Chapter Text
And I also have the impression--a bit hazy,
Like the dream one tries to remember on waking up to the dim
light of dawn--
That there’s something better in me than myself.
-fernando pessoa, “oxfordshire”
lost country
After the dust settled and life slowly resumed its normal sleepy pace, John took to telling folk that he was the reason Arthur met the love of his life. John said it grandly, like he arranged some great meeting, like everything that happened after Arthur met Charles was part of some sweeping romantic plan John had cooked up to finally get Arthur to stop moping around Lost Country Brewing Company, LLC like a lonesome old dog. It was all bullsh*t, and Arthur would tell that to anybody who'd listen. John'd had no hand in it; really all John did was drink too much on a Tuesday night and call off sick Wednesday morning, leaving the opening crew desperately short-handed. Really all John did was act like an ass, again, and expect Arthur to swoop in and clean up his mess, again.
Whether or not cleaning up that mess had led to Arthur meeting the love of his life, well.
That was irrelevant, in Arthur's view of things.
What really happened was this:
Hosea called Arthur in the black of the very early morning not two hours after Arthur’d finally made it home, exhausted and frayed from working the night shift on a Taco Tuesday. Arthur, like an idiot, picked up on the second ring, and Hosea bullied Arthur into hauling his sorry ass back up out of bed and down into Valentine, where Arthur’d stomped around the shop cursing John’s miserable name, turning the ovens on and grinding the morning’s coffee, kicking the last remnants of the night crowd under the tables.
Arthur hated working mornings. He was a night owl by nature which was why, when Dutch’d bought up a shoddy rundown little storefront six years back and told them all that they were turning over a collective new leaf as bartenders and baristas, Arthur had immediately claimed the night shift in perpetuity.
He’d just never been made for mornings, especially not when he’d gone home, stripped his boots off, washed away the grime of the day and collapsed into bed. Getting up and stumbling back to work on less than four hours of sleep just made Arthur flat out mean.
Well, meaner. Arthur generally wasn’t known for his sunny disposition.
Anyway, it was John’s fault that Arthur'd had to go in, because John had known that he’d be working in the morning and had come into Lost Country last night regardless, knocking back glass after glass of sh*tty beer, already half-drunk from earlier misadventures. Arthur’d cut him off well before midnight, able to sense which way the wind was blowing, but locking a greasy near-alcoholic out of the beer fridge didn’t really work well when said greasy near-alcohol had his own set of keys.
John had blacked out some time around one in the morning, and Arthur should've known then that the little bastard would weasel his way out of coming in to open in the morning. John had a gift for collecting suspiciously-convenient hangovers.
“Miserable little sh*thead dumbass,” Arthur growled under his breath, dumping beans into the big industrial grinder Hosea had swindled some moron out of at a flea market years back. He flicked the grinder on. The old machine rattled and groaned, moaning a thin protest, but after a minute it coughed to life and the sharp smell of freshly-ground coffee beans filled the air, banishing the miasma of stale beer and old dust that usually filled the place.
(Taco Tuesday was usually a nightmare, because Pearson, the bar cook, couldn't cook tacos. Whatever he made and passed off as tacos usually ended up regurgitated underneath various tables, toilet seats and other surfaces, relegated to being the opener's problem.)
Arthur got the house blend brewing, filling his own chipped mug first, and once he’d had some coffee in him he felt a little more human, grimly determined to take on his unexpectedly long day.
Next time I see Marston I’m gonna kick his ass, Arthur decided. Beating the sh*t out of John usually made him feel better, especially when there was a good reason to kick him around a little. The horror show that constituted the men's restroom post-Taco Tuesday absolutely counted as a good reason, in Arthur's opinion.
Irritation towards John resolved into a decently-solid plan, Arthur went about the rest of the opening ritual, helping himself to more coffee whenever he drifted past the machine, and by the time it was officially time to open--five-thirty in the goddamn morning, because Valentine was a livestock town and got up before even the sun--Arthur was awake, at least, and moving no slower than he usually did.
At some point Mary-Beth had come in through the back and started the morning’s baking. All the bagels and sh*t they sold in the cases in front of the bar Dutch bought in bulk and shipped into the store frozen, but the pastries and sweets and various tiny breads Lost Country offered alongside its perpetually burnt coffee were the ladies’ particular pride, so they traded off who came in every morning and started the day’s baking.
Arthur liked Mary-Beth. Tilly was his favorite of the women--well, Tilly and Sadie, though Arthur’d never really thought of Sadie as one of the women--mostly because Tilly was too sharp for Arthur to keep up with and always made him laugh running rings around him in conversation, but Tilly’d worked last night with him and had apparently had the good sense to ignore Hosea’s call, if he’d even bothered trying her in the first place.
Hosea probably ain’t even bother tryin’ anybody else, Arthur thought sourly, sweeping up crumbled napkins and skirting what he hoped was only a beer spill and not anything worse. Hosea would’ve known that Arthur was the only one dumb enough to pick up the phone when Hosea called at three in the morning. Why bother letting half a dozen other phones ring to voicemail when he could just call Arthur, who’d picked up with a bleary “Who’s dead?” on the second ring?
One of these days, Arthur ought to just disconnect his phone and pitch it into the horse pond behind his house. Damn thing was more trouble than it was worth.
Mary-Beth was sweet, though, and she spent the morning flitting in and out of the front room spilling over with new ideas for stories. Arthur liked to listen to her talk, especially since she’d known him long enough to not bother with waiting for him to string a reply together before five o’clock. She just chattered on, plying him with bits of blueberry muffin while he picked up around the floor and sketched, occasionally tossing him the dark heels of the breads she was making, banana and raisin and rye and sourdough, some of them smeared with jam, others dripping with salty cubes of butter.
By the time Arthur got his first customer of the day he was awake and well-fed enough to be almost genial. He didn’t even growl when the bell rang, the door swinging open to let the dusty gloom of Valentine air sweep through the shop. Mary-Beth cut off mid-description and Arthur put down his most recent piece of bread--banana walnut, soft and warm in his mouth--and turned around.
He even brushed his hands off on his apron. The Health Inspector, Lost Country's perennial enemy, would’ve wept to see it.
A big, broad-shouldered man came through the door, the look of a long-haul trucker hanging around him like a ratty coat. He was wearing old oil-stained jeans and a frayed flannel shirt thrown over a white t-shirt, his scuffed boots peeling up at the toes with age.
He had the air of a man who’d reached the end of his rope. He had a battered wide-brimmed hat pulled low to cover his long, frazzled hair, half of which was scraped back into a loose tail while the other half framed his face. He had dark hair and dark skin and dark eyes that were framed by the deep-set bruises Arthur only ever saw on long-haulers and cattlemen, the marks of too many nights at the wheel or in the saddle, the normal rhythms of life stretched out and pulling at the seams.
The feller was handsome. Arthur noticed that as an afterthought, his breath catching in his chest. Under the bruises and the loose strands of hair, the feller was handsome. His eyes were bright and keen.
