About Drinking Beer and Singing Toto (From: The Mere Valley)

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The Mere Valley: A Novel  

Added Content

Chapter One: Main Street

Tim rubbed a roll of bills together in his sweaty fingers, forehead bunched and burning as he stood spectator as Herm Burns and his teenage son clumsily loaded an antique woodworking bench into the back of Herm’s shiny white pickup truck. He rubbed the bills until they were flaky, enduring the process in its entirety while the sun superheated the cracked sidewalk in front of his empty store. He shifted back and forth to give his singeing boot heels a fighting chance. The high altitude added an extra kick to summer. That’s what Herm said pulling up, excited especially when he said kick, too enthusiastic, to deliver secondhand knowledge gleaned from a website with “science” in the name.

            “Your mother will love this,” Tim heard Herm grunting to his skinny son Rory as they wrestled the unwieldy piece. “Parties. Your mother, she needed a serving table for parties.”

            “Great,” said the teenager, insolently slamming the tailgate closed, spitting like a pretend cowboy through closed teeth onto the curb. It instantly evaporated. “An old table. Exciting.”

            Tim almost smiled. Rory’s comment was predictably tone deaf and age-appropriately stupid. He might’ve said something as dismissive in his formative years, but he couldn’t see backwards with clarity, recent events being what they were, clogging up the works of his recall.

            Herm left the son leaning on the truck to fiddle with his girlish bangs as he walked cautiously over to Tim with an outstretched hand, pink and bloated from underuse. His smile was bleached and too perfectly white for a man that had seen a long run of years. The teeth were made more absurd contrasted against Herm’s wrinkles and the various spots of undefinable irritation on his face. “I’m sorry about everything,” he said, raising his beaten dog eyes to Tim’s face and then raising them higher again, to the sign providing them a momentary slice of shade.

            “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Herm. Like I said. Thank you for responding to the ad. Every bit helps.”

            “Did you count that? We just hit the ATM and Linda was on the phone the whole time. The Valley Fest and all that. Anyway, I didn’t double check. Make sure. I don’t want to short you.”

            Tim held up the roll and slipped it into the front pocket of his old jeans, hoping a forced smile was clear enough signal. The matter was closed.

            “Okay,” Herm said. “We’ll see you and Shayna around town. Bennie’s this Friday, maybe. That blues band from the city is playing again.”

            “We’ll see.” Herm managed to blunder onto another landmine, forgetting that Shayna was staying with her part-time tutor sister past the county line. Tim was sure more than one person in town was privy to their discord. Mere Valley was growing but it couldn’t outrun the speed of spreading words. Rumor still traveled quick as Mercury in the burgeoning tourist destination.

            When they finally pulled away, Tim grimaced as his grandpa’s bench already starting to slide in Herm’s truck bed. In ten minutes it would be brutalized and chipped, but that was the least of it. Herm’s wife would have it stripped of its true purpose to serve champagne or unpronounceable finger foods to people Tim couldn’t imagine if he tried. He walked languidly back inside, ignoring the store owners standing across the street watching, fingers ready to call the sheriff’s office. Maybe it’d make the big city news, another stale white guy with a deflated mountain of dreams going crazy, disillusioned by a life sanded down to the nub. Those looking on were people he’d known for decades, but they posed imperiously like ready-made gestapo initiates, arms crossed and faces bunched up to focus through the heat.

            “How’s everyone,” he called out, summoning a short wave to the audience before turning back inside, doing one last sweep around the store to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. He told himself out loud not to think several times as he circled the square footage. Semple’s Hardware was officially no more. The third generation would be the last. His grandfather and dad were gone, along with his woodworking bench and everything else. He sat in the middle of the floor and looked at the counter, using his memory to fill the empty space. He’d learned most things about life from the old timers that used Semple’s as a base of operations, the ones who’d mosey in smelling of chewing tobacco to buy a single washer or nut; all of it a pretext to wile away days telling stories and gossiping like old women in sitting rooms. He found himself pounding the indestructible hardwood next to his legs, whispering a list of things he might’ve done differently without swallowing, until the drool started leaking out from between his lips.

