Finding My Thunder

by Diane Munier

  By lunch time I was developing a system. I didn’t have to worry about Lonnie making me a fool, he’d done worse to Danny a couple of times so we were equally made to feel stupid.

  I figured Danny would be ready to quit, but it didn’t seem to phase him as he’d been by the desk a couple of times, once to pull off my bandana, another time to say that rat ran under my desk. He did this when Lonnie was out back and both times he was still smiling.

  Then I remembered how the coaches would scream at him in the games and I knew his step-dad Paul wasn’t soft either, not in the stands he wasn’t.

  So I tried not to feel the burning on the side of my face, the one facing the shop. I didn’t know if he looked at me, but I looked at him when I could.

  Robert was more forth coming. He wanted to get my lunch.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  Danny stood there wiping his hands on a rag. When Robert went out he said, “Guess you look hungry.”

  I smiled. He went to his car and came back rattling a bag. He sat on a chair nearby and pulled out two sandwiches. “Hey, you want one?”

  I shook my head. “You’ll just take it back,” I said and we laughed.

  Lonnie was gone looking at a job. “He drinks all day,” Danny laughed.

  “I know it,” I said. Now Danny did.

  “He sleeps here,” he said.

  “I wondered.” Well, I thought he was at Loreena’s. Who would want to sleep here? Yet he preferred this to coming home.

  “On cardboard in the back.”

  “Gross.”

  He shrugged and laughed and chewed. “Come on and take a bite.” He rolled his chair closer and held his sandwich in front of my mouth. “It’s Spam,” he sang.

  I pushed his hand back and looked at it. “There ain’t no animal called Spam,” I whispered.

  “Go on,” he said, his eyes on my lips. We could hear Lonnie pull up in back and Danny’s eyes shot there then back to me. “Hurry up.”

  I took a nibble just to make him happy, and it seemed to. He rolled back to where he was then and took a bite over mine. He smiled big while he chewed.

  “How come you seem so happy?” I whispered.

  He shrugged and went on eating his gross Spam. “Why not?”

  Lonnie came in then. First thing he noticed was they’d changed his radio. He stalked over there and set it back. Then he came forward holding a stack of mail. He walked between our two chairs and threw this on the desk messing up one of my piles. “You keep your damn hands off my radio,” he said to Danny.

  “Wasn’t me,” Danny said eating, but it was him and Daddy knew.

  “Robert knows better,” Daddy said.

  “Yeah sorry,” Danny said and he winked at me.

  “Get that ate and get back to work.” Lonnie said, then he went out the front door. He ate at Kenny’s bar down the street most times but more likely he drank his lunch.

  I started to sort through the mail and Danny finished and got up and pretty soon I heard the radio back on rock and roll. I looked over my shoulder at him and he stared back and grinned.

  “Shit will fly,” I said. “I mean it.”

  “Let it fly,” he said, and he put on the goggles and turned on the buffer. The radio was loud playing “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and Danny’s voice chimed in with John, George and Paul and maybe Ringo.

  Much as I feared for him I had to smile. I didn’t want him to get fired but it was kind of inspiring.

  Finding My Thunder 6

  When Lonnie came in after lunch the Stones were singing. I was about to chew my bottom lip off, but I kept pretending I was paying attention to what I was doing. I’d tallied all the bills Lonnie owed and I was going over and over that balance because I surely had it wrong.

  Lonnie walked all righteous to that radio and shut it off. “What did I tell you?” he yelled at Danny.

  I was glad that Robert walked in then, toothpick in his mouth. He saw Lonnie standing there glaring at Danny. He looked at me and smiled like, what the hell is this?

  Danny kept running the buffer like he didn’t hear Lonnie and even when he pulled it off the tank he was polishing he kept it running while he stared at Lonnie.

  “You on something boy?” Lonnie yelled. He marched to the plug in and yanked the cord out of the wall. That machine died and it was quiet.

  “You messin’ with me, boy or you just daft?”

