Wild at Whiskey Creek

by Julie Anne Long

  And maybe the only way to win this game was to simply stop playing it.

  And as he stared at that bulletin board of The Baby Owls, three guys who got a wondrous break, the kind of break Glory deserved, too, his radio crackled into life.

  “Got another call, Eli, from Cora Ludlow at Heavenly Shores. She thought she heard a loud argument. Someone was shouting the F word.”

  That was almost funny.

  “Be right there,” he said evenly.

  Since he was already right there, he got out and walked about a hundred paces upward, into the pines, down into a clearing, and fixed his eyes on one spot.

  And when a shadow appeared, and Glory stepped into the rectangle cast by the porch light and disappeared into her house, he exhaled and turned back to this car. Despite everything, nothing would be okay again if she wasn’t.

  Chapter 12

  She woke up because the place between her nose and upper lip was strangely hot. She opened one eye and discovered it was because her blinds were haphazardly closed and the sun was lasering down on her in that spot.

  She opened her other eye and then shut them again with a groan. She’d had worse hangovers, hangovers that felt like tympani, but not for quite some time. This one felt like a huge cotton ball packed around her brain, somewhat muffling her ability to think.

  Alas, things started to come back to her a little too quickly.

  The Baby Owls show was tonight, and she was due to work an afternoon shift.

  And from there, everything else from last night sifted back.

  She flung a melodramatic arm over her eyes and she groaned in abject humiliation.

  Eli had declined the opportunity to drunkenly hump her in the front seat of his cruiser, and then she had yelled at him.

  Correction: He’d wanted to hump her, he’d just opted to do the right thing instead.

  Last night it had scalded her pride. This morning, dear mother of God, was she ever grateful nothing had happened, because he was right.

  But why did he always have to be right?

  And witness to her most ignominious moments?

  Good night’s work, all in all, Greenleaf, she told herself.

  She crawled out of bed, turned her tiger toward the wall so it wouldn’t have to look at her, then climbed back in.

  Then again, it was entirely possible he was getting his needs met by Blondie McBlonderson.

  Or would be soon. Given that Glory had gotten him hot and hard and then departed in a huff.

  And why shouldn’t Eli enjoy a less . . . eventful . . . woman? She couldn’t picture Bethany hurling things at billboards, because, let’s face it, how many sane women would?

  And for that matter . . . why shouldn’t she explore the possibilities presented by a gorgeous actor with a Porsche?

  As this train of thought was hardly soothing, she finally dragged her sorry butt out of her bedroom and made for the kitchen, yawning and calling “Mom?”

  No answer. Her mom was already out and about.

  Fortunately, at some point her mom had bought more coffee. The budget-stretching kind that tasted like burned sawdust and came in a can that might as well read “ACME” on the side.

  She troweled about two cups’ worth into the French press and put on the kettle. That ought to clear the cotton out of her head.

  She peered blearily around the kitchen and her gaze stopped at the kitchen table.

  She wasn’t surprised to see a note from John-Mark there. She was only surprised he hadn’t pinned it there with a dagger. She could see a black row of exclamation points from where she stood.

  She peered down at it.

  You drank FOUR of my Mickey’s??????!!!!!!!!!!! I said one! ONE!

  He’d drawn a little angry face, with hair sticking straight up all over the head, bushy eyebrows, and fangs, for some reason.

  P.S. My car needs a whole new carburetor! Doesn’t that suck? Help. $$$$$$$$

  P.P.S. Because fangs are fun to draw, that’s why.

  P.P.P.S. I took Dad #3’s old leaf blower and I’m going to try to pawn it. Will replace. We’ll just have to re-learn how to use a rake. I think they have classes at The Learning Annex.

  Below it he’d drawn a rectangle and labeled it:

  Carburetor donation/good karma fund.

  She studied the note, mulling just the right response, and then very neatly wrote under his rectangle.

  One? I thought you said four.

  Xoxo your sister Glory

  Now that, that was funny. She grinned, picturing his face when he read that.

