He looked toward the small stage, saw Tad Pearson, a local would-be folksinger, pulling the cover off one of the microphones and starting to set up for tonight’s performance.
Was he glad they’d moved? Was he happy here? Gregory was not sure. He was glad he’d quit his old job, and he certainly had plenty of things to keep him busy, plenty with which to occupy his time, but if he were to be totally honest with himself, the life of unending joy that he’d always thought would be his if he ever came into a large amount of money had not really materialized.
The shine on his Bill Graham Jr. dream had also faded. He had indeed contacted some nationally known touring acts, but McGuane was so far away from any major center of population, that unless Mocha Joe’s was willing to fork over big bucks, it would be too cost-prohibitive for any of the acts to play here.
So he was stuck with local bands and local musicians, and since he’d seen just about all of them now, even a few from as far away as Wilcox and Safford, he thought he could safely say that he wasn’t going to be discovering the next Beatles or even the next Hootie and the Blow-fish. There was still his plan to feature poetry, to try and find some legitimate cowboy poets to read their work, but even his hopes for success there had been considerably muted.
Odd emerged from Paul’s office, carrying a section of sawed-off board and a toolbox so heavy it weighted him to the right. Odd always cheered him up, and he smiled as the old man twisted his body and walked sideways, grunting his complaints, in order to make it past the counter.
“You could’ve just taken it out the back,” Gregory said. “It’d be a lot easier.”
Odd looked up at him. “I’ve had about enough suggestions for one day. My truck’s out front, and that’s where I’m going.”
Gregory met Wynona’s eyes, and she shrugged, moving to the opposite end of the counter.
Gregory laughed. “You’re a bitter old buzzard, aren’t you?”
The old man sighed, put down his toolbox. He put the wood on top of it and wiped the sweat from his face with both hands. “I suppose I am,” he admitted. “But you try working in that unair-conditioned little office for three hours and see if it don’t make you crabby as hell.”
“Where’s Paul?”
“Took off early today. Said he had some personal business to take care of. I think he’s coming back tonight, though. Why?”
“Nothing. I was just wondering.” He walked over, picked up the wood from the top of the toolbox. “What kind of ‘personal business’?”
Odd shrugged. “Not my place to wonder.”
Gregory nodded, and the two of them walked through the café and outside to Odd’s dented old pickup.
“You hangin’ around for the show?” Odd asked.
Gregory shook his head. “I just thought I’d stop by for a second, see what’s happening before heading home.”
The old man looked back toward the open door of the cafe then leaned in closer. “Between you and me, I don’t think that Pearson boy’s got much of a future in show biz.”
“I’d have to go along with you there.”
“What do people like him do it for? Get up there and humiliate themselves like that? You know his buddies at the title company are bound to be talking.”
“Some people just feel the need to express themselves, I guess.”
“Well, I express myself in the shower. And it’s not gonna go any further’n that.”
Gregory laughed.
Odd walked around to the driver’s side of the pickup. “I guess I’m off,” he said.
“I’m heading home, too. Want to give me a lift?”
“Sure. Hop in.”
“Just a sec.” Gregory hurried back into the café, told Wynona he was going home and told her to ask Paul to call him if he came in.
The teenager nodded. “Will do.”
He went back outside, got in the truck, and had barely closed the door before Odd was speeding up the road.
“You’re supposed to take me home,” Gregory pointed out.
The old man grinned. “I know a shortcut.”
Sure enough, it was a shortcut, and not nearly as hair-raising a route as Gregory had feared. Odd drove down the drive, swung the pickup around, and left him off right in front of his door.
“You want to come in?” Gregory asked.
Odd shook his head. “Lurlene’ll have supper made already. She gets pretty riled if I’m even half a second late. I’ll take a rain check on that.”
“Why don’t you two both come by sometime?”
Odd nodded. “I’d like that. You never did have no housewarming party or nothing. We could get a few people together, see if we can’t get ’em to bring gifts.” He paused. “Only, I doubt they’d be too expensive. You’re the lottery winner after all.”
“Maybe I’ll buy the gifts. Bribe people to come.”
Odd grinned. “There you go. You can count me and Lurlene in.”
Gregory slammed the cab door. “Later.”
He could not tell if Odd bade him any form of good-bye; the pickup took off so fast that he instinctively jumped back so his feet wouldn’t get run over by the right rear tire. He saw a hand poke out of the driver’s window and wave, a silhouette in the dust.
In the kitchen, Julia and his mother were talking about planting flowers. In Russian. They’d all been speaking a lot more Russian since they’d arrived here, and he was not really sure why. Regression on his part, he assumed. A combination of living with his mother again and being back in the town where he’d grown up. But he wasn’t sure about Julia. Was she doing it for his mother’s sake, merely to be polite, or was she trying to keep in practice in order to… what? Maintain her heritage? It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense, and he decided to let it slide and not worry about it.
He gave Julia a quick, perfunctory kiss, got a glass of water, and, ascertaining that the conversation was not yet over and that neither of them wanted him involved in it, retreated into the living room.
He sat down, turned on the television and flipped through channels until he found a tabloid news show. Setting the remote down on the coffee table, he kicked off his shoes and settled in on the couch to watch. The features were ostensibly human interest stories and were delivered in upbeat cheerleader tones by the pert female anchor, but they all involved murder, betrayal, and the worst sorts of human activity. A man tracked his ex-wife across country to a small town, where he attempted to run her down with a car: she leaped out of the way to safety while he crashed into a tree and was killed. A woman went from being a high-priced lawyer to being a high-priced call girl and was killed by a john on the same day she had written to her mother that she was quitting the prostitution business. A ten-year-old girl who had her arms chopped off by the father who’d molested her since she was three had learned to paint pictures with her feet.
Halfway through the show, his mother came into the living room, sat down in her recliner and watched the rest of the program with him. In the kitchen, he heard the rattle of pots and pans as Julia started dinner.
The tabloid show ended, and a promo for the upcoming news came on: a Phoenix youngster was missing and police had found a body buried in the desert that might be his.
Gregory turned toward his mother, speaking in Russian. “Makes you wonder sometimes about the goodness of man, doesn’t it?”
“People,” she reminded him, “are a combination of the dust of the earth and the breath of God. God created man from the dust, but He breathed life into him. That’s why people may be base and animalistic in many ways, but they still desire and keep reaching for the spiritual and godly.” She smiled at him. “I liked the girl painting with her toes.”
Gregory smiled back. Sometimes his mother surprised him.