  “Daft?” Danny repeated, looking at Lonnie like he should explain it.

  Lonnie had his hands on his hips, “You touch my radio one more time I will break your hand,” he said.

  I put my hand over my mouth.

  “Holy shit, Lonnie,” Robert said pushing off of the doorway and walking toward them.

  Lonnie pointed at Robert. “You stay out of this shit brain,” he said.

  “It’s just a damn radio,” Robert said.

  “You want to shut your mouth?” Lonnie said. Then he pointed to me, “I blame you. This ain’t no place for a girl. You get your stuff together and get home.”

  I stood up quick. “Um Lonnie…could you come here for a minute?”

  He mimicked me as he stalked to the desk where I stood. I knew this wasn’t a good time, but I had to pull his evil mouth off of Danny.

  “I’ve had nothing but trouble since you come in here. So you just pack up your shit and get the hell out and you stay home with your crazy Mama and that crazy one lives behind and don’t you come back.” I knew he was glad to turn it on to me…I knew he thought me weaker.

  So I took in a shaky breath and let it out. Danny had laid that buffer down but I turned my back so he wouldn’t think this had a thing to do with him. I picked up the paper I’d been messing with, those figures I’d gone over and over. “Lonnie I added up what you owe.” I handed him the paper. He glared around at everything and I pointed where he should look. I pointed to the total. Thirty-two thousand dollars.

  “What the hell you think you’re doin’?” he said swallowing hard, glaring at me. “What the hell you doin’ gettin’ in my business? You don’t stick your nose in my business. Who the hell you think you are you little bitch? Nobody told you to do this. What you gonna do with this? This is for her…and that colored. You’re spyin’ on me. You get the hell out of here. You get out.” He waved that paper around, that big vein throbbing in his forehead.

  My heart was racing. I put a hand on the desk to keep the room from tilting. “I also figured what you’re owed…but you don’t bill like you need to. I think you’re doing work you ain’t getting paid for. You don’t have a healthy cash flow…money in…money out. I figure there’s at least twelve thousand you’re getting stiffed for right now. You got the invoices written out but I don’t see where the money came in.”

  He glared at me for another thirty, forty seconds, then he slapped that paper on his leg, yelled beyond me for Danny and Robert to get back to work he wasn’t paying them to stand around. Then he said, “Oh, you gonna use that on me? You think you can?”

  I turned to see Danny laying a pipe back on the table. “That’s just your guilty conscience,” Danny said.

  Lonnie went to him quick. “You better believe if it wasn’t for Paul you’d been out of here the minute you touched my radio. You ever think you are man enough to use something like that on me you come on then.”

  They were staring off, and Robert said, “Boss, calm down. He’s a good kid. He didn’t know what he was seeing. Calm down, man.”

  “You ever…ever pull a weapon on me…better have the guts to use it,” Lonnie said up close to Danny’s face.

  “Yes sir,” Danny said. He looked away then and picked up the buffer and got back to work.

  Lonnie stood for another minute glaring at him.

  Robert kept watching them while he worked until Lonnie turned away and stalked back to me. My legs were shaking so I eased back to the chair.

  I did what I was supreme at, talking normal when one of my parents was acting like
a maniac, “I got what you’re owed from purchase orders you had on the desk here. But if you don’t get an order and you don’t remember what you did then comes time to bill you might forget something. If someone comes in here wanting you to fix something…like a chair…or something on their truck…you have to write out a purchase order.”

  “I ain’t got time to do that.”

  “Then you lose your time. Time is money. So then you lose your money,” I said, just the way they taught me at school. I remembered liking the order of accounting, the way it worked.

  “I got purchase orders somewhere,” he said and I felt the first ray of hope. “I know how to run a business,” he said, “but I got to do everything myself.”

  “Yes sir. That must be really hard,” I said, and he looked at me briefly…suspicious.

  “What your Mama and that one behind never understood is the load I got to carry…dragging you all along with me…and all I hear is the bitchin’ and complainin’.”