  Her smile faded. He wasn’t going to get squat for that leaf blower. And John-Mark needed that car to get to work and the absence of an exclamation point after help told her he was maybe a little scared.

  Which scared her, too.

  Because scared people get desperate.

  Then again, bless him, John-Mark had less imagination and more patience than Jonah, he was willing to work a little harder, and he probably had less pride, too. His friends were primarily dorks, and some of them even had brains.

  But that little dull headache between her eyes throbbed a little harder, and that’s because her shoulder muscles had bunched up as befit . . . what had Eli called her? The linchpin. As if he’d actually known this for some time, and maybe wasn’t crazy about it. As if maybe it was something that bothered him a little. Somehow she’d always thought of her family as a single heaving, entropic entity, not in terms of who played what part.

  But he was right: it’s not like her mom was helpless.

  But she was the one who had stepped up to hold it together. At the cost of her own dreams and her own self.

  She sucked in a breath. Encroaching on her awareness again was that steep drop and murky darkness. She knew it had to do with Jonah, and she had a hunch the blackness included every emotion, the way black included every color.

  One of them, and she could feel it in the band tightening across her gut, was big anger.

  She didn’t want to feel it.

  She headed for her jacket instead, hanging on the hook just inside the front entry. She fished in the jacket pocket and found two wilted dollars and laid them on John-Mark’s rectangle.

  And then she took her “coffee,” such as it was, back to her bedroom and pulled her guitar out of its case. She pulled it into her arms for a brief little good-morning cuddle, then leaned back in her bed and sighed and strummed a C major. The vitamin B6 of chords. Big and bright. She was trying to wake herself up.

  She followed that with a friskily arpeggiated G major.

  She decided she’d teach Annelise those two chords. And just in case Eden decided to unclench and sent Annelise over, she’d bring her guitar with her to work today.

  She played the C and the G again. And if she wanted to, she could lay an endless variety of melodies over those two chords. But they weren’t what she needed right now.

  She’d have to fish around until she found the chords that both fit and would purge her complicated mood, the ones that would coax out just the right words for just the right song, because she could feel that a song wanted out.

  She leaped to the opposite end of the mood spectrum and strummed an almost comically gloomy D minor add 9. Then fingerpicked it. Beautiful, dirgey little chord. Monroe Porter and his death-metal friends would have sighed in pleasure.

  “That’s a pretty tune, baby doll,” her mother called, her keys jingling as she let herself into the house. “A little like ‘Greensleeves.’”

  This was so patently ridiculous and wrong it cheered Glory up perversely.

  She got up and closed the door to her room.

  She sat down on the floor again, leaned back against the old double bed, the one she thought she would have left behind a year ago, stared out the window at that old tree she’d stood under when she’d sung “Hey Hey What Can I Do” to Eli on his birthday, and at her stuffed tiger, whose striped butt was facing her and whose face was pointed out the window in the directi
on of the highway.

  She was just going to have to sit still for a bit and feel, no matter how uncomfortable she currently found that prospect.

  He had said such beautiful things last night. Eli had learned early on to speak with truth and economy thanks to his stutter. She knew he never believed he was eloquent. Glory knew better.

  Tentatively, she laid her fingers on the strings, in the shape of a D major sus 2. And trailed her fingers down them; more of a caress than a strum. It was wistful but not dark. Portentous, in that it promised something soaring. Restrained, but could be built into something, built and built in layers like the tide coming in.

  That familiar little tingle told her. Yeah, now she was feeling it.

  She went to a G major with the added D.

  With her foot she tapped a rhythm that was very nearly martial. And just sang whatever came into her head.

  Are you afraid to touch me, darlin’?

  Are you afraid you’ll burn?

  You’ll have to get in line, darlin’

  You’ll have to wait your turn

  Yeah everybody wants me, darlin’

  But one day you’ll finally learn

  I only ever wanted you

  Because, baby, I’m a badass rose

  Baby, I’m the kind that grows

  Stronger when it storms

  And weaker in your arms

  I might cut you, make you bleed

  But I’m all you’ll ever need

  Don’t give up on me

  Oh, don’t give up on me

  Damn.

