About The Jets and Sharks (Added Content)

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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 to Herm Burns and his teenage son clumsily loading 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, exsanguinated 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 over the diesel clatter, excited especially when he said kick, too enthusiastic, to deliver secondhand knowledge gleaned from a website with “science” in the name.

            “Your mom will love this,” Tim heard Herm grunting to his emaciated son Rory as they wrestled the unwieldy piece. “Parties. 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 and such.  

            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 past-his-date 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. Whatever you think or however you think it, don’t say you wish there was something you could’ve done.”

            “Okay,” Merritt said, tipping his semi-effeminate suede cowboy hat to the Reny Davies 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 dignity, like it was his last. His blue eyes were brilliant with watery emotion. “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 naked 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. That’s so great!” Ron was put off and overenthusiasm was his refuge. It was always hard to calculate the outsiders. Money and coming from someplace big to someplace small had a strange and varying effects 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.” The transplant 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: Plans Change

            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 informed 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, close to flabby but somehow still attractive to all the world. “You are depressed,” he said, “staring at me like I’m a runway model. There’s websites for your needs, son.”

            Hoyt Thompkins 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 bounced it harmlessly off Tim’s weary face. “Let’s skip the patented Semple self-examination and get out there. Let’s do Cotter’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 do the thing.”

            “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 matted hair unlocked and blew in the pounding wind while Hoyt sang Toto’s “Rosanna” in an undefinable shifting key, joyously scathing to the ear and far from the original. 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.      

            “Meet you all the way!”

            “Turn it down, H.”

            “Meet you all the way!”

            “Turn it down or I’m jumping out.” Tim threw the almost finished beer across the cab.

            “Shit, man.” Hoyt started pulling the truck over to the side of the road. “What’s the matter with you? Messing up my ride, the nerve.”

“What’s the matter with me?” he asked back, scoffing at the irony as the fat truck tires found forced rest in the long grass next to the searing state road.

            “We’ll just sit here, man. I don’t give a shit. All day. We don’t even have to fish. Fuck. Fucking rainbow trout and beer with your boy. Captain Burdenville in my car.”

            Tim let Hoyt’s proclamation sit there while they stared again toward the mountains. Two or three shiny German sedans and one Italian sportscar passed by at the thoughtless speed of rich people. “Turn around.”

            “Why?”

            “Because I want to do something stupid and destructive.”

            “That right?”

            “To someone I hate. That deserves it.”

                                                            ______________________

            Hoyt took one to two silent seconds’ pause before yanking the wheel left. They rocked over the uneven ground and started back to town. He reached into the cooler for a beer to compliment his drive and offered a stream of suggestions, some tame, some insane. It went on like that for five minutes. Tim sipping pilsner as an add-on to the three or four shots of tequila from earlier, Hoyt saying he’d seen this or that damn dumb thing in a movie, watched this or that damn dumb thing on YouTube. He spoke fast and with the sincerest brand of seriousness; the tone was that of startup company’s founder pitching his lifelong passion project to iron-jawed venture capitalists.

            They parked about a quarter mile from the Lennox Estate entrance. Back through town, through his sipping and Tim’s untethered brainstorming, he’d never actually told Hoyt where to go.

            Old friends. Best of friends.

            “What’s it gonna be?” asked Hoyt after the truck’s post-turnoff quake and belch. “Whatever we do, it’ll be hard climbing those walls. You know, I saw this movie—”

            Tim released himself from his role as captive audience and rounded the truck bed, looking for something that would cause the elder Lennox a little bit of money and little bit of stress. He spotted an orange spray-paint can, one Hoyt used at his construction site jobs, and began to shake it, salivating as he eyed the carefully choreographed ivy that danced so well down the red bricks of Lennox’s fortress.

            Hoyt picked up a can of his own and stood at his shoudler. He was a little disappointed Tim hadn’t listened to any of his ideas and slightly concerned about the choice of paint; his concrete company was the only game in Mere Valley and the color might turn suspicion toward him. “Fuck it,” he said, shaking the can to sync up with Tim’s, stretching his neck like they were about to break out of huddle. “What are we going to write?”

