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And the icon of unpredictable tides would be my brother, Liem. Even if he were up and about, he wouldn’t show his face here. And that’s because he was unequivocally banned from the docks after what the deck hands and fishermen were calling the “Free Willy” incident.
From what I understood, nothing lewd happened—small mercies—but he did try to disengage a trawl and release a bunch of freshly caught shrimp back into the Gulf. Malachi, the man who caught him, only conceded to not call the cops after Liem agreed to 1) never come back to the docks, 2) do a cover-up job on the guy’s chest tattoo to change “Jenny” to “Betty” for free, and 3) do so without comment.
Liem had his own dreams and deserved a chance to be young and explore them. He’d graduated high school at sixteen after completing an accelerated homeschooling program and started a tattoo apprenticeship soon after at a shop near my parents’ old house in Eufaula. He was almost twenty-one now and had been taking online college courses in art and business on and off over the past two years.
Any potential anger I could’ve harbored over his wanderings since they’d moved here was easily kept at bay by the knowledge that my little brother, though a bit of a wild card, wasn’t truly flaky. He just didn’t see the world the way that most people did and certainly didn’t operate like the rest of us.
Which was sanely. Consistently. Fully clothed.
I almost wished I could feel angry with Liem for not stepping up more with the restaurant, but I maybe didn’t have a lot of room to talk.
I’d taken on most of the responsibilities that didn’t involve cooking in the restaurant’s kitchen, but it still left a lot for Mom and Liem to do. I still loved cooking but had a bit of a mental block when it came to cooking in a bustling, professional kitchen—especially with others. The thought of operating the oven, stove, and deep fryers side by side with my family….
I clenched my fists and shifted my weight on the plastic crate as beads of sweat broke out on my forehead. I forced my gaze to the docks and counted my breaths as I tracked rays of new sunlight dancing on the water’s surface.
Inhale.
The morning is here.
Exhale.
The restaurant is as safe as it can be.
No. I wouldn’t be cooking alongside my family at Ari’s any time soon. Instead, my contributions to the family restaurant were mostly made in the form of prep work and paperwork. And ramp building. But it still left a lot of the labor to Mom, who took it on graciously, especially considering how much the move here hadn’t gone at all as she’d expected. I was just emotionally aware enough to understand that, of my two parents, I was much more like my mom. Liem had so much of our dad’s personality in him, and I think Mom would have fled the continent if both of her sons turned out like Monroe “Monny” Lott.
On the outside, my dad looked the part of a gruff, middle-aged ex-military man, but inside he was… much more complicated. But what he and Liem had most in common was how they viewed the world and the people in it—with endless amusement.
My phone vibrated with an incoming text and buzzed again as I picked it up. I unlocked it to find back-to-back messages from the man himself.
The first was a blurry photo of a bowl of grits with Dad’s finger clearly visible in the top corner.
The second was a text.
Dad
Your mom’s cheese grits are lumpy. I sure do miss yours , , ,
I huffed, wondering how he mixed up periods and commas, but typed my reply, thankful that he’d at least stopped texting in all caps.
If I cooked you breakfast this morning, it would be a bowl of oatmeal (no sugar) and an egg-white-and-kale omelet. You know what the doctor said.
Three dots appeared as he typed his response. One that would in all likelihood murder my nerves.
lol
Here lies Vinh Lott.
I’d had this conversation with him a lot since his surgery, so I forwent a reply, setting my phone on the ground by my feet and reaching into my pocket for something else to fiddle with. I pulled out Mom’s bright purple stun gun and twirled it in my hand as I squinted against the sun to peer out at the docks. I’d been perched on an old plastic crate behind Fortuna, the biggest casino on this strip of the Coast, for going on half an hour.
I’d only gotten a few hours of sleep before I came down here to wait for Mom’s seafood shipment for the restaurant. Originally, Dad had planned to take care of the seafood sourcing himself, but that was before he had emergency surgery on his leg. He loved everything about fishing but wouldn’t be doing any this season. He still had a few weeks before he would even be fitted for his prosthetic leg.
Yesterday, over an early breakfast at their new rental home, Mom had finally agreed for me to take over this task. She’d slapped the weapon into my hand with her signature scowl and left me with some instructions that were equal parts mystifying and thought-provoking.
“Listen to me, son. Don’t be afraid to use it. If I’m not back by the time they’re done unloading their hauls, you may have to. They tried to cheat me twice before I showed them that I was not someone to be messed with. Most importantly, son, if you hear Billy—that’s the boy with the silver-and-red beard—use the Lord’s name in vain, you are to send him a message he won’t soon forget.”
She had delivered that last bit with a violent downward stabbing motion.
Billy was a 250-pound beast of a man in his midfifties.