  She laid the guitar aside gingerly, as if it were a chainsaw she’d just turned off. She had a knot in her throat.

  Those last few lines had come out of nowhere. Odd how the song had swung from taunting, sexy bravado to something like a plea.

  But then her guitar had always felt like the divining rod that helped her get to the truth.

  And maybe it had just revealed something she needed to know.

  Chapter 13

  “Don’t smack anybody if they grab your ass, Glory. Leave the corporal punishment to me.” Glenn was running down a list of The Baby Owls show agenda items and this, apparently was on it.

  “You think someone will grab my ass?” Swell.

  Glenn had rounded up the troops to brief them on how “An Evening with The Baby Owls” (pretentious as hell, Glory thought—they were hardly rock’s elder statesmen—but the manager insisted that all mentions of the event, including the notice in the Hellcat Canyon Chronicle online and any local radio announcements, refer to it that way). The crew for the evening—Glenn, Sherrie, Glory, Giorgio, and Truck Donegal—were sitting together inside the Misty Cat like an earnest prayer circle.

  “We’ve never had a big show yet where some jerk hasn’t tried to fondle a waitress. So yes. I do think someone will try to grab your ass. And the more beer they drink—we’re going to sell gallons—the more they’ll try it. Though some of these indie band types are cheap bastards. It’s the rockers that drink the most. Remember when Blue Room came through and did an acoustic set years ago, Sherrie?”

  “We completely ran out of beer. Made a mint. We had quite a Christmas that year,” she said mistily.

  Blue Room was enormously successful now. Glory was a fan.

  Glenn had enlisted Truck Donegal to check IDs at the door. He was a huge guy with a square, handsome face, and he looked dumb and not averse to cracking the occasional skull, which wasn’t far wrong. But thanks to a little inspiration from John Tennessee McCord and to the astonishment of everyone, he’d become a pretty successful entrepreneur, and his fundamental, considerably more decent self, was shining through more and more.

  Giorgio was in charge of sound equipment, of all the microphones and the mixing board and any other equipment the band might need, though Glenn had learned they were bringing their own sound guy. Glenn was emcee and waiter; Glory and Sherrie would be the waitresses.

  A long line of The Baby Owls fans were queued outside the Misty Cat, which had room for about two hundred when packed to capacity for a show. Glory craned her head. It was a veritable sea of plaid flannel and knit caps and hipster spectacles and big woolly hipster beards. The influx of faux lumberjacks (Fauxmberjacks?) and their dates (Lumberjills? Limberjills?) meant there wasn’t a spare parking space on the entire block.

  Ping! An epiphany struck. “They look like owls! Like baby owls! Those round glasses above those woolly beards . . . They look like owls in a nest!” Glory breathed.

  “Ooooohhhhh,” everyone said simultaneously, as they all stood up to look.

  “Anyway,” Glenn continued meaningfully, and they all sat down hard again. “Sherrie already knows the dodge-the-ass-grabbers drill, and Glory, point out any culprits to me and I’ll have a stern word.” Glenn was like a grizzly bear when it came to people he cared about. “Truck will escort the customer out, if such action is warranted. No taking matters into your own hands. It could get hairy and we know how to handle this. Got it?”

  “Got it,” she said humbly. In other words, no throwing her own punches, regardless of how good she was at throwing punches.

  Truck Donegal nodded along, too. He’d actually heckled Glory once or twice at open mic nights, but that was practically part of the drill and she could handle that, no sweat. He was a peer of Jonah’s and Eli’s and he privately considered Glory sort of like that YouTube video of the little cat who hadn’t hesitated to smack the crap out of an alligator on its snout, driving it back into the water.

  He’d also long known that messing with Glory would mean messing with Eli or Jonah or both.