            No response. He could see that his vengeful friend was mostly blinking eyes and a pulsating chest. “So, we’re going to draw something? How about something classic, like Assholes or Dicks? We could draw assholes. Or dicks. Or assholes and dicks. Timmy boy, give me something.”

            Tim stopped shaking the can and dropped his head, mumbling curses at himself. This was his employer. He’d lost fair and square. A sick parent and changing times had wiped him out. Progress. A little bad luck here. A couple of missed payments there. Lennox was an asshole, but he wasn’t worth getting Hoyt in trouble (though that wasn’t a hard thing to accomplish) or losing his own new job.

            He grabbed Hoyt’s can and squeezed him tight but friendly by the neck. “You’re a wild man.”

            “Glad you appreciate it. Katie didn’t appreciate it.”

            “No she did not,” Tim laughed, trying not to. It was hard for any man to lose the love of his life, especially one as insistent on having a good time. “Sorry, pal. We should’ve gone fishing.”

            “That’s okay. We can do that tomorrow. You don’t have to work Sunday’s either.”

            “Perks of the employee.” Tim said employee like someone might say taxes or Nazis or leprosy.

            It was still early into the evening. They sat with fresh beers on Hoyt’s tailgate and traded things to laugh about. Tim unconvincingly mentioned getting back in triathlon shape. Hoyt said something about taking a road trip to Mexico since neither of them had ever been much for beaches or hard drugs and they could use some fresh experiences. Like most lifelong friendships, there was a measure of reminiscing, fragments of fantasy about younger days.

            “What in shit?” Hoyt said.

            It wasn’t long for Tim to catch up. Merritt Lennox’s dense white hair was unmistakably luminescent in the dusk. His beautiful Ferrari convertible adopting the turn and slope was one beautiful, foreign, horrible thing. His passenger’s elegant neck and auburn hair. Her laughing with her head tilted up to let the mountain air sweep under her chin.

            “There’s no reason for that,” Tim said.

            “No way,” Hoyt said, sipping his beer.

            “Because I’m thinking of all the reasonable explanations for that.”

            “No way,” Hoyt said, pouring down half a can.

            “It’s not possible what we saw. No. Things couldn’t be that bad for me.”

            “I think it is that bad,” Hoyt said, finishing the beer. “Merritt Senior and your wife.”

Chapter Five: Getting Out

            The bulletin board in the Mere Valley jail was located in a strange place, on the pale cinderblock wall opposite the row of four seldom-used cells in the back of the building. Some might say it was quirky or folksy in its ineffectiveness and lack of eye traffic, the bulletin board placement. Part and parcel of the small-town charm. In the same vein as the whole jail and police station setup, sharing a wall with Gib’s Outdoor Store. Besides being the sheriff, Gib was a nationally renowned fly-fisherman and venerated expert on most anything concerning quiet, primordial things in life.

            Emphasis on quiet. Gib could stand in a stream for ten hours and say nothing about the biting cold or the drilling mosquitos or the kids in town hooked on drugs. He could cover himself in wet leaves for a day without so much as an audible breath, waiting to shoot down a buck worthy enough to merit the monkish effort.

            Taciturnity served a man well, Tim thought. The ability to hold one’s tongue was a trait he’d always admired but never had the strength or resolve to attain. He was never silent as much as he was biding time to say the next thing.

            “Gib, you want to let me out?”

            The sheriff was visible through the bars and out the open door that lead to the cells. It was more than cracked, like Gib wanted to check on Tim every so often without getting up from his chair. He was dressed in a lightweight denim shirt and waterproof hiking pants, very relaxed and un-sheriffy, tying a fly of his own design.    

            Tim didn’t expect an answer the first time. He’d wait and try again. Perhaps read the bulletin board for the fiftieth time. Flyers for the Mere Valley Preservation Society, The Small Business Association of Mere Valley, and the Local Wildlife Initiative were three that stood out. Tim was the president of all three. If the last few years were any indication, he was crap at his job. “Did you move the bulletin board back here so I’d have to look at it?” he asked Gib.

            No response. No surprise.

