Page 8 of Nixon’s Promise

Nix smiled at the memory. It had taken him almost all summer to build the one room hovel. Between getting the corn in, the hay baled, then up and in the loft, and all the rest of his chores finished, he hadn’t had a lot of extra time. But he’d worked on it every day, using the tractor to drag whatever scrap wood and tin he could find down to the woods’ edge, then carrying it the rest of the way in. Nix had also found an old table and a few chairs in the barn rafters and taken those down, too.

It had been Nix’s own personal getaway. When he’d first built it, he’d taken a few of his dad’s old Playboys down there. The shack had provided him the privacy he’d needed to enjoy those magazines. When he’d gotten older, Nix had cleaned it up a bit and stored a few sleeping bags down there. He’d used it then to enjoy other things. It’d been aptly coined the Love Shack. And back in high school, between Nix and his friends, it had seen a goodly amount of love.

Maybe telling Zack about the shack wasn’t a good idea. McKenna had said he was working on getting himself some, and the shack would provide Zack the same privacy it had Nix back in the day.

“If you wouldn’t mind, I’ll check it out.”

“Not at all.”

“A few rules. I don’t mind if you take your buds down there, but no smoking in the woods. It’s dry as fuck in the summer. They’ll go up quick.”

“I don’t smoke,” he told Nix.

“That’s good. You can use it, hang out down there, but you police the area and your friends. That’s the rule—when you’re there, you’re the boss.”

Zack was looking at Nixon like he wasn’t understanding. Nix didn’t know what McKenna allowed and what she’d talked to her brother about. Nor was it his place, but the boy was fifteen and Nix knew damn good and well what he was doing at fifteen.

It had been right about Zack’s age that Nix had graduated from Playboys and his hand, to the real thing—though he was mostly still using his hand. So even if Nix didn’t think it was his place, it was his responsibility to make sure Zack understood.

“Bottom line, bud, I don’t want a bunch of beer cans and liquor bottles piling up down there. I also don’t want spent condoms and wrappers left behind.” Understanding dawned and Nix was surprised he didn’t see any embarrassment. That told Nix he’d done the right thing, Zack had also graduated from Playboys to the real thing. “Though I need to add I also don’t want to hear about the shack being used as a fuck pad.”

That earned Nix a hard look. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“Good. Then it’s yours to use.”

Zack changed the subject. “What are you doing today? I see you finished pulling out that fence.”

“Yeah. You’ve been over here before?”

“Yeah,” Zack answered sheepishly.

“It’s cool. I don’t mind. It was left vacant for a long time.”

“I’d heard stories about the Swagger land.” Zack shrugged.

“I’m sure you did. You know, you can’t believe half the shit you hear around town.”

“I know.”

Nix figured the kid did. It normally took newcomers about two-point-five seconds to figure out rumors were a national pastime around Cliff City.

“I’m trying to figure out what to do with the old milk tank and pipeline. I could probably get a good price for it at the junkyard. It’s stainless steel,” Nix told him.

“So why don’t you pull it out?”

“No reason other than it will be a pain in the ass to dismantle it by myself and haul it.”

“I’ll help.”

Nix eyed the boy. Jesus, he must really be bored if he was offering to help to pull out the old milk lines.

“What about your chores at home?”

“Those are easy. Dishwasher two days a week, my laundry, and every morning I have to turn out Sally and Goat. They take like five minutes. Oh, and dump some feed for the ducks.”

Nixon thought about the boy’s chores and wanted to laugh. Those weren’t chores, those were simply things you did around the house because it was a given. He’d bet McKenna paid the kid an allowance, too.

Nix hadn’t started to earn a salary working on the farm until he was sixteen, and that was only because his dad wanted to teach him how to pay his own bills. And if Nix wanted to drive, which he did, he’d had to buy his own car and pay for insurance and gas. Not to mention, he also wanted to date. There was no such thing as a handout around the Swagger farm. If Nix wanted it, he had to work for it. And that meant long hours and hard labor.