A Night's Tail

by Sofie Kelly

  Keith King was sitting at the same table and he got to his feet. Keith was on the library board and he was dad to Taylor, who had worked on our summer reading program. I couldn’t catch all of what he said to the drunk but I could see the tension in his body, in his clenched fists and the rigid way he held his shoulders. The situation was close to getting out of hand. I couldn’t get most of the drunken man’s words but I could hear his tone and I didn’t hear any remorse. He’d done something to the dog—kicked it most likely—that much was clear, and it didn’t seem as though he was sorry.

  Marcus had already gotten up and was making his way to the table with Brady right behind him. Before they could close the distance the drunk said something to Keith and I saw him pull back his leg, like he was going to kick the dog a second time.

  He didn’t get the chance. Derek was passing the table on his way up to the bar. His right fist caught the left side of the man’s jaw. He swayed backward like an old-style inflatable clown punching bag. Marcus caught the man by the shirt collar just as one of the bouncers reached them. Derek gave his fist a shake like he was shaking off a cramp. I hadn’t noticed him detour from his trek to the bar. Now he stood there glaring at the intoxicated man.

  Everyone at the table had gotten to their feet with the exception of the man with the prosthetic legs. Keith and Derek were talking at the same time. The drunk was shouting and rubbing his chin. For a moment I thought I heard him say something about Christmas, which didn’t make any sense. Marcus spoke to the bouncer, who nodded and then stood there, arms folded, black T-shirt stretched smooth over his muscles. Still holding on to the drunken man by the scuff of his neck, Marcus leaned down and spoke to the dog’s owner. When he straightened up he said a few words to Derek before sending him back in our direction.

  “You all right?” Ethan asked as Derek reached the table.

  Derek nodded. “Asshole,” he muttered darkly. The knuckles on his right hand were already starting to swell. Maggie pushed away from the table and headed to the bar without a word.

  “Do you know that man?” I asked. “I thought I heard him say something about Christmas.”

  Derek flushed. “I think it was just a shot at my clothes.” He glanced down at the red quilted vest and red-and-black shirt he was wearing. “Guy’s a jerk.”

  I glanced around, wondering where the band we had come to hear was. People were restless, a lot of them on their feet, and too many voices just a bit too loud seemed to rumble through the room like distant thunder, warning that a storm might be ahead. Marcus may have diffused the immediate situation with Derek and the drunk, but that didn’t mean that there still couldn’t be trouble. People were looking our way. The drunk had looked familiar for some reason I couldn’t place. I was guessing at least some people in the bar knew who he was.

  I leaned across the table. “Sing something,” I said to Ethan.

  “Yeah right,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I’ll get the whole place doing ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ as a round. Or would you rather we all held hands and sang ‘Kumbaya’?”

  I pushed my hair behind my ear with an impatient gesture. Ethan hated me telling him what to do. I had a mental image of him as a two-year-old, grabbing the socks I was trying to put on his chubby toddler feet, running down the hall and flinging them into the middle of the kitchen floor, standing there, feet planted wide apart, defiance blazing in his eyes.

  I glared at him. “Don’t act like a guy. I don’t see any sign of the band or any more dancers. And it’s getting tense in here.”

  He looked around. I knew he had to feel the unsettled energy in the room. “We don’t have our instruments,” he said, swiping a hand over his chin. I knew that gesture. He was thinking about what I’d said. “Anyway, we can’t just start singing.”

  This time I rolled my eyes. “Right. Because you’ve never done that before.”

  Ethan made a face.

  “‘A Hundred Other Worlds,’” I said. “You don’t need instruments for that song.” “A Hundred Other Worlds” was my favorite Gerbils song. Ethan had written it. The love song featured just voices and guitar but it sounded equally beautiful with only the guys’ perfect harmonies. “Please,” I added.

  He exhaled loudly. “I suppose next you’ll play the ‘I changed your diapers’ card.” The gleam in his eyes told me I’d already won.

  I held up my phone. “No, but I could play the video of you drumming on a box of oatmeal, wearing nothing but a smile and a saggy diaper.”

  “You’re mean,” he said, but he was already getting up.

  “And I’m older and I practice while you’re asleep,” I finished.

  Ethan elbowed Milo and raised an eyebrow at Derek, tipping his head in the direction of the stage. Derek nodded and set the makeshift ice pack that Maggie had gotten for him—ice wrapped in a striped cotton bar towel—on the table.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Ethan shrugged. “Yeah, well if we don’t sing the only other option would be you dancing.”

  I tried to swat him but he darted out of my way.

  The three of them made their way over to the small stage the various bands used. Milo and Derek lined up behind Ethan, hands behind their backs. Ethan glanced over his shoulder at them, then turned to face the crowd and started to sing. He didn’t have a mic. He didn’t need one.

  It started with the tables closest to the stage. People stopped what they were doing to listen, dropping back into their seats one after another, focused on the music, focused on Ethan’s voice, on all three of their voices.

  It gave me goose bumps. On the other side of the table Maggie was mesmerized. I saw her rub her hand over her arm as though maybe she had goose bumps, too.