            “Hi there. Are you Timothy Semple?”

            He rose up like a man with younger legs, embarrassed and without an excuse in the world. He might’ve been able to explain away his behavior to an old friend, but before him was a stranger. “Uh, yes ma’am. We’re not open.”

            She nodded back with a little smirk that confirmed the obviousness of his statement then asked if the counter was okay for setting down her box. Before he could unlock his jaw, she said, “I’m Reny Davies. Dru Davies’ niece.”

            “Of course,” he said.

            “Okay,” she labored to say. “You’re confused. I’m setting this down, Timothy Semple. It’s heavy.”

            “Of course,” he repeated, scratching his messy hairline and watching her stretch her arms behind her back after relieving the burden. The combination of profile and motion showed off put an extra spotlight on her figure, curvaceous and youthful. Nothing overly tight, not like the women his wife tried to keep up with, sweating buckets in spinning classes, being yelled at by some guy named Cade until their backs rippled and their thighs resembled Barry Sanders’.

            “That’s better,” she sighed, wiping her neck and then her hands with a blue bandana pulled from a patched back pocket. “Nice to meet you, Timothy Semple.”

            “Hi,” he said while she looked around his rangy frame to assess the surroundings. “Just Tim. It’s been kind of,” he continued, “do I know you?”

            “Dru Davies bought the space. Today’s the first of the month and I just got to town to start setting up the shop.”

            Tim looked at his watch like doing so made for good deflection. “I shouldn’t be here. I was just meeting a guy for one last,” he said, talking as much to himself while he started for the door. “It’s not important. I’ll get out of your way, Ms. Davies.”

            “It’s totally fine, Tim,” she said, starting to sift her things. “And you don’t have to sprint. You’re officially my first friend in Mere Valley.”

            He passed her by with a nod and half an awkward smile, allowing himself a moment to recognize signs of beauty before attempting to dismiss the thought. Just stop you moron. She’s younger than you can put a number to. Twenty-something. Never mind.  

            “This has got to be hard, Timothy.” The painfully obvious declaration was loud, made by Merritt D. Lennox, Jr. Tim noticed the gang of busybodies increasing in number and milling intensely, filling up the block on both sides, growing ever more ready for drama. He could feel the eyes of the cute new tenant on his back. Lennox Junior’s megaphone voice was enough to take her away from her moving box and come outside into the sun. He had to get out of the situation. This was one of those life moments, he told himself. Where a man finds out what he can endure. In seconds he called upon better men’s memories to make the moment small, war stories from his father and grandfather about outlasting some god-awful enemy, being near death and riddled with disease as they all slept in a bed of their dead buddy’s guts or some such. “Just really sad to see an institution like Semple’s get swept up,” yelled Junior. “I wish—”

            “You wish what, Merritt?” The borrowed memories were gone. The world was only heat and him and his failure, the last being clearly on display for his old friends and the new girl. And Merritt. Oh God Tim wished he hated the youngest Lennox. The fact that he didn’t made everything worse. “Do me a favor, buddy. Don’t say you wish there was something you could’ve done.”

            “Okay,” Merritt said, tipping his semi-effeminate suede cowboy hat to the girl as Tim brushed by in search of his rusty two-tone Ford F-150. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just came to pay my respects.”

            Tim tightened the keys in his hand until his palm drew blood. The metal sank deeper into his skin as he fought the urge to turn around put Merritt on the ground.

            He swallowed. Hurting Lennox would do nothing except get him in trouble with the richest family in town and set fire to whatever future he had left.

            “I’ll see you it at the job on Monday,” Merritt yelled. It was impossible to know what purpose Junior thought he served by being there. Some sort of simple-minded decency, Tim told himself. It certainly wasn’t malice. Malice was monopolized by Lennox’s father, Merritt, Sr.

