Beauty and the Mustache (8 page)

I checked my cell phone on
the way out of town, as I wasn’t getting any reception at the
house, and saw a text message from Elizabeth. Their plane was set
to touch down at 4:15 p.m., but I needn’t rush to pick them up
because they would get a rental car. She finished the text
with
we love you, girl
, and that made me smile.

The message helped, and
knowing that Elizabeth and Sandra were coming gave me a sense of
calm reassurance, even if it was only temporary. I felt like I was
surrounded by strangers. These brothers who I
thought
I knew were turning out to be
a mystery wrapped in an enigma, slathered in conundrum flavored
cream cheese.

Since Roscoe and I only
had each other as company for the hour drive home, I encouraged my
youngest brother—who was now six-foot-two—to dish the dirt on the
older ones.

Except, there was no dirt
to dish.

“
So, Jethro is a park
ranger? How’d that happen?” I briefly wondered why my mother hadn’t
said anything about it. Even though she rarely spoke about my
brothers during our daily phone calls, Jethro cleaning himself up
and becoming a park ranger seemed like it would’ve been pretty big
news.

“
It’s awesome, right?”
Roscoe’s smile was immediate and proud. “It’s a pretty funny story.
Jethro was…well, you know. He was stealing cars and partying, but
he was smart about it. That boy was arrested so many times, but he
was never charged. He was damn lucky.”

“
I remember. The day I
left for college he was coming home from lockup.” I could still
recall wondering whether I should wait for him to get home or just
head out without saying goodbye. I waited until supper, when Billy
arrived and told me that Jethro was at the Dragon—one of three
biker bars near this part of the parkway—drinking with his buddies
and celebrating his criminal success.

Disgusted, I’d left right
then.

“
Well, Drew beat the shit
out of Jethro when he caught him trying to steal his 1971 Aermacchi
Harley-Davidson Turismo Veloce.”

My mouth fell open, partly
because an image of Drew straddling a classic Harley flashed
through my mind and partly because the story was downright
shocking.

I stared at Roscoe. “Did
Drew press charges?”

“
Nah. He told Jethro that
he would pull some strings and get him a job as a park ranger if he
promised to stop with the illegal bullshit.”

“
And he did?”

“
Yep. Well, mostly. Jethro
never was in very deep with the Iron Order, so he was able to
extract himself pretty quickly.”

The Iron Order was the
biker club that controlled Green Valley and the surrounding
counties. The Dragon Biker Bar was their hangout. At one point, I
remembered Momma being afraid that Jethro would become one of them,
but he never was much of a joiner.

Roscoe paused for a minute
as he navigated a series of impressive switchbacks on the mountain
road. In order to reach Knoxville, we needed to go up one of the
mountains then down the other side.

When the turns were behind
us, he picked up the story. “Jethro had to start at the bottom of
the ladder and work up to the job he has now. He got his GED then
went and got his AS degree, and finally, last year he got the job
as a ranger. Now he and Drew work together all the
time.”

He then spent the next
several minutes waxing poetic about Drew and Jethro. From the way
Roscoe described it, they were preventing forest fires and
protecting the endangered animals, and working toward every other
kind of altruistic endeavor.

I detected a hint of envy
in Roscoe’s voice. It seemed that Drew had a number-one fan, and
that fan was Roscoe Winston.

“
That’s great,” I said in
all sincerity. “That’s really great.” It was great. It was super
great. And it probably meant the world to my mother. I couldn’t
believe she’d never said anything about it.

“
Drew is…he’s the man.
He’s really quiet. I think it’s because he doesn’t want to show
other people up or make them feel like they’re less than him. Did
you know his father is a senator in Texas? He doesn’t talk about it
much, but he comes from money.”

I thought about this
information for a bit, marinated in it. Drew didn’t seem all that
quiet to me. In fact, he seemed downright chatty. Rather than
contradict Roscoe’s assertion regarding Drew’s propensity toward
reticence, I decided to keep my observations to myself.

“
Roscoe, our grandparents
had money too, but that doesn’t make one person better than
another.” Our grandfather on our mother’s side had been a
politician and a very wealthy man.

“
I know, but Drew has made
all the difference. He helped Duane, Beauford, and Cletus with the
paperwork for their auto shop, and he even helped them buy the
place. He’s part owner, but he doesn’t see fit to
interfere.”

“
Did you
say
their
auto shop? They own the shop?”

Roscoe nodded and gave me
a big grin, his blue eyes flickering to mine then back to the road,
“Hell, yeah, it’s theirs: Winston Brothers Auto Shop. Momma helps
them with the books. It’s doing real good. They have a hook-up on
old, busted classic cars. They fix then then sell them in Nashville
for big bucks to people in the music biz.”

This revelation was surprising, but also
freaking fantastic. I felt a surge of pride for the twins and my
sweet brother Cletus. Good for them.

Annoyingly, I also felt a
good deal of gratitude toward Drew. I decided to push those
feelings to the side. If the shop was doing well, then Drew was
well compensated for his investment.

“
What about Billy? He was
in a suit this morning. What’s that about?”

“
Oh, Billy’s doing his
thing at the mill. He’s doing real good too, now that he no longer
has to clean up messes.”

“
Clean up
messes?”

“
Well, you know he was
always bailing Jethro out of jail and trying to keep the rest of us
out of trouble—not that he needed to worry about me.”

I thought back to my childhood recollections
of Billy. Of my brothers, he was the most absent and withdrawn.
Most men started working at the mill as soon as they reached
seventeen. Billy started working there at sixteen. I was surprised
he was still at home since he seemed to wish for escape even more
than I did.