“Uh,” said Arthur, caught flat-footed by the unanticipated surge of attraction tightening his belly. “Hi.”
The feller looked Arthur dead in the eye. “I need all of the caramel sauce that you have,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Arthur, because Arthur was an idiot, “okay, sure. You want that by the bottle or the case?”
The trucker gave Arthur a long, slow blink. “What?”
“The--uh, the caramel,” said Arthur. He tried not to redden. He realized now after he’d already opened his fool mouth that the feller probably meant that he’d like some caramel-flavored coffee or maybe one of those frozen coffee-smoothie-milkshake things Bill, Tilly and Karen were always drinking, but Arthur’d already put his foot in his mouth and he was a man who stuck to his guns.
He was also, apparently, a man who mixed his metaphors when flustered. He gave a mental shrug and went with it.
He grabbed a bottle of caramel sauce from one of the high shelves, turning it so the trucker could see the label. “See?”
The trucker blinked again. He’d definitely had a long night; he looked like he’d brought the road in with him, miles of black asphalt yawning behind his eyes. “You… sell the bottles?”
“Sure do,” Arthur said, even though he knew that they did not. All of the syrups and caramels and things were supposed to be for bar staff only. Arthur didn't know why they had half of what they did--the regular crowd in Valentine was not known for its affection for elderberry simple syrup or amaranth bitters, both of which Arthur could see stocked on the shelves up behind the bar.
f*ck it, Arthur thought. If Hosea gets mad it’s his own fault for makin’ me come in anyway. He can take it up with Marston.
“Four ninety-nine,” Arthur said helpfully, choosing a price that sounded more or less right to him. He didn't know anything about the going price for a bottle of caramel sauce, but judging by the abject confusion in the trucker's dark eyes, he didn't know sh*t all about it either. Arthur could work with that. He was a sh*t actor but a passable liar. Arthur leaned into his little fiction wholeheartedly. “I can also, uh, getcha a coffee if y’want somethin’ to put it in. The caramel, I mean,” he added, as the confusion in the trucker's handsome face only deepened.
The trucker eyed Arthur. Arthur eyed him right back. Arthur knew that he had a mean face, between his crooked nose and the scar on his chin and the flat pale green of his eyes. Unnerving, folk said. Like looking through sea ice, whatever that was. That was why nobody ever started sh*t on nights Arthur had the bar. He had a face like he’d end fights and fists big enough to make the ending hurt a fair bit.
The trucker, finally, nodded. “Alright,” he said. “One bottle, and as big a cup of coffee as you have.”
“Done,” Arthur said. To make up for his general inability to talk to people like a human being, Arthur ducked into the kitchen and came back out with the biggest mug he could find, a godawful giant monstrosity that an unsuspecting man could drown in. It was one of Dutch’s mugs, matte black, with the words BIG DADDY printed on the side in hideous orange letters.
Arthur, steadfastly ignoring the trucker’s rising eyebrows, filled it near to the top, leaving only enough room for cream and a few squirts of caramel sauce, and set the whole thing down in front of the trucker, thunking the bottle of caramel sauce down next to it.
The trucker’s eyebrows had disappeared entirely under his hat. He looked half like he’d been hit in the face and half like he thought he was gonna hit Arthur.
“There y’are,” Arthur said, unnecessarily. “That’ll be six eighty-five.”
“Six eighty-five,” the trucker repeated.
“Six eighty-five,” Arthur agreed. He and the trucker stared at each other, the price of the coffee hanging between them, the absurdity of it all stretched out, straining. Arthur could feel a redness begin to creep up the back of his neck.
“Oh my god, Arthur,” said Mary-Beth, poking her head out of the kitchen. “You go get the next round of muffins out of the oven, I’ll take care of this poor feller here.”
“Muffins,” said Arthur, seizing the lifeline with both hands. “Got it. ‘Bye, mister.” He fled to the safety of the back room, but not before he heard the trucker say, in a very bemused tone, “Goodbye?”
“You’ll have to forgive him,” Mary-Beth said, as the kitchen door swung shut. “He works nights at the bar, mostly. Mornings ain’t his thing, bless his heart. D’you want me to remake that for you?”
Stupid, Arthur thought, scowling at the oven. Stupid, stupid. First person Arthur’d been attracted to in god knew how long--a few years, at least--and Arthur stared at him for a solid thirty seconds and then scared him off with an overabundance of caramel sauce.
f*ckin’ typical, he thought. He kind of wanted to hit something, but he was a bit too old to be punching walls, especially walls in his place of employment. Hosea knew where Arthur lived and also signed Arthur's paychecks. He'd get his one way or the other, if Arthur started breaking sh*t. Arthur sighed deeply. It was a pity the trucker’d come into Lost Country for morning coffee instead of an evening nightcap. Arthur could never be described as personable, but he was usually better with people at night, especially when he could get over his nerves with a surreptitious shot or two.
Not that a feller like that would go for a feller like me, Arthur thought ruefully. Under all the road-blurred edges and the general air of desperation, the trucker’d been handsome. He'd been young. He probably cleaned up real nice, probably didn’t have no trouble finding company in between shifts on the road, no trouble at all.
Arthur himself was too sour-faced and worn out to get much interest. Folk’d try to catch Arthur's eye now and again, but never folk who looked like that trucker.
“Arthur!” Mary-Beth called. “The muffins!”
Arthur blinked, startled out of his sullen thoughts. He smelled smoke. “sh*t!”
---
Arthur’s day did not much improve from there. John finally dragged his sorry self in around eleven, grey-skinned and groaning--his delicate condition not helped by the fact that Arthur had smacked him upside the head the second he’d come through the door, and none too gently neither--and Kieran came not long after to let Mary-Beth go home, but Mary-Beth of course couldn’t leave without regaling them both with Arthur’s morning misadventure.
“You just gave him a bottle of caramel sauce?” John asked, disbelievingly. “He’s gonna want one every time he comes in now! That guy’s always in here gettin’ something sweet.”
Arthur groaned. “Well, he weren’t real clear now, was he? He came stormin’ in an’ all he asked for was caramel sauce. How was I supposed t’know?” He hesitated. “That feller comes in here a lot?”
“Oh,” said John, a wicked grin spreading across his face, pulling at his stupid scars, “it’s like that, is it?”
“Shut up,” Arthur growled.
“Oh-ho! It is like that!” John crowed, delighted. Mary-Beth laughed. Kieran shifted uncomfortably. He was still pretty new, Kieran, and he wasn’t all that sure of his place in the whole big pack of them yet. He mostly kept to himself or to the gentler members of Dutch’s patchwork crew, like Mary-Beth, Javier, Hosea and Uncle.
Kieran and John got along just fine because John was a little f*cking con artist, but most of the other boys, Arthur and Dutch and Bill and Micah, made Kieran nervous.
Arthur didn’t mind the younger man's timidity. He used it to his advantage now, pinning Kieran with a hard stare, daring him to laugh.
Kieran went white as a sheet.
