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“Don’t need to tell me twice.” He reverses the truck and squeals the tires on our exit.
What a child.
Underneath it all, he’s still the boy with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was my protector growing up and I was his. There’s nothing my brother wouldn’t do to make sure I was taken care of. And the trade-off was huge. Among other things, Travis never got to be just a boy. A kid.
He guns the engine and I grit my teeth, holding back my curse or the urge to tell him to slow down. There’s no point. He’ll do the opposite if I say a word.
He needs to get his anger and frustration out of his system, and in the meantime, I grip the handle and hope he doesn’t get pulled over for speeding.
There was a time I feared he might follow in our parents’ footsteps. Prospect is riddled with judgmental residents. They make it hard to forget where you come from or reinvent yourself.
I should know, I’ve been trying my entire life. And so has Travis.
My brother is a natural with cars and wanted to open his own garage. He’s got no formal training, but so far there’s been nothing he can’t fix. Once he got it in his head, he saved for school, taking business management courses online at night, and putting whatever was left away so he could get a place to set up shop.
In the end it didn’t happen. Every bit of property in town he wanted to lease, or buy outright with the help of a bank loan, which he qualified for, was met with opposition.
Obstacles everywhere.
The likes of Sage Kincaide and her cronies got in the way. They didn’t think someone as dirty or lowly as Travis Hallman should run a business. Who did he think he was?
But Travis is a tenacious bastard. He didn’t give up, and eventually, his dreams were close to coming true. He finally found someone who would sell to him. It was the perfect spot on the corner of Main Street.
Mr. Mueller, in his eighties with stage four pancreatic cancer, had first refused to sell his garage to my brother. And then, perhaps because he was dying or he was fed up with kowtowing to the powers that be in Prospect, old man Mueller changed his mind and agreed to Travis’s terms.
He had nothing to lose, or so he thought, as he said to my brother. Until one night, before the paperwork was signed, his garage went up in flames and along with it went Travis’s dream.
Now my brother works in the rebuilt garage, only it’s owned by someone of Sage Kincaide’s choosing. He’s the head mechanic and the best in a fifty-mile radius. Folks from Helena will make the drive to Prospect if the job’s a tricky one, knowing Travis is their man. He’s thought about leaving. He could, but he won’t. He refuses to be run out of town.
Me? All I think about is leaving, but who knows now.
Shoot.What have I done?
I can only imagine how Sage Kincaide will react when she hears she’s going to be a grandmother.
3
RIDGE
Mack parks his new truck alongside mine, the chrome detail reflecting like a disco ball in the afternoon sun. It’s an impressive and wildly expensive vehicle, and other than its size, doesn’t suit him one bit.
I watch from my spot in the dugout as my best friend since childhood slides from behind the wheel with ease, then strides purposefully across the field toward me.
Mackenzie Mitchell is built more like a linebacker than a cowboy, although, you’d never know it from the almost graceful way he moves. The man can rope a calf faster than anyone I know, and makes it look like he’s performing a damn ballet.
Still, from this angle, he looks like a giant. Or a redheaded grizzly bear.
How in the hell does he tolerate a full beard in this heat?
“Did you call me here to revisit the dreams of our wasted youth?” The bench groans under our combined weight as he takes a seat beside me.
Together, we look out at the chalk-lined dirt of the Prospect High baseball diamond, the manicured lawn of the outfield, and the weathered bleachers that stretch to meet the bright blue sky. This is the place where, when we weren’t busy working on a ranch, we spent all our spare time as kids.
He’s not far off when he calls it a dream. I was the star player of our high school baseball team, the Miners. I wasn’t always the fastest on the field, but as starting pitcher in our senior year, I led us to an undefeated state championship and was named MVP.
When I left this town on a baseball scholarship with UT Austin, I thought I’d make it big. Fuck, I almost did.
A career in the majors was just a signature away.
