He grins again, not singing Hank’s words but just reciting them to me. “‘That side’s yours and this side’s mine.’”
“Just so we understand each other,” I say.
He gives me a long look this time, still grinning, and says, “You sound just like your old man sometimes.”
“Thank you.”
He turns and spits.
“Don’t automatically assume I meant that as a compliment.”
I do something then I haven’t done much of lately.
I laugh.
Until it hurts.
After Charlie’s left for the day, I go inside the house to the basement gym my father had built for himself, for the jock he still had in him until the day he died, the gym he saw me using for myself when I got bigger and older.
Nothing fancy down here. An old treadmill that still works just fine. Squat rack. Couple of barbells. A fold-back wall-mount rack. Slant board for sit-ups. Dumbbells of different weights.
I’ve told EJ in advance that dinner might have to be a little later than usual tonight because I’m heading for the gym.
“Haven’t you been working out all day with Charlie?” she asks.
“Need to punish myself just a little more,” I say, kissing her on top of her head.
“Punishing yourself for what?”
“Figure of speech,” I tell her.
She looks up at me. “You sure about that?” she asks before adding, “Dinner at eight?”
“I won’t be late.”
“Don’t you overdo it down there, Silas Tucker,” she says. “The last thing you want to do is set yourself back.”
I smile at her and croon to her with one of my favorite lines from Ben Harper:
Hard not to feel like the odd one in my bones.
“Please don’t sing,” she says.
It’s my first time, since I left the rehab facility, in a gym without a trainer or physical therapist present. But for the next hour I set about beating the holy hell out of myself, music from one of my many playlists blasting out of my iPhone. Jason Isbell. Steve Earle. Kris and Willie and Waylon and Johnny Cash when they were the Highwaymen. Even some Hank, not that I’d admit that to Charlie Hall, that snob.
Even my offensive linemen, those hogs, used to admire the fact that I was the first one in the weight room, even before they got there, and the last one out.
Today I pretend that I’m still that guy, even knowing that I’m not, knowing that EJ is upstairs and can’t hear me singing along now with Duffy:
I don’t know what this is, ’cause you got me good.
When I finally finish up, sweat coming off me in what feels like waves, the satisfaction of having made it through a hard workout like this, trying to cancel out the hurt I was feeling just everywhere, I do feel like a jock again for a few minutes.
First one in, last one out.
Hell yeah.
EIGHTEEN
