Page 34 of The Reckless Rookie

It changes how you walk.

The work’s not killing me anymore, is the other thing.

When I got here, a fence post beat me in a fair fight. Now I set a line of them without thinking, hands doing the job while my head’s somewhere else, and Vicente walks past and doesn’t say no, which from Vicente is a parade. I’ve earned something out here I never earned with a slap shot. Nobody handed it to me and no agent got it in a contract. I did it with my hands, badly, for weeks, until I didn’t do it badly anymore. It’s the proudest I’ve been of anything that didn’t come with a crowd, and I finally stopped being surprised by that.

Dwyer tries me midafternoon. He has been circling for days, big and bored and mean enough to mistake somebody else’s restraint for weakness. This time he steps into my work and kicks the post I just set hard enough to knock it off line.

“Hey, O’Sullivan.” Loud enough for the yard. “Man you put down still needs a cane. Heard his kid saw the clip. Bet that made you feel like a real hard bastard.” A couple of heads come up. Nobody tells him to stop. Men in a place like this know a test when they hear one, and half of them want to see which way I fail it.

The old heat comes up so fast my hand closes before I know it moved. I see his jaw, the angle, the single clean shot that would shut his mouth and put the whole yard back in order. I want it. Not in theory. I want to feel him go quiet under my fist.

I take one step before I catch myself. Dwyer sees it and smiles, because now he knows he found the live wire.

“Come on, famous.” He moves closer. “Show us what the city pays for.”

The consequences are there: the sheriff, the report, the felony coming back, Catalina’s ranch paying for four seconds of me. For one bad beat, all of it is far away and Dwyer is close.

Do I have to. Or do I want to.

I want to badly enough that the difference hurts.

I force my hand open around the post bar. Set the bar down instead of through him. Square the post he kicked crooked.

“Nah,” I tell him, and my voice isn’t easy. “You’re not worth the paperwork.” The yard makes a sound that is almost a laugh. Dwyer waits for me to look at him again. I don’t. After a long second, he walks off to find somebody easier to break.

Vicente is twenty feet away resetting a clip. He never looks up, but a beat later he says to the wire, “Good line of posts.”

We end up on the tailgate of Vicente’s truck when the light goes long, the three of us, me and Jason and the old man, which is what the younger guys call him even though he can’t be much past forty.

Nobody planned it. That’s how the good ones happen. The day empties out and you’re too tired to move and somebody’s got a thermos and nobody wants to be the first to leave, so you sit, and the talk comes sideways the way it only does when men are too worn down to armor up.

Jason’s quiet in a way I’ve learned to read. Something’s sitting on him.

“You good?” I ask.

He turns his water bottle in his hands. “Court date Friday. Custody thing.” A long pause, the kind you don’t fill. “Renata wants to cut my time with Sofia. Down to nothing, basically. Supervised.”

“How old’s your girl?”

“Six.” He says it like the number costs him. “She still thinks I hung the moon. That’s the part that…” He stops. “I got maybe a year before she figures out what I am, and Renata wants to make sure I don’t get to spend it.”

I know something now, sitting on that tailgate, that I didn’t know six months ago.

I know exactly what Jason is. He’s me. He’s a guy who loves something so much it scares him, and handles the fear by doing the dumbest possible thing with it, and then watches it cost him exactly what he was scared of losing. The DUI’s not the problem. The DUI’s just what his particular fear looks like when it gets out.

“I’m going to tell you something,” I say. “Take it or leave it.”

“Depends.”

“You’re doing it wrong.” I let that sit a second. “Not the loving her. The rest of it. You’re scared you’re gonna lose her so you’re showing up to court angry, showing up to Renata angry, and every angry thing you do is a gift you’re handing the other side. I’ve watched you do it here too. Somebody pushes, you shove back, and it feels like standing up for yourself and it’s exactly what buries you.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“I’m the only one at this fire who’s qualified to talk.” That gets a breath out of him that’s almost a laugh. “I put a man in the hospital, Jason. I know precisely what it costs to lead with the worst thing in you. I’m out here shoveling for a judge because I couldn’t do what I’m about to tell you to do.”

He’s looking at me now.

“Change is boring,” I tell him. “That’s the secret nobody says out loud. It’s not a moment. It’s not one big fix. It’s showing up Friday in a tie with your mouth shut and a lawyer talking for you. It’s doing the boring right thing every single day until the boring right thing is who you are. You want that year with Sofia? You want ten years? Then you get quiet, you do the work, and you stay the hell away from anybody who wants you to be the guy who shoves back. Those people aren’t your friends. They like you broke because it makes them feel tall.”