Tim finally reached his old truck.

“Lennox Home and Garden is really lucky to have you, buddy.”

            Tim bit down on his lip as he tried to jiggle the lock. “You got to be kidding me,” he said.

            “You need some help?” Junior screamed from somewhere.

            “You got to be kidding me,” Tim repeated, letting go of his now bloody keys and looking for something in the bed of his truck. He found a two-by-four that he’d forgotten about. Mumbling, he grabbed it and started beating the door to the F-150. Merritt called out, asking if everything was okay. Across the street, they were taking pictures. The girl was looking left and right with her mouth cupped, watching as the sad man from her aunt’s new store proceeded to smash the windows of an old pickup in the middle of main street.

Chapter Two: Gable’s Bistro

            Tim never actually made it inside his truck. He stopped short of breaking the windows after what turned out to be an exhausting exercise in rage dispersal. By the time he arrived at Gable’s the video of his outburst had made the rounds on social media. Gable had seen it from four separate angles. Two versions had color commentary already added in. One proclaimed Semple to be a “madman.” The other said he was “Just really, really sad.”

            Sun shot across the room but stopped in a line short of the bar. It was less than hour until she opened at four, but she stopped her thousand preparations for a moment and poured him a tall glass of bourbon. She’d even turned his stool square to signal readiness for whatever he had to dump at her feet. “You can talk about it or not,” she said, flinching from the sun and while patting the top of his flagging head. When he finally gained the strength to look up, she was holding out a rag next to his hand.

            “Thanks,” he said. The words came out cracked and dry. He hadn’t taken a drink yet. Rarely drank at all. But he would today. Gable knew it. He appreciated that she knew it.

            “No problem. But hurry up and wrap up that cut. No bleeding on my bar. Was that from the two-by-four?”

            He shook his head. “I think I squeezed my keys too hard.”

            “You’re not hugely impressive right now, young man.”

            The pressure around his hand caused him to wince. “If we put our heads together I’m not sure if we could come up with anything like impressive in a long time.”

            “Now we’re just doing self-pity.” She let out half-playful moan. “You know how that makes me uncomfortable.”

            “Sorry. I didn’t mean to come here, Gabes. You’ve got things to do.”

            Gable rubbed his sand dune hair and sighed, like seeing every inch of her face was of vital importance. “I owe you a lot,” she said. “God, as if you need to hear it—we’re friends, jackass.”

            “We are friends.”

            “So, take that drink and do some breathing. I’ve got to finish getting ready. The oldest and the richest start coming as soon as I open You know how it works around here.”

            “You make it sound like a stampede. Can 80-year-olds move that quick?”

            She lightly applied an admonishing tap on the spot where she’d tousled his hair. “The wife still not talking to you?”

            “No. I doubt my little display will help, either. No way she doesn’t hear about it.”

            “And see it. You’re Valley viral. Whatever. Start fixing things tomorrow. Tonight, we’ll get drunk. Maybe break some more stuff. I’ll bring over some of my ex’s crap to burn. Then,” she said, betraying enough sadness to make him sadder still. “We toast a few more times to Semple’s Tools.”

            He held up the bourbon with watery blue eyes. “Thanks, Gabes.”

Chapter Three: New Job

            “Are you the manager?”

            Tim turned around fully expecting to see one of his old “friends” with a smug look on his face, already laughing at the red Lennox Hardware work vest he was wearing. Instead, it was a pale man with eyebrows dark as crude oil and a hair lip. His name was Clyde, an underling from Mere Valley’s only law office. They’d met a few times around town, but it was obvious Clyde didn’t remember their encounters.

            “I’m the manager,” said Tim, sticking out the TIM on the left side of his chest to make the nametag a little more visible. Manager Tim had learned through the course of the day that it was easier than going through the old ways, shaking hands and saying howdy and all the other friendly anachronisms of his rotting carcass of a family business over on Main Street.