  A hand touched my shoulder. Marcus dropped into the chair beside me as Brady slid in next to Maggie. I linked my fingers with his but I couldn’t take my eyes off of my baby brother. Neither could anyone else.

  I’d always known Ethan had talent. He was three when, after standing for the national anthem at a Red Sox game, his tiny hand over his heart, he’d turned to Dad and proclaimed emphatically, “Out tune!” about the off-key actress who’d been singing. And he’d been right. It made my big-sister heart swell with pride to look around and see so many other people recognizing Ethan’s talent.

  They finished the song and for a few seconds silence hung in the air. Then someone began to clap. Someone else let out a long, sharp whistle. The crowd, as they say, went wild.

  The scheduled band, the band we’d gone to The Brick to hear, showed up right after that. The Flaming Gerbils ended up sitting in for two songs with them. Someone found a guitar for Derek and once the crowd heard him play everyone seemed to forget about the earlier incident. He was good, I realized. Not Jake, but equally as talented. I leaned back against Marcus’s shoulder, enjoying the music and the company, relieved that everything was okay.

  Derek came back to the table when they finished and sank onto the chair next to me. Brady and Maggie were up dancing. “Kathleen, I’m sorry,” he said, swiping a hand across his chin.

  “You don’t owe me an apology,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “But these are your friends and people you know and work with and that guy acted like an ass.”

  I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. I glanced over at the table where Keith King, the man and his service dog and their friends were still sitting. “He kicked the dog, didn’t he?” I asked. “The drunk, I mean. And he was drunk.”

  Derek nodded. “Yeah, he kicked the dog—he was going to do it again—and he was drunk. Then he said something about freakin’ animals being everywhere because guys have lost their . . .” He gestured with one hand and I was pretty sure I could guess how to finish the sentence. “I lost my cool. The guy’s a vet. I saw his cap on the table. How could anyone say that about a man who’s a hero and then kick his dog?”

>   “Your intentions were good,” Marcus said, “but maybe next time you could let the dog’s owner speak for himself first.”

  Derek nodded, but I saw a flash of annoyance in his eyes. “Right, I get it,” he said. “It’s just that my dad’s a vet—Vietnam—and I walk dogs at a shelter back in Boston. I don’t think that that kind of behavior should be ignored. I think it should be called out.” There was a slight self-righteous edge to his voice.

  Derek looked at Marcus. “I suppose there’s going to be some kind of fine.”

  “No one was arrested,” Marcus said. “No charges. No fines.” I saw him glance at Brady. “The gentleman saw the error of his ways.”

  I wondered what Marcus and Brady had said to the man. I glanced over at the nearby table again. Keith caught my eye, raised one hand and smiled. I smiled back at him then I turned my attention to Derek again. “Do you have any idea who that man was?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t live around here?” Derek asked.

  I shook my head. “No. But there was something familiar about him. It could just be that he’s a tourist who came into the library looking for directions.” Had the man been in the library? No, I was fairly certain I hadn’t seen him there. Maybe I’d noticed him at Eric’s Place when I was getting coffee. Or could he have been in the artists’ co-op store when I stopped in to talk to Maggie?

  “His name is Lewis Wallace,” Marcus said.

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Wait a minute. The businessman that the development committee has been talking to? The one who might set up his new supplement business in one of the empty warehouses down by the waterfront?”

  Marcus nodded.

  Now I knew why I’d thought I’d seen Wallace somewhere before. Maggie and I had gone to a meeting about his pitch to the town. He hadn’t been there, but there had been a photo of the man inside the information packet we’d received.

  “Way to make a good impression,” Derek said with an offhand shrug.

  Ethan came back to the table then, dropped into the chair across from me and grinned. “That was cool,” he said, his face flushed, eyes gleaming. “Man, those guys are good.” He looked at Derek. “That guitar is a Takamine?” It wasn’t really a question.

  Derek leaned an elbow on the table and smiled. “It is. I did like the way it sounds.”

  Ethan laughed. “So do I see one in your future?”

  Derek shook his head. “Liam starts college in the fall, remember?” He glanced at Marcus and me. “I never went to college. Not gonna happen to my kid. So no new guitars for his old man until he makes it big. My old Gibson is good enough for me.”

  Derek was a good enough musician that I felt certain he could have gotten music out of half a dozen rubber bands stretched over an empty cereal box. Ethan was watching me, I realized then, sprawled in his chair, a grin on his face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Just waiting for you to say ‘I told you so.’ You’re getting slow in your old age, big sister.”

  “I figured the ‘I told you so’ was self-evident.” I leaned back in my own seat, copying his body language.

  Ethan laughed. “This calls for a beer,” he said.

  The words were barely out of his mouth when our waiter appeared at the table with two pitchers of beer and a big basket heaped with spicy crispy fries.

  “Thank you,” I said to Marcus. He must have stopped at the bar on his way back to the table. My fries and the drinks had been forgotten in the aftermath of Derek’s altercation with the drunken man.

  “I didn’t order anything,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. We didn’t order any of that,” I said to the waiter.

  “This is from Mr. King,” he said as he set the two pitchers in the center of the table. He put the fries in front of me. I glanced over at the bar. Zach, Maggie’s bartender friend, lifted a hand in acknowledgment and smiled as though he’d been the one to send the fries and not Keith.

