I've learned to read the signs. The supply closet. The extra sweeping. The way the inventory gets reorganized alphabetically and then by category and then by size, each system more complicated than the last. Each task a wall he's building between himself and the thing he can't control.
I'd better tell him that Ron is still in town. I don't keep things from him, even to protect him. That's the deal. That's the line I drew the morning I read his letter and decided thatevery man who ever lied to him or made decisions about his life was a man I would never be.
But I'll wait until tonight, when we're in bed, when my arms are around him. When bad, scary things are easier to talk about in the dark.
The afternoon moves slow. Monday nights are light, usually just the regulars, maybe twenty people. Not a big production. I marinate chicken. I check the smoker temps. I restock the cooler. Routine things. The things that keep a bar running and a brain from eating itself alive.
Around four-thirty, I head outside to fire up Big Bertha. The parking lot is empty. The afternoon sun is brutal, that late-August Florida heat that turns asphalt into a griddle. It's quiet. The kind of stillness that happens between shifts.
I pull the cover off Big Bertha. I check the firebox and start loading it up with the good stuff, the lump hardwood that costs twice as much and burns three times better. I'm arranging it the way Dad taught me, a pyramid in the center with space around the edges for airflow, when I hear a truck pull into the lot.
I don't look up right away. Trucks pull in and out all day. Delivery drivers, construction crews, the occasional tourist who's looking for a public beach or a bathroom.
The engine cuts. A door opens and closes. Footsteps on the asphalt, steady and unhurried, coming toward the grill. I straighten up and turn around.
And there the bastard is again.
Ron Jackson.
Standing in my parking lot with a smile on his face like he's stopping by to visit an old friend. He's dressed the same as Saturday. Clean pressed pants. A button-down-shirt, blue,sleeves rolled up over thick forearms. Work boots that are worn but not dirty. The hair is combed neatly.
He looks like a man on his way home from a business trip, and the smile he's wearing is the same one he wore before, the one that makes people trust him.
Everything about him is a lie.
Every stitch of clothing, every line on his face, every molecule of that smile is a performance designed to make the world see a good man. And the world buys it because why wouldn't they? He looks like someone's favorite uncle. He looks like the guy who coaches your kid's baseball team and always brings the best potato salad to the church potluck.
I know what he looks like in a doorway at one in the morning with the hall light behind him. I know what his hands did to a boy who couldn't fight back. I know the sound of his boots on a hardwood floor because Stormy described it, and I will carry that sound until I die.
"Hey there," Ron says. He stops about ten feet from the grill. Respectful distance. The distance a polite man keeps when approaching someone he doesn't know well. "I was in here Saturday night. Don't know if you remember me."
"Yeah, sure. I remember," I say in my normal, friendly voice. The voice that talks to strangers and makes everyone feel welcome. The voice is the lie. Underneath it, somewhere in the vicinity of my gut, is a raw sound roaring that doesn't have a name. A low, animal frequency that vibrates in my bones.
"I'm heading back up to Alabama," he says. "Long drive ahead. Saw the smoke and thought I'd stop in and grab a plate of ribs to take on the road. Saturday's batch was incredible. Best I've had outside of Memphis, and that's not a compliment I give lightly."
"Appreciate that," I say. I gesture at the grill. "But she's not ready yet. Just started the coals. Won't have anything worth eating for another couple hours."
"Ah, that's too bad." He doesn't leave. He looks at the grill the way a man looks at a grill when he's killing time, appreciative, no hurry. "That's a beautiful setup. Custom?"
"My dad built it. Welded the firebox himself out of a commercial propane tank."
"That's craftsmanship. You can tell when someone puts real love into building something. It shows." He smiles the warm smile from the Waffle House. "A man who builds something with his own hands has a different relationship with it than someone who just buys one off the lot. You know what I mean?"
"Yeah, I do."
He nods. He looks at the grill a moment longer. Then he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his phone. He taps the screen a few times, scrolls, and turns it toward me.
"Let me ask you a question, since you're a bike man and all." He holds the phone out so I can see. On the screen is a photograph of a black Harley Sportster. Chrome pipes, clean tank, compact frame. The bike that's in pieces in a chop shop right now, scattered across three workbenches. Soon to be scattered across three states. The bike that carried Stormy out of hell and away from this demon's hands. "You ever seen this bike come through here? I know you get a lot of riders."
I look at the photo. I take my time looking at it because a man who runs a biker bar would take his time looking at a bike. I study it the way I'd study any Sportster someone showed me, noting the details, the modifications, the custom work.
"Nice ride," I say. "Sportster 1200?"
"Eight-eighty-three. But I bored it out and did the big bore kit myself. New cams, new exhaust, rebuilt the carburetor from scratch." He pulls the phone back and looks at the photo himself. An expression crosses his face. Not sadness. More like the fondness of a man looking at something he loves. "I put a lot of hours into this bike. Countless hours. Built it from the frame up. Picked every part. Shaped and formed it exactly the way I wanted it."
"That's a commitment," I say.
"It is." He puts the phone away. He doesn't take his eyes off me. "I hand-picked every single piece. Took my time with it. Some things you can't rush to make perfect, you know? You have to be patient. You have to pay attention. You have to learn what works and what doesn't, what it responds to. And when you finally get it dialed in, when every part is exactly where it should be and the whole thing runs exactly the way you designed it to run…" He pauses. The smile changes. It gets smaller. More private. "There's nothing in this world like it. Riding that bike every day. Every single day. I just couldn't get enough, you know? It was in my blood, and under my skin. It felt so damn good. So perfect. Like it was made for me. Because it was. I made it for me and me alone."