Arthur grunted. “Shut up, John,” he said again. “Ain’t like nothin’. Jus’ wanna know if I gotta worry about him puttin’ a dent in the inventory, is all.”
“You want him to put a dent in something else, that’s what you want,” John said, leering. “He comes in three or four times a week, next time I see him I can put in a good word for ya, see if he goes for big, dumb and stupid.”
Arthur scowled. Then he remembered that Hosea wasn’t around to yell at him, so he hauled off and punched John square in the mouth.
He felt better after that. Kieran blanched at the sight of blood and fled to the kitchens. Mary-Beth sighed and shook her head. John cut his lip on his teeth and got blood all over the counter.
Arthur, shaking out his hand, decided he’d done his due service for the day, grabbed his sh*t, and left.
“You can tell Hosea that I ain’t comin’ in ‘til Friday!” Arthur hollered over his shoulder as he went. “He owes me and he knows it!”
“You’ll have to take that up with him!” Mary-Beth hollered back. Arthur resolved to toss his phone out as soon he got back home.
He tugged on his jacket and his helmet, swung a leg over the back of his bike, and gave her a kick. She was old, his bike, only a few years younger than Arthur himself, but she was in much better shape than he was. One kick was all she needed to rumble to life beneath him, the familiar growl of the engine a welcome sound, the reverb echoing in Arthur’s ribcage and settling Arthur's always-restless thoughts.
He backed out of the parking lot and left Lost Country Brewing Company, LLC, in the dust behind him. Valentine lingered for a moment, its few rows of worn-out, old-timey buildings red with dust, the smell of cattle and sheep thick in the air, before Arthur hit the empty road and opened the throttle, letting the roar of his bike and the rush of the wind sweep everything else away.
Arthur didn’t live too far out from Valentine, though he was technically situated across state lines. (Ambarino did not believe in income taxes, which Arthur, given his somewhat radical upbringing and patchy cash-based income, deeply appreciated.)
The ride was an easy one, as nice at eleven in the morning as it was at eleven at night, all woods and water and dramatic views of the high buttes of New Hanover, the towering peaks of the Grizzlies, the sweep of the river and the fresh, startling green of the forests flush with their late spring growth.
Arthur avoided the main roads, choosing instead the long, winding state route that took him along the banks of the Dakota River, the smell of pines fresh and clean and heavy in the air. Spring had come fully to the lowlands of Heartlands County, where Valentine sat nestled between the forests of Cumberland County and the wide scrubby plains of the Heartlands. Arthur had some spring up in his little piece of Ambarino, south as he was of the high mountains, but in the distant peaks he could still see snow shining white against the hard blue sky.
Here, though, the ice had long since melted off the river and the birds had all come back. Bright songbirds flitted by in a rush of red and green. Orioles flashed and fluttered. A velvet-headed buck put his nose up as Arthur’s bike roared past and the buck broke for the river, tail flashing, as an eagle rose up from the shining blue water with something small caught in its claws.
There were many things that Arthur disliked about living near Valentine, chief among them the pervasive smell of cow sh*t and the lack of anything to do on the weekends, but the view sure wasn't one of those things.
Arthur rode easy all the way up to the old fort, crossed the battered bridge sticking out over the river, and left the river road behind, trading forests and red buttes for the thinner woods flanking the mountains, the fields that would soon be orange and red and yellow with wildflowers.
When Arthur’d been a kid, home had been transient and shapeless, even before he’d fallen in with Dutch and Hosea. Home had been motel rooms and the backs of old cars, had been one sh*tty clapboard apartment after another up and down the Rocky Mountains. He hadn't lived anywhere for longer than a season.
Home now was a little place on a plot of land not far from the geysers and pools of Cotorra Springs, tucked up a pretty green hillside against the broad grey flank of a nameless mountain. Arthur’s place wasn’t much, just a two-bedroom house that leaked when it rained, its counters chipped and its floors creaky, but it had come with a good bit of land to it and Arthur’s heart still unfolded every time he rounded the corner and caught sight of it, the crooked fence posts, the drafty old barn, the horses out grazing in the field.
A twenty-minute trail ride to the south brought him to the Dakota River. Twenty minutes north put him well on his way to Donner Falls and the reservoir beyond it. East was the high steppe, the hills that rolled orange and yellow with poppies, and west lay the teeth of the Grizzlies.
All and all, Arthur was pretty content with what he’d ended up with.
He guided his bike down the gravel driveway, steering clear of the wet spots that had bowed the earth with all the early spring rains, and killed the engine near the barn. He walked his bike the rest of the way, leaving her in the shade underneath a lip of roof, and stretched, popping the sore spots out of his back.
“I’m gettin’ old,” he told the chickens, which had once again broken free of their barnside coop and were pecking around the yard with cheerful abandon. Copper, Arthur’s old gun dog, and Cain, his newer spotted cur, had never paid the chickens any mind, so the chickens had never learned any fear. There was an orange cat who’d been sniffing around the barn for a few weeks who might change that, but until there was blood and feathers all through his house Arthur wouldn’t be too worried.
He shaded his eyes against the day and sighed.
“Guess there’s no use fightin’ it,” he muttered, toeing the chickens gently aside. “I probably should get to work, huh?”
The chickens, being chickens, kept about their business.
Arthur gave himself another minute to feel old and grouchy, and then he got down to work.
He didn’t run a proper farm by any means. In the spring and summer the women would come by sometimes and plant things, given that Arthur had somehow ended up with the most property, but Dutch’s place was where all the brewery sh*t was grown, the hops and some wheat and some odds and ends used to flavor whatever latest concoction came spluttering out of the tap.
Arthur’s land usually only yielded tomatoes. The odd pepper, a few dense bushes of mint, that sort of thing. He didn’t do any of that--he left the growing to Karen and Abigail, who both had the knack for it.
But there was other work to be done; he kept chickens, he had a few goats, he had two lazy dogs and a rotating cast of stray cats and a whole slew of horses. The fences needed periodic mending and there were holes in the fields that needed filling in. The animals needed watered, the barn swept out, the grass around the house kept more or less in check.
Hell, the horses were near a full-time job all on their own.
Arthur had started with one horse and now somehow had a whole herd of them. Buell, his first, was inherited. A sour old Korean War vet named Hamish who’d lived up the road a ways had spotted Arthur riding his bike along O’Creagh’s Run one afternoon and had bullied him into going fishing. One giant pike and a swim in the lake later, Arthur and Hamish were fast friends.
The war hadn’t been good to Hamish--hadn’t been good to anybody, really--and his health had been pretty poor, ‘til one day about six months after they’d met Arthur had come around to go fishing again and found old Hamish dead on his own front porch. Buell hadn’t had anywhere else to go and Arthur’d had the land. He’d taken Buell home and set the poor bastard up in the overgrown paddock, and then a few months later he’d gotten a letter in the mail telling him that Buell, along with everything else Hamish had owned, was Arthur’s anyway.
