“Wow,” I whispered. I’d seen the man pissed three times this week so far. I couldn’t imagine what his brothers must be like.
“Well, damn,” Sonny said as he walked toward us down the hall and leaned against the half wall behind my new tool area. “Who’s going to go out there and tame the beast?”
All around the garage there was a loud chorus of, “Not it!”
“Looks like you get the pleasure,” Sonny smiled.
“Well, fuck.”
“Grab a handful of those candies he keeps in a jar behind his desk. He’s got a sweet tooth and if his mouth is full he can’t yell,” Sonny told me. And then, laughing, he said, “I learned that trick from his mama.”
I hopped out of the engine well of the old truck and grabbed the rag that was hanging out of the back pocket of my coveralls. As I walked to Daughtry’s office, I wiped my hands, trying to get off the majority of the grease and dirt I’d already collected in the short time I’d been working this morning.
When I walked through the office door, I was surprised to see that it was well tended and organized, stacks of folders on the corner of the desk with a calendar in the middle that was covered in scribbled notes and phone numbers. On the corner of the desk closest to the wall was an 8x10 frame that held a picture of a large group of kids.
I stepped closer and picked it up so I could study the children in the photo. The oldest child had dark skin and long braided hair and she was holding a toddler who had one blue eye and one green. There were little boys and one or two other girls all around the teenager and I laughed when I saw that one of the boys was naked. Another older boy, who looked almost the same age as the biggest girl was holding a small baby in his arms and looking down at her with a smile. I took note of some of the other children and smiled when I saw how happy every single one of them looked.
They were standing on a patio and I could see adults floating around in the pool behind them and a silver-haired man at the grill off to the side.
It looked like a family barbecue that you might see in a hot dog or beer commercial on television. I imagined there was a lot of laughter and screaming kids that day and everyone went home full and tired that night.
I put the frame back in place and moved around the desk to the shelves behind it. There were other photos and I recognized a young Daughtry, along with a younger Lout and Sonny there with three other boys. They were standing in a line with their arms up over each other’s shoulders as they grinned at the camera. I could see a dark-haired woman seated off to the side in the background holding a little pink wrapped bundle in her arms.
So this must be Daughtry’s three brothers and they had grown up with Sonny and Lout. That’s good to know, I thought to myself. People stuck around this family for years, meaning they were good people. And better yet, all of the children in the photos, both old and new, looked happy.
I shook away my thoughts and grabbed the big jar from the shelf. I reached in and got a handful of the Jolly Ranchers and stuffed them into the front pocket of my overalls before I put the jar back up on the shelf.
You can tame the beast with sweets, I thought. That was good information to have.
◆◆◆
“Can I help you out here in the sunshine for a bit?” I asked Daughtry as I walked up to where he was sitting on an overturned bucket, his elbows on his splayed knees and his chin resting in his hands.
He glanced up at me with a raised brow and I reached into my pocket and offered him a green piece of candy as a peace offering.
He took it out of my hand and unwrapped it before he popped it into his mouth.
“I noticed the boneyard earlier,” I told him as I walked past him and knelt down in front of an old engine. I started picking up random pieces that had been removed and examining them to see if they were even worth keeping as I talked, “It’s a jumble. You mind assigning it to me as one of my duties? I kind of like going through old stuff and seeing what can be saved.”
“It relaxes me when I’m out here working,” Daughtry said evenly. “I’m sorry I was a dick to you, Jamie, and I’m sorry I doubted your skills just because you’re a girl. A woman. It would be like me saying Lout can’t work on cars because of his skin color or Tucker can’t do it because he can’t read.”
“Yeah,” I shrugged. “I’m used to it. I grew up working at my grandpa’s shop in East Texas. I’ve heard it all my life, but it didn’t stop me - it just made me want to prove people wrong.”
“I can already tell you know your way around an engine just by how you handled that one we just pulled out.”
“Thanks,” I said with a smile as I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Friends?”
Daughtry seemed to think about it for a minute before he nodded, “Friends.”
I searched for something else to make conversation about and finally said, “I saw a picture in your office of a bunch of kids. Are they all your nieces and nephews?”
“Yeah, in a roundabout way,” Daughtry explained. “They’re not all blood, but they’re all family, if you know what I mean.”
“Blood doesn’t equal family,” I told him. “My sons aren’t of my blood, but they’re still my boys.”
“How did you get boys that age? Married?”
“We were never married,” I explained. “I dated their father Wyatt. He was in the service with my brothers and he was my best friend, Neva’s, big brother. Since the boy’s mom didn’t want to take care of them, he needed someone who could take custody of them while he was deployed. That someone was me for the last five years. Before that it was Neva.”
“So, he’s here with you?”
“No,” I shook my head, amazed that the pain of losing Wyatt was even less after my realization yesterday. “He was killed along with Neva’s husband almost a year ago, so Neva and I brought the boys here to be close to my dad and my brothers.”
“Those two are now legally your boys?”
“Three,” I explained. “I have three sons. Adam is 14, Joshua is 12, and Heath is 11.”
“You’re younger than me and your oldest kid is more than half your age.”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “When Wyatt first deployed after we got together was when he signed over custody to me. I was barely 19 and the boys were 8, 6, and 5.”
“No babies of your own then?”
I laughed bitterly and shook my head, “No, no babies of my own. Wyatt was content to let me raise the ones he had, but was so against giving me a baby of my own that he got a vasectomy without telling me about it.”
“Shit.”
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” I laughed uncomfortably. “I just figured it out yesterday after I left here.”
“If he’s dead, how did you find out?”
“I don’t know for sure that’s what he did,” I told him. “But he was always careful to use condoms even though I was on birth control until about a month or so after he had ‘the flu’ for a week. The few times we had sex after that, like the time right before he left for the last time, he didn’t wear one.”