I also thought about his
chilly reception of me earlier in the day and his comment about my
being gone for eight years. I hadn’t expected all my brothers to
welcome me back with open arms. I was just a little surprised that
Billy—who’d never seemed all that interested in me when we were
kids—appeared to be the only one vexed by my long
absence.

“
What’s Billy doing down
there that he has to wear a suit?”

“
He’s got some fancy
title, regional director of mill operations or something like that.
He’s been there forever, and you know how smart he is. He could
have done anything; maybe even become a proper engineer if he’d
wanted to.”

Regional director of mill
operations sounded very important. I wasn’t exactly sure what that
encompassed, but apparently, it meant that he needed to wear a suit
to work every day. Which, on my father’s side of the family, was
like becoming the president of the United States.

I managed to get Roscoe to tell me about
himself with some prodding. He tried to shrug off his
accomplishments like they were no big deal. They were a big
deal.

Roscoe was finishing his
last year at the University of Tennessee, majoring in biology. I
knew he was attending community college two years ago, as it was
one of the few pieces of information my mother had shared about my
brothers. However, I didn’t know that he’d transferred to the state
university sometime during the last eighteen months.

“
That’s
so great, Roscoe. I’m….” I swallowed because I was going to
say
I’m really proud of you,
but then stopped myself. I didn’t feel like I had
the right to say those words since I’d left him and the rest of my
family nearly a decade ago. Instead, I finished the thought with,
“I’m really happy for you. I’m happy for all of you. You’re all
doing so great.”

“
Yeah….” Roscoe nodded,
glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, his tone teasing. “Now
that you see we’re not a bunch of skunks, maybe you’ll come visit
more often.”

I blushed, embarrassed and
ashamed of the years I’d been gone. Even though he was poking fun,
his words hit a nerve.

I sighed, looked out the
window. “Sure—if ya’ll want me to.”

“
Of course we want you to.
Don’t be stupid.”

“
You could come visit me
in Chicago. It’s a pretty great city.”

“
Isn’t it cold all the
time? Sleet and snow and forty below zero wind chill and all that
mess?”

“
No, not all the time.” I
glanced at him and pressed my lips together to keep from smirking.
“Just nine months out of the year.”

Roscoe laughed and shook
his head. “How do you stand it? Don’t you miss four solid seasons?
And the mountains, I can’t wait to finish college and move back
here. I don’t think there’s a more beautiful place on
earth.”

As if on cue, we passed a
lookout turnoff with a particularly breathtaking view of the Smoky
Mountains. They were ensconced in their typical blue mist and
descended fold upon fold to a green tree-lined valley. I had to
admit, it was beautiful country.

Instead of vocalizing
this, I said, “Well, you haven’t been many places on earth. You
might change your mind once you go out there and check out what it
has to offer.”

“
Nah.” He shook his head
and shocked the crud out of me by saying, “I spent a summer hiking
all over Europe. Old buildings don’t do much for me, but I can see
why other people think they’re pretty. I took a semester off school
and did a road trip from New York to Los Angeles. We went the long
way and saw the Redwood Forest, which is probably the second most
beautiful place on earth. Then I flew to New Zealand. That’s where
the third most beautiful place on earth is, Doubtful
Sound.”

He paused for a minute
because we’d come to a fork in the road and a stop sign.

I couldn’t help my blurted
question. “How did you afford all that?”

He looked at me, his mouth
quirking to the side. “It wasn’t all that expensive because I went
with Drew, and he had to go for work. He had the option of going by
car or flying to each location, so he picked the road trip and took
me with him. He thought it would be good for me to see the country,
see what’s out there. He said I could go anywhere and be anything.
I don’t think I believed him until we went on that
trip.”

Roscoe and I stared at
each other for a long moment until I blurted another question. “Why
would he do that? Why would he do any of this—helping Jethro, the
twins, Duane, you—what’s in it for him?”

My brother narrowed his
eyes at me, but a smile tugged at his lips. “Family, I think.” Then
his eyes lost focus and he frowned. “It’s not really my place to
say.”

“
What does that
mean?”

He shrugged, looked left
and right for oncoming cars, and took the road to Green Valley. “It
means just that. Drew’s got his reasons, and I don’t tell other
people’s stories.”

***

We made it
back to the house after 2:00 p.m. and immediately
set to work rearranging the furniture in the den. We moved out a
big wooden desk that had belonged to my maternal grandfather as
well as several tables, the vintage sofa and matching chair, an old
freestanding globe, and other various antique pieces. The majority
of the items had been inherited by my mother from her parents, and
she’d kept them all in pristine condition.

My momma came from money.
She was an only child. The house we grew up in and all the land
surrounding it had belonged to her parents. My grandfather died
before I was born, but my grandmother died when I was ten—quite
suddenly, from a stroke—and left the house and all her wealth to my
mother.

This all happened two
years after my parents separated. My grandmother also left trusts
for each of us, which have been controlled by Momma, and which we
can’t access until our thirtieth birthdays. I didn’t know how much
money was in the trust, as I’d never given it much thought, but I
did know that the money was why my father was always trying to
re-insert himself into our lives.

We left two recliners in
the room, all the bookshelves, and a side table. I was determined
that one of us would be with her at all times, and the leather
recliners were big and comfortable.

Once we were certain that
the room would now accommodate her hospital bed, equipment, and the
sleeping cot, we took a short break to have some lemonade and a
sandwich. Well, I had lemonade. Roscoe had a beer.

Our timing was close to
perfect; the transport arrived just after 4:30 p.m. Momma had slept
through the entire trip. I knew she was likely on an impressive
regimen of painkillers and sleeping aids. They were usually called
quality of life meds, which really meant end of life
meds.