After Buell had come the rest of the horses in fits and starts; Old Boy was John’s, Silver Dollar Hosea’s, and Brown Jack was Bill’s. The rest of them were Arthur’s. Most were rescues of one kind or another and all of them demanded Arthur’s attention. They wanted fattening up and brushing down. They wanted to go out trail riding, to get a view of life beyond Arthur’s land. They wanted shoeing or to kick off their shoes or to forgo the entire process and stomp the farrier to death whenever he dared come by.
(Buell and Lyra, one of Arthur’s mares, were the worst about it. Lyra had put more holes in human beings than a groundhog could dig in a field. Once Buell and Lyra finally kicked the bucket, assuming they were not too spiteful to die, Arthur was never, ever buying a white horse again.)
Rooster was waiting for Arthur as Arthur put his bike away and made the trek from the barn to the inner paddock, stiff and tired. He caught sight of Arthur and stamped his front hooves, tossing his head and screaming his displeasure.
“Yeah, yeah,” Arthur grumbled. He was late with the feed and Rooster knew it. Arthur usually did the morning feed at nine or so, after he’d slept off the effects of his night, but it was now nearly noon.
Arrayed behind Rooster the rest of the herd watched with interest, grouped together in patient clumps beside their empty feed buckets.
Arthur decided that he was too tired to do a full feed--damn horses had acres and acres of grass to chew on, after all--so he only grabbed a pair of buckets from the barn, shooing away the day’s accumulation of barn cats, and filled them with feed. Trailing oats and therefore chickens, he made his way back to the pasture fence. Rooster whinnied again and tried to shove his face in the nearest bucket.
“Back off, ya greedy bastard,” Arthur growled, wrangling the gate open and checking Rooster out of the way with a hip. Despite his outsize temper, Roose was just a bit of a horse and fairly easy to shove around. “You’ll get yours, I promise, but you cain’t eat all of it.”
Rooster disagreed, attempting to shove his nose in the bucket again. Arthur swung it out of the way and managed to get to the safety of the mares, who were all clustered eagerly around their empty feeder. Rooster tried to weasel his way in and got nipped by Reliance for his trouble. Whickering crossly, Rooster backed off and went to mind his own trough, snorting and stamping when Hemingway, one of the geldings, drifted a little too close.
Arthur fed the mares first, then the geldings, then Buell in his paddock--the sour-tempered old creature had to have a field of his own--and Old Boy and Brown Jack next. He fed Rooster last, mostly just to be an asshole.
Once the horses were fed, Arthur took care of the goats, scattered some more feed for the chickens, and made a valiant effort at cutting back the scraggly grass around his house. By the time he finished the sun had swung west of the mountains and turned the sky soft and pink. Arthur made his rounds again, making sure everyone was watered for the night, and then turned in, retreating to the safety of his house.
It wasn’t until nearly full dark, after a sandwich and a glass of bourbon, that Arthur sank into his armchair and realized what an idiot he’d been.
I sold him a bottle of caramel sauce, Arthur thought, putting his face in his hands. Jesus Christ.
Arthur’d never been particularly smooth. Dutch and Hosea could talk anyone into bed--and had--and women had always loved John’s vaguely dirty charm, but Arthur’d never been very good at talking to anybody. He’d had some moderate success as a younger man, but back then Arthur’d had enough swagger and energy to make up for his occasional bouts of conversational stupidity.
Now Arthur was old and tired. His nose had been broken quite a few more times and he was worn out, guarded and slow and badly out of practice when it came to talking to folks.
Today might’ve been a new low, though, he thought wryly. It was a shame. He had liked the look of the feller, even though he’d been exhausted and road-weary and maybe a bit overfond of caramel sauce.
Arthur eyed the bottom of his glass, studying the last few sips of whisky there. Ah well. Ain’t nothing for it.
He drained his glass and fell asleep in his armchair thinking of dark hair and warm hands.
---
Despite what he’d said to John and Mary-Beth, Arthur ended up going in to work on Thursday anyway, though it was for his regular evening shift instead of an opener. He’d contemplated pitching his phone into the horse pond behind his house but in the end he hadn’t bothered. Everyone knew where he lived anyway, so it wasn’t like he could get away from it all.
Hosea was waiting, dusted with flour and scowling, when Arthur rumbled in to work at four. Arthur grinned at him.
“Hosea,” he said jovially.
Hosea scowled harder and stabbed a floury finger at him. “Don’t take that tone with me,” he said. “Have you seen John? He looks like he went three rounds with a meat grinder.”
Arthur waved Hosea off. “Aw, he’ll be fine,” Arthur said dismissively. “I ain’t even hit him that hard. ‘Sides, he was askin’ for it. You know how he gets.”
“I know that I had to send him home early on Wednesday on account of his nose being broke,” Hosea scolded. “And I know he looks an awful fright. Abigail’s on the warpath, you know. I’ve half a mind to let her lay into you.”
“Aw, Abigail won’t do nothin’ to me,” Arthur said, brushing Hosea’s concerns aside again. “She definitely knows how John can get, and if she didn’t kill me for that one thing back in ninety-three she ain’t gonna kill me today.”
Hosea sighed. “You have got to let it go,” he said. “This bad blood between you and John, I mean. It ain’t good for anybody, least of all for you.”
It was Arthur’s turn to scowl. “I ain’t hit him ‘cause of that, ” he said.
Hosea arched one grey eyebrow. “You didn’t, huh? Well, the why of it doesn’t matter, just that you did it and it’s done. You know how I feel about fighting in the shop, Arthur.”
“It weren’t a fight, just a little dust-up, Hosea, c’mon,” Arthur said. “Marston’ll be back to normal in a week or two, maybe just a little uglier than he was before, an’ with luck he’s learned a lesson about pickin’ at me while I’m in the process of doin’ him a favor.”
“Be that as it may,” said Hosea, and Arthur did not like the gleam in the old man’s blue eyes, did not like it one bit, “I’ve told you about fighting in the shop before, and since you decided that you ain’t gonna listen to me, I’ve gotta find a way to make the message stick.”
“Hosea,” Arthur said warningly. Hosea shook a floury finger at Arthur again.
“Morning shift,” he said. “Monday through Friday--I ain’t dumb enough to put you on a Sunday morning, you’d kill the church crowd, but you’re on mornings for the next--indeterminate length of time, I think, ‘til I decide you’ve learned your lesson.”
“Hosea!” Arthur protested, more than a little horrified. “C’mon, I won’t hit him again. You know me workin’ mornings won’t be good for anybody.”
“Probably not,” Hosea allowed, “but I don’t mind making you miserable for a month or two if it means you and John put whatever it is between you to rest. Now,” he said, and his tone dropped considerably into a range Arthur had learned never to argue with, “that’s gonna be the last of it. Don’t try and change my mind or go crying to Dutch -- he likes you and John fighting about as much as I do. Get to work.”
Arthur stared at Hosea mutinously, anger buzzing in the back of his mouth, but he could see that there’d be no swaying the old man.
