Years of military food had suppressed Brendan’s gag reflex to a certain point, but apparently it hadn’t quite killed the natural response to inedible objects. As he chewed the pie and its sugary filling, he resisted the urge to spit it all right back onto the plate.
“Good, right?” his mother asked, grinning like a fox in a hen house.
Mouth still struggling to purge the cherries, Brendan smiled big and swallowed the lot of it whole. As bad as that was, he realized he had about twelve more shovels worth of the stuff to force down before he could escape this hellish dinner. His mother’s demeanor took on a whole new look with this validation from her son. She smiled a lot and caught him up on years’ worth of gossip he couldn’t have cared less about, but he played the role of the good son. Slowly, but surely, he worked his way through the enormous piece of pie, and then chugged a glass of water upon completion.
Instinctively, his mom started cutting another piece.
“No, Mom,” he blurted out. When she turned to him with a mixture of surprise and disappointment, he added, “I’d hate to eat it all now when we can save some for later.”
His dad smiled, but not kindly. His mother insisted she could make more, but Brendan refused politely on the grounds that he would burst open if he consumed another bite. She nodded reluctantly and started cleaning up. Brendan’s dad stood and sauntered back towards the general direction of the television, so Brendan went to help his mom.
“Hun, get out of my kitchen,” she said when he tried to assist her.
“Just trying to help.”
“Well, I’ve done this long enough that I don’t need any help.” She swatted him on the backside with a small towel. “Now, get!”
Chapter 4
The ceiling fan whipped around in a blur, creating an ethereal whirlwind in the little illumination granted by starlight coming through the blinds. As a kid, the fans provided the only relief from the Texas heat. In his absence, Brendan’s parents had finally upgraded to central air conditioning, a luxury never considered within the realm of possibility ten years ago. The A/C wouldn’t run hard in late October, but in this part of the country the temperatures could stay uncomfortable all the way through Thanksgiving.
And uncomfortable accurately described the surprise reunion with his parents.
Now Brendan lay in his brother’s old room, staring at a ceiling fan, still seething towards his dad’s taciturn reaction to seeing his youngest son for the first time in nine years. Shit, he’d forgotten how much civilian life could piss him off so quickly. At every turn there was some stupid little thing ready to pounce and send his blood pressure through the damn roof. If his dad’s pissy behavior wasn’t enough, when Brendan had suggested taking his stuff to his old room, his mother had hesitated before revealing she’d cleared it out for her antiques.
What the hell? It’s not like he’d died. They probably emptied his room before the stink of his old gym clothes had even dissipated. To make matters worse, the only other free bed in the house was Grant’s old one.
Brendan shot up and sat on the edge of the bed, staring back at the sheets on the mattress. Grant had probably screwed Michelle on this bed more than once.
Great.
Brendan ripped the top sheet off the bed and padded down the stairs and through the living room to the old couch he’d crashed out on many times in high school after watching TV into the wee hours of the morning. As his eyelids drooped, threatening sleep, a final thought tried to needle him: Grant probably banged Michelle on the couch, too.
Whatever. This was his couch.
But try as he might, he couldn’t drift off peacefully. After rolling around unsuccessfully to find a comfortable position on the lumpy sofa, he sat up and rested his chin on his hands. There wasn’t really much to see in the light of day, so in the dark of night the living room looked stark. A couch, a recliner, an extra chair, a TV, and a couple of small tables. Not much, but he supposed there didn’t need to be anything else. He’d always liked his parents’ house, and other people’s homes looked cluttered with shit by comparison. His dad’s stubborn interior design preferences probably kept the decorating minimal, and despite all the problems he had with his father, Brendan could definitely agree on that point. Walls didn’t need to be covered in pictures and paintings; they just had to hold the roof up.
Since sleep wasn’t on the immediate horizon, Brendan reached over and clicked on the lamp sitting on the end table. As he drew his hand back, his eyes caught sight of a framed picture he hadn’t seen in years. He picked it up and tried to remember ever seeing this one framed. Maybe after all that happened in high school, his parents didn’t really have many pictures of their two sons together.
This one featured a third youth with him and Grant: Marcus Armstead. Six months older than Brendan and two years younger than Grant, the likeable kid had befriended both of the Rhodes brothers. In this picture, they each wore Coyote football uniforms and held their helmets at their sides. Brendan smiled. Man, had they really been that scrawny?
But then the smile faded. This picture must’ve been taken at the start of his freshman year, when his brother was going into his senior season. He carefully put the picture back on the table, facedown.
Despite the futility in searching for sleep, Brendan reached over and turned off the light before lying back down on the couch. His breathing slowed down as he forced himself to relax. He’d slept in harsher conditions before, but all this family stuff really messed with his head. Instead of getting more pissed off, he tried to focus on something else.
Marcus probably still lived in town. Brendan hadn’t really tried to keep in contact with the guy, which was kind of chicken-shit after all Marcus had done while they went to school together. Hell, Marcus had been more of a brother to him than Grant ever was.
He’d call Marcus in the morning. Tomorrow was Monday and the guy would probably be at work, doing whatever he did for work, but Brendan would figure out how to find him. Shallow Creek wasn’t a big place, so it shouldn’t prove too tough. Plus, it would give him a reason to get out of the house.
Hell, he’d sign up to clean those famously nasty toilets at the high school gym if it meant he could get out and avoid another piece of that cherry pie. His stomach growled at the thought as he finally faded to sleep.
Chapter 5
Rudy Johnstone Park. The local hero had lived philanthropically enough to get a park named after him, but that was about it. Few people in Shallow Creek could probably tell why the guy was important, despite the small bronze placards all over the park explaining just that.
The place looking pretty much as Brendan remembered it: a few baseball fields, a couple of play-areas, and a four-hundred-meter running track. Nothing to write home about, but functional enough. From Brendan’s perch on a metal bench next to the track, he could see someone had redone its surface fairly recently. It would be nice to train on a relatively spongy surface, as opposed to the concrete his knees typically protested against.
By this time in the morning, the sun had started to creep slowly across a cloudless sky, keeping the temperature perfect for a run. Brendan had risen an hour before the sun, though. His mom had almost screamed in surprise to find him in kitchen at six in the morning, cooking up some eggs and bacon in her favorite skillet. She’d bustled him out of the way, gently telling him he was doing it wrong, but she’d seemed happy enough. His dad had appeared shortly thereafter, passing comment on how Brendan used to never get up before noon as a kid.