  I snagged one French fry. They were crispy, hot and perfectly spiced. I could feel the heat on my tongue. I leaned sideways, caught Keith’s attention and mouthed a thank-you. That got me a warm smile in return. Keith wasn’t a demonstrative man. I realized the man with the service dog must be someone special to him.

  Marcus and I got up to dance after I finished my basket of fries. He caught my hand and pulled me against him.

  “Hey, this isn’t one of those middle school clinch songs,” I said, looking up into his gorgeous blue eyes. The band was doing their version of Bon Jovi’s “Livin on a Prayer.” I could see Maggie dancing with abandon, arms high over her head.

  “Number one, I don’t care,” Marcus said, his warm breath tickling my hair. “Number two, what is a ‘middle school clinch song’?”

  “One of those slow songs they’d play at school dances back in seventh grade. The girl would put her head on the guy’s shoulder and basically they’d just sway back and forth to the music.”

  “I never did that.”

  I tipped my head back to look at him. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” he said. “In seventh grade I still hadn’t had my growth spurt and my mom cut my hair—bowl bangs. There wasn’t one girl in the seventh grade who would have gotten this close to me back then.”

  I stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “Their loss,” I said. It was hard to imagine a short version of Marcus with hair that looked like his mother had stuck a dish on his head to cut it. This Marcus had a smile that made women take a second look, and an honest-to-goodness six-pack.

  Since it seemed we were going to keep dancing this close, I decided to just enjoy the warmth of his hand against my back and the way he smelled like citrusy aftershave and Juicy Fruit gum.

  “Thank you for handling that drunk,” I said. “What did you and Brady say to him?”

  “I pointed out that I could arrest him for public intoxication and Brady added that I could add a charge for animal cruelty. He wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t see if things went badly for Derek they’d also go badly for him.”

  “Did he know you recognized him?” I asked. “I can’t help thinking that it doesn’t exactly make his case for the town to give him a deal on that piece of property down on the waterfront if he’s going around getting drunk and kicking service dogs.”

  Marcus shrugged. “I don’t know. I asked him his name and he just laughed. Brady is the one who recognized him. I didn’t want to escalate things by pushing for his ID. He probably thought it was funny that he was able to get away with acting like an idiot. And to be fair, maybe he was just having an off night. It happens.”

  He pulled me a little closer. “You know, I think I would have liked middle school clinch songs if you’d been at my middle school.”

  “I would have danced with you,” I said.

  “Even with my quasi–Tom Petty haircut?”

  “That was the look you were going for?”

  He reached over and tucked a stray strand of my hair behind my ear. “I was. I’m not really sure my mother even knew who Tom Petty was.”

  “Even if you’d had a haircut like Richard Petty the race-car driver I would have danced with you,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow and a slow smile spread across his face. “For future reference, flattery works on me.”

  I gave his hand a squeeze. “Good to know,” I said.

  Off to my right I could see Maggie dancing with Brady. To my left the boys were still around the table, talking. I could almost see the energy radiating from Ethan, one hand wrapped around his beer, the other punctuating his sentences with sharp movements slicing through the air. He was like our mom. Performing energized them both.

  We stayed for the band’s second set and then headed home. Brady offered to drop off Milo and Derek at the bed-and-breakfast where they were staying but it was a nice night—clear and just a couple of degrees below fre
ezing and they decided to walk down. Marcus, Ethan and I squeezed into the front seat of my truck.

  “Is there going to be kissing?” Ethan asked, when I pulled in the driveway at Marcus’s house. He squished his face and pulled his shoulders up around his ears. He was sitting in the middle between Marcus and me.

  “Yes, there’s going to be kissing.” I leaned across him, covering his eyes with one hand, and gave Marcus a quick kiss.

  “I’ll call you after practice,” he said.

  Marcus was helping coach the girls’ high school hockey team. They were just one win away from making it to the state finals.

  I nodded.

  “Good to see you, Ethan,” he added and climbed out of the truck.

  “Is it safe to look?” Ethan asked. I’d already dropped my hand. He opened one eye, squinting at me. “I don’t want to see anything that might scar my psyche. I’m very sensitive.”

  “You’re very something,” I said. I straightened up and put the truck in gear.

  Ethan slugged my shoulder with a loose fist and laughed. “C’mon, Kathleen, you know you’ve missed me.”

  “Like a root canal,” I countered as I backed out of the driveway. “Like fingernails on a chalkboard.” We’d been doing this routine for years.

  “Do they still have chalkboards?” Ethan asked.

  “Like a colonoscopy. Like Mom’s hot cross buns.” Our mother’s hot cross buns were legendary. They looked like they belonged in an issue of Bon Appétit. But they were harder than a concrete paver. Dad had literally chipped a tooth on one of them, although as far as Mom was concerned the tooth had a weak spot and the fact that it broke when he took a bite of—or at least tried to take a bite of—one of her hot cross buns was just an unfortunate coincidence.

  Ethan narrowed his eyes at me. “Ooooh, Mom’s hot cross buns. Burn.”