Page 47 of Thug

“I thought my dad was going to whip that old man’s ass. He got right up in his face and said, ‘There ain’t nothing second-rate about having a broke air conditioner,’ The man shook his head. ‘If it’s broke? No, sir. Things break from time to time, and there ain’t nothing a man can do about it. Why? The air conditioner in your car broke?’”

He tried to take a drink, but realized the bottle was empty. He handed it to me.

I didn’t know where his story was going, but I didn’t care. He was telling me about something that was meaningful to him, and I appreciated it greatly.

I handed him a fresh bottle of beer. “So, what happened?”

“Well, my dad tells the guy we drove straight through from Marana to Fort Worth with a broken air conditioner. The guy asks where Marana is. My dad tells him it’s near Tucson, and the guy whistles through his teeth. ‘God damn,’ the old man said. ‘What’d that take? Sixteen hours?’ My dad agreed, and the old man shook his head and handed him the key to the motel room. ‘It was a 110 today,’ the old man said. ‘How much further you headed?’ ‘We’re here,’ my dad said. ‘This is it.’ It was the first time I’d been to a motel, and I remember thinking I can’t believe we drove sixteen fucking hours through the sweltering heart to just to go to sleep in a motel.”

I laughed. “Was that it? You went to a motel in Texas? That was your trip?”

He shook his head. “The next day we went to Six Flags.” He tilted the neck of his beer bottle toward me. “That was the last time I remember having fun.”

My heart sank. I wanted to hear more about his last recollection of his life being fun. “Did you ride the roller coaster?”

“Over and over.”

My imagination had conjured up Price’s youth as being awful. I was so excited that at least a part of it wasn’t. Even if he hadn’t had fun in thirty years, I wanted him to recall the last time he did with vigor.

“Did your parents ride it with you?” I asked.

“My dad did. Heights made my mother queasy, so she didn’t. She rode the tilt-a-whirl, and the thing that spins around and the bottom falls out of it. They had a go-cart track and we all rode them. Ate cotton candy and those hot dogs on a stick. Damned near puked when the day was over. Funny thing. On the way home, I didn’t look at one of those bank signs. I didn’t even care.”

“I bet you had fun.”

He glared. “That was the point of the story. It was fun.”

I wanted him to realize it was all a state of mind. That a person can ride the equivalent of a rollercoaster while sitting in the living room listening to their favorite song.

“I try to have fun every day,” I said. “No matter what.”

He coughed out a dry laugh. “I just try to get through mine without being arrested or killed.”

I grinned a reassuring smile. “Life’s only as bad as your last doctor’s appointment.”

His face contorted. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“If the doctor says I’m in good health, that’s all that matters. Until the day comes that she says, ‘Been nice knowing you, Gray. You’re going to be dead before your next checkup’, I’ve got nothing to worry about. The world can come apart as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t keep me from finding something to be happy about.”

“People like you make me want to puke,” he said flatly. “Generally speaking.”

I took exception to the comment. I laughed, nevertheless. “I make you want to vomit. That’s nice to hear.”

He gave me a cross look. “I said, ‘generally speaking, people like you make me want to puke.’ Not you, but people like you.”

“Give me a description.”

“Of?”

“The people you’re talking about.”

“They claim to be perpetually happy. Living in a bubble of denial with a little white puppy named Bear and an immigrant nanny that looks after their two-point-two kids, they drive their six-figure SUVs to the latest celebrity-endorsed restaurant and buy the overpriced raw tuna with a kale salad on the side because it’s Keto-friendly. On their way home they cut me off in traffic because their blind spot detection doesn’t pick up motorcycles and they never take time to look. Mad that they nearly killed me, I flip them off. They spend that night—and possibly the remainder of their life—angry that people like me exist. They wander this earth wearing their Rolex watches and Gucci loafers, blind as to what’s truly going on around them.”

He’d given the subject some serious thought. It was obviously a matter of contention with him. I decided to proceed with caution.

“I’m not like that,” I said. “My $2,500 SUV has a ‘look twice for bikers’ sticker on it, I don’t have a dog or kids, and I don’t care if an Instagram influencer says a place is ‘the bomb’, I eat where the locals eat, and I’m all too aware of what’s going on around me. But. Having that knowledge doesn’t prevent me from being happy.”

He raised his brows. “What’s going on around you?”