Post by bretf on Jan 19, 2021 10:51:05 GMT -6
Here’s the start of something that’s been bouncing around in my head for some time, but I haven’t progressed far while writing about the Smoke family. So now that I’m editing Chad’s story, I’ll work on this off and on to get my mind on something else.
A Matter of Convenience
Chapter 1
Kevin Andrews stared unseeingly between his beer and the television mounted behind the bar. Rather than a ball game, which he rarely watched, the TV was on a news program. The talking heads were going over the same stories they’d covered endlessly for days and he was sick of it all; Covid 19, the President-elect and all the changes he planned to make, the outgoing President’s waning popularity and impending impeachment trial. The banner running across the bottom had more of the same. Unrest in many cities; protestors converging on Washington DC, increased solar flare activity, impending fight over the contentious Keystone Pipeline, not enough vaccine to go around, lottery fever.
“Hey Kev, can I get you another?” The waitress asked, even though he'd been holding his half-full glass for the past ten minutes.
Kevin looked up and blinked several times and shook his head. How’d she slip up on me like that? His gaze may have been on his glass but he hadn’t seen it or its contents. His head was numb even though the half-filled glass before him was his first. “Huh, what, I’m sorry did you say something?” he asked.
Tammy shook her head at the forsaken look on his face. He wasn’t like most of the people who came to the bar, never drinking much and not acting like he enjoyed what he did drink. He always sat alone and stared blindly at his beer. It’d been three or four weeks since he’d first stepped foot inside the bar. The first time she saw him reminded her of a kid who’d just turned of age and was nervous about being there. He hadn’t gotten any more comfortable since.
But Kevin wasn’t a kid. He looked to be around forty-five to fifty so he should know his way around instead of looking lost. Rumor had it he was going through a rough patch with his marriage but Tammy didn’t know if the stories were true or not. If the rumors were true, hanging out in a bar wouldn’t help matters. She’d seen the results of that behavior more times than she could count. Alcohol never solved problems; it only made them worse. But at least he didn’t get plowed every night like most of the guys having problems did.
The story on the television changed and Kevin glanced at it absently before looking at the waitress. He took a few moments to study her face. She was always friendly and had asked his name the second time he’d come to the bar. Maybe she was that way with everyone but he didn’t know. In his rattled state, he rarely paid attention to what was happening around him. He’d told her his name, but she didn’t use it, shortening it instead. She always called him Kev; he was Kevin to everyone else.
He’d only been acquainted with her a short time, just since the divorce was final and he no longer wanted to go home. But she talked to him like she’d known him a long time, like they were old friends. She was close to his age, both of them well past their prime. What was the look on her face? Did she want him to stay? Did she just want a good tip? Kevin wasn’t sure; he’d never been good at reading women. His wife Debbie, no, make that ex-wife he amended in his head, could attest. It seemed he’d never done things right by her. Kevin felt a stab of pain thinking about her. It’d been an hour since he’d thought of her. Why did he have to think of her right then? He absently ran his right thumb and index finger across his ring finger, feeling the groove but not the ring that’d worn it.
Kevin looked away from the waitress to his watch, and then to his beer glass. “No, Tammy,” he said, “I better not. I should be getting on home. But thank you.”
Again, he couldn’t read the look on her face. Was it disappointment? Was it relief? It didn’t matter. He shouldn’t be sitting there throwing his money away anyway. It wasn’t like he had enough to waste. Another memory of Debbie flashed through his brain at the thought. Not enough money; never enough money. How many times had she harped on him he could do so much better if he only applied himself?
“Oh, you got a date or something?” Tammy asked.
The comment stung, no it cut deeper than a sting. It hurt, it hurt deep into his soul. “No Tammy, I don’t have a date! But I do have better things to do than sit here,” he snapped and drained the rest of his glass, instantly regretting it. He nearly gagged from the warm beer but he wouldn’t let her see it.
Kevin stood up stiffly, flinching from the knots in his back. He was getting old, he decided. Maybe Debbie was right and he should look for a different job while he still had a chance to get one. But in his heart, he didn’t think so. He didn’t work for the Children’s Home for glory or money. He did it because it was right. It was so he could provide a bit of stability in the kid’s shattered lives.