  “And in case things get truly hairy,” Glenn continued, “I understand Deputy Barlow will be here. With a date.” He glanced at Sherrie, who nodded. “He’ll be off duty, but of course it’s always useful to have someone present who can get someone in a full nelson as quick as a wink.”

  Ooof. Her heart felt like it had just taken a punch.

  Of course everyone knew Eli’s business. Small towns.

  But was Eli making a point by bringing Bethany?

  Or was he bringing Bethany as insurance against Glory straddling him out of the blue? Given that it must seem rather hard to predict what Glory would do lately.

  She could feel a flush begin to paint her from her collarbone upward.

  Why shouldn’t he be able to just enjoy The Baby Owls concert? She could hardly object to his presence. Then again, why couldn’t he do it alone?

  “We’ll put Eli and his date in the little V.I.P. Section,” Glenn continued. The “V.I.P. section” was basically a roped-off section near the counter, complete with some of those comfy stools, one of which Mick Macklemore had nearly brained Eli with. “We’ll bring those folks in through the back. Eden and Annelise will be there. And your friend Franco Francone called ahead, Glory, to see if we could hold a spot for him, too.”

  Well. It was shaping up to be an interesting evening. “What makes him my friend?”

  “I saw that fella preening onstage next to you after the brawl the other night. He gave you his digits on a napkin. He’s got himself a crush, kiddo,” Glenn confirmed.

  “He’s the sort that can’t go three seconds without attention from a good-looking woman,” Glory asserted.

  “Maybe so. But tag, you’re it.”

  Franco Francone wasn’t giving up, which was interesting. His presence would go some way toward ameliorating the fact that Eli would be on a “date.” She’d never realized how much she hated that word.

  “Okay,” Glenn said with finality. He leaned back and looked at the clock. “Aaaaaand . . . Break! Truck, get the doors!”

  Truck threw open the doors and they began funneling in the crowd.

  Within a half hour, the Misty Cat was teeming and actual conversation would only be held either mouth to ear or shouted from a position of inches away. Glory was kept hopping, but she did manage to see a few of her friends get in, like Casey Carson and Kayla Benoit, Monroe Porter, the death-me
tal drummer, and Marvin Wade, who had come to dance, of course.

  And the drunker everyone got, the louder it got.

  She was collecting money from a bearded guy, who looked like the type to get affectionately handsy when he was drunk, and handing off his beer when she saw Franco Francone slip in through the back hallway, ushered in by Glenn. She only had time to toss him a quick wave, which he intercepted with one of his white grins.

  No sign of Eli yet.

  And fifteen minutes before showtime, there was absolutely no sign of the band.

  Fifteen minutes after showtime there was still no sign of the band.

  Twenty minutes after showtime, when there was still no sign of the band, was when the crowd really started to get restive. In a very peculiar way.

  “HOO! HOO! HOO! HOO! HOO!”

  Glenn grabbed Glory’s arm and pulled her aside. “What the hell are they doing?”

  “They’re hooting.” Glory had read up on The Baby Owls in the internet version of Clang magazine. “Apparently that’s what they do at The Baby Owls’ shows. You know, like owls do.”

  Glenn’s eyes nearly disappeared into his head from rolling.

  “How far does this owl thing go? If they riot will they roost in my rafters? Will they crap on my floor? Will they catch rodents and spit out the bones? Not that I have any rodents,” he hastily added. “Where the hell is that damn band?”

  And then suddenly his eyes widened and he seized his phone like a gunslinger. It must have buzzed. “Finally have a text.”

  He jammed his reading glasses up onto his face. “It says, ‘Our bus broke down on I-5 in Bulgaria.’” He was still shouting at Glory.

  She frowned. “. . . the hell?” They had a Nevada City in this part of California, which was rather confusing, but not a Bulgaria.

  He scrolled. “Got another one. Oh wait. Not Bulgaria. ‘Bumfuck.’ Their bus broke down in Bumfuck. Autocorrect.”

  Bumfuck more or less accurately described huge swaths of forested Northern California, at least according to city folk. The Baby Owls were going to have to get more specific.