Just Down the Road (3 page)

She glanced over at her uncle’s bed. The room was lined with machines that moved and beeped and marked time, but for the old man resting, time seemed to have stood still. He drifted between life and death, swinging like a rusty pendulum from one to the other.

If Reagan could see death coming for him, she’d fight with every ounce of her energy to stop it from taking Jeremiah Truman. After five years of living in Harmony, she felt like she had a wide circle of friends, but when she’d arrived, a runaway with little hope of finding anywhere to belong, Jeremiah had taken her in as his family.

Reagan remembered how she told him once that all she ever did was reverse wishing. She was afraid of even hoping for something. It seemed easier to just wish bad things wouldn’t happen. Now, at twenty-one, she wished for a world of things, but the top of the list was that he’d never leave her.

“Reagan?” Brandon Biggs poked his head in the door. “You still awake?”

She stepped from the window into the milky light surrounding her uncle’s bed. “I’m here, Big.” Sometime over the summer she’d begun calling him what all his construction friends called him. She had no idea if the nickname was simply a short version of his last name or an adjective of description. Both fit, and the name seemed to stick. Brandon Biggs was simply Big to all who met him now.

“Did you eat any supper?” He tried to slip his big frame into the room, as if opening the door wider might set off some alarm. The muscular thug who’d bullied her when she’d first tried to fit in at Harmony High was gone, replaced by a mountain of a friend.

“I don’t think I’ve eaten anything today except a doughnut the nurse gave me,” she answered, knowing that he’d probably already guessed, for he held a bag in each hand.

At six-feet-seven and almost three hundred pounds, Big never slipped anywhere, but he tried his best to tiptoe in his work boots toward her. He set the bags down in the big windowsill designed to hold flowers and cards. Then, without a word, he circled her waist with his hands and lifted her up onto the ledge.

They would have made an odd couple if they dated, him so big and her so small. He was a construction foreman and she ran her uncle’s tiny apple orchard business while finishing her degree from an online college, but somehow they worked as friends. Maybe because they’d both been knocked around as kids, but they believed in each other. She saw the good in him, and he saw the strength in her.

Reagan crossed her legs and smiled as he handed her a cheeseburger. “You got these from Buffalo’s bar, I’m guessing. What would you have done if I’d already had dinner?”

“I’d eat them both. And of course I got them at Buffalo’s. It’s the only place open this late that makes a burger worth eating, but right after I turned my order in, you wouldn’t believe the fight that broke out.”

Reagan unwrapped her food and asked, “You get involved?” Big was made of muscle. Someone in a fight might get hurt just running into him by accident.

He shook his head. “I was just there to look after Beau and Border. They were playing tonight. Damn, if they’re not getting as good as any of those singers on
American Idol
.” After taking a quarter of the burger for his first bite, he added, “I might have been tempted to step in, but I knew you’d give me hell if I did, so I just moved over by the band cage and made sure Border could keep playing. One guy came flying from the fight and hit the chicken wire so hard it reminded me of a bug hitting the windshield. I thought about hitting him a few times for scaring the boys trying to play, but I just tossed him back into the fight.”

He might be more than double her size, but part of Reagan had always felt like she was his mother. He seemed to live his life by what she’d think of him. She was proud of the way he watched over his little brother, Border, and how he checked in on his grandmother every weekend even when he was volunteering as a fireman.

The big guy leaned against the window frame and told her the details of the bar fight. With her on the ledge, they were eye to eye as they talked and ate. He asked about her uncle, interested in the details of his condition. She liked talking to Big. It wasn’t as good as talking to Noah Mc-Allen, but it was close.

Finally, he stuffed his trash in one of the bags and said, “I got to go, Reagan. I promised I’d circle by and pick up the boys’ equipment after the bar closes. I’m not sure how, but the boys both managed to get a date tonight. Two giggly girls wanted to take them out to eat breakfast at the truck stop when they finished the last set.”

“If the girls were in the bar, they’re older women.” Reagan laughed, knowing that Beau Yates couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen and Border Biggs maybe a year older. The sheriff told her once that the only way she’d let them play at Buffalo’s was if they stayed in the cage and out of the bar. “Beau Yates stutters when he talks to me or any girl near his age. Two bar babes will probably scare him to death.”

Big shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe older women will teach those two something. All Beau thinks about is playing that guitar, and Border doesn’t bother to shower until I yell at him. I’m no more than a mother hen with two homely chicks. Beau Yates never goes home, and half the time I’m not sure he can see through all that hair. His folks should probably pay me child support for all the meals I feed him.”

“You like him around,” Reagan cut in. “He’s a good influence on Border.”

“Yeah, but he might as well be living with us. His old man hates the idea of his only son playing in a band and gives him hell. Beau’s always telling me no one knows how to give out hell like a preacher. Beau says Border’s got it easy living with me.”

Reagan touched Big’s rough cheek. “You’re a good big brother, Brandon Biggs.”

He smiled. “I’d better be. I’m all he’s got. We fight from time to time, but we both know what we got now is far better than what we had at home with our mom always high and some boyfriend of hers around reminding us to disappear.”

Big Biggs lifted her from the window.

She walked him out the door to the elevator. “Thanks for bringing me supper. I hate to leave Uncle Jeremiah for more than a few minutes.”

He looked like he wanted to hug her, but she crossed her arms and he seemed to understand. “I’ll come by tomorrow. Call me if you need anything.”

“I will. Thanks.”

He stepped on the elevator and she waved, already backing down the hall toward her uncle. When she stepped into the shadowy room, Reagan moved to her computer and checked her e-mail.