As soon as he thought it, he felt as if he’d been stabbed, the pain was so real. Debbie never got that either. And it wasn’t just her. His children Hannah and Noah called him old-fashioned and gladly sided with their mom during the divorce. They resented him for his ideals and how he’d tried to raise them.
Kevin was at a loss for how to fight for them. Not that it mattered. Hannah was away at college and Noah would be in the fall. But he’d lost them long ago, back when Debbie had so thoughtfully presented them each with an I-phone. It seemed they forgot their dad after that, except when they needed something done their mom couldn’t do, or money. They’d always come to him if their mom was short on cash. Maybe they were right, he was too old-fashioned. Because caring so much about your kids, trying to raise them to think and be independent was an old-fashioned ideal. WHATEVER! And now his life was as shattered as the kids he worked with.
“Thanks Tammy,” he said and threw a handful of wadded bills on the table. Hopefully it was enough but he wasn’t going to count them to make sure. He was so irritated and lost in his thoughts he didn’t even notice the announcer on the TV going crazy. If he’d looked up, he’d have seen protestors storming the Capitol. Kevin walked out the door oblivious.
Kevin fished into his pocket for his keys and slid the key into the lock of his old truck. It was yet another thing that’d set Debbie off. She didn’t think he should be driving some old clunker. He should get something new, something she wouldn’t be embarrassed to sit in. It didn’t matter to her that he could work on his truck without a computer or a mechanic. It was like him, old-fashioned. Whatever!
He stopped and gripped the door of the truck with one hand and the cab with the other. Old-fashioned indeed, but it was the second time he’d thought that irritating term in a matter of minutes. It ticked him off to no end when some punk shrugged his shoulders and stated, “Whatever,” and there he was thinking it constantly. It’d become the perfect term for his life. His whatever live, so meaningless. Stopping short of saying the word again in his mind, he got in the truck and put the key in the ignition. His hand was poised on the key, but he didn’t turn it. What was the point after all?
There wasn’t anything to go home to. Crap, Debbie even took the dog just to spite him and foxes had got all his chickens. There was nothing at home but memories. He stared blankly past the steering wheel and considered going back into the bar. No, that wouldn’t do. Never much of a drinker, he felt the buzz from the little he’d had. He started the truck and headed for home.
Kevin slowed to a crawl to make the turn from the county road onto the dirt lane leading to his house. After a few yards, it was liked he’d been transported somewhere else. Trees and underbrush were thick on both sides of the lane, muffling most of the noise from the road, offering solitude he’d always appreciated. Had appreciated anyway, back when his family lived with him. Now, the quiet and solitude added to his intense loneliness.
The old truck creaked and popped as he bounced down the lane. A rabbit scurried across the lane, narrowly avoiding being crushed by one of the truck tires, and four quail ran ahead of him. The brush and small trees growing along the road scraped the sides of the truck as he progressed. He really should do something about all of it, but he’d never considered it as big a priority as Debbie had.
A half mile from the county road, the trees pulled back from the lane and a cleared area opened up. Two houses stood there, about the width of a football field apart. Kevin glanced at the second house out of habit. It was dark and vacant, even more than his own. Harvey, the old farmer who’d lived there, had been unable to live alone and had been put into assisted living the previous fall. Kevin missed the old man. He’d been the only person who could relate to him. But the last time Kevin visited him had depressed him so much, he didn’t know if he’d go back again. Harvey’s Parkinson’s Disease had progressed rapidly after he’d left his home. He needed help to eat and dementia had robbed him of his memory. Kevin hated to see the old man in such a sad state.
Harvey had tried to get Kevin to buy the home and he wanted to, but couldn’t afford it even with the good-neighbor discount Harvey offered him. Nor would Debbie agree to it. He certainly couldn’t afford it after Debbie dropped the bombshell that she was leaving and his pay check would have to cover the full mortgage payment from then on.
Kevin pulled into his carport and sat for several minutes before getting out of the truck. It was so depressing, coming home to an empty house. The house was small and cozy, nothing like the extravagant homes popping up in the surrounding countryside. At least it used to be cozy, before Debbie was overwhelmed with envy of those other homes.
He looked at the house and hitched his pants up. Debbie should see him now. She’d complained often enough he was getting fat and soft and should take better care of himself. Not any longer. The extra weight was gone and his clothes hung on him. If he kept losing weight, which seemed likely since food tasted like sawdust, he’d have to get some new clothes. If nothing else, he needed to find one of the belts he hadn’t worn in years.
