Chat - Archer Mayor [112]
His adrenaline pumping and his own gun out by now, Joe stared at them both for a few moments, wondering what might happen next, even glancing at the door once to see if their one remaining daughter might not be standing there with a shotgun.
But all was finally at rest.
“Jesus” was all he could summon up in the end, reaching for the phone. “What a bunch.”
JMAN: hey – Mandi144 u out ther?
LoneleeG: don’t no Mandi, but im here
JMAN: kool. ASL
LoneleeG: 15/f/Burlington
JMAN: Vermont? Wurks 4 me
Chapter 27
Joe switched off the table saw and examined the edge of the board he’d just pushed through the blade.
“No blood?” a voice asked from behind him. “I would’ve thought by now you’d be missing a thumb at least.”
Joe put the board down and dusted his abdomen free of sawdust. “Hey, Willy. Slumming in the neighborhood?”
Kunkle shrugged, looking around the small barn that his boss had converted into a woodworking shop attached to his house. “Something like that.”
“You stand a cup of coffee?” Joe asked. “I made it an hour ago, and I’m having some anyhow.”
“Sure,” Willy answered, pointing at the table saw with his chin. “What’re you making?”
Joe laughed, removing the thick apron he wore. “If I’m lucky, an end table for Lyn’s daughter, Coryn. Her apartment is supposedly like a sixties college museum of stacked bricks and orange crates.”
They left the shop for the living room next door and the kitchen beyond. Joe lived in what might have been a gatehouse had it not been stuck onto the back of a Victorian monstrosity fronting the street. In any case, it was also inexplicably and oddly proportioned, so that anyone taller than five and a half feet looked shoehorned into the place.
“You two still tight?” Willy asked.
“With Lyn?” Joe responded, taking out a mug. “So far, so good. I take it you’re asking because Sam just threw you out.”
“Fuck you,” Willy said without emphasis. He watched Joe pour out the coffee in silence. Only after he accepted the mug did he add, “We just had a fight. I left. She wanted to talk—as usual.”
Joe poured his own mug and sat on a stool near the counter. “You do talk sometimes, though, right?”
Willy took a sip and answered, “Yeah, Mom. We talk. I wasn’t in the mood this time.”
“It’s tough,” Joe commented vaguely, knowing his audience. “The price we have to pay for companionship. Still worth it to you?”
Willy stared a moment into the depths of the mug. “I guess.”
A thumbs-up, given the man, Joe thought.
“How’s your brother doin’?” Willy asked, changing the subject.
“Close to good as new. Using a cane only, driving on his own. He’s even back at work half days.”
“That was a weird deal.”
“You mean Dan Griffis going after him?” Joe asked. “Yeah. I never thanked you properly for doing what you did, by the way, getting close to E. T. In the long run, that probably saved all our bacon the night Dan came hunting for me and mine.”
Willy nodded. “No sweat. Got me to hang out in a bar again. I always liked bars, even if what they had in them didn’t like me.”
Or liked him too much, Joe thought.
“E. T. was a good enough guy, though,” Willy continued unexpectedly. “A fucked-up dad, maybe, but okay in the end. Did you ever get together with him after?”
Joe shook his head. “The night he called, I could tell it was about all he had left in him. The local scuttlebutt has it he hasn’t left his house since—not to see Dan in jail, not to run the business, not even to have a drink. From what I hear, the lawyers are gathering to figure out all his businesses.”
Willy laughed. “Any lawyers left over after the Leppman-Gartner clan got through hiring?”
“Good point,” Joe agreed.
Willy put his coffee down and gazed at his host. Joe had rarely seen him in such a contemplative mood. “This family shit is so weird.”
Joe smiled at him. “How so?”
“I don’t know. Getting ticked off at Sam tonight and driving around, I got to thinking. Seems like all we do is piss and moan about breaking up or sticking together, and when we’re not doing that, it’s family, family, family. I mean, what do you