            When he felt the hot air sweep through and watched Gib stand, he could smell a change in the air. It was a novel scent. He imagined Old Lennox with his decrepit thin lips kissing her on the cheek as he gave her the bottle of whatever she was wearing. The old lech. What did that make her? What did that make him? He saw Gib say something that looked like one or two words to Shayna that of course he couldn’t hear and clutched onto the rusty bars, pushing and pulling them like a mental patient sure of his sanity. At that time, Gib’s quietude really was about the most aggravating thing in the world.

            Shayna was in the hallway with her back against the wall opposite the cells. She was more beautiful than ever, he thought happily and quickly, soon dismissing the thought that it might be the absence or the wanting what you can’t have or the fact that Old Shitbag Lennox was putting it to her. She seemed simultaneously sad and scared, like he was some caged animal and they’d already fed him a last meal before the meat grinder. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Really, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

            “What did happen?” Her tone was about as affect-free as a man could expect from a separated spouse talking through bars. Tim appreciated it and tried to match her equanimity.

            “Gib got crazy. I think it’s a police overreach situation. He grabbed me up, threw me in the car—cuffs and everything. Took me down here like a common criminal. I don’t even know how long I’ve been here.”

            “Gib said three hours.”

            “That doesn’t sound like a lot, but with the confinement and the claustrophobia…”

            “Tim,” she sighed with a thorough eye-rubbing, “you don’t have claustrophobia.”

            He rubbed a fingernail up and down one of the bars until a bit of rust flaked off. “I didn’t know either. This whole thing, I’m telling you. Not my finest hour.”

            Her head dropped. Her voice saddened. “It’s been some time since anything like your finest hour.”

            She wasn’t trying to be mean. Her tone was somber, reflective, the tone adopted specifically for bygones. He bent over from the pain, wishing she’d brought more anger, something more natural to defend against. “You can’t honestly be seeing him,” he said, starting to gasp with every word. Maybe he did have claustrophobia.

            Gib was looking over his shoulder from the office with tight lips. He was shaking his head slightly. A silent warning. A visual aid.

            “You’re lecturing me about behavior from inside a jail cell. Do you understand how typical this is?”

            Tim knew just where she was going, and why Gib was shaking his head. He felt like he knew everything—a feeling he decided to engage further. Stepping to the back wall of the cell, he began: “I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but I’m sorry. I think you know I’m sorry because you know me better than anyone in the world. Divorce papers at work? We’ve never even used the word. How are you feeling, by the way?”

            The words were coming so fast it was hard to know if she could make them out. His last question was the most important and should’ve been the first question, the one about her health. Shayna looked great at the time of her diagnosis, after all. No one knew about the cancer while it was growing, not even her.

            This was when Gable moved back into town and was staying with them. For two months it was a great life. Business was okay and he was starting to put a dent in dad’s debts. He was making headway with the city council about keeping the big chains out of town (selfishly and for the good of the Valley), and he was helping Gable with her business. The three of them got along. Shayna was a talented doctor but could adjust to people that lived with less precision, people like Gable and Tim. She told him that it looked exhausting, trying to run a business, to make yourself important to others. Tim told her that it made sense to him. She’d made herself important by going to college and getting the grades and becoming a heart specialist, one of the best in the state.

            He’d never really thought about cheating on his wife until he was doing it. He felt lonely and Gable was around, feeling lonely. They didn’t set out to do it, but maybe they should’ve known. Shayna worked a lot and Gable was attractive and full of energy and for whatever reason always seemed to spark off of Tim’s personality.

            The good doctor came home early in the middle of Tim’s first and only time with Gable. It was the worst moment of his life. Worse than his dad dying or losing the store or realizing the community had started to turn on him.

            Tim hadn’t knowingly cheated on his sick wife. It was fact, insofar that he didn’t know. In other ways he had done exactly that. As far as perception, rumor, and feelings, he was the guy in town that slept around on a saint with a terrible disease, a woman who helped babies and little kids with their hearts.

            However you unpacked it, he was an asshole. That was beyond question. He carried the title around like an anvil every minute of every day. Six of the heaviest months imaginable. Was it too much to ask for a break?

