“Yes, sir. It’s been my thing since I was a teenager.”
“I went through a phase myself.” He says it casual, almost throwaway, cutting into his steak. “College. Different music, same energy. Gil Scott-Heron. The Last Poets. A lot of spoken word. We were angry about some of the same things, just came at it from different directions.”
I look at him. Martin Kimball, post office worker, church-going father, steady man in a button-down, just told me he listened to Gil Scott-Heron in college. Gil Scott-Heron, who put a poem over a beat and told America its revolution would not be sponsored by Xerox, who laid the blueprint for everything that came after, who was punk before punk had a name.
“Gil Scott-Heron is foundational,” I say.
“He is.” Martin nods. Cuts another piece of steak. “Different era. Same fight.”
Patricia is watching this exchange with an expression I can’t read. She looks at Martin, then at me, then at Zoe, who is eating avocado toast and glowing.
“Do you have any hobbies besides music?” Patricia asks. “Zoe mentioned you have tattoos.”
“I do.” I hold out my forearms. The koi, the geometric piece, the older work on my upper arms visible below the sleeve of my t-shirt. Patricia looks at them with the expression of a woman who is being very open-minded.
“Those are… detailed.”
“My artist is talented. She works at a shop on Granger.”
“Tattoos are very popular now,” Patricia says, in the same tone she used for “how fun.” She’s trying. She’s trying so hard. I can see the effort in the set of her jaw and the brightness of her smile and the way she keeps picking up her water glass and putting it down without drinking.
We eat. The conversation moves to Zoe’s work at Station 11, which is safe ground, and both parents light up when she talks about the drills and the crew and Hayes’s training methods. They’re proud of her. Unambiguously, visibly proud, and watching them watch Zoe talk about firefighting is like watching two people see their child become real in front of them.
“We should go,” Zoe says eventually, after the plates are cleared and the coffee has been refilled twice. “Teague has a shift tonight.”
We stand. I reach for my jacket on the back of the chair. I’ve been sitting on it the whole meal, draped over the chair back. I pick it up and put it on the way I always do, one arm, then the other, shrugging it onto my shoulders, and the patches face out.
Martin sees them.
He sees them. Stops reaching for his wallet. His eyes move across my back, left to right, and I can feel him reading. Black Lives Matter, bottom right, fraying at the edge. Trans rights, center back, bright pink thread. Kids over guns. Eat therich. No more billionaires. The older patches underneath, faded and layered, a record of every march and rally and show I’ve been to for a decade.
The jacket isn’t a costume. I didn’t put these patches on for today. They’ve been there for years, through rain and sweat and sun, sewn on with thread I stole from my mom’s sewing kit and thread I bought at the dollar store. They’re fraying and faded and real.
Martin looks at the jacket. Then he looks at me. His expression does a thing I wasn’t expecting, a small recalibration, the same one he did when I said business owner instead of bartender except deeper. He’s not seeing a punk girl with a mohawk anymore. He’s seeing the patches and reading the politics underneath and finding them credible.
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. He just nods, once, small and weighted, and then he pulls out his wallet and pays for brunch because Martin Kimball pays for brunch and that’s not negotiable.
Outside, on the sidewalk, Zoe’s hand finds mine.
Patricia hugs Zoe. Then she turns to me and hesitates for one second, just one, and then she hugs me too. Briefly. Carefully. Like she’s hugging something she hasn’t figured out how to hold yet.
“It was lovely to meet you, Teague.”
“You too, Mrs. Kimball.”
“Patricia.” She steps back. “Come for dinner sometime. I’ll make chicken. It's my specialty.”
Martin shakes my hand. Same firm grip as before, but he holds it for an extra beat.
“Take care of our girl,” he says.
I snicker. “She takes care of herself. I’m just keeping up.”
Something moves in his face. Not a smile. A recognition. Then he lets go and puts his arm around Patricia and they walk to their car, and Zoe and I stand on the sidewalk on Calloway Street watching them go.
“Your dad saw the jacket,” I say.
She watched him do it. I could tell.
