Page 51 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight
He looked away, shook his head like he was being stupid and stood. “It’s nothin’. Come on.”
Grady grabbed him by the arm, maybe a little rougher than he meant to, but Cole stopped and looked back at him.
“It wasn’t always?” Grady insisted.
Cole’s expression shifted as he shook off the mask he’d briefly slipped on, the recognition that Grady was seriously asking registering there.
“It wasn’t always good, back home.”
Grady also wasn’t sure what to do with that. He figured it mightn’t have been, given that it must’ve been years of managing debt and fending off the banks. But Cole was the youngest, how much of that could’ve been on him? Surely Old Man Cole would’ve protected the boys from the worst of it. Grady only knew about his daddy’s affair when he was older because his mama had finally lost it that night in the kitchen before she left for good, shortly before his daddy died. Otherwise, he would’ve thought everything was coming up roses.
“But—” Grady started.
He let go of Cole’s arm and looked out at the horizon.
“But?” Cole said into Grady’s inability to go on. Then the words found him, the words to match the feeling.
“But it’s all right here, isn’t it?” Grady asked.
He looked back at Cole standing on the step below him, still tall enough to be at his shoulder. The wide grin he gave Grady was answer enough.
“It’s all right here,” Cole agreed. Grady could tell he was trying not to laugh at Grady being sensitive to a feeling for the first time in his life.
Grady knocked his shoulder with Cole’s and told him to hurry up.
JP sure knew how to make the last day count, though. The crew arrived in their two trucks in the usual bustle of jibes and greetings, and then JP was plugging in the stereo and cranking 70s disco.
“Nooooo,” Carson booed.
“I hate to agree with him, but c’mon, JP, not that,” Keith said.
JP did a little jig on the wooden floorboards, grinned at them all like a lunatic, his wild curls flaring out, moves terrible.
“That,” JP said firmly, and fist-bumped Cole. “Get to it.” He shimmied over to his position and everyone else groaned, but Grady saw them bopping along eventually.
“Thank fuck,” Milly said when they sat down to lunch and JP turned the music off.
“Don’t get too excited. I got another boxset.”
“Whaddya mean, you got another one? You only just got that one!” Marcel exclaimed. JP smiled wryly at him.
“Yeah, but then the missus got me a new one for my birthday.”
“It was your birthday?” Cole said. “Happy birthday.”
“It was his birthday a month ago.” Milly narrowed her eyes at JP and bit into her sandwich.
“Little Cole.” JP turned to him. “Littlest Cole.”
“Oh, shut up.”
But Cole was grinning at the attention and ducking his head to try to hide it. Grady couldn’t help smiling over at him.
“My missus got you something, though. The tenth, right?”
“How do you remember that?” Cole asked.
Grady looked between Cole and JP.