Growing up Hosea had always been the backbone of Arthur’s strange little family. Dutch was the breath and blood and the beating heart of them and Arthur was maybe the hands, but Hosea had always been the structure and the foundation. He’d been the one to keep them going when Dutch’s grand plans fell apart or when Arthur’s anger got the better of him. Hosea was the one who’d made sure they all got fed, who’d checked them into hotels when the road got too hard or one of them took sick.
For the most part Hosea’s word was law, and had been for twenty years.
“Fine,” Arthur spat, unable to completely shed his venom, and he ducked past Hosea and slammed his way into the bar.
Thursday nights in Valentine were just like every other night in Valentine, which meant that Lost Country was packed to her creaky old gills by six o’clock as ranch hands and cow herds came in for the day, stinking to high heaven and cruising for a drink or a f*ck or a fight.
All three were available at Lost Country Brewing Company, LL-goddamn-C. There were a couple of other watering holes in Valentine, but Smithfields was one of those sh*tty fake Wild West saloon gimmicks geared towards the town’s small population of tourists and Keane’s was small, cramped and perpetually out of both decent drink and desirable bed partners.
Lost Country was the only dive in the county that had hot food, real beer and a regular share of open-minded women looking to spend a night or two with a genuine cowboy. Dutch and Hosea didn’t mind hookers working the crowds so long as the hookers didn’t bring lawmen sniffing around, so even on a Thursday the place was raucous and randy, beer and whiskey flowing through the crowd like water.
The noise and the smell did nothing to improve Arthur’s mood.
All night he slammed around the bar in a savage temper, slinging drinks with probably more vigor than necessary, bristling like wet cat at any of the night’s patrons who tried to give him any guff.
Arthur and his patchwork family had been in Valentine for near on six years now, though, long enough to be considered locals by all but the sourest, most suspicious old cattlemen, and most folk knew to steer clear of Arthur when he was in a mood as black as this one. In the early days he’d had his pick of fights. Ranchers and cowboys were rough by nature, used to swaggering around and beating on sullen-looking out-of-towners who didn’t get out of their way fast enough.
Folk learned after a few months that trying to put the hurt on Arthur was likely to end in a shattered cheekbone.
I shoulda been nicer, Arthur thought darkly as the night began to wind down. Most of the folks looking for a f*ck had paired off already, gone back to their homes or up the road to the Saints Hotel for a cheap room. There were still a couple of big boys who could probably be goaded into a brawl and a few long-faced drunks nursing whiskeys at the bar, but the raw, rowdy energy of a bar at eleven or twelve usually faded to beer-soaked sorrow by two.
Shoulda been nicer, and shoulda thrown a fight or two. Arthur was no stranger to taking a beating--if he’d let the Valentine boys lay him out a time or two, maybe now they’d still be up for a fight when Arthur really needed one.
But no, he’d had to be full of piss and vinegar when they moved in, angry at anything and everything. And now none of these cowboys would take a swing at him, no matter how rude Arthur was. A crying shame, it was. A town full of big, strong men and not one of them was brave enough to put one in Arthur’s jaw.
Sean’ll be back soon, he told himself. Sean was always good for a fight, even if he never won. And Hosea couldn’t even get mad at Arthur and Sean for brawling, because usually it was entirely consensual. Sean liked to box and Arthur liked to fight regardless of what kind he was doing.
But Sean was a state away getting up to no good in Blackwater, burning through his annual bonus at what was no doubt a prodigious pace, and Javier had gone with him.
Arthur’s other option was to pick a fight with Micah, whowason shift tonight and was busy oozing slime where he wasn't wanted near a crowd of young farmer's daughters, but Dutch had a weird soft spot for Micah and if Hosea was willing to make everybody miserable by throwing Arthur at the morning shift, he’d be willing to take Arthur out back and shoot him for stirring up more blood in the workplace.
f*ck it, Arthur thought bitterly, as two A.M. came and went and Abigail put out the last call and began to collect tabs. I’m just gonna have to deal with it, I guess.
The prospect darkened his mood even further, and by the time they were closed up for the night and began to grab all their sh*t from the staff room to clear out, Arthur was so short-tempered and nearly mute with fury that Dutch, who liked to spend the night shift in the brew-house out back until last call, when he liked to pace the floor and boot drunks out on their asses personally, took Arthur by the scruff of the neck like a misbehaving puppy and shook him, albeit gently enough.
“Hosea told me,” Dutch said. He smiled, his eyes turning up at the corners, and Arthur felt some of the anger go out of him at the sight. He'd always had a hard time arguing with Dutch. “Listen, son, I ain’t gonna tell you how to run your life. You’ve got an anger in you, and that’s alright--you’ve got plenty to be angry about. Just… point it somewhere more productive than John's face, alright? For Hosea’s sake, if not for John's. The old girl is worried about you.”
Arthur blew out a breath. Dutch didn’t let him go, his grip firm and grounding. He and Arthur were of a height now, had been since Arthur was seventeen years old, but some part of Arthur would likely see Dutch as ten feet tall until he died.
“Fine,” Arthur grumbled. “For the old man. You know I’m gonna be a bear in a week or two, Dutch. I don’t do mornings.”
Dutch chuckled and shook Arthur again. “I know,” he said. “Me and Old Girl have got something worked out, never you worry.”
“You got me off mornings?” Arthur asked hopefully, mood perking.
“Well, no,” said Dutch. “Hosea’s pretty set on it, and I can’t say I disagree. If you and John wanna take a few swings at each other that’s your business, you’re grown men, but my boy, behind the bar? Really?”
“John started it,” Arthur growled.
“You hit first, and you hit harder,” Dutch said. "And from what I hear John didn't hit you at all." His tone too took on a note Arthur had learned never to argue with. Arthur dropped his shoulders with a heavy sigh. Dutch squeezed his neck and let him go.
“Take the next few days off,” Dutch advised. “Come ‘round the house this weekend. Molly’s got some harebrained idea to smoke a pig in the yard. Have some fun, get your head on straight, then come in on Monday and take your lumps like a man. Alright?”
“Alright,” Arthur muttered.
“You’ll be running deliveries, anyway,” Dutch said. “Hosea’s mad as hell but he ain’t stupid. Puttin’ you in front of the morning crowd is a recipe for disaster.”
Arthur finally brightened at that. Deliveries weren’t so bad. “Can I take my bike?”
“Yeah, van’s still busted,” Dutch said, shaking his head. “Just don’t get pulled over on company time, okay?”
“I never get pulled over,” Arthur scoffed. He hadn’t been pulled over since he was twelve and taking a joyride in his foster father’s old Ford.
“You are my most reliable son,” Dutch acknowledged. As always, his affection and his pride in Arthur made Arthur stand a little taller, his chin up and his chest warm. “Now go home, sleep it off, get your head on straight. I’ll see you Saturday, my place?”
“Alright,” Arthur said. “Saturday.”
Deliveries I can do, Arthur thought, as he crossed the parking lot and swung a leg over his bike. Deliveries are easy.
Mood a little improved, Arthur took the open road home, the wind and the stars pulling over him, washing his anger away.