            Probably. Of course. Grace never made that much sense. Why should it now? And yet.

            “Can you get Gib to let me out? We can talk and I swear I’ll be cool.” He couldn’t really swear, he realized, not with the thought of Old Shitbag Lennox foisting his lizard body upon her. “I swear I’ll be cool,” he repeated.

            She crossed her arms and looked at the floor and to the side, full of shame, heavy-eyed. “I talked to Lennox and Gib. They’re not going to press charges if you agree to sessions. Six weeks.”

            “Counseling?” Tim was already starting to lose his cool. Shayna was reaching inside her bag for keys. She knew the signs and was ready for leaving. He took a breath. “I’ll do whatever I have to. Just come home. It’s us, Shay. Us.”

            “I told Gib to let you out after I’ve been gone for five minutes. Stop being such a dick, and don’t try to find me. No grand gestures. I’m serious.”

            Tim took shook out his big hands and stepped back, letting his stomach rumble. There was acid building up inside. It might’ve been all the drinking and fast food, or it might’ve been his present station. Hard to say. “Are we ever going to talk? I just want to know how you are.”

            She found her keys. The time with her was over, and though it was mostly horrible and humiliating and torturous, it was still a chance to look at her. To feel her through the air, whatever metaphysical signals she put off. His anger turned to sadness and he was forced into fighting tears. He had to get her back. Had to be willing to do anything. No grand gestures.

            What the hell was he going to do?

Chapter Six: Gangbusters

            Somehow the fates made it easy for Tim to do what Shayna wanted, to stay away. As soon as he walked out the door he was met with several texts. An old buddy of his father’s needed help with his washer. A simple job turned into several hours of time killed with the obligatory slow conversation of the aging. And then Gable needed help at the restaurant; one of her refrigerators was out and this was “literally the worst thing ever.” He fixed it before the evening rush of the rich, before lathered men and perfumed women drifted in with their casual wear outfits worth more than Tim’s entire wardrobe. She kissed his cheek with the microsecond she had and told him that he was an angel, and thank you, and that he should go home. He ended up fixing a few more things in the back until closing. In part he was spectating. Gable was amazing, frantic and orchestrated, like the most prepared athlete on the field holding back just enough. He slipped out without saying goodbye, unwilling to upset her wonderful rhythm.

            The next day, he slept until the late afternoon. Fortunately, the depression was so heavy that he only got up once for the bathroom before going back to bed. It was weird sleep and he dreamt of better days and Shayna’s face and Gable’s hands and sad memories of his parents but anything was better than that Sunday void that he was avoiding with body and soul, Sunday stewing in the knowledge that all the proper choosers and decent doers were enjoying their days, surrounded and safe from the darkness.

            Tim’s first counseling session the following day didn’t get off to a blinding start, despite going in with a fairly even attitude. He expected problems, considering the counselor, but he had already talked himself thoroughly into being the better man.

            Samuel opened the front door of his two-story remodel with a smile. “Hello, Timothy. You look handsome as ever. Almost on time. Come on in and have a seat wherever you feel like it.”

            Tim checked his watch. He was ten minutes early unless the thing was broken. “Hey, Sammy,” he said, walking through the wide entranceway, admiring the 50s style wood paneling he had installed last year after convincing Samuel (Sammy) that a retro-classy feel could look cool and warm the place up.

            He knew the house well enough to find the big room toward the back, Sammy right on his heels asking him carefully how things were going. Tim tried to ignore the fact that his counselor was manifestly happy at the prospect of lording over him for the next month and a half. Still, whatever he had to do. Bring on the indignities. Bring on the pain.

            Step one to back to Shayna and the good life.

            He opened the sliding doors to find two unexpected but familiar faces.

            “The big man himself,” said Leah Sander, sitting in a leather chair cross-legged between the two shiny armrests, a feat only accomplished by someone with the size and flexibility of a grown woman with an almost frightening obsession with fitness. “Come on in and join the party, big man.” The words were only able to find their way out through tiny pauses in her laughter. Tim thought of the Great Escape.

