“Nah, I’m good.” He adjusted the lawn chair against the house wall so he’d face the sun, and he puffed on the pipe while he lit it.
A sight I’d grown up watching. Other than his body slowly failing him, nothing had changed. From the pipe to the denim coveralls.
“I’ll bring back lunch when I return the truck,” I told him. “You take it easy now, you hear?”
He laughed gruffly. “Get on outta here, boy. I’m fine. It’s a good day. I feel like I’m fifty!”
Yeah, well, he was seventy-eight, and a stiff breeze could topple him over.
“Here, take this crap with you.” He extended the paper.
I smirked and grabbed it from him. “See you in a few hours.”
He nodded and waved me off.
Just as I climbed into the truck, he hollered after me.
“Tell Marlene to call me more often! I never get to see the kids!”
I acknowledged him with a two-finger wave before I closed the door and started the engine. Getting my sister to call Pops more often would be about as easy as getting Pops to work less. We did see her more since she’d relocated from DC to Seattle, but the woman had her hands full. Two boys under ten, her own business, plus whatever yahoo she was currently dating.
The next couple hours disappeared as I made deliveries to various general stores, bakeries, and distilleries. It was the small business orders I was dealing with today. Local places that used Pops’s produce in their pastries, jams, and wines.
My mind kept going back to that goddamn article, and it bugged the shit out of me. Thank fuck we lived in a small town. It would be forgotten in no time. I wasn’t even sure that many people read the local paper, but I’d still had my hopes up when we’d been brainstorming at the Quad. We needed more money.
At five o’clock, I pulled into an empty parking spot near the entrance of the Quad. A few kids were standing outside the one-story brick building pretending as if they hadn’t just thrown away their cigarettes.
I pushed down the kickstand and dismounted my bike, then removed the helmet.
“You know I talk to your mother, Alex,” I called. I felt for the woman. Single, husband split, four kids. Alex was the troublemaker she and I were trying to pull away from the wrong crowd. A summer job was helping during the day, and sometimes he came over to my place and walked my dogs.
He shot me a scowl. “Nobody likes a snitch. And I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
I snorted and locked the bike before heading toward them. “Quit playing and put out the smokes properly. Now.” They’d thrown them into the bushes, and we didn’t need to make the evening news. All week, they’d been warning of wildfires.
They did as told, all while grumbling and being regular moody teenagers, and I went inside.
I’d volunteered at the Quad on and off for the past twenty years, and I still got the same feeling when I walked in. Here, I could do good. Here, I could be useful. And the results were instant when you worked with kids.
Since the youth center was located in the poorest district of town, the kids who showed up here after school and during breaks often had no other choice. Some fled toxic home environments, some lived with a single parent who was always working, some struggled in school and found tutors here, and some got bullied in school but had found friends at the Quad.
The building had once been a small school. Then to accommodate for the growing population, new schools had been built, and my grandmother had bought this place. She’d turned it into what it was today. Three of the classrooms had become six smaller areas for our staff, as well as for counseling, the kitchen in the old faculty lounge had received an upgrade, and the rest was open. Wide open. So when someone yelled across the Quad, across the pool table area, across the study corner, across the gaming nook, across the café…everyone heard it.
“Look what the cat dragged in, a beach cowboy!”
I had two options here, as everyone looked up from what they were doing. Approximately twenty teenagers. Three staff members, among them a grinning Dominic Cleary, our boss and my alleged friend. I could own it. I could own the article and not become the butt of so many future jokes. Because truth be told, I’d found it fucking cute when a little girl on the beach had given me the nickname four or five years ago. And I didn’t want it ruined. Or, second option, I show my chagrin. In which case, people would find it funny, and the jokes would line up.
“You and your lily-white ass jealous of the attention I get, kid?” I replied and jerked my chin at him.