who was barely twenty-one, and his brother was a year older and about three inches shorter. “Listen up, Virge. I’m not ‘asshole’ around here. I’m the boss, and if you want to keep pulling the deposit that’s keeping you in Half-Cat Whiskey and cheap beer, you’d do well to remember that.”
Virgil didn’t look the least bit chastised.
“Same goes for you, Emmett.”
His brother had the intelligence to nod his head, as if he agreed with me.
I would have liked to get some actual employees in here, but my father made some kind of deal with his brother Victor before he died, and these guys had been handed down to me along with ownership of the store. There’d been a time when I’d had plans for this place, when I could envision it becoming something I was excited about running, owning. But that was when I thought I’d be going to college and coming back for it, maybe getting a few years of pro soccer under my belt and my wild dreams out of my system.
“What the hell are you two cackling about over here anyway?” I asked, already regretting the question as a wicked smile overtook Virgil’s face.
“Remember the moose?”
Simple question, really. And for most people, a question like this would trigger an obvious memory, if they did, in fact, have a moose-related memory. Sadly, I had about thirteen moose-related memories, and none of them were good.
“Yes,” I said, not wanting to be drawn too far into a conversation that generally ended with me agreeing to put the bucket on the heavy-duty tractor on my back lot and close my eyes to whatever happened next.
“This time, we’re gonna set himinsidethe Muffin Tin.” Virgil’s voice got high and squeaky with excitement, and Emmett nodded his agreement, rubbing his hands together. Emmett did a lot of nodding, and not a lot of speaking. That was probably thanks to the lisp he’d always had, for which he’d been relentlessly teased as a kid. Now he let Virgil do all the talking, which was a shame, because Virgil’s brain usually caught up to his mouth about three days later.
“I don’t think so,” I said, crossing my arms and pulling myself to my full height.
The moose sat in Verda Tanner’s garden most of the time. It was a monstrous bronze thing, cast solid and just about to scale, so all told, it weighed somewhere around a ton. It was a bit of an oversized lawn ornament, most of the town agreed, but Verda’s late sculptor husband had cast the thing during his “bronze age” and she loved it. I’d overheard her talk about it once (after the moose had been relocated to sit beneath the huge tree in the town square wearing a shirt that read:Tanners. They’re not smart, but at least they’re ugly.She’d cried and moaned, and even flung her arms around the moose and talked to it as if it was her dead husband. It kind of reminded me of an old episode ofSanford & SonsI’d seen once, where the old man played by Redd Foxx would look to the heavens and talk to his dead wife. I felt a little guilty, thinking about it.
Point was, the woman loved the moose, and moving it around town was a huge hassle. And thinking about the feud now made me think of Addison Tanner, and her pretty brown hair and sad dark eyes. She had a bit of a smart mouth, maybe, but I didn’t feel any animosity toward her. In fact the idea of hurting her—even a little—made my own heart ache a bit for no explicable reason. It just seemed like maybe she’d been hurt already. And moose-related antics might hurt her more—even if not directly. Verda was her aunt, after all.
“C’mon, Mike,” Virgil pleaded. “I’ll move all the feed you want if you let us borrow the tractor tonight.”
“No.” I sighed as a beat-up blue Camry pulled into the lot out front. “And you’ll move all the feed right now because I’m paying you to do it.”
Virgil and Emmett exchanged a look, but they headed off to the back of the store together, hopefully to start hauling feed. But probably not.
I turned to the front as the bell over the door rang out, and forced a smile for my ex-wife, who looked upset and frazzled as ever, Daniel trailing behind her. Fridays were kid-trade days. I had Dan every other week, Friday to Friday.
“Hey, Shell,” I said, trying to make my voice light and happy. She’d broken down in tears a few times before when I hadn’t sounded happy enough to see her.
“Oh, God, Mike,” she started, her voice already a wail as she dropped her keys on my counter and leaned heavily on her forearms, bowing her head. “It’s been such a day.”
I smiled over her head at Daniel, who looked pretty unfazed by “the day,” and when he stepped behind the counter, I pulled him into a bear hug. “Missed you, little man,” I told him as something inside me snapped closed. I felt loose and incomplete when he wasn’t around. It was always a relief to have him back. “Where’s your stuff?” I glanced around for his pack, his schoolwork.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Shelly wailed. She lifted her head, and I saw tears standing in the eyes I’d once thought could change the world. I knew now those bright blue eyes only had the power to change my life, and not necessarily for the better. She was still pretty, and if you’d put her in a cheerleader uniform, she’d look a lot like the girl I couldn’t quit thinking about at sixteen. But now? Now I’d take one look and realize none of that—the blond hair and high voice—mattered to me anymore. I’d been young and impulsive back then, and I hoped I was wiser now.
I didn’t need bright blue eyes and a pretty little rosebud mouth.
I didn’t need the tight little body wrapped in a low-cut shirt or a cheerleader’s top.
I needed to focus on being a responsible father to my son. And that was all I needed. All other paths led to ruin. I’d already proven that.
“We were running so late, and Daniel was dragging his feet, like always, playing that stupid game on the computer and everything, and I’m already late for work now.” Shelly’s litany of excuses wasn’t new.
