Fast Lane - Kristen Ashley Page 0,38

water. We had a lot of turtles that lived there.

I got too close, a turtle didn’t want me that close, floated up and took a bite out of me on the skin between my pinkie toe and the next one.

Or maybe that turtle just thought I was food.

[Smiles]

It surprised me, mostly.

So, I freaked out, shouting and flailing, going in circles in that innertube.

[Laughs]

I must have looked like I’d lost my mind.

To my grandfather, I looked like I was being attacked.

He raced out of the house, down the yard, to the pond and almost jumped in wearing all his clothes before I got it together and rowed myself over to him.

He hauled me out, looked down at my toe, there was a little cut, some blood.

He cleaned me up and put some Neosporin on it.

You know that dad on My Big Fat Greek Wedding with his Windex?

That was Gramps with his Neosporin.

[Smiles]

Just a nick.

No big deal.

A few days later, I was doing something on our property, I don’t know what. I was always off doing something. Daydreamer.

Back beyond the barn, up by the trees close to the railroad tracks, I saw them all in a line.

Maybe eight, ten dead turtles. All with a bullet hole in their shells.

Gramps was a sniper in the war.

[Shakes head]

Yes.

Just a nick.

But it hurt me, and it scared me.

[Expression turns faraway]

Yes.

Preacher understood that.

He understood Gramps.

[Expression gains focus]

Gramps might have died with the buzz cut that he retained since the war and Preacher’s hair might have been down to his shoulders.

But those men?

Two peas in a pod.

“Well, there you go,” Gram mumbled.

I was staring.

“Holy crap,” Sonia breathed.

We were all sitting at the dining room table, looking through the kitchen to the mudroom, which was what we called our living room.

And Gramps and Preacher were standing there with Tommy, and Gramps had just slapped Preacher on the shoulder in male camaraderie.

“You know, your grandfather told your mother the night before she married your father that he’d put her in his car and drive her to Florida, and the wedding, and that man, be damned.”

Slowly, I turned my head to look at her after hearing a story I’d never heard before and I felt Sonia had perked up to listen too.

“She picked that man,” Gram finished.

She then clicked her teeth and winked at me.

“You’ve always been a smart girl. Not that your mother wasn’t. That man even had me bamboozled. Gotta admit, that isn’t hard when it comes to me, but it was when it came to your mom. We all can learn at any time, and it doesn’t have to be us who’s the one who makes the mistake that teaches the lesson.”

“Lynie!” my grandfather called. “We gonna feed these kids or what?”

“Did your fingers stop working?” Gram asked.

“They’re gonna work enough for me to turn the key in the ignition in my truck to go get Kentucky Fried Chicken,” my grandfather told her.

“Yay! My favorite!” Sonia cried.

Gramps totally knew that, but he ignored her like he was adept at doing because it wouldn’t do for a man’s man to give it all up and show outright he doted on his girls, even if he caught absolutely everything.

And doted on his girls.

“I’m making my macaroni and cheese,” Gram declared.

On no, she wasn’t.

We were having Preacher’s favorite.

Hamburgers.

We were not having Gram’s macaroni and cheese.

And not because I didn’t know where Preacher stood on macaroni and cheese.

“Oh, lawd,” Jen mumbled.

She’d had occasion to force down Gram’s mac ’n’ cheese.

Obviously, I had too.

So, I winced.

“How about I fry up those burgers,” I suggested after recovering from my wince.

“I’m making my mac ’n’ cheese,” Gram decreed.

“Lynie, no you’re not,” Gramps denied.

“Lyla isn’t frying up hamburgers for famous rock stars,” Gram returned. “My mac ’n’ cheese is a delicacy.”

“It’s yellow gelatinous goo,” Gramps stated.

There were a number of gasps, none of them louder than Gram’s, even if this statement was inarguably true.

“Take that back, Audie Campbell,” she snapped.

“Woman, I did not marry you for your cooking abilities, and that’s a good thing, since, if you got ’em, you been hidin’ ’em for near-on fifty years,” Gramps told her. “I’m getting chicken.”

Before Gram could react to Gramps’s latest comment, I quickly said, “We already got hamburger meat so we could have burgers, Gramps. Preacher and Tommy really like burgers.”

Gramps turned to Preacher and then Tommy, who were now flanking him, both looking like they wanted to bust out laughing.

“You boys like chicken?” he asked.

He got two, “Yes, sirs.”

“We’re having chicken,” Gramps decided.

He then took