Page 14 of Roadrunner

“So this gal looks at me and says, ‘I don’t care how big it is, I bet I can swallow the whole damned thing.’ I tell her I’ll bet her twenty bucks she can’t, and pick up her drink thinking it’s mine. Diet fuckin’ Coke and rum. Nearly spit it across the bar. Paid my tab anyway, showed her the twenty as a tease, and we go outside, and it’s snowing so hard I can’t see ten feet in front of me.” He cupped his hands around his eyes like he was still trying to see through it. “Don’t know what the temperature was. My spit froze before it hit the ground. Use your imagination, fellas. It was cold.”

He waited until he had the crowd fully with him before he went on.

“So I toss the drink in a dumpster and point her at my truck. She looks it over and says, ‘I thought you were a biker.’ I tell her I am, I just don’t ride when it’s fuckin’ snuh, snuh, snowing. She thinks about it, says okay, and then the door lock won’t turn. I work on it about five minutes before I figure it’s frozen and send her back inside. Told her I’d come get her.”

“Why not just use the fob?” Brisco asked.

“’Sixty-three GMC short bed,” Sparks said. “No fob. Two keys. One for the door, one for the ignition.”

“Oh,” Brisco said.

“Anyway. It’s about forty degrees and raining, so I heat the lock up with my Zippo for half an hour while it snows another foot and the wind’s blowing hard enough that standing up is a project. Get the truck running, whistle for her, and she comes out ready to go. I can’t feel my fingers or my toes at this point. Walked back to that truck like a clubfooted baby giraffe in roller skates.”

He took a pull of his beer.

“We’re not even out of the lot before she starts on the truck. ‘This thing even got a heater?’ ‘Give it a minute,’ I tell her. ‘It’s older than both of us combined.’ She’s got her arms crossed the whole time, looking at me like I personally called in the blizzard to ruin her night.”

He mimed gripping a wheel.

“We’re about a mile down this back road, and I swear that mile took ten minutes. Road’s slick as snot, I still can’t feel my feet, and she’s going on about her frozen toes and some guy at the bar with a mustache who probably had a truck with a working heater. I’m half listening, half trying to see past my own headlights, and she reaches over to hit the defrost, which on that truck meant slapping the dash twice in a spot my pops showed me. She don’t know the spot. Slaps it wrong right when I’m turning to tell her, and when I look back at the road, my headlights are lighting up a ten-foot ditch about four seconds away.”

He looked around at all of them.

“I scream like a little girl and yank the wheel. Truck goes into a spin, launches off the road, and we come down nose-first at the bottom of that ditch like somebody kicked us out of a cargo plane.”

“Walked away without a scratch, both of us. She’s done. Done. Doesn’t say a word to me the rest of the night. Makes me walk two miles through the blizzard to a farmhouse so she can call her sister, and the whole way there she’s telling me exactly what she thinks of my truck, my driving, and my life choices. Never did collect that twenty. Took four months and a new frame to fix the truck.” He shook his head. “And that’s why I’m in charge of the defroster. No exceptions.”

Everyone laughed, me included.

“Sparks, you’re a fucking idiot,” Riley said.

“A fuh, fuh, funny idiot,” Sparks said, looking between us.

“That was a good story,” I told him.

“Most gals would’ve bailed before the ditch.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Thanks for stih, sticking around.”

Lackey stepped into the shop doorway and whistled, sharp enough to cut through the amp. “Food’s ready!”

Nobody rushed the smokers. Instead they gathered around the tables in something close to a circle, and Price came in a moment later, unhurried, pushing his hair back with his fingers before he stopped a few steps short of the group.

He looked over the crowd. It was mostly men, with three women among them, me included. “Appreciate every one of you being here.” His eyes moved to the other two women, then to me. “That includes the old ladies. Thank you all.” He paused. “This time of year sits differently with different people. Some of you it’s good memories. Some of you it isn’t. Either way, I hope you leave here tonight with something closer to friendship and family than whatever you walked in with. I’ve asked Brother Lackey to say a few words before we eat. Whatever your relationship with the man upstairs, show him some respect while he’s talking.”

I had one memory of a Thanksgiving with both my parents in the same room, from when I was five or six, and I’d never been sure how much of it I’d actually lived and how much I’d built afterward to have something to hold onto. I closed my eyes, grateful, and hoped this one might replace it. A camera flash. Martina’s hand on my back so I would smile.

Lackey cleared his throat. “We’re gathered here to show love and respect for each other in a season that’s hard on some of us. I ask that you bless the joyous among us with the ability to give the sorrowful a little hope, bless the hopeful with a moment of joy, and bless the doubtful with some certainty that this life isn’t all bad, whatever brought them to this table. And I ask that you bless this food, so it strengthens us to be better men and women. In your name, amen.”

Amen.

I opened my eyes. Three dozen men stood around those tables. They were bearded, bald, braided, tall, short, dark, pale, built like tanks and built like wire. Every single one of them looked like trouble.

One of them I hadn’t met yet turned to the man beside him. “This’ll be my Thanksgiving and Christmas both,” he said. “You, Slacker?”

“Same here, Brother Pike.” Slacker laughed, dry. “Same here.”

Pike clapped him on the shoulder. “Life ain’t all bad, you know it?”

“Look around you,” Slacker said. “If this is bad, I don’t want to see good.”