The house was so bleak, he stood and stared at it for several minutes. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t force himself to go inside. Not yet anyway. Tammy the waitress’s face flashed in his mind and he considered if he should’ve stayed at the bar longer. No, drowning himself in beer or crying on Tammy’s shoulder wasn’t the answer. Getting out of the bar had been the right decision, he just didn’t know what the next right decision was.
Turning away from the house, he noticed his neglected garden patch. It was yet another bone of contention between him and Debbie. She couldn’t understand why he wanted to grow food when it could all be purchased at the store. She tuned him out when he talked about preservatives and chemicals on the store bought food. He might as well of been talking Chinese for all the good it did. But he’d grown up gardening, it was a necessity in his youth if the family was to eat. So he’d kept it up since, even when he could afford not to.
The garden needed worked up and planted, he saw. The past few months had him in such a fog, he hadn’t noticed it was time he should be out there working. After a glance at the empty house, he went to the tool shed and found his leather gloves and spading fork. It was a lot of work, tilling the dirt by hand, but his tiller had thrown a rod the previous year and he couldn’t afford to repair or replace it. Before he left the shed, he found a string and tied two belt loops together. It wouldn’t do to keep pulling his pants up when he was spading.
Kevin stopped at the corner of the garden plot and turned a spade-full of dirt and then another. He dug with a passion, as if with each spade-full of dirt he turned over he was burying his pain and all the feelings Debbie and the kids had left him with. He tried to bury his grief and all of Debbie’s condescending comments; to bury the past. Instead, the effort gave him new pains and aches in muscles no longer accustomed to the activity. But he ignored them and pushed on.
The sun set while Kevin worked and he kept at it until he couldn’t see well enough to continue. The physical activity had been good for him. At some point, his shoulders and back were aching so much they distracted him from the ache in his heart. He straightened with a groan and wiped the sweat from his forehead. After putting the spade and gloves away, he went to the house and collapsed onto the couch. He should shower after working but he’d do it in the morning. For the moment, he wanted sleep. Hopefully, the fatigue would keep his mind from intruding on his rest like it had every night for the past three months.
Copyright 2021 Bret W. Friend
A Matter of Convenience
Chapter 1
Kevin Andrews stared unseeingly between his beer and the television mounted behind the bar. Rather than a ball game, which he rarely watched, the TV was on a news program. The talking heads were going over the same stories they’d covered endlessly for days and he was sick of it all; Covid 19, the President-elect and all the changes he planned to make, the outgoing President’s waning popularity and impending impeachment trial. The banner running across the bottom had more of the same. Unrest in many cities; protestors converging on Washington DC, increased solar flare activity, impending fight over the contentious Keystone Pipeline, not enough vaccine to go around, lottery fever.
“Hey Kev, can I get you another?” The waitress asked, even though he'd been holding his half-full glass for the past ten minutes.
Kevin looked up and blinked several times and shook his head. How’d she slip up on me like that? His gaze may have been on his glass but he hadn’t seen it or its contents. His head was numb even though the half-filled glass before him was his first. “Huh, what, I’m sorry did you say something?” he asked.
Tammy shook her head at the forsaken look on his face. He wasn’t like most of the people who came to the bar, never drinking much and not acting like he enjoyed what he did drink. He always sat alone and stared blindly at his beer. It’d been three or four weeks since he’d first stepped foot inside the bar. The first time she saw him reminded her of a kid who’d just turned of age and was nervous about being there. He hadn’t gotten any more comfortable since.
But Kevin wasn’t a kid. He looked to be around forty-five to fifty so he should know his way around instead of looking lost. Rumor had it he was going through a rough patch with his marriage but Tammy didn’t know if the stories were true or not. If the rumors were true, hanging out in a bar wouldn’t help matters. She’d seen the results of that behavior more times than she could count. Alcohol never solved problems; it only made them worse. But at least he didn’t get plowed every night like most of the guys having problems did.
The story on the television changed and Kevin glanced at it absently before looking at the waitress. He took a few moments to study her face. She was always friendly and had asked his name the second time he’d come to the bar. Maybe she was that way with everyone but he didn’t know. In his rattled state, he rarely paid attention to what was happening around him. He’d told her his name, but she didn’t use it, shortening it instead. She always called him Kev; he was Kevin to everyone else.
