“Oh yeah?” It sounded like news to him that I wanted intel on Blount. “I’ll do that,” he said. “I’ll think real hard.”
Our father-son moment ended when he saw a gang of teenage boys standing around like they were too cool to actually enjoy the funnel cakes and fried ice cream that they were eating. He started talking with them, and I got the sense my continued presence would be embarrassing. I vaguely recognized one of the boys, though it took me a minute to realize from where: he was Jackson’s friend who ran the idiotic podcast about the wonders of marijuana.
Not who I wanted hanging around with my son, but I knew saying so would put an end to any chance of a pleasant evening with Noah. And if I insisted on a house rule that he couldn’t have any pot-smoking friends, that would eliminate most of the boys his age in town.
Noah asked for money—I slipped him my last twenty—and promised to keep an eye on his texts so if Roy came through on his suggestion of a yacht ride tonight, he could come with us. Yachts were apparently cooler than other teenagers, and he was looking forward to it.
I texted Roy, hoping to get that part of the evening to kick off ASAP. Then I pocketed my phone and strolled on down the beach. It seemed like half the town was there. It looked exactly like it had every other time I’d been to the shrimp fest, and the whole last decade and a half blurred together in my mind. I could hardly believe that Noah no longer only came up to my waist, or that Elise was gone.
A woman’s voice called out, “Hey, doll!” It took her a couple tries before I saw her in the crowd and realized she was talking to me. Cheryl, my extremely friendly Broke Spoke waitress. She wasn’t alone; apparently Dunk had an entourage, and she was part of it.
I said, “Oh, hey, Cheryl! And Dunk, and all y’all!”
Dunk grunted a grudging hello and said to one of his compadres, “Give him a shirt.” The whole crew, all six or eight of them, were wearing Broke Spoke T-shirts. The compadre balled up a black one and tossed it to me. I opened it up and saw, under the club’s name, a nude female silhouette bending over a motorcycle wheel. My life as I knew it did not contain any type of event at which I would wear such a shirt.
I said, “Thanks much!” When I looked up, I noticed the women’s shirts were a little different: same illustration, but the club’s name was written in sequins.
Cheryl said, with a big smile, “I hope you come on back soon, now!”
Before I could answer, Dunk told her, “You know he don’t drink nothing but water. With maraschino cherries sometimes.”
The men he was with guffawed. One of them looked like a younger, less bulky Dunk. I’d heard he had a son.
Dunk told Cheryl, “Unless you’re getting ten-dollar tips on two-cent cherries, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
Her smile faltered. “But it’s a medical condition,” she said, looking to me for confirmation. “Ain’t it? That’s what Pat Warton told me.”
I nodded, wondering how well she and Pat knew each other.
“Medical condition, my ass,” Dunk said. His eyes narrowed.
“It is what it is,” I said, with a shrug.
He looked friendly all of a sudden—not toward me, but toward whoever he’d spotted behind me. I turned and saw Henry Carrell staring clear over my head at him. Henry had a tight smile on his face, the kind of smile I associated with running into someone you owed money to. Or how I’d probably looked, I thought, when I’d run into Tony Rosa and worried he might tell folks I’d left our former workplace under a cloud of disgrace.
“Henry!” Dunk walked past me, holding out his meaty paw, and smacked a handshake on Henry that would’ve knocked some people over.
“Great to see you, Dunk.” Henry’s politician voice had kicked in, and he sounded sincere.
“Henry and I go way the hell back,” Dunk told his entourage. “To when we was this high.” He gestured. “Third grade, wasn’t it?”
“Third grade,” Henry confirmed.
“Nobody thought punk kids like us would be the economic future of this town. Or that you’d get so high and mighty. Look at him, a fisherman’s son, on the beach in a goddamn suit!”
Dunk’s buddies laughed.
Henry tried a little joke: “Well, we only got a week until the election, and I’m fishing for votes.” I gave him a polite chuckle; nobody else did. He added, “Speaking of which, I got to get going—”
I said, “Mind if I come with? You got my vote, and I got no problem telling other folks why.”
“Well, that’s mighty kind of you, Leland.”
Over his shoulder, Dunk said, “Give me extra large. Pink or pastel or some shit.” His compadre tossed him a mint-green shirt, and he put it in Henry’s hands.
Henry unfolded it and looked at the illustration. His eyebrows went up. “Dunk,” he said, trying to hand it back, “you know I support local businesses. But advertising a strip club ain’t going to set right with my wife, or my church.”
Dunk crossed his arms on his chest. “Carrell,” he said, “That is the least of your wife’s worries. And I did not get my ass shot at in Iraq just to come home and get disrespected by some jumped-up fisherman’s kid.”
After a second, Henry said, “Course not.” His arm dropped; he’d given up trying to get rid of the shirt. “And as I’ve said before, thank you for your service.”
As we walked up the beach, Henry glad-handing every third or fourth person while I carried both T-shirts, I wondered but didn’t ask why he’d let Dunk give him such a drubbing. I didn’t remember them being friends, enemies, or anything else in high school. I hadn’t realized