---
The weekend came and went. The pig roast at Dutch’s turned out alright, edible even once Mrs. Grimshaw got involved and kept the pig from burning. Usually such a task would have fallen to Pearson, but he’d been halfway down the bottle before the roast even started and had been no help whatsoever after Sadie slipped a few shots of rum into his battered tin mug, mostly to shut him up.
Arthur would’ve told her off for it, because Sadie’s burning dislike for Pearson meant that if she got away with it once she’d try it again, and eventually try it with arsenic, but before he'd made his way over to her Sean showed up, fresh from Blackwater, and was more than happy to scuffle with Arthur around the bonfire. Arthur slept until nine on Sunday, muscles tired and hands sore, and Sunday afternoon he saddled up one of his horses and took her for a ride.
He picked steady Reliance, a rosy grey Andalusian mare he had quite literally stumbled upon a few years ago out on the plains. Lia was even-tempered and even-keel. Not even Arthur’s black moods or a snake on the trail could spook her.
They had a good ride up in the mountain trails, tracking a few rabbits and listening to coyotes yap and yowl. Arthur was pretty sure he’d caught a flash of tawny fur high up in the trees, the fierce yellow gleam of a mountain cat’s eyes, but even though he tried to track her he never managed to get a good look, and he turned around before night could fall and the mountain lion could come down from her trees and track him.
Monday rolled around quicker than Arthur would’ve liked, but he was determined to do as Dutch had asked and take his lumps, as they were, like a man.
He rode into the shop the grey of the morning, parked his bike around the corner, and slipped into the kitchen quietly. Valentine had been still and silent coming in, the roads fresh and clear. It would not, he hoped, be a bad day for deliveries.
Hosea was waiting for him in the kitchen while Molly and Mary-Beth chatted over a floured table, Molly kneading bread and Mary-Beth glazing muffins. The whole kitchen smelled homey and warm, familiar now after six years, and the early morning quiet, for once, didn’t leave Arthur woozy and unsettled.
“Don’t get comfortable,” Hosea grunted. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, where a pair of blue duffel bags balanced precariously on top of a rickety old chair next to a paper cup of coffee, still warm enough that steam was curling up from the lid.
Arthur softened at the sight of it. “Don’t worry, old man,” he said gruffly. “I ain’t gonna fight wit’ya. Where’m I goin’?”
Hosea eyed Arthur dubiously but was willing enough to accept Arthur’s peace offering as an act of contrition. “You’ll be makin’ the usual runs, mostly,” he said. “There’s a list in the bag.” He hesitated. “Be careful, alright?”
Arthur smiled. “I’m always careful, Hosea,” he said. He opened the first bag up to fish out the list and check the contents; all the usual sh*t was there, packed in underneath bagels and muffins that had been packaged into neat little boxes, each labeled with the name of the client. Somebody’d bought a cake. The bottom of the first bag was made heavy by a few cases of beer, bottlecaps glinting in the kitchen lights. The second was much the same. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. Arthur grunted. A normal day, then. All the right information was in the list, marked down in Hosea’s careful handwriting.
Arthur hefted the bags with a heavy sigh. “Jesus Christ,” he grumbled. “Who ordered the bricks?”
“That’d be a Mr. Haywood up in Roanoke County,” Hosea said, without batting an eye. “No funny business, Arthur. Call the shop if you need anything; I’m here ‘til eleven, and Dutch is in after me.”
“Aye aye, boss,” Arthur said, offering a lazy salute, and he trooped back out into the morning light.
Arthur wasn’t stupid enough to just throw the bags over the back of his bike--he’d done that before and squished the sh*t out of some cupcakes--so he spent a few minutes packing everything to his satisfaction, making sure his bike was balanced and that the more delicate boxes wouldn’t get crushed beneath the heavier.
Finally, as the sun was just beginning to climb over the horizon, the sky pink and creamy, Arthur downed his cup of coffee and hit the road.
He had six deliveries in Valentine proper. A bunch of ranch hands got a box of donuts each. The doctor, Ben something or other, got his usual order plus an extra case of beer. The butcher got a loaf of sourdough bread and the owner of the Saints Hotel, the butcher’s archnemesis, got a loaf of pumpernickel.
The gunsmith got his usual and even the local pastor, a suspicious old man who had never liked the look of Dutch’s boys, had put in for a box of muffins.
Once he was done in Valentine, Arthur swung east and hit the usual spots, dropping deliveries off at Emerald Ranch and some odd little sod house in the plains before angling for the winding, wooded roads of Roanoke County.
Arthur didn’t come up this way much, not usually. New Hanover was a Midwestern state, all farm and field, but at least Arthur’s half of the state was more scrubland and steppe than the eastern, which was still stuck somewhere in the eighteen nineties and a little too much like rural Kentucky for Arthur’s tastes.
Oh, the country itself was pretty enough, all hill and holler, handsome as a woman with flowers in her hair, but the locals left a little something to be desired. They were coal miners and sh*tkickers, mostly, some timbermen here and there, clannish and rude. And then there were the Murfrees to contend with, if Arthur were unlucky enough to wander past some.
Arthur usually wasn’t lucky.
Today, though, fortune smiled on him and the road to Van Horn was clear and Murfree-free. Arthur didn’t even spot any county police, which was rare; usually the county boys were all over Roanoke, lying in wait to catch people flying down the hills going forty over.
But today there wasn’t a soul around so Arthur took his sweet time getting in to Van Horn, coasting slow and easy around the road’s twists and turns. Van Horn itself was a lot like Valentine, worn and rustic, only somehow seedier. Van Horn was all clapboard and dust, a relic from long ago, glory faded to a sh*tty biker bar and one battered main road, all the young folk gone away and all the old folk stewing in their cups.
Arthur’s guy, a Mr. Haywood who’d ordered a whole bag’s worth of sh*t all by himself, met Arthur behind the Old Light Saloon, Van Horn’s aforementioned sh*tty biker bar, and took his delivery with incongruous good humor.
“All here?” he asked, rummaging through the bag excitedly. Mr. Haywood’s eyes lighted on a box of powdered donuts and made a happy sound. “No one ‘round here makes donuts like you folks do,” he said.
Arthur grunted and took his payment, waving away Mr. Haywood’s proffered tip. “Ain’t nothin’,” he said. By now midmorning had come and gone. Van Horn was a good few hours past Valentine, a little far in Arthur’s opinion for a delivery, but he wasn’t the boss. If he left now, he’d make it to Valentine again in time for lunch and the end of his shift.
“Thank you very much!” Mr. Haywood called, as Arthur ducked out of Old Light and made for his bike. “Be seein’ you again!”
Arthur shook his head and swung a leg over his bike, kicking her to life again beneath him. He hoped that by the time Mr. Haywood put in for another order he’d be off the morning shift and back to his usual, but today hadn’t been so bad.
He left Van Horn behind, choosing to take the highway this time instead of meander his way back across the middle of the state, and let the rush of the open road pull him out of his thoughts and root him into his body.