He’d only been acquainted with her a short time, just since the divorce was final and he no longer wanted to go home. But she talked to him like she’d known him a long time, like they were old friends. She was close to his age, both of them well past their prime. What was the look on her face? Did she want him to stay? Did she just want a good tip? Kevin wasn’t sure; he’d never been good at reading women. His wife Debbie, no, make that ex-wife he amended in his head, could attest. It seemed he’d never done things right by her. Kevin felt a stab of pain thinking about her. It’d been an hour since he’d thought of her. Why did he have to think of her right then? He absently ran his right thumb and index finger across his ring finger, feeling the groove but not the ring that’d worn it.
Kevin looked away from the waitress to his watch, and then to his beer glass. “No, Tammy,” he said, “I better not. I should be getting on home. But thank you.”
Again, he couldn’t read the look on her face. Was it disappointment? Was it relief? It didn’t matter. He shouldn’t be sitting there throwing his money away anyway. It wasn’t like he had enough to waste. Another memory of Debbie flashed through his brain at the thought. Not enough money; never enough money. How many times had she harped on him he could do so much better if he only applied himself?
“Oh, you got a date or something?” Tammy asked.
The comment stung, no it cut deeper than a sting. It hurt, it hurt deep into his soul. “No Tammy, I don’t have a date! But I do have better things to do than sit here,” he snapped and drained the rest of his glass, instantly regretting it. He nearly gagged from the warm beer but he wouldn’t let her see it.
Kevin stood up stiffly, flinching from the knots in his back. He was getting old, he decided. Maybe Debbie was right and he should look for a different job while he still had a chance to get one. But in his heart, he didn’t think so. He didn’t work for the Children’s Home for glory or money. He did it because it was right. It was so he could provide a bit of stability in the kid’s shattered lives.
As soon as he thought it, he felt as if he’d been stabbed, the pain was so real. Debbie never got that either. And it wasn’t just her. His children Hannah and Noah called him old-fashioned and gladly sided with their mom during the divorce. They resented him for his ideals and how he’d tried to raise them.
Kevin was at a loss for how to fight for them. Not that it mattered. Hannah was away at college and Noah would be in the fall. But he’d lost them long ago, back when Debbie had so thoughtfully presented them each with an I-phone. It seemed they forgot their dad after that, except when they needed something done their mom couldn’t do, or money. They’d always come to him if their mom was short on cash. Maybe they were right, he was too old-fashioned. Because caring so much about your kids, trying to raise them to think and be independent was an old-fashioned ideal. WHATEVER! And now his life was as shattered as the kids he worked with.
“Thanks Tammy,” he said and threw a handful of wadded bills on the table. Hopefully it was enough but he wasn’t going to count them to make sure. He was so irritated and lost in his thoughts he didn’t even notice the announcer on the TV going crazy. If he’d looked up, he’d have seen protestors storming the Capitol. Kevin walked out the door oblivious.
Kevin fished into his pocket for his keys and slid the key into the lock of his old truck. It was yet another thing that’d set Debbie off. She didn’t think he should be driving some old clunker. He should get something new, something she wouldn’t be embarrassed to sit in. It didn’t matter to her that he could work on his truck without a computer or a mechanic. It was like him, old-fashioned. Whatever!
He stopped and gripped the door of the truck with one hand and the cab with the other. Old-fashioned indeed, but it was the second time he’d thought that irritating term in a matter of minutes. It ticked him off to no end when some punk shrugged his shoulders and stated, “Whatever,” and there he was thinking it constantly. It’d become the perfect term for his life. His whatever live, so meaningless. Stopping short of saying the word again in his mind, he got in the truck and put the key in the ignition. His hand was poised on the key, but he didn’t turn it. What was the point after all?
There wasn’t anything to go home to. Crap, Debbie even took the dog just to spite him and foxes had got all his chickens. There was nothing at home but memories. He stared blankly past the steering wheel and considered going back into the bar. No, that wouldn’t do. Never much of a drinker, he felt the buzz from the little he’d had. He started the truck and headed for home.
