Hearts Left Behind Read Online Free PDF Page B

nor my greater height nor how firmly I might try to
squeeze back.  These men are the only men I’ve ever known.  They are
at work before the sun is in these parts because that’s what their old man did
and they don’t know any other way.  They meet at Brenda’s for breakfast
after putting in a couple hours work and they always end up staying for an
extra cup of coffee.  Not because of what’s inside the cup, but because of
who’s across the table.
     
    I spent the better part of the day painting those sun
porch stairs.  Chipping away the old dead flakes,
brushing everything clean, and applying a thick first coat of barn-red.  
It was a full day’s work, but with my choking dream looming, I was not anxious to
sleep again.  So after a supper of roast beef, mashed potatoes, green
beans, coleslaw, and a Matlock rerun, I walked down to Mustang’s Corner Pub for a nightcap. 
    Mustang’s had been I Like Ike’s in a previous life but shared
little resemblance to that old ice cream parlor.  There were small
flickering TVs at either end of the bar and a third one above a booth in the
far corner of the room.  There were three patrons in the place when I
walked in.  Two sitting next to each other on the far
right side, one sitting by himself in the middle of the bar, close to the taps.  
I took a seat on the near side of the bar closest to the door.  The
bartender approached from the corner of my eye.
    “So what are we drinking tonight, pecker?”
    I didn’t recognize the voice, but I recognized the
“pecker”.  I lifted my eyes to see an older version of a face I once
knew.  A sparse light-colored handlebar mustache framed the small, pursed
mouth.  Chewing tobacco packed tight under the lower lip, a tattered LA
Dodgers baseball cap on his head.  Part Yankee, all Rebel ,
both shone bright in those intense gray-blue eyes.  Looking up at him –
and it seems like I’ve been having to look up to see the face of Son Settles my
whole life – I said with a half smile, “Hey, Son.  Say, uh, that’s not the
same cap, is it?”
    This got a laugh out of him.  At least I think it
was a laugh.  It sounded a little like “Shut your white-collared,
book-learning mouth, pecker.”
    “No.  No, it’s not the same hat,” he said.
    A big fat silence followed, during which Son stood
tall behind the bar, hands on hips and looking at me hard.  I looked back
at him even harder, though I could see where to Son it might have just looked
like I was staring at my feet and squirming on my stool.
    “Well,” I said lifting my head again, “I am sorry
about that hat, Son.  Probably should have said that a long time ago.”
    “No worries,” he said.  “Pecker.”
    I ordered a vodka tonic and stared back down at my
feet as Son went off to make it for me.
    If Son Settles had ever been a friend of mine, it was
just barely.  I carry some of the fault for that, of course.  Things
might have been different with Son and me had I not thrown his LA Dodger cap in
the toilet the first time we met.  Charlie
had brought Son over to my house that warm summer’s day in 1978, and despite
the fact that he was two years older than me, I was
not intimidated by Son in the least.  We talked baseball and when the
discussion grew into a “my team’s better than your team” argument, I told him I
was going to take his Dodger cap off his head and flush it down the
toilet.  When he dared me to do it, do it I did. 
    When I look back on this, I see something in myself
that has always been there and it is this.  I have always hated the notion
that someone might find me predictable.  I don’t know why, but like I say
I think it’s always been there.  It was certainly there that July
afternoon in 1978.
    When Son pulled his Dodger’s cap out of the toilet and
shook it dry, he wore a look of utter astonishment on his sun-browned
face.  But just beneath that was another look, a sort of calm before the
storm expression that I would