Nothing from Noah. He’d ridden in a rodeo in Kansas tonight for big money. If he’d won, he would have called or e-mailed. Noah McAllen had made pro, just like his dad. The whole town was proud of him. Everyone in Harmony wanted him to go all the way. Everyone except Reagan. She just wanted him home in one piece. She felt she was in a love triangle. She loved Noah and Noah loved the rodeo.

Closing her laptop, she reached for a blanket and snuggled into the recliner. She fell asleep as the sound of the machines blended with the beat of the howling wind tapping against the window.

T
RUCK
S
TOP

B
EAU
Y
ATES COULDN’T BELIEVE HE WAS SITTING IN A TRUCK
stop after midnight with a woman who wasn’t wearing a bra. He grinned at Border, his best friend. Beau had no trouble reading Border Biggs’s mind.

In all the months they’d been playing at the Buffalo Bar and Grill, no one had tried to pick them up. Now, he was sitting right here with two groupies and they couldn’t stop chattering about how wonderfully he played and how they loved his songs. Border’s girl even kept patting on him and holding his arm like she was afraid he might get away. Every time she leaned close to him, her big bust brushed his arm and Border looked like a pup having his tummy rubbed.

Beau’s date seemed more interested in adding another coat of makeup. She talked nonstop, but he wasn’t sure her ears worked. She also had the hiccups. Every time she hiccupped, both women laughed. After a dozen times, Beau had trouble seeing the humor and couldn’t even manage to smile.

The women were probably four or five years older than them, not as pretty as they’d been in bar light, and maybe a little drunker than they were when they’d asked if the band would like to go to breakfast. But, all in all, this wasn’t bad.

This was like a date. No better, the girls were paying. Between school and practice Beau and Border didn’t have enough time or money to date, even though they’d spent hours talking about it.

“How did you boys get together and form the band?” the woman whose name sounded like some kind of fancy candy asked.

Border shrugged. “He was the only person who talked to me when I transferred here from Bailee. My big brother got a job in construction and asked me to come live with him a few years ago. I took about a second to think it over and pack.”

The hiccupping girl sounded off again and her friend chimed in with a laugh.

“I-I taught him to play,” Beau added to the answer before Border told his life story. The girls didn’t look like they were into details or even long sentences.

“I love the way you play,” the one next to Border said, rubbing against his arm. “Do you have tattoos just on your hands, or all over?”

Both women giggled.

Border nodded like a bobblehead. He wasn’t used to girls talking to him. He was a younger model of his big brother, Brandon “Big” Biggs, but Border shaved his head and had been collecting tattoos as a hobby since he was sixteen and could pass for eighteen.

“What did you say the name of the band is?” his girl asked between hiccups.

“T-the P-partners.” Beau answered, fighting down his stutter. As an only child, he blamed his parents for his not being able to talk to girls. If he’d had a sister, maybe they wouldn’t seem so frightening, or if his father hadn’t given him weekly sermons on the evils of females, or if he’d had time to date at fifteen like most guys he knew, maybe he could at least talk.

“I think that’s cute that you two are partners,” Border’s date said, then began repeating “The Partners, the Partners” over and over, as if her brain had gotten stuck.

The waitress, a girl who’d been in Beau’s senior class, slung four midnight breakfast specials down on the table and frowned at Beau. He dove into the food, irritated that he cared one way or the other what Willow Renalls thought of him.

The girls picked at their food and complained about the truck stop not serving alcohol. Border’s date seemed to be fascinated with the condiment basket that came with breakfast. She put butter and honey on her toast, syrup on her sausage, ketchup and hot sauce on her eggs, and grape jelly all over one pancake while going on and on about how she loved breakfast.

Beau broke into their rant as he moved the basket of little packets away from her. “W-we also play over in C-Clinton once a month and by C-Christmas we p-plan to have a few nights lined up in Amarillo.”

The girls giggled, and Beau guessed either he’d gone too deep into conversation or they’d noticed he was afraid of them. The one next to him began circling smiley faces across her pancake, and the one beside Border started patting Border on the head. Her hands were so sticky, they stuck every few pats.

Border tried to push her away as he ate. Her breasts bumping against his arm seemed to no longer hold his interest now that food was on the table, or maybe Border had finally looked up to his date’s face and didn’t like what he saw. She had that kind of puffy round face that’s pretty in the spring of a girl’s life, and for her it seemed a very short spring. The dark circles painted around her eyes and the bloodred lipstick didn’t help.

Beau ate his free meal and tried to think of something shallow enough to say.

The girls found it first. They both decided they had to go pee. Beau’s date stumbled getting out of the booth and drew everyone’s attention, even the waitress. Then she asked everyone she passed where the potty was while her friend urged, “Hurry,” as they moved along.

Once they were gone, Beau looked at his best friend … his only friend. “You want to get out of here?”

“Hell, yes.” Border shoved half his scrambled eggs into his mouth. “Even if we got lucky with those two, I have a feeling we’d be waking up itching in the morning.”

Beau laughed. “Go outside and call your brother’s cell and ask him to come out and pick us up. It’s two miles back to town.” Beau didn’t like the idea of walking back in the dark, but it seemed better than staying here. “Don’t come back in. I’ll tell them you’re sick. After I think your brother should have had time to get here, I’ll say I’m going to check on you.”

“What if they don’t believe you, or worse, want to see how I’m doing? It’ll take my brother several minutes to drive out.”

“Then we run.” Beau tried to smile. “And pray your brother reaches us before the two run us down. I have a feeling they won’t be happy when we disappear.”

While Border vanished out the front door, Beau pulled out a ten he kept hidden in the back of his wallet and put it under his plate. The women would probably pay before they left, but he doubted they’d leave a tip and he didn’t like the thought that Willow would have to clean up this mess.