The German with the spotlight being the haughty laughter.

            “Okay,” he answered. “Hi Leah.” Tim would’ve asked more or turned to Sammy to offer a wondering look, but he was yet to address Ray Millstone. “Hello, Ray. You’re—here.”

            Sammy made his way around Tim with flushed cheeks and a smile too wide to be construed as anything but mockery. The sloppy sound of him rubbing his wet hands together forced a wince from Tim. At this point Ray decided to chime in. “The big man,” he growled. It was more gravely eruption than greeting. “The damned big man has come to grace us with his presence.”

            “Let’s be kind,” said Sammy, adopting a tone for kindergarteners. “Timothy’s going to fit right in. We’re all here to help each other.”

            Timothy was big enough to know what was going on. He’d been forced into a situation almost impossibly uncomfortable. It was group therapy. And everyone in the group had something against him.

            “The thing is,” Sammy said, sitting down in the room’s only comfortable chair, crossing his legs like a villain at the height of his powers. “With all the new people coming into town and me being the only therapist, I arranged to do the court-mandated sessions all at once.”

            “This can’t be,” Tim said. They all heard the dread in his voice. It didn’t take a therapist’s antennae. Ray growled happily. Leah sneered so hard her nose almost caved in on the rest of her face.

            “Why don’t we get started,” Sammy said, holding up a yellow legal pad and setting it back down on his soft thighs. “Take the first step. Every great journey.”

            Tim took a chair. He had to take a chair. There was defeat in his knees. Tremble in his hands. He had no doubt, anymore. There was a higher power. There had to be, to set up something like this. This was more than Machiavellian. This menace was ancient, having made its calculations eons ago.

            The first session went a little rough, but Sammy said that was okay. Putting someone with anger and depression (Tim) in the same room as a drug addict (Leah) and an alcoholic narcissist with OCD (Ray) was never going to go off like gangbusters.

Chapter Seven: Might Need Pads

            Tim and Gable sat in low light at the bar, both exhausted in their own style. The restaurant was doing better and better and the post-closing silence was warm and easy. They sipped an expensive wine from a small French vineyard and talked about their days. “I’m not sure how to feel anything but bad for you,” Gable said. “Did you record it?”

            She was referring to his therapy session. He took a sip of wine and tried to act like he had a palette that could distinguish it from any other, then said, “No, I didn’t record it. It didn’t seem like the right thing to do.”

            Gable smiled and leaned on her hand, looking unsurprised and naturally gorgeous with her hair up and an undetectable amount of makeup. “I knew you wouldn’t do it. Good for you.”

            “With the others in there, you know.”

            “It’d be an invasion of privacy,” Gable said, tapping her knuckles on the bar.

            “Exactly. And even though Leah Sander is a psychopath and Ray Millstone is crazy and they both want me dead, it would be pretty messed up to air out their dirty laundry.”

            “Which isn’t your style.”

            “I don’t like to think it’s my style.” The banter was unchallenging and semi tongue-in-cheek. Just the ticket.

            “Let me fix you up something really quick.”

            Usually Tim would object, but he was still thinking about therapy. What a festival of shit. “I’d really appreciate it. But only if you eat with me. You’re getting too skinny.”

            She kissed him on the cheek. After the sounds of a master chef commenced, he put in his ear buds and listened back to the end of the session. Yeah, he recorded it. But only for himself.

            Leah: I don’t want to sit next to him. He disgusts me. What he did to Shayna. You don’t get any worse. It’s like having to sit next to a Nazi.

            Ray: Leah, he’s nothing like a Nazi.

            Tim: Wow. Thanks, Ray.

            Sammy: Good job, Ray. Yes. Showing support for another person is a good sign.

            Ray: You’re all so slow! Slow slow slow slow slow slow. I was trying to say that the Nazi comparison is inadequate. He’s much worse. Much worse than a Nazi! Read a book Leah. He’s more like a plague or massive volcano or a terrible earthquake.

            Tim: Sammy, how is this helping anyone? And why are you smiling?

            Sammy: I’m not smiling. I had something stuck in my back teeth. Awful when that happens.