  I had such a desire to pick up one of the binders off his desk and smash him in the face I had to tuck my hands under my thighs. “That…must be really hard. See…I never knew that. But…I want to help. I…don’t want to be like…Mama. I want to help you.”

  “I don’t need your help,” he said. “This ain’t no place for a girl. You’re causing me all kinds of trouble already. I ain’t got time for this.”

  “I’m just here to help. I’ll keep it really nice here and keep it all in order.”

  “And you’ll go home and tell them all my business.”

  “No sir. I don’t talk to them much. I won’t tell them nothing.”

  “I can’t keep these bucks in line with you here,” he said.

  “I don’t care about them.”

  “That’s not it. They’re showin’ off cause of you.”

  “That will stop. I promise. Let me do this. You’re the only sane parent I got. I don’t want to spend my summer with Mama again when I could be a help to you.”

  He didn’t care about that. Everything I was saying was a lie and I hated his guts and I had to create a new me to get around him but he was a lion and I was throwing him every kind of meat I could get my hands on.

  “I can’t babysit you,” he said.

  “I ain’t asking for it. I’ll get your phone.”

  “I don’t answer it. They all want money.”

  “I’ll take care of it. We don’t want to miss calls for jobs. See you got to answer it.”

  “You just take a message, you don’t ever tell them I’m here.”

  “Yes sir. And if it’s for a job you can call back, see?”

  He laughed, and I don’t think I’d ever been the source of so much as a smile from him before. “You ain’t tellin’ me nothin’. What do you think I’ve been doin’ all this time? You come once a week maybe.”

  “No. Every day. Please. I’ll bring my books and I’ll read. I won’t bother you. I’ll keep up with things…do whatever you say. I won’t be no trouble. Please.”

  I had never spoken this way to him. I could feel Danny’s eyes on me, but with that buffer going he couldn’t hear me at least.

  Lonnie paced around and lit a cigarette. He was staring out the window puffing on that smoke. “All my life I been alone,” he said.

  I managed not to guffaw, but I found such a personal statement kind of riveting.

  “Your mama crawling up my ass…that one in back…those eyes…like a dumb beast staring at me. Judging me like…what a damn thing to have to live with.”

  I tried to let all the crap coming out of his mouth go by and I waited for that yes.

  “You can come in…but when I say to hit the road you get out and don’t you bother me or nag at me.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And you don’t be bothering these boys.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “We’ll try it. And I don’t want no whining.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Shit,” he said and he dropped his smoke and ground it under his boot, and I had my back to him and I smiled and as he walked away, all the way to the door and he went outside and I looked at Danny and he was looking back and after a few seconds he smiled at me and he winked…and I smiled too.

  Finding My Thunder 7

  Maybe there was something to Lonnie calling them the young bucks or something cause they were both after me to ride me home, first Robert as I came out the front door and his truck was cutting across the sidewalk next to the building, him coming from the alley. I said, “No thanks, I need the walk.”

  Then Danny once I started to walk. He stopped the purple car in the street, pulled beside me against the curb pointed the wrong way and him not caring I guessed. “C’mon, Grunier,” he said.

  “I better not,” I said and I was feeling a little frustrated. Or pissed. Definitely some pissed. But what I meant was we needed to stay clear so Lonnie wouldn’t see and think we were plotting. Or they were showing off for me like he accused.

  “Lonnie’s coming by any minute to get more beer so you need to go on,” I said to Danny. Lonnie had hit the beer really hard after all that went on that afternoon, mostly because of that total I showed him. I didn’t think he’d ever added it up before, well I knew he didn’t, just lived day to day not facing anything real.

  “I don’t care about that,” Danny said.

  I stopped and glanced at the shop. “Well I do. You shouldn’t of touched his radio. He might of….”

  He laughed like a smart ass. “He ain’t gonna do nothing…but bitch.”

  “Don’t defy him like that.”

  “Just get in,” he said.

  “No. He can’t see us.”

  “What’d he say about me? I ain’t good enough?”