            He looked at his watch and waited for Clyde to finish rooting around his slim briefcase. Maybe the name of the tool was written down in there. Tim didn’t say a word. He was genuinely interested in what Clyde was seeking. That is, until he spoke.

            “You’ve been served,” he said. A thick manila envelope was thrust from the innards of the case and into Tim’s hands.

            “Served what?”

            “Take it.”

            Tim gripped the paper out of pity for Clyde more than anything else. The guy looked ready to make a run for it. In fact he did, hard soles thwapping out the door and into a used German sedan with impressive quickness. Tim watched the entire escape with curiosity and a growing unease, holding a malfunctioning power drill and the slumping envelope, one in each hand.

            An older woman named Betha Brooks was one aisle over and pushed over a section of oil filters to the ground to make a hole for her face. She meant to snap him from his addled state. “Timothy Semple. You give me those eyes, young man.”

            He regained a measure of focus. Oil filters were at his feet. It was a mess. Mrs. Brooks was reaching through the aisle so that her pale dry hand came out on his side, like a breech in a sarcophagus. She was snapping her fingers with superhuman quickness. “Okay, Mrs. Brooks,” he said, bending down to address her through the makeshift tunnel. “This isn’t twenty years ago.”

            She finally stopped snapping. “What’s that supposed to mean, Timothy Semple?”

            He stood tall and looked around, grateful that Lennox’s huge store was slow. The place was huge but relied on the internet for most of their sales. “It means I’m a grown man and you’re not teaching high school English anymore. You can’t go around snapping at grown men.”

            “Don’t make me come over there.” Her hand turned to a little fist.

            Tim softened his tone before rebuffing his old teacher too harshly, remembering that one of the gray hair regulars at Semple’s told him that Mrs. Brooks was going through the early stages of dementia. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Brooks.”

            Her hand relaxed. “Always making things hard on yourself, boy. So much potential by the wayside.”

            “Yes, ma’am. Thank you for noticing.”

            “What did you do to make that sweet girl want to break up with you?”

            It was a strange situation. He didn’t know if Mrs. Brooks was mentally in the present or if she thought he was still a teenager. Funny thing, she’d be right about the “sweet girl” either way. He’d started dating Shayna in high school. They must’ve broken up and gotten back together three or four times senior year while Tim was under Mrs. Brooks’ tutelage. It was a game back then. They were inevitable. The popular prettiest girl. The popular handsome boy. Since they were ten years old, only just a matter of time. Each separation was just an excuse for making up. Shayna would fling herself into his arms at a full sprint and they’d roll around and be done with it until the next breakup.

            That’s how it used to feel. Before divorce papers and working for a soulless corporate chain and dad dying and Mrs. Brooks having dementia and the whole rest of everything exploding into a fine misty cloud of shit.

            The arm got yanked back and Mrs. Brooks’ face was replaced by a younger one. More pretty than mature, full cheeks and thick red lips. “Sorry about that, Tim. Mom gets all fire when she’s out shopping.”

            “Hey there, Leann. Don’t worry about it.” He leaned close to the opening and whispered. “How’s she doing?”

            “Oh… good days and bad days.”

            He cast his eyes down, sensing a tide of specific pain behind her clichéd response. “I’m truly sorry, Lee. You know…”

“Go on. It’s okay.”

“I was just going to say, it’s important to let yourself enjoy the good days. Easy to use them for recovery and preparation for the bad ones.” It was loose and unsolicited, but Leann was a native of Mere Valley and it was the hard sort of thing people from the same tribe could say to one another, sad unhelpful words somehow spiritually necessary for the survival of a community.

He tightened his mouth and hoped he hadn’t gone outside the lines. Leann was and had always been there, sometimes prominent and sometimes somewhere in the background. Despite the ebbs and flows, they were the same age and by small-town-default knew just about everything there was to know about each other.

