Hate You Not

The men are dressed like they’re going somewhere completely different. Ratty T-shirts, mud-stained jeans, and big work boots that are caked with red mud. One dude’s got some vines around his ankle, like he just tromped through the kudzu on his way here. I know he didn’t walk here, though, because no one seems to walk in Georgia. Most people rolled up tonight in big trucks with hulking off-road tires.

Including Shawn—June’s brother—whom the kids and I encountered at the ticket stand.

Shawn is six-foot-five, with big bones and a beer belly, kind brown eyes, and a receding hairline he keeps covered by a Georgia Dawgs ball cap. He’s wearing a white undershirt, dark, stiff-looking jeans, and what I think are work boots. When we first encounter him, he gets down on one knee and holds his arms open for the kids.

“Hey there, aces,” he says as he hugs them.

“What’s an ace?” Margot asks.

“You know, a flying ace!”

“What’s a flying ace?” Oliver asks.

“A brave fighter pilot!”

“Who is he fighting?”

“It’s a she,” Margot says.

Shawn throws his head back and laughs like they’re the funniest things he’s ever seen. Then he stands up, holding his hand out for me. “Hey there. I’m the brother.” He grins, and I notice he’s got freckles on his face.

Turns out, Shawn got all the friendly genes that skipped June. The dude’s just fun. He walks the kids and me all around the bleachers, which are cased in by white-washed concrete blocks and covered with a tin roof. He introduces us to what feels like must be everyone in Heat Springs. The men shake my hand or slap my back, and some of the women look me over when they think I’m not looking. Everyone is excessively friendly. It’s a shock, after the reception I got from June. I remind myself that was my fault, though.

Since my new strategy involves winning her over, I play nice with everyone I meet. Thirty minutes in, we’ve played horseshoes plus that game where you swing a ball bat and bash a machine that lights up at the top if you hit it hard enough. I won a stuffed beaver, of all damn things, and Oliver and Margot are taking turns holding it.

We find a place to sit on the metal bleachers, and Shawn disappears and then returns holding a Miller Lite for me and two bags of what appear to be wet peanuts for the kids.

“Oh, and here.” He pulls two juice boxes out of his pocket. “Got y’all some lemonade too.”

The wet peanuts are, apparently, boiled peanuts. Shawn pushes me to try one, and to my shock, I like them. He’s so entertained by my enthusiasm that he gets me my own bag.

“You’re a great date, man.”

He gives me a funny look for half a second before we’re both laughing.

“I got a girlfriend,” he says in his low drawl.

“Not into me?”

He gives me another wide-eyed look, and I snicker. “Too taboo to talk about that shit down here below the Mason-Dixon line?”

“Naw. I’m on board the love is love train.” Margot drops the beaver while jamming the straw in her juice box, and he scoops it off the cement floor and holds it toward me with a shake. “I just want me one of these.”

A crackling sound comes over the loudspeakers, but then the country music comes back. He shrugs. “It’s pretty backwoods around here,” he says. “Especially with tech shit.” Of course, it sounds like he’s saying ’round here. I try to keep the smile off my lips, and he elbows me like we’re old friends.

“You laughin’ at our accents, brother?”

“I’m not laughing.”

“You appreciating them?”

“Oh yeah.”

He snickers. “Sure you are.”

“I am.”

“You sound like a guy on…what’s it?” he says, adjusting his cap. “Oh, the NPR.”

I laugh. The NPR. “You think so?”

He takes a swig of his beer. “Oh yeah. Nice, clean accent.”

“Is yours dirty?”

“You know it.”

“So you’re a trucker?”

“Naw, I own the trucks. I let other people drive them.”

“What’s that like?” I ask.

“I’ve got a few good ones. But some of them are pains in the ass.” He glances down at the kids. “Pain in the rear end.” He nods at Oliver, who looks confused.

“You have a pain in your rear end?” Margot asks loudly.

Everyone around us laughs, and Shawn covers his face with his cap.

As he’s fitting it back atop his head, a tallish dark-haired woman and two well-dressed kids walk up. The woman sits beside me like we know each other, and for a second, I stare at her. There’s something familiar about her, but I can’t say what. Then she leans behind me to give Shawn a half-hug, and I realize she must be June’s other sister, Mary Helen. What were her kids’ names? Charlie and Jack?

I try to get a peek at them, but then the woman wraps her arm around me. “You must be the wicked interloper.”