I got a boarding pass and had some time to kill. A Delta flight had just arrived from Atlanta, and I was watching the people coming off. A good-looking older man with a sun-block shirt and a fly-rod tube came bounding down the gangway. I didn’t have to see his face to recognize that carefree walk.
“Hey, Bradley,” my daddy said in his warm southern drawl. “What in the world are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” I said.
“I’m gonna catch me some bonefish,” he said. “And I gotta get my clubs off the carousel. We’re gonna do a little golfing, too.”
I looked around. “Who came down with you?” I asked. “Jerome? Case?”
“No. No,” he said. “I’m meeting a friend — some friends — down here.” He suddenly sounded like me when I was a teenager, trying to explain where I’d been all night. It was out of character for him not to invite me to go with him, but I suddenly knew all too well why he couldn’t.
“Well, you be careful,” I said. “I’m on a case, so I gotta get on this plane.” I could feel myself blushing.
“Maybe next time you can stay and go fishin’,” he said, looking relieved.
“Yeah, for sure,” I said. “Next time, for sure.”
“I love you, son,” he said, giving me a big bear hug.
“I love you too, Daddy.” I hugged him back.
“Well, I don’t want you to miss your plane,” he said.
“Go on and get your clubs,” I said, “before somebody else does.”
He said goodbye again and headed off down the concourse. I started to get in line, but then I ducked back out. I could see his bright yellow shirt quite a ways down the concourse. “Daddy!” I yelled. Lots of heads turned, but he heard me and turned around. “Tell her I said she only gets one mulligan!” The stunned look on his face was priceless. I waved again and got on my plane.
Copyright © 2010 by Jim Davis
Beer Money
by Shane Nelson
Shane Nelson’s last short story for EQMM, “That One Small Thing” (February 2009) was selected as a Distinguished Story of 2009 by Best American Mystery Stories 2010. Since then, the Canadian author and sometime teacher has had several more stories published, including one given an honorable mention in Best Horror of the Year, Volume 2, edited by Ellen Datlow. He is currently managing to find time to write while also working as a stay-at-home dad of twins, “the hardest job I’ve ever had,” he says!
I was leaning against the counter in Frank Gosselin’s store, talking to Frank about the weather, when Edwin Rhodes came inside. A snowy gust of wind followed him, rustling the papers tacked to the corkboard by the door. He heaved the door closed and the papers on the corkboard fell still again. Edwin began knocking snow off his boots with his cane and pulling snow from the old metal leg braces he wore.
I was new to town and had only met a handful of people, but I’d seen Edwin before. He was at least seventy, as old as Frank, and had a shock of white hair that he kept tucked under a grey toque most of the year. Stoop-shouldered, he wore a seemingly permanent scowl on his craggy face. The most noticeable thing about him, however, was his old-fashioned metal leg braces. I wondered why, in this day and age, he wore braces that looked as if they belonged on the country’s first polio victim.
“Morning, Ed,” Frank said from his perch on a stool behind the counter. “Mighty ugly out there.”
“It’s been nicer,” Edwin agreed.
I felt like I should say something. The best I could come up with was, “Morning.” Edwin glowered and made his way down the first aisle, his oversized peacoat shedding clumps of half-melted snow.
“Don’t mind Ed,” Frank said. “It takes him about twenty years to warm up to folks.”
I smiled. “Have you known him that long?”
“My whole life,” Frank said. That surprised me, as Edwin didn’t seem all that fond of Frank.
“Anyhow,” Frank continued, pushing back the sleeves of his cableknit sweater, exposing hairy forearms. “You think your Internet weather forecast is more accurate than my almanac?”
Frank had a copy of the Old Farmer’s Almanac hanging behind his desk. It was dog-eared, stained, and worn. For Frank, it was a weather bible.
“I put more faith in technology than I do a book.”
“In my day,” Frank said, “we got smarter as we got older.”
I was about to say something in response to Frank’s barb when the telephone in the back room started to jangle. Like the almanac, Frank’s telephone was also a relic. I wondered if the phone company knew that he had a rotary-dial wall phone hanging back there.
“Back in a sec,” Frank said. He clumped into the back room and grabbed the phone mid ring. I heard him say, “H’lo?” and then I tuned him out, putting my back to the counter and playing my eyes around the store.
While most businesses boasted electronic cash registers and plastic shelves, Frank’s store was a throwback to simpler times. His shelves were handmade, his floor hardwood. There was a working woodstove in the back corner — simmering orange today. The only things that looked out of place were the shelves of liquor at the back of the store and the beer cooler.
Edwin was near the cooler. He moved with slow, heavy steps, burdened by the cane and the braces. As I watched, he opened the beer cooler and removed a six-pack of Newcastle Brown Ale. Then, without so much as a backward glance, he tucked it under his peacoat.
Edwin thumped his way back up the aisle between the shelves. He looked ridiculous with the six-pack under his jacket, but he didn’t seem to give a damn. He went straight past me, one hand on his cane and the other holding the six-pack in place. His eyes caught mine and he hooked his lip into a smile. He was daring me to say something. I didn’t.
He opened the door and the wind rushed inside, bringing swirling ghosts of snow. The papers on the corkboard did their noisy dance. Edwin looked at me. The sky behind him was grey and muted, stormy light the consistency of old milk. Still, I could see the red veins in his eyes and the grey stubble on his cheeks. In the back, Frank was still yammering on the telephone.
Edwin grinned. It seemed to say: Now we’re in this together. Then he stepped outside, head bent against the howling wind. The door banged closed, and he was gone.
I listened to the hiss of the woodstove in the corner and watched the second hand on the old John Deere clock on the wall. Was it my place to tell Frank about Ed’s theft? I was trying to decide when Frank hung up the phone and returned to his stool.
“Edwin gone?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
Frank removed a half-smoked cigar from behind the counter and tucked it into the corner of his mouth. Hooking an eyebrow, he asked, “Your lungs give a damn?”
Personally, I thought smoking in public was a nuisance, but this was Frank’s place and if he wanted to break the law I’d look the other way. Frank lit his cigar and puffed at it contentedly. Outside, the wind whooped. After a few moments he said, “You seem glum all of a sudden.”
“Not glum,” I said. “Just thinking.”
“ ’Bout?”
“Edwin,” I said. “You two are good friends?”
Frank chewed on the cigar and it bobbed in the corner of his mouth. “I think so,” he told me. “Least we used to be. Edwin’s a tough one to figure.”
“But you like him? You get along?”
“Sure,” Frank said. “He’s a great guy.”
That settled it. I couldn’t tell Frank on the off chance that it would put paid to whatever friendship these two old men shared.