            “How long did your dad end up living with you?” she asked. “Three, four years?”

            He softened his look, not wanting to let on how hard it was. She didn’t need to hear it. She was living it and as living went on, his old friend would come to know pain and helplessness he lacked the sad poetry to explain. “Three or four years. That’s right.”

            “Wow.”

            “She looks great,” he said, lowering his voice playfully low. “And still knows when I’m up to no good.”

            Leann laughed and turned her head, asking her mother not to stray. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you, Tim.”

            He needed a moment. It was a heavy yoke to see an old friend going through something that slow and painful, something that chips away. He leaned with his hand on a metal shelf and felt the cold, trying to decide if he felt bad for Leann or for himself, having to think about it all again. The confused trips to the bathroom and Shayna trying to be supportive until they broke against each other and not having the time to be everything to everyone, in the process becoming almost nothing.

            “Sir, do you work here?”

            He turned around and saw a balding guy about his age wearing tight seersucker shorts and a vintage Cubs shirt fraying around the arms. It was one of the newest new additions to Mere Valley. “Hey, Ron,” Tim answered.

            “Wow. You know my name.” Ron was put off. It was always hard to calculate the outsiders. Money and coming from someplace big to someplace small had a strange but varying effect on people.

            “You came by Semple’s a couple times when you first moved. I helped you fix that hot tub.”

            “Right, the hot tub.” Ron stuck a sandaled foot out sideways and placed his hands on his thick hips. “That was a really good job. Life saver, Jim.”

            “Thanks.” Jim. He didn’t have the energy to correct Ron about his name. Didn’t know who who’d it embarrass more.

            “I went to that same place, but it was not the same place. Doesn’t matter. Do you know a lot about toilets, Jim?”

Chapter 4: Hoyt and Then

            The weekend. Tim had two days off with absolutely nothing to do. This new life had stops and starts, something natural enough for the average person, completely foreign to a small business owner. He hated the lack. More, he hated the idea of getting used to it. Life as a regular sloth was a special breed of torture.

            The sound of a diesel truck skidding to a stop in his gravel driveway forced him to look up from the couch. For a second he thought it might be Shayna, but no. “Timmy boy! You alive in there? I’m done taking the silent treatment. Get on out here, son.”

            That Hoyt’s voice didn’t provide an instant influx of joy told Tim that he was officially, certifiably depressed.

            “I’m coming in, you bastard. All depressed and shit.” He looked up at Hoyt, same as he ever was. “You are depressed,” he said, “staring at me like I’m a runway model. There’s websites for your needs, son.”

            Hoyt Thompson was his best friend. Most of their earliest and happiest moments were shared. Being grown, it was a little different, but not much. Hoyt had his kids and an ex, but he was still the same Hoyt, thick or thicker than family.

            “I’m sorry, man.”

            Hoyt took an empty beer can and tossed it lightly into Tim’s face. “Let’s skip the patented Semple self-examination and get out there. Let’s do Trotter’s lake. If we start now, we can get up there by sundown when they start biting.

            “It’ll still be too damn hot,” Tim said, shaking out cobwebs.

            “No, I checked the weather. Cooling down tonight. If you’re going sober I brought water, if you’re going drunk I brought beer. Grab that douchey pole of yours and let’s go.”

            Maybe—”

            He was in the truck and halfway through a beer a few minutes later. Hoyt had his pickup just about floored, as if he was trying to build up momentum for the steep grade into the mountains ahead. Tim’s hair blew in the pounding wind while Hoyt sang Toto’s “Rosanna” in an undefinable shifting key, wonderfully scathing to the ear and far from the original. The halcyon memories of ditching class twenty-something years ago were undeniable.

            “I know what you’re doing,” he yelled, cutting Hoyt off from trying the high Rosanna-Rosanna just before the snappy pre-chorus.