“Yeah, little town, south of Eugene, partway to the coast.”
“What the fuck were you doing in Drain?”
“I told you, shithead! Working, making a living, doing what folks do.”
“No, I mean, how’d you end up in a place called Drain?”
“Oh. We were on our way out to Coos Bay. I’d fucked up, did some things to make me an unwelcome citizen in the state of Wyoming, and a friend of Penny’s from Casper was set up out that way, Coos Bay, talked up how beautiful and friendly it was. So we were on our way, last summer, seems like a hundred fucking years ago, had a little Ford, and the engine seized. Ended up in Drain, ended up pregnant, and then I get this genius idea, checks come to the old person who used to have our PO box. Blank checks, from one of those credit card companies. So I tell Penny…”
They are silent while the waitress sets down two sweating bottles of Coors in front of them and Lisle makes a circle in the air with his finger, says, “Keep ’em coming.” Jason can see from her eyes on Lisle’s ponytail and muddy jacket that they are not the usual customers of this bar, but it’s close to the hospital. Jason glances around for a clock.
“Brandi said she might be able to get me a job up there.” Jason jerks his head out the bar window south toward Portland Heights, the rich neighborhood where Brandi pumps gas.
“Yeah, I don’t know.” Lisle’s eyes drift away from his; his hand wraps around the neck of his bottle. “You don’t have any references, man.”
“You’d do it.”
“But I’m your brother.”
They tilt their beers.
“I know a guy who does hardwood installs,” Lisle says. “I could hook you up with him.”
“Take a lead pipe to my back while you’re at it. I can’t be on my hands and knees hammering in floors all day. Back is fucked as it is.”
Lisle nods—they’d been logging together that summer with their old man when Jason fell. Lisle had half carried him the quarter mile in the rain to the access road, tried to crack him up the whole two-hour ambulance ride when they thought he’d be paralyzed.
“Got anything else?” Jason doesn’t look at Lisle when he says it.
“You don’t have the best track record, J.”
“It’s not the worst. I’m clean, I don’t drink.” Lisle does his hee-haw laugh as Jason pauses to slug from his beer. “Much. These are special circumstances.”
“Penny said last job, you punched out the boss on the road crew.”
Bitch. “I can’t work a road crew.”
“And no logging, no ‘fucking construction,’ no car wash, no landscaping. I’ve heard the list.”
“I can’t be the guy who stands out there freezing my balls off turning the sign for all the gear-jamming aces going places. I used to be the guy who sprayed eighteen wheels of gravel on those poor fuckers.”
Lisle looks at his watch. “I’ve got to go get Brandi.”
Jason’s stomach feels hollowed out, like beer bubbling at the bottom of an empty jug. He burps into his fist, thinks he should order a burger, quickly, since Lisle will pick up the tab, today of all days.
“What about you—anyone hiring out your way?” Lisle had just started work for a bridge engineering company near Salem, hired the first day he showed up with his hard hat and harness. Must be fucking nice.
“Man,” Lisle says, wiping his hand down his face, and Jason knows what’s coming. “I told you about Nick. Nobody with a record. Policy.”
“Fucking discrimination. I might as well be back on the inside.”
“We’re hanging from steel cables a hundred feet up in pissing-down rain—there’s a trust that’s got to be built. A team’s only as good as its weakest link.”
“Chain,” Jason spits at his prick of a brother.
“What?”
“The word is chain. Or team and player. Get it right.” Put it on a fucking poster and shove it up your ass. Jason goes to get up, and his back twangs, a rod of fire down his leg to his boot; he slumps back into his chair.
“Sorry, man. About today,” Lisle says.
Jason can feel Penny’s arms around his neck this morning, a strangling chokehold, begging him not to make her sign those papers.
“HE’S OUR OWN FLESH and blood!”
And Chloe Pinter in her tight little suit hustling those fuckheads out of the room, the panic look in Francie’s eyes, darting to Jason and Penny like a rabbit’s,