There was a reason Arthur had never bothered buying a car. Most of them had, when they’d settled in Valentine six years ago. Hosea’d bought a truck, Uncle’d bought a really sh*tty old station wagon, Bill’d bought a van as old as he was. Even John had caved, once he’d slunk back in six months ago, had thrown in the towel and bought an ancient, spluttering Jeep to keep Abigail off his back about “safe, reliable transportation.”
But Arthur’d always hated cars and cabs. He couldn’t lose himself in the road in a truck or a Jeep, not like he could on his bike. On his bike Arthur had to be alert and calm. He had to pay attention to the way his bike moved underneath him, the weight of her, the steady grumble of her engines.
No open top or sunroof in the world can match this, he thought. The wind pulled at him, dragged through his hair and pulled at his leathers, wicked sweat away from his brow. Arthur had never been a praying man but he thought that if he were, he’d do it from the back of a Harley.
He made it back to Valentine just a bit after noon, his heart calm and his temper more or less even, for once.
Dutch knows what he’s doing, Arthur realized, guiding his bike back into an opening parking spot ‘round the back of Lost Country. The Monday lunch crowd was thin, as always. The shop made most of its money with the morning rush and the evening crawl.
Arthur still wasn’t too happy about being stuck on the morning shift for the indefinite future, but at least if he was on deliveries he’d get to ride, get to spend some time out on the road. He’d missed that the last six years. Dutch’s plans often made little sense to Arthur, but this one would do just fine.
Mood considerably brighter than Arthur’d thought it would be, he shouldered his way into the back of the kitchen, made hungry by the road and the sun, and pilfered half a reuben off a plate he knew was Hosea’s. Tilly and Karen, who were in the kitchen working the ovens, noticed and shook their heads but neither told him off for it.
Arthur tipped his hat at them, appreciating their complicity, and snagged himself some long-cold coffee too.
He was licking crumbs and thousand island dressing off his fingers when Hosea swept in, hair dusted with flour, and shot Arthur a stern glance.
“Made it back alright?” he asked, arching a white eyebrow. “Any problems?”
“Yes and no,” Arthur said, answering Hosea’s questions in order. “Made the run fine, had no trouble. What're we doing deliverin’ all the way out to Van Horn? Not that I minded the ride,” Arthur added, rolling his shoulders. “Was easy enough gettin’ out there.”
Hosea just shrugged. “Seems a bit far to me too, but Dutch’s got it in his head that we should expand our business a bit. Seems to think we ought to… how’d he put it, franchise. ”
Arthur snorted. That sounded like Dutch.
Still, without Dutch’s intervention Arthur likely would have been forced to wait tables and mind the goddamn register for weeks on end, so Arthur wasn’t about to voice any of his doubts about the likelihood of franchising or whatever such nonsense Dutch had gotten into his head lately.
They were making a decent living here in Valentine, all of them. Supporting a patchwork crew of twenty-odd folks had never been easy, but they were all doing alright. Arthur knew that some folks were picking up odd jobs here and there, supplementing their incomes with a day on this cattle ranch or a night in that feller’s bed, but nobody was starving and most everyone had a roof over their head, even Bill, who preferred the open air to the point where his house was little more than a shack with a holey roof out in the sticks of some old, abandoned mining town down the road.
Dutch’s people were doing well enough. They didn’t need to get involved in trying to rustle up business in Van Horn or Annesburg. Arthur could see maybe branching out and getting a toehold in Emerald Ranch, but that was about it. Anything past that was plain foolishness or plain greed.
But it wasn’t Arthur’s place to question Dutch’s grand ideas, especially not when Dutch had just done him a favor, so he only shrugged, licking the last of the reuben from his fingers, already turning his thoughts to his bed and a smoke. He was about done for the day.
“You know me, Hosea,” Arthur said. “I just do what I’m told. If Dutch wants me runnin’ deliveries up in Van Horn, I don’t mind. ‘Specially not if folks are willin’ to pay. Just seems odd, is all.”
Hosea huffed. “Odd is right,” he said. His expression softened. “Dutch has always been a bit odd, though, so I suppose we’ll have to live with it. You good to make a run tomorrow?”
Arthur shrugged. The price of gas was cheap and he liked the road. “Sure,” he said.
Hosea smiled wryly. “Don’t think actin’ all sweet and cheerful’s gonna get you out of this,” he warned. “You’re still on my sh*t list, boy.”
Arthur rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah,” he said.
“And that sandwich was two-fifty,” Hosea said. “You can pay me out of the morning’s tips. Go split ‘em up for everybody--there’s five of us on this morning, and I don’t trust Sean to count.”
“Probably wise,” Arthur muttered. He did as he was told, ducking out of the kitchen into the bar and dining half of the shop, where Sean was lounging against the register, plainly ogling one of the shop’s few customers, a pretty, rangy girl who Arthur knew made her money hooking on the weekends.
Arthur whacked Sean upside the head, very gently. No need to draw Hosea’s ire by whacking Sean as hard as he deserved, after all.
“MacGuire,” Arthur growled. “You ain’t paid to laze about starin’ at women. Go find something to clean.”
“Aw, Arthur,” Sean whined, rubbing the back of his head theatrically. “Whatcha do that fer? I weren’t harmin’ nobody, just doin’ a bit of lookin’ is all.” Sean was one of the younger lads, a boy of twenty-two or twenty-three--he’d hooked up with Dutch and his band of misfits only a few months after they’d all settled in Valentine and thought that the few barfights he’d gotten into at Arthur’s side made him a man.
Really Sean was just an annoyance, but Arthur did like him, most of the time. He wasn’t sure exactly what chain of calamitous events had to have occurred for a scrappy Irish kid to end up in a cattle town in the American Midwest, but Arthur had a decent enough grasp of current events to guess. Sean did have an alarming fondness for anything that could be set on fire and he ate up Dutch’s anarcho-syndicalist sh*t with a spoon.
“Look on your own time,” said Arthur. He gave Sean the gimlet eye but Sean just smiled blithely at him, too used to Arthur’s cuffing and scuffing to be that bothered.
Idiot kid, Arthur thought, without any ire. He checked Sean aside with a hip and the wave of a hand, reaching for the tip jar that was happily full, despite the fact that there were only three paying customers in Lost Country.
“Hey, whatcha doin’ with those?” Sean said indignantly, making a grab for the jar. Arthur just turned his back, aware that he had about five inches and fifty pounds on Sean, who was built like a particularly ugly reed.
“Countin’ ‘em,” Arthur said. He emptied the jar on the counter, separating the bills from the coins with a practiced motion, beginning to sort it all out into five piles.
“I don’t know where you get off think yer gonna get any! You’ve been out ridin’ around all day, sittin’ on yer arse, while me an’ the girls’ve been workin’ ourselves to the bone.”
“Yeah,” Arthur said, head coming up from his counting to take a dramatic look around the empty shop, “real busy, I can see that.”
“C’mon,” Sean whined.