  I was shaking my head. Was he crazy? “Good enough for what? He hired you, didn’t he?”

  “He hired me cause he owes Paul money. This is a punishment for me. I’m being punished. Paul got me this job.”

  This hurt me for some reason. What did I think, he came here for me? What did I expect.

  “Hilly? Are you gettin’ in?”

  I shook my head and took off walking.

  I was worn out. Up and down and sick of it. I walked quick but Danny pulled along beside me.

  “Just go,” I said waving my hand and picking up the pace until I was practically jogging. I cared too much about him. I would always be hurt around him and I didn’t need more hurt.

  Bixby, our local Barny Fife passed going in the other direction. He blared the siren at Danny. That meant Danny needed to correct himself and get out of the on-coming lane, not that there were many cars using Main Street around here but it was Bixby’s job to uphold the law.

  “Alright,” Danny yelled and he took off then.

  I slowed down and went back to walking. Lonnie hadn’t come out of the shop yet. I went in the corner market to buy something for supper. I had the two silver dollars I’d stolen from Lonnie’s room. I’d been too embarrassed to give them to Danny that morning when he’d bought me breakfast. And I had another two dollars I’d found in a cup on top of Lonnie’s old refrigerator at the shop. I’d stole that too. And I planned to steal more. Much, much more.

  After I’d bought a couple cans of dog food, a pack of sliced American cheese and a loaf of bread, I tried to turn over in my mind why I was so upset with Danny. He had provoked Lonnie putting himself at great risk. He had picked up a pipe to fight Lonnie…for me. But here was the kicker, he had only taken the job as a punishment…something between Paul and himself. So he was here to be a smart ass and that was no good.

  I already had enough unpredictable people in my life. Danny in the mix just upped the ante for more catastrophe. His lack of care for how crazy Lonnie was would get him hurt. This would end badly.

  And Lonnie, horrible as he was, I needed him. I had a crazy mother to care for and it was wrong to let so much of the responsibility for us fall on Naomi. So as much of a son of a bitch as Lonnie was, I needed to make s
ure he didn’t end up in jail or the hospital because if him and Danny got into it….

  That evening Sooner enjoyed her two cans of food. I wished I had more. Naomi had been there and left a pot of soup on the stove. Mama ate a bowl and spent the night quiet. She fell asleep earlier than usual and I closed her door and went to my room and my records.

  I was listening to Joni Mitchell and writing a poem when Danny came around. I shouldn’t be so surprised this time, but he was on the porch roof and standing at my window and that was pretty shocking.

  I said, “What are you doing?”

  And he said, “Can’t run away now, can you?”

  So we looked at each other through that black screen, and I unhooked it and lifted it and he raised it higher and climbed in. He carried an album. He seemed really big in my room, like it got smaller so quick. He handed me the record and I backed up to my bed and sat down and looked at it as he walked around and looked at my stuff. I didn’t have much, but it meant something, what I had, and he went through my few albums and my stack of 45’s and he put on his record, “Fresh Cream,” so I could hear this guitar player Eric Clapton, he said.

  I got up and closed my notebook and stuck it on my desk. He sat on my bed where I’d been, and I sat on my desk chair and then he leaned back and took my pillow and crammed it under his head and folded his hands on his stomach. I couldn’t stop staring.

  We just listened to the music for a while and it was amazing. I reached out and turned the desk lamp off so he could get the full effect of my black light and he looked at my peace sign right away and stared at it.

  Wonderful as it was to be with him like this, I couldn’t relax. But after a while I went and laid on the rug like I usually did, and I lit a cigarette. I heard him move and he sat near me and took a cigarette. He struck a match, glowed on his face, and he sucked that thing to life and he leaned his back against the foot of my bed. We were like that, sharing the bean bag ashtray and just listening and sometimes he stared at the floor but sometimes at me.

  After we finished our cigarettes he moved the ashtray aside and shifted and stretched along side of me. He looked at me for a while, and we were just like that, just looking at each other and the music played.