As soon as I sit down next to Vince, he says, “You okay? You didn’t sound quite right to me on the phone.”
“All good,” I say. “Even better now that I’m here and you’re here.”
Vince toasts me with his mug. “Always.”
We do shoot some pool, me beating him every game until I finally switch to doing it left-handed. I keep beating him anyway, much to his loud dismay.
“Is there any game you’re not good at?”
“These days?” I say. “Most of them.”
“Don’t give me that,” he says. “You’re on the comeback trail, dawg. Not sure to where, mind you. But I’m seeing it even if nobody else does.”
I put an arm around him and walk us back to the bar.
“Always said you needed glasses.”
He limits himself to one beer because he’s driving.
I sip a root beer, ask if he wants to work out tomorrow afternoon.
He says he’s in. After he pays his check, refusing to let me do it, we walk together out to the back parking lot.
Then he’s the one hugging me.
“You know I’d do anything for you, right?”
“My whole life,” I say, then tell him he doesn’t even have to call ahead tomorrow, just show up at the gym around five.
I get into the truck and pull out of the lot, having already cranked up Blue Öyster Cult and “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.”
Had my father feared the Reaper, even though I’d never known him to fear anybody or anything?
Or should I be the one fearing the Reaper these days?
I sing along anyway, one more song of my life where I know all the words by heart:
All our times have come here,
But now they’re gone…
I’m on SR 31, the road on which he’d been shot that day, when the flashing blue lights appear behind me, and I clearly hear the siren over the music pounding away at me in the front seat.
At first, I think it might be Burt Webb messing with me. But as I pull over to the shoulder, I see that the car is county and not local.
One of Sheriff Nash Hader’s cars, maybe even with Hader himself out for a drive, recognizing my truck and seizing an opportunity to act like a prick.
By the time I’ve shut off the engine, I’ve already got my wallet out. I hear the rap on the window as I’m pulling the registration out of the glove compartment.
The cop, one I don’t recognize, motions for me to roll down the window.
I do.
“What’s the problem, officer?” I say. “I know I wasn’t speeding.”
“Please step out of the vehicle, sir.”
I can see he’s a big man. Not bigger than me. But few are, especially around here.