Kevin slowed to a crawl to make the turn from the county road onto the dirt lane leading to his house. After a few yards, it was liked he’d been transported somewhere else. Trees and underbrush were thick on both sides of the lane, muffling most of the noise from the road, offering solitude he’d always appreciated. Had appreciated anyway, back when his family lived with him. Now, the quiet and solitude added to his intense loneliness.
The old truck creaked and popped as he bounced down the lane. A rabbit scurried across the lane, narrowly avoiding being crushed by one of the truck tires, and four quail ran ahead of him. The brush and small trees growing along the road scraped the sides of the truck as he progressed. He really should do something about all of it, but he’d never considered it as big a priority as Debbie had.
A half mile from the county road, the trees pulled back from the lane and a cleared area opened up. Two houses stood there, about the width of a football field apart. Kevin glanced at the second house out of habit. It was dark and vacant, even more than his own. Harvey, the old farmer who’d lived there, had been unable to live alone and had been put into assisted living the previous fall. Kevin missed the old man. He’d been the only person who could relate to him. But the last time Kevin visited him had depressed him so much, he didn’t know if he’d go back again. Harvey’s Parkinson’s Disease had progressed rapidly after he’d left his home. He needed help to eat and dementia had robbed him of his memory. Kevin hated to see the old man in such a sad state.
Harvey had tried to get Kevin to buy the home and he wanted to, but couldn’t afford it even with the good-neighbor discount Harvey offered him. Nor would Debbie agree to it. He certainly couldn’t afford it after Debbie dropped the bombshell that she was leaving and his pay check would have to cover the full mortgage payment from then on.
Kevin pulled into his carport and sat for several minutes before getting out of the truck. It was so depressing, coming home to an empty house. The house was small and cozy, nothing like the extravagant homes popping up in the surrounding countryside. At least it used to be cozy, before Debbie was overwhelmed with envy of those other homes.
He looked at the house and hitched his pants up. Debbie should see him now. She’d complained often enough he was getting fat and soft and should take better care of himself. Not any longer. The extra weight was gone and his clothes hung on him. If he kept losing weight, which seemed likely since food tasted like sawdust, he’d have to get some new clothes. If nothing else, he needed to find one of the belts he hadn’t worn in years.
The house was so bleak, he stood and stared at it for several minutes. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t force himself to go inside. Not yet anyway. Tammy the waitress’s face flashed in his mind and he considered if he should’ve stayed at the bar longer. No, drowning himself in beer or crying on Tammy’s shoulder wasn’t the answer. Getting out of the bar had been the right decision, he just didn’t know what the next right decision was.
Turning away from the house, he noticed his neglected garden patch. It was yet another bone of contention between him and Debbie. She couldn’t understand why he wanted to grow food when it could all be purchased at the store. She tuned him out when he talked about preservatives and chemicals on the store bought food. He might as well of been talking Chinese for all the good it did. But he’d grown up gardening, it was a necessity in his youth if the family was to eat. So he’d kept it up since, even when he could afford not to.
The garden needed worked up and planted, he saw. The past few months had him in such a fog, he hadn’t noticed it was time he should be out there working. After a glance at the empty house, he went to the tool shed and found his leather gloves and spading fork. It was a lot of work, tilling the dirt by hand, but his tiller had thrown a rod the previous year and he couldn’t afford to repair or replace it. Before he left the shed, he found a string and tied two belt loops together. It wouldn’t do to keep pulling his pants up when he was spading.
Kevin stopped at the corner of the garden plot and turned a spade-full of dirt and then another. He dug with a passion, as if with each spade-full of dirt he turned over he was burying his pain and all the feelings Debbie and the kids had left him with. He tried to bury his grief and all of Debbie’s condescending comments; to bury the past. Instead, the effort gave him new pains and aches in muscles no longer accustomed to the activity. But he ignored them and pushed on.
The sun set while Kevin worked and he kept at it until he couldn’t see well enough to continue. The physical activity had been good for him. At some point, his shoulders and back were aching so much they distracted him from the ache in his heart. He straightened with a groan and wiped the sweat from his forehead. After putting the spade and gloves away, he went to the house and collapsed onto the couch. He should shower after working but he’d do it in the morning. For the moment, he wanted sleep. Hopefully, the fatigue would keep his mind from intruding on his rest like it had every night for the past three months.
Copyright 2021 Bret W. Friend