Hank had burst out laughing when he finally figured out what Juan was talking about. He had always been tight lipped about his past and this was the result, his friends and neighbors thought he was gay! Nanci and Juan were devout Catholics and Hank had attended church with them a few times, even though he was more of a non-denominational kind of man. Nanci had come up with a theory, Juan explained, that Hank was religious and gay. So religious that he would not think of blasphemy by actually practicing his homosexuality, which is why no one ever saw Hank with another man.
Hank told Juan he just didn't want to date anyone, he explained that he had been married before, a long time ago. The experience he had as a very young married man had left him sour on the whole thought of ever having a relationship again. Hank and his wife had two kids too, which was news to Juan. No one had ever seen any pictures of children in Hank's house or at his work space in the garage.
Hank wen on to explain that the two kids he had conceived while married turned out to be those of two different men, if the dna testing were to be believed, but that was getting ahead of the story a little. By the time Hank had found out about his kids he been ready to believe anything. By then all his savings were cleaned out, payments were coming due for loans he had never signed on and his own mother had to tell him she came over to talk to his wife and found her in bed with another man. Hank's parents were not rich, but they had fronted him money for the divorce and the subsequent paternity tests.
Soon after the paternity tests came back Hank had hard decisions to make. His wife sued him for alimony and told him privately if he paid it he could still see 'his' children every two weeks. Hank had declined to pay alimony, his ex filed suit to keep him from seeing the kids he thought were his, a two year old and a four year old. Life had gone on. Only not quite. His ex was fucked up, no one doubted that by then and Hank had been given a choice of pressing charges against her for wrongfully signing on over seventy thousand dollars of loans with his name or of putting her away for forgery and a host of other charges. Still thinking of 'his' kids, he declined to press charges and was subsequently hit up for full payment of the loans. Hank hired yet another lawyer, this one an ace at resolving credit disputes, the lawyer explained the situation to the creditors and while they commiserated with him about the mess he was in, they said he had not pressed charges and they were still owed the money and needed payment. Eventually Hank declared bankruptcy, he had tried for months to keep up with the payment schedule demanded by the creditors, but his salary was just not enough and then, suddenly, he had no salary coming in anymore.
His ex would not leave him alone, she had kept coming by where he worked and demandimg money, if he did not pay she caused a scene in front of the customers. Hank thought his boss was pretty good for putting up with it as long as he did. Even after Hank had a restraining order his wife still showed up. Even after she was arrested and spent three days cooling her heels in jail, she continued to come back. Then cars started being vandalized at night, then a rock was thrown through the front window. Finally his boss called him in and they had 'the talk'. Hank couldn't be fired for what was going on, but South Carolina was a 'no cause' employment state and his boss explained that he had to let him go due to all the problems caused by his ex wife. The man was decent enough though; he paid Hank three months' salary and gave him a great letter of recommendation.
Apparently the news was out; there was no work in the area. In two weeks of applying for jobs he should have landed, no one even so much as called him back. That was when he stopped paying the loans and instead paid a bankruptcy attorney. The process took a surprisingly long time, during which Hank moved back in with his parents. He stretched the money he had and looked into attending college. Four days after his bankruptcy was finalized his parents were driving home on a rainy night and never made it. A state patrol officer explained that they had been in an accident, slid off the road and rolled, they had died quickly. The weeks that followed were a blur, funerals to arrange, the estate to settle, bills to pay off. They were some of the worst of Hank's relatively short life. At the funeral his wife had shown up. She caught his attention and beckoned him over. She told him that if he did not give her the money 'she knew' his parents had left him she was going to start in on him again, he had two choices, pay her or live in hell.
Hank knew then. He knew she had done it, killed his parents, the fucking bitch. Hank's first instinct, which in retrospect was probably exactly what his ex wanted, was to pound her into the ground for murdering his parents. He somehow thought past that and merely nodded and said he would have a check for her when the estate was settled, but that he had nothing now, as his parents bank accounts had been depleted by his divorce and paying for their funerals. Hank told her it would take a few months to settle everything. She told him he had a week to make the first of many payments. He asked how much she wanted. She said he could keep anything over seventy thousand dollars. He merely nodded to her.
If he had beat up his wife at his parent's funeral for what he knew she had done, she probably would have sued him for every penny he owned. Instead he buried his parents, and spoke to several guests who recognized his ex-wife. He told them that she had told him she had killed his parents and if he didn't pay her seventy thousand dollars she was going to kill him too. A little white lie. He cried too. The rest was as easy as it was painful. First his ex had violated the restraining order, a fact seen by any number of attendees at the funeral, second the district attorney already had a history of his ex harassing him and knew the story of what she had put him through. The district attorney's investigation into the possible murder of Hank's parents was far more thorough than it might normally have been. Witnesses were found, alibis turned up to be false, his wife was in a lot of trouble.
The day his ex wife was charged with the homicide of his parents and the police went to her home to arrest her they found her incapacitated in her apartment. She had slit her wrists, after drowning her two children. She had also left a long, rambling note accusing Hank of abuse, and made up stories of harassment. Worse yet the bitch did not have the courtesy to die. They rushed her, barely alive, to the hospital and she recovered. The kids did not recover. His ex-wife was remanded to custody for her trial and had the great big, brass balls to send Hank a letter saying she still loved him and asking him to hire her an attorney to defend her. Hank had never answered her and her subsequent letters were less kind, in fact they were used by the district attorney at her sentencing hearing, the last Hank had heard anyway. By then he had left South Carolina to start a new life.
By this time Hank and Juan had given up all pretense at working on the Camaro and Nanci had started bring them beers, beer after beer after beer. Hank had ended his story well and truly drunk, he recalled. Coming back to the here and now, he looked out over the mostly deserted and still eerily light streets and says, "Ain't that about right Juan?"
"Sì. Yeah Hank."
"Of course after that, everyone knew about it. It was great that not everyone was talking about my sexual orientation anymore, but it took a few months before the pity came out of their eyes and that was pretty hard to take. Juan though, he was always there for me, so was Nanci. Nanci….", Hank stared off into the night some more.
Kevin heard the story and knew there was more to come, he doubted Hank or Juan would be up here on this roof, leaving Juan's wife behind.