Page 6 of Whiskey Shivers

“Thank you for doing this,” I said. “I really appreciate it.”

“It’s no trouble. Let’s get you back on your rails,” he said with a smile and a jerk of his head. I felt my smile grow as I slipped past him out into the hall and he locked up my classroom behind us.

“Thanks for letting me borrow Mr. Johnson for a ride,” I said to Curtis, the lead custodian for the school.

The older black man, who had to be in his early seventies, waved me off and said kindly, “Oh, that’s no trouble, Miss Legare, no trouble at all. Mikey here is a good worker and he’ll be back to finish the job. Ain’t got no worries about that.”

I smiled and Mike looked pleased and said, “Appreciate it, my guy.” He clapped Curtis on the shoulder lightly as we passed.

I slowed when the lights flashed on the big Dodge RAM pickup in the employee parking lot.

“Oh, wow,” I said. I couldn’t keep how impressed I was out of my voice. “This looks really new!”

“It’s actually two years old,” he said. “I just like to keep my shhhhhtuff nice.”

I laughed a little as I opened the passenger side door. It was immaculate inside the truck, but that wasn’t why I was laughing.

“Don’t worry about keeping it clean around me,” I told him. “I aged out of the foster care system. I’ve heard it all and then some.”

We both shut our doors at the same time as we settled into our seats. He gave a low whistle as he buckled up.

“That must have been tough,” he remarked.

I nodded. “It wasn’t easy, but here I am,” I said brightly and with a bit of a false sense of bravado. I mean, there were definitely days where I didn’t feel like I belonged here, and by “here,” I didn’t mean in New Orleans, or even at Lakeside High. What I meant was I didn’t feel like I should be this educated or proficient in my work. I didn’t feel like with how I grew up or how I’d pulled through all the opposition stacked in front of me that I should have made it. I felt like I should be at some Dollar General somewhere, pregnant with my third or fourth kid, on my second or third father of that child, watching the clock so I could get out and have a drink or my next hit of whatever. I felt like I should be my mother.

What’s more, and I don’t know why, but I felt comfortable enough around Hex that I said as much.

He raised an eyebrow and glanced in my direction as we rolled up to a stoplight. He said, “Sounds like you had it rougher than most growing up. Says something about you that youarehere and not there.”

I smiled to myself and looked out the window, leaning back into the plush leather seat of his truck and letting my eyes drift up to the wide, fall, blue sky stretching out endlessly above us.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said, and I was charmed to be sure. It’d been a while since I’d met anyone so easy to talk to.

“So, where’d you move here from?” he asked.

“Sorry? How’d you know I’m not from here?” I asked.

“Accent’s different, but hey – I’m not from around here, either. I moved out here from the good ol’ Volunteer state. The great state of Tennessee.”

“Ah, I was about to say, your accent isn’t from here, either. The answer is Huston, but my momma was originally from these parts. Her parents were, anyway. They up and moved to Huston after she was born.”

“They couldn’t take care of you?” he asked, and I shook my head.

“No, my grandma had a stroke and my grandpa wasn’t in the best of health, either. The state decided foster care was best.”

“Well, I’m glad it worked out the way it did and you’re here,” he said. “Lakeside High was in sore need of a teacher like you. You’re one of the best, if I do say so myself.”

I laughed and said, “I guess that’s because I live, sleep, eat, and breathe work. It hasn’t been the easiest for me to make friends since moving here. Mark never really wants to go out unless it’s a work function, and he’s been taking me to less and less of those. I don’t get out much.”

“That’s a damn shame,” he said, turning down the street to Roald & Son’s Auto Shop.

“I just don’t like going out by myself,” I said with a shrug. “I guess it’s as much my fault as anything else.”

“You should get out more, go on down to a café, sit and read a while, something – I don’t know. One of my buddy’s girls, she goes out and sits and paints watercolors. Got into mixing her own paints and stuff from natural things and opened her own shop. You got any hobbies?”

“Nothing I’ve picked up in a while, but I have a few,” I said.

“Well, there you go. Maybe you wanna pick some of it up again.”

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