            Ray: They say electric toothbrushes are best. Maybe you need a new toothbrush. Maybe a visit to the dentist. Very few people take proper care of their teeth. These are basic facts and statistics and you being a doctor, well, not a real doctor, you think you’d know about proper oral healthcare or at least be up to speed with a layperson like myself. I use a different brush for each side of my mouth and only use them once. Once is all. Only once. The germs. The germs. The germs—germs—germs!

            Leah: You people make me want to do drugs more than I’ve ever wanted to do drugs. You are the worst!

            At that point, the recording became unintelligible except for some popping sounds. Ray actually tackled Tim and his chair as one single unit, sending them all awkwardly to the hardwood. The old man delivered several undefended rabbit punches before burning himself out. Tim let it happen, Sammy hiding his smile and Leah showing off her screaming. This was his penance. It had to be a penance. There was no other word for it.

            “What are you listening to?” Gable asked, emerging from the back.

            “Snow Patrol. I know it’s an old favorite but I like how they don’t bother rhyming.”

            “I love them.” She went behind the bar and poured him another glass of wine like she was still on the clock and he was customer in need of impressing. Tim couldn’t think of anything stranger. To be in a hell and a heaven of his own making in the span of an hour was strange stuff. That it was all sort of related made it stranger and convinced him that the cosmos were conspiring against him in ways never heard of. He had to be ready for the challenge.

            “What’s with the face?” she asked.

            He couldn’t imagine what he looked like. He ignored the question and toasted to her success. They ate and laughed and kept it light. She had something on her mind, he could tell, and he wanted to kiss her.

            Nah. He gave her a long hug and went home. Three beers and one cigarette. He looked at himself in the mirror for a few minutes, examining the bruises left by Ray. Five more weeks. He thought about breaking out his old football pads before sadly laughing himself to sleep with a slight buzz.

Chapter Eight: Maimed or Killed

            After only a short time working at Lennox’s Hardware, the back warehouse had become something of a sanctuary for Tim. When a well-meaning high school kid named Brock ran a forklift through the sheetrock of the bathroom wall, it made sense for him to take full charge of the heavy machinery. He patted Brock on his bony back and told him it was an accident before sending him out to the floor to work at literally anything else, sparing the youngster from the thought that he might’ve impaled someone to brutal death as they took their afternoon constitutional.

            It was almost closing when Merritt Lennox Sr. came striding in with a question that reached Tim all the way in the back as he was sorting through a new lumber delivery. “Semple! What’s this I hear about you ruining my wall!?

            The new warehouse was big enough to give Tim a good thirty yards to think about how he was going to handle this encounter. As they came to face each other, he realized a thousand yards wouldn’t have made much difference.

            “I’m giving you a lot of rope,” he said to Tim, looking leathery and old but only relatively so. For a guy in his sixties, Merritt still carried around a lot of muscle. His tailored fancy business-casual western covered over the flabbier parts of his physique. And that hair. It was thicker than Tim’s and cut by a woman with a weird name moved fresh up from the city to cater to Mere Valley’s new rich population. It fell nice and evenly and made Tim a little jealous only because it was such an obvious indicator of their respective places in the world.

            “Hello, Merritt,” said Tim, wiping the sweat sitting atop his eyebrows. “What’s this about the wall?”

            He honestly wasn’t trying to coy. Not really. It was a complicated situation. Was his new boss talking about the wall that he’d defaced or the one the kid had put two big holes in?

            “If you can’t even operate a forklift, why should I keep you on?”

Tim crossed his arms and looked down, grateful not to be discussing his drunken misdemeanors. He was almost excited enough to start telling the truth, that it was Brock’s mistake. “Mr. Lennox, I’m still getting used to the equipment around here. I’ll repair the damages myself. I’ll cover the expenses, of course.”

            Lennox stuck examined the damage with one of his snakeskin boots. “Just get it done. And I suppose I’ll see you tonight. Do you plan on speaking?”

            “I might say a few words.”

            Lennox’s phone rang and he turned away and away and out like Tim didn’t exist and they didn’t just have an extremely tense conversation.

