While he continued to move his gear out of the house, I secured a storage unit large enough to hold his giant bed and dresser, and I also started to put a room on hold for him at the long-term hotel. “I just need your credit card,” I said when he came in.
“You’re amazingly efficient.” He handed me a thin piece of plastic and I used that to confirm everything.
In a few short minutes and after fighting with his big, dumb mattress, we were on the road. He really didn’t have too much, which was lucky. If my family ever had to move out of our house, there were layers upon layers to get through. The garage was packed from top to bottom with the detritus of multiple generations, as was the attic, as was the basement.
“Did you leave a lot at your parents’ house in Arkansas?” I asked as we wrestled the mattress into the storage place. He was strong but it was so damn bendy!
“I guess I have childhood things there. My mom saved all my old school papers and baby stuff. She has the football from when I won my first high school game and all the awards from my playing days.” After he clicked shut his padlock on his new storage unit, he checked inside my car to confirm that it was empty. All that was left now were personal things like clothes and toiletries, and he had stowed that in the back seat of his truck.
“Do you want to get something to eat before you head home?” he suggested.
“I thought you had to get on the road to Ohio.”
“I called my boss on the way here and said I would leave in the morning instead, due to personal problems. I didn’t explain that I had to flee from my home because I’d chosen to live with jackoffs,” he said.
“If it makes you feel better, I also live with them. My family.”
“At least you didn’t choose them,” he pointed out. “Let’s go eat. I’m starving.”
It was probably because he’d done most of the heavy lifting—ok, all of the heavy lifting. Since I’d gotten tired just from looking around the Woodsmen football complex, I’d been forcing myself to go on walks around the neighborhood so I could get in better shape. Apparently, I’d also have to start doing some arm workouts. And back, and probably abs, too.
“It’s not really dinner time yet. Let’s go to the hotel first so you can check in,” I said. It was better to complete everything that you didn’t want to do. That was why I’d finished our “group” project today, even though it was due on Wednesday. “Then I have an idea for a restaurant where you’ll be able to order without a lot of adulterations.”
We left my car at the hotel and went together to try out this new place, which was just opening for their dinner service as we arrived. The menu was full of organic, non-fried, vegetable-protein items—so basically, it was the opposite of Walter’s and Shane did seem impressed. “I can order something as-is,” he commented. “I always make the staff hate me when I get picky.”
“Why are you so interested in nutrition? Was that part of your football life?”
“Yeah, but isn’t it a good idea for everyone to eat healthy?” he asked.
“No, because if they did, then I would lose my livelihood. What’s this?” I pointed to a word I didn’t recognize on the paper menu.They had real ones here, not just words painted on a cinderblock wall.
“That’s another way to say it’s made of soy. It’s pretty good,” he assured me. We talked over some other items and then, after we ordered, he had questions about the restaurant (my family’s place, not the one we were sitting in).
“Did you get so good at organizing by working at Walter’s?” he asked. “By the way, Walter’s…what? Diner? Eatery? It looks like part of your road sign is missing.”
“It is missing,” I confirmed. “It used to be ‘Walter’s Café,’ but nobody used the whole name so when the sign broke a few years ago, we left it.” Also, new signs were very expensive, which I knew because I had priced them out. “I guess that I always had to be efficient, like you said. It wasn’t only from working there, though, because I also had to do it at home. My parents were really busy so we took care of a lot on our own.”
“My older sister used to watch us. She also used to try to try to hit us with a wooden spoon if we annoyed her, so we developed speed and agility. That’s how I got good at scrambling out of the pocket when I was a quarterback and my other two sisters ran track in high school. It worked out in the end.”
“My brother wasn’t in charge of us,” I said. “Good thing, because he would have been terrible at it.”
“Not quick enough with the spoon?” he suggested, but I shook my head.
“Max is into Max. When I was a kid, I thought it made sense because he was so awesome. Everyone was into him, includingme. I worshipped him. He was the smartest kid in the school until about eighth grade.”
“Then what happened?”
I shrugged. “I guess other people caught up a little. He had been better at sports, too, really good at baseball. He was taller and stronger than all the other players.”
“That helps.”
“It did, until they also grew,” I answered. “Then he lost that advantage. But my dad was still sure that he was going to make it big, either in baseball or running Wall Street. Maybe expanding the restaurant into a multi-state chain. Something. Today, we heard Max’s latest idea.” I explained how my brother was planning to capitalize on our tourist season by offering near-death experiences to them. Like, one day they’d eat fudge and go to the beach, and the next, they’d be entombed in an abandoned grain silo that he’d set on fire.
Shane looked horrified. “Adventure tourism? Is that why people come to northern Michigan?”
“Maybe ziplining, but this is so dangerous. Who would ever give him money for it?” No one would besides my parents. “My sister said that Max took an online sales course, which she could hear through the wall. They taught people to believe that they were their own guarantee of success.”
“Does he have another job, a fallback?” he asked.