Arthur shook his head. “Tips get split even between everyone who’s on shift,” he said. “That’s the way it’s always been, an’ the fact that you ain’t caught on yet is probably while I’m out here doin’ this sh*t, not you.”
Sean scowled.
“Here,” Arthur said, feeling uncharacteristically generous, “we’ve got an extra quarter that I ain’t wanna split. It’s all yours.”
“Gee thanks,” Sean said, “a whole bloody twenty-five cents--”
“That Tilly gets now, since you’re gonna be a sh*t about it,” said Arthur, throwing the extra quarter into the pile he’d set aside for Tilly.
“Arsehole,” Sean grumbled, but he knew better than to push things any further. Arthur took splitting tips very seriously, since most of them had rents and mortgages and sh*t to worry about now. Sean lived with whoever had an open couch and mostly paid his way in beer.
“Look, you made nearly fifteen bucks this mornin’,” Arthur said, pushing Sean’s portion towards the brat. “Ain’t bad for a mornin’a jus' lookin’, is it?”
He did not put an extra two-fifty in Hosea’s pile, because the old man never finished his sandwiches anyway and Arthur didn’t want to be too obliging and obedient--Hosea might start to think that Arthur was sick or something, and if there was anything worse than Hosea’s scolding it was Hosea’s mothering.
“Yeah, that’s not bad,” said Sean, brightening considerably. “Worth a few beers at least.”
Arthur snorted, pocketing his own portion. “That’s the spirit,” he said. “Now g’wan, git. Go clean somethin’. I’ll watch the register for,” he checked the clock behind the bar, “five minutes.”
Sean miraculously did as he was told, no doubt imagining all of the sh*tty pints of watery beer he’d buy with his fifteen whole dollars. Arthur took his place at the register, leaning on the counter a bit to take the pressure of his knees.
I’m gettin’ old, he thought, not for the first time in the last few months. Christ, I feel like a cowboy. Aching and sore before his time, his joints battered from a lifetime of falling and brawling, his back tight from days in the saddle or on his bike, nights folded up on his lumpy mattress. He straightened up, rolled his shoulders back and tried to stretch even though he felt it make his shirt ride up, exposing a strip of skin at his belly.
Arthur was midstretch when the bell over the door chimed and the handsome trucker with the sweet tooth walked in.
Arthur froze. The trucker went still.
They stared at each other.
He looks better, Arthur thought, unable to stop himself from noticing that between last week and today, the trucker’d managed to get at least a few good nights of sleep in. He was less worn, less ragged and smudged around the edges--his hair was still long and pulled back into a loose tail and his eyes were still smudged beneath with tired shadows, but his back was straight and his clothes were clean, his jeans tucked into his boots and his shirt free of oil stains.
And I, of course, look like an idiot, Arthur realized, flushing hard. He dropped his arms and hastily tugged at his shirt, praying that he was too sunburned and wind-chapped for the feller to notice that Arthur had blushed like a schoolboy confronted with his first pair of tit*.
No, he told himself sternly, because thinking of tit*--or the trucker’s chest, which was much broader in this clean, neat-fitting tee-shirt than it had been in the shapeless thing the trucker’d had on last time--was not going to help him appear like a functional man.
The trucker was still standing stock still in the doorway, his eyes wide.
Arthur cleared his throat. “Uh, c’mon--c’mon in,” he said. “Uh, welcome. To Lost Country,” Arthur clarified, resisting the urge to lock up all his joints and add the Brewing Company, Ell-Ell-Goddamn-Cee at the end like he and the boys did when they were drunk and stupid.
“Good afternoon,” the trucker said warily, stepping fully inside the shop, his dark eyes fixed on Arthur’s. He had a round, boyish kind of face, a wide mouth, a nose that was just the slightest bit crooked.
“Hi,” said Arthur, unnecessarily. He cleared his throat again. “What can I getcha?”
The trucker approached the counter very slowly, moving like he half expected Arthur to bounce over the counter and start hurling bottles of caramel sauce at him. “I’d like a latte,” the trucker said. He didn’t take his eyes off Arthur’s face. “With some caramel sauce added, please.”
“A latte,” Arthur repeated. “Can do, mister. That’ll be, uh,” he checked the price list surreptitiously, “two-ninety.”
He took his eyes off the trucker, his blush mostly faded by now, and bustled about. He could make a latte. He could even add caramel sauce--he maybe added a bit more than he was supposed to, but he didn’t think that the feller would mind that much.
There were two dollars and ninety cents on the counter when he returned with the feller’s drink.
“Here ya go,” said Arthur, swapping the latte for the cash. He wanted to watch the guy drink it but thought that might be a bit weird, so he made himself look away and put the money in the register while the guy took a very cautious sip out of the corner of Arthur’s eye.
The trucker’s expression cleared, his concern over another insane interaction quickly replaced by pleasure over a decent cup of coffee.
Arthur hid a smile, pleased.
“This is good,” the trucker said.
Arthur did smile now, figuring it was safe to do so. “I can figure the machines out after I’ve had a few cups of coffee myself,” he said. “Mornings are, uh. A little difficult.”
The trucker smiled back. He had a nice smile, wide and honest, and another tug of attraction stirred in Arthur’s gut. He didn’t know what it was, exactly--attraction was something hat just happened to Arthur sometimes, entirely random and fairly rare. He’d never really had a type, as far as he could tell. Just, occasionally, he’d look over at someone and he’d want to get to know them. To be near them.
He wanted to get to know this feller.
“I can’t say much,” the trucker said, taking another sip of his coffee. “Usually I can’t string more than a few words together before ten o’clock, ‘less I get some sugar in me.”
“I’m Arthur,” Arthur said. He gestured around the shop. “Usually I work nights. The morning shift’s not my usual, uh, grind.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he winced-- terrible, grind, really, Morgan? --but the trucker huffed a chuckle.
“Charles,” he said. “I work all hours, but the hotel up the road’s pretty much the only place to catch a few hours of sleep and a hot shower between here and Blackwater, so. I’m in a lot, I guess.”
“Well, nice to meet ya,” Arthur said, determined to have a normal goddamn interaction and not chase the poor trucker--Charles, his name was Charles--away. “I’m on mornings for the foreseeable, so I’m sure I’ll see ya around.”
“Yeah,” Charles said, taking another happy sip of his coffee, “see ya. Have a good one.” He waved and turned to leave, holding his latte in one big, broad hand. Arthur held very still until the feller’d left the shop, crossed the parking lot and vanished from sight. He was not about to turn around and trip over a loose mat or something, or open his mouth, or do anything at all that would make Arthur look like more of an idiot that Charles already thought he was.
Sean took that opportunity to appear at Arthur’s elbow, grinning widely.
“So, Arthur,” he trilled. “Whatever happened to lookin’ on yer own time, eh? Not that I can blame you, with a big, beefy fella like that, Christ above, but really, man. If you stared at him any harder he was gonna burst inta flames!”
Arthur didn’t hit him, but it was a close thing.