            About five minutes later Brock came back to thank him. He was growing up with a single mom and the influx of rich folks made everything in town more expensive. They needed the money just to make rent and the basics.

            “Don’t worry, kid,” he said. “Just ask when you don’t know something. There’s dangerous stuff around here. Tim offered a little smile. “Not to be dramatic but you could get us all maimed or killed.”

            Brock started to say something else but he shood him away, already feeling too much like his father.

            Alone in a big empty warehouse seemed appropriate now. He needed the space for thinking. Merritt Sr. was either unusually clever or Machiavellian or both and it left a great deal on Tim’s plate. Did he know about the kid’s accident and come charging with accusations anyway?

            Did he bring up the meeting later as some sort of warning?

            Powering down the warehouse, he realized he could go in circles forever. Lennox might be doing a thousand things for a thousand reasons. None of them really mattered. Reconciliation with Shayla was his game, and perhaps with time, the restoration of his reputation. If only he could do it without getting maimed or killed.

Chapter Nine: Settlement

            In the old high school basketball gym, setting of former glories, Tim stood behind a mobile podium of his own design near center court, trying to imagine how anyone could honestly be neutral about anything. While each side of the gym hollered holy hell at the other across a walkway in the middle, it didn’t seem like there was a lot he could offer the situation. The only people not screaming were up in front, sitting on the side of the transplants; it was the pretty girl who’d come into his shop the day he was selling off the last of Semple’s history. Her aunt, he assumed, the shop’s new owner was next to her; an older, thicker version, but still attractive, blond hair pulled up and held by a pen. He was looking at them intensely, or so they must have thought. In actuality his eyes had simply stopped as he started trying to think of the most dispassionate and neutral people in history. He considered Switzerland and how great a job they’d done at staying out of things. He’d always heard they’d stayed out of things. That was the line about Switzerland. Was it really true or just sometimes true? How the hell did anyone stay out of the World Wars? He told himself to stop thinking. This was no time to abandon Switzerland. This was a time to be Switzerland. Precise. Cool. Detached. Knife-like. He shook his head and furrowed his brow. That’s a whole country. They’ve got an entire system for staying detached. Mountains and banks and wooden clocks and a well-oiled apparatus for keeping out. What was one man to do, especially with roots in Mere Valley going back to the first settlement?

            “You know, I was just thinking,” he started, causing the mic to squeal before settling down. More than a few curses were hurled his way, but he didn’t stop. “My great-grandfather Silas Semple used to tell me stories about this place, how the first time it didn’t work all that smooth.”

            Someone from the townie side screamed you’re useless!

            Someone from the transplant side screamed we don’t care!

            Maybe it was the odd look in his eyes. Something quieted them down and eventually they all took to their folding chairs.

            “The first people to make it to this valley were tough and brave, he told me. I think it’s more likely that they were just desperate for something that couldn’t be taken away by the whims of folks with bigger and bigger ideas. Hell, each and every single one of them probably had a slightly different reason for coming out here.”

            What’s your point?

            We don’t care!

            “I know you don’t care, Ronnie. I’m going to finish anyway. Those folks that first made a place here didn’t turn unneighborly all of a sudden because new people kept showing up. They found a way to live together without stepping on toes.”

            The pretty girl from the store stood up and held a tablet by her head. “This historical website says that the initial settlers wiped out a large population of a Native Americans before being massacred themselves in a vengeful bloodbath.”

            Tim let out a breath of deflation. “Thank you. What was your name, ma’am?”

            “Reny Davies. We met the other day.”

            “They’re the ones took over your family store!”

            “Thanks again Ronnie. Glad you picked tonight as your first time to come out.”

            “You betcha boss.”

            Tim noted that old Ronnie wasn’t trying to be horrible. His grizzled approach was forged from years of busting balls at Semple’s hardware store—good times with familiar people, where insults flew from one side of the store to the other, where histories were laid bare for everyone to enjoy and for the embarrassed party to know brief and deserved shame.

            “If we just set aside our personal gripes for a second and move ahead to Valley Fest,” he said, almost stripping the varnish from the podium as his grip tightened for an immediate reaction.

