Fast Lane - Kristen Ashley Page 0,42

the wall beside the brick fireplace, a pulldown desk.

Lyla:

Tommy was ex-military and no-nonsense, so Gramps liked him from the start.

Preacher had talked him around.

So, once Tom got back from Chicago, those three spent a lot of time sitting around the kitchen table, smoking cigarettes, and shooting man shit.

[Smiles].

I have pictures of them with their glasses of bourbon and ashtrays they never dumped out, spinning their yarns.

[Shakes head, still smiling, takes big breath and lets it go]

I didn’t know it, but Preacher hadn’t won him.

Not until the night we played euchre.

[Off tape]

Euchre?

It’s a card game. People in the Midwest take it pretty seriously.

It wasn’t that.

It wasn’t the euchre or that Preacher knew how to play.

It was that it was the day after Christmas.

Julia hadn’t called on Christmas Day or Christmas Eve and we were all upset about it. Sonia and I called and both left messages, but even though we were Dad’s children too, he didn’t call us.

Sonia was older than me, graduating from Purdue that coming summer.

When he made his play to kick us when we were down after Mom died, the only one he could get his hands on was Julia.

Not that he wanted her, and that has nothing to do with Jules.

It was his way to stick it to Mom, posthumously, and stick it to Gramps, at that time, because, I figure the only other person outside Gram who knew that story about Gramps telling Mom he’d take her to Florida rather than her marrying my dad was Dad.

But we were sitting around the kitchen table, me and Preacher partners, getting beat by Gramps and Sonia, who were partners, and it was hard to beat Gramps at euchre, doing this while Gram mixed cocktails, poured bourbon and generally flitted about, as was her wont.

[Nostalgic half-smile]

The phone rings, Gram gets it, it’s Julia.

We’re thrilled, maybe me especially because I can’t wait to introduce her over the phone to Preacher.

Gram chats to her.

She sits in on the game for Sonia when she chats with her.

And then Sonia says Julia wants to talk to me and she takes my place as partners with Preacher so I can chat with my baby sister.

The thing is, when I get on the phone, it isn’t Julia.

It’s my father.

And I barely say hello before he’s shouting at me to call off my boyfriend’s attorneys.

I’ve no doubt it showed on my face, so within seconds, I’m not holding the phone anymore, Preacher is.

He listens for another second before he says, “You’re not talking to Lyla anymore, you’re talking to Preacher McCade. Put her sister on, please.”

He said that three times.

I remember.

Three times.

“Put her sister on, please.”

That was very like and unlike Preacher.

He could be polite, to people who deserved it.

But not to people like my father.

After the third time, I knew by his face he was done.

He then says, “My manager will be in touch with a number. From this point on, if you want Lyla, or Sonia, you call that number and you request to speak to them. If this is what they want, our people will set up a time for that conversation to happen. Julia is free to call this number at any time, until she’s home and doesn’t need to do that. But you just lost access to your girls unless it comes through me. Do you get me?”

He stood there a moment listening to the phone.

Then he hung up, looked at me and said, “I don’t think he got me.”

Dad didn’t get him, but my grandfather did.

And that was it.

Preacher had Gramps too.

[Off tape]

Your father was a turtle.

[Nods]

You understand, and in the way of that metaphor, you’re right.

But actually, my father was a snake.

Gramps knew it before my mother married him.

And Preacher knew it and I don’t think he ever one-on-one met the man.

The rest of that Christmas break…

[Trails off]

[Turns head to look out the window]

I lived a lot of life since then, but even not having Mom there, that two weeks on our little piece of property in Indiana were two of the happiest weeks of my life.

[Turns head back]

And Preacher’s.

Jesse:

Her grandmother threw a New Years’ Eve party that year. Asked me, Mom and my sisters there. Tim and the girl he was seein’. Dave and his folks.

Lyla and her sister and Jen and Amber and a few more of Lyla’s friends.

[Smiles]

Lynie Campbell smoked one cigarette a year, on New Years’, and I remember her making a big deal of making Preacher light it for her, swanning about with that