Page 4 of Property of Bull
“Turns out that young Tucker has a pilot’s license, so she applied to take over the crop dusting, too,” Leavers informs me even though I’ve turned back toward my house.
I wasn’t really paying attention, maybe I didn’t hear him right.She?
“Come again?” I say, turning back just as he’s pulling away. Instead of stopping, he just continues on his way, probably annoyed that I didn’t want to stand around gossiping like an old lady.
An old memory teases at the edge of my mind, but I shake it off, and fixate on having to call the Town Hall. There are calls that I despise making, because I know that nothing will actually come of them and all I’ll do is vent my spleen on old Felix from the moment he picks up.
“Hello?” I bellow out when I pause long enough for a response and there’s nothing coming. “Hello!”
“Oh, there we go. I just had to adjust my hearing aid, Bull,” he responds, and that excuse might fly with outsiders, but everyone from Clear Creek has seen this ornery asshole reach up and turn the aids on and off, depending on his interest level.
I doubt he’s listened to anything his wife has had to say in the past decade.
“Bull? Are you still there?” Felix asks and I swear I can picture him grinning into the phone.
“The new plow driver is a fucking menace. My mailbox has been hit three times in the past two weeks and I want to get reimbursed for it.” I bite out each word, telling myself to stay calm no matter how much I hate having to repeat myself.
“Well, now, this is an ongoing issue, and it would be best to handle it on your own.” For whatever reason, he sounds more amused than he did a minute ago.
“It’s the first year I’ve ever had this issue.” I seethe.
“Then that makes you a lucky man, Mr. Wells! Unfortunately, there’s nothing left in the budget for us to reimburse anyone else at this time.”
“That’s not what Leavers told me.”
“See now, Leavers works for the U.S. Postal Service, not the township. So, I can’t imagine him having up-to-date information on our budget.” His condescending tone has me swearing a blue streak. “Look, I’ll tell Margo to be more careful. Honestly, we’re lucky she applied for the job, so I don’t want to upset her.”
Then I hear the click of the call disconnecting just as my memories come racing back.
Go-Go. The nickname that the little girl readily volunteered after I caught her hiding in the back of our funeral home, springs to my mind. I’ve never forgotten how calm she was after basically witnessing a murder my father ordered. For years, I’ve thought about her, especially when I enter that room; always curious how she dealt with the things she saw and heard that day.
She sure as fuck never told anyone, else there would have been a knock on our door followed by a swarm of federal agents.
Snapping back to the here and now, I know damn good and well that Felix’s office is directly across the hall from Leavers, so his lame-ass excuse pisses me off, so slamming my phone against the counter is pointless.
“Don’t want to upset her,” I mumble to myself. “What about the rest of us?”
A long time ago, my momma told me to count to ten when I got angry. ‘Just take a breath and cool down.’
That was fucking bullshit. First, I would just start counting.
By the time I was six, I’d start counting in the Spanish I learned on Sesame Street.
Then, after Momma brought a globe home from a garage sale, and I became obsessed with maps, I started teaching myself to count in Italian, French, and Japanese.
Learning to count in other languages led to teaching myself more and more about each one and the different cultures. At least until my dad started taking a belt to my ass anytime he heard me speaking anything but English.
“Don’t fucking waste your time, Stryker. You’ll do what I do and that’s final. Learn some Spanish, but if you’re bored, get over to the garage and learn how to put together a motor.”
Soon after that, the globe was used during target practice. That day, Mom’s eyes told me something my old man neither saw nor cared about—that she was done.
I was twelve when I came home to an empty house. Dad was off on one of his runs, but even with a head start, she knew he’d kill her if she had taken me with her.
She may have physically left, but she didn’t stop loving me until her death.
The proof was always our secret. A few days after she took off, I found the world map she had taped to the back wall of my closet, marked with all the places she always dreamed of seeing. Then, the following week, Mom’s friend, Jordan waved at me to come inside the bakery she owned.
I’d been avoiding it since Mom took off, rightfully knowing that opening the door to all the wonderful scents would bring back every good memory I had.