            “Why are you planning this?” asked an older transplant with hair plugs and a needless sweater draped over his back.

            There was some grumbling in the crowd. Tim allowed it to run its course. Hair plugs had asked a decent enough question, though he wasn’t about to go into the history of Valley Fest, how it was his father’s favorite day of the year and how Tim had volunteered to carry the torch when dad got too sick to handle it.

            The natives knew the story all too well and didn’t need a recapitulation.

            The transplants didn’t seem the types to care at all about some folksy yarn about traditions and the taking up of mantles. Valley Fest had money behind it now. There were powerful people wanting to make it into something corporate and commercial. Many of the townies loathed the idea with every fiber of their beings.

            Standing in the middle with the mantle was Tim. Hair plugs was right. He wasn’t right for the job. It was time to stop pretending.

            “I’m more than willing to step down,” he said, tripping up a hundred separate conversations. “You appoint someone new and you can do what you want with it.”

            To say Tim felt good would be making it too simple. He was relieved, surely, but there was a regret mixed in. A feeling like his father wouldn’t approve. Funny thing, his father probably would be one of the only people in the world to understand. Tim needed to focus on getting his life together. Getting back out on his own. Getting his wife back. There were more important things to do than Valley Fest. Almost anything in the world was more important than Valley Fest. He looked up and allowed himself to picture the skies beginning to open.

            “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

            The sunlight was gone. The rest of gym took their seats and stopped talking altogether. Standing at the back end of the gym was Merritt Lennox, patriarch and successful proprietor of crappy merchandise. It was like he had positioned himself as far away from Tim as possible, so they’d be forced into talking obnoxiously loud to one another.

            “Have you changed your mind already, Timmy?” He shouted/asked.

            Tim didn’t know how to respond. The old man just wouldn’t let go of his balls. He was downright obsessed with his balls. Even now, when he was trying to abdicate his last piece of community responsibility, this bastard had to put his nose in. It wasn’t enough to put him out of business. It wasn’t enough to take his wife, God, the man took your wife. Now he was trying to twist the blade, just your fun. The man was a sadistic psychopathic monster. At the very least, a real asshole.

            Somehow, he managed a question. “Do you have a candidate in mind, Mr. Lennox?”

            “I was just getting to that, Timmy. I think this is a perfect job for Merritt Junior. He’s been talking to me about getting more involved in Mere Valley. This would be a nice little jumping off point.”

            The gym turned half to grumbling and half to happy chatter. Tim Semple looked back up and saw nothing but a lack of insulation and a dangerous amount of asbestos.

            “I get it,” Tim declared. He had to be careful. He couldn’t go into specifics, how he got that by saying Merritt Junior could do the job, Senior was heavily implying that it was a job that any moron could do. Any moron like Tim. It made sense now, why Junior had showed up the day he shuttered Semple’s for good. It was on Merritt’s orders. Just to add to Tim’s embarrassment.

            “What do you get, honey?” Betha Brooks asked.

            “Hi there, Mrs. Brooks. Glad to see you out tonight?”

            “Why wouldn’t I be out? Don’t make me call your mother, Timothy.”

            Leann Brooks pulled her mother down and mouthed sorry toward the podium. It didn’t work. The former schoolteacher was back up, ready to fire. “I don’t know what this interloper has on you, Mr. Semple, but it seems like giving the Festival over without so much as a fight… it’s not the boy I know.”

            “Don’t be such a pussy,” Ronnie said. A few others offered similar sentiments.

            “Maybe we should put it to a vote,” Tim said, trying to save his job and Valley Fest. It was a tough spot. And it’s not like he didn’t realize that most of the townies still hated his guts. They just hated the “interlopers” more.

            “Pussy!”

            Okay. Enough of that. “From what I know of the rules, I haven’t done anything to warrant dismissal. Let’s just go like we have been. Next meeting a week from tonight. I’ll ask everyone to get along and fully expect to ignored the second I turn my back.”

            He hit his fist on the podium and walked toward the backdoor, like walking off stage while the Sharks and Jets sparred over the choice of weapons at the next rumble.