Lions

~ ~ ~

Boyd and May sat alone in the empty diner, stirring coffee, empty pie plates beside them. May had turned the overhead lights off and the front door was propped open. It was twilight, last day of September, and the evenings were finally cool again. Across the street, the bar was closed, the cracked window still boarded.

“We could move the bar in here,” Boyd said, his elbows on the table and his head bent over the coffee cup. “Make it yours. Get a liquor license. Change the name of the place.”

“No more Lucy Graves?”

“I think we should change it all.”

“They’re just windows, Boyd. We can fix them.”

Boyd shrugged. His mustache had grown into an unkempt silver beard. “Maybe we ought to just go, too.”

May shook her head. “I don’t think I could get Georgie to leave, Boyd.”

“You really mean to take care of her.”

“I do.”

“What about Annie?”

“Annie’s got her hands full.”

“These could be our last good years together, Maybelline.”

“What, you want to be on vacation?” She was old enough to know better than to think of her life as dear just because it was hers. If where she had ended up was arbitrary, her partner just as much so, she loved and appreciated them no less for it. “I’m sorry,” she said, and opened her hands. “I’m staying here. At my age you make a choice and you do it. Chuck will keep circling through town. Burnsville is there if we need it. Georgie needs me. Twenty-six years I’ve known her, she half raised my only child, and no doubt Leigh would have been all bad instead of half bad without the Walkers’ help.”

“OK,” he whispered. He shook his head, staring into his mug.

She reached over and put a hand on his forearm. “Boyd. Come on.”

He looked up, his blue eyes shining. “That man walked all that way. Somehow made his way. It wasn’t until he got here—” He couldn’t finish. His eyes spilled over and he pressed them with a forefinger and thumb.

“Boyd.”

“You know something, May? I’ve wasted my life one night at a time, four beers in and trying to win people over. Some stupid joke. Some stupid story. Some stupid lie.”

“Come on now.”

May stood up and joined him on his side of the booth, and put her arm around him.

“I’m sick of the sound of my own voice.”

“Well,” she said, and nudged him, laughing softly.

“It’s like I’m standing right beside myself all the time.”

“Listen, Boyd. We were all responsible this summer. You didn’t mean any real harm.” She jostled him lightly. “Did you?”

He sniffed and sucked air in through his mouth and wiped his nose. “Seems like it started with me, doesn’t it?”

“That’s just people talking. Always been a place of big stories, hasn’t it? You’re only a man, Boyd. So you don’t always get it right. Did you ever meet someone who did?”

He was quiet a minute. “John Walker. Didn’t he? Didn’t you say you should have been so lucky? Have a man like he was?”

“I don’t know how perfect he was.” She sighed. “Pretty odd fellow and before the summer anyone else would have said the same.”

“I guess maybe they still do.”

“He left his wife and kid without much to go on, and by his own stubborn lights. Didn’t he?”

“I guess so.”

“And I’ll tell you something else. For years I’ve heard you repeat the same jokes and stories in that bar, night after night.”

“I know,” he said. “Even the good ones are old. I haven’t said anything new since I was fifteen.”

“What I was going to say is that I haven’t heard any of those stories in weeks. A month. You’ve been quiet.”

“Well, it’s been growing on me,” he said. “Being sorry.”

“OK. It’s a change. Right?”

He shrugged.

“Come on,” she nudged him. “Let’s make a plan. Is this our home? That’s Boyd’s Bar across the street, isn’t it? And this is the Lucy Graves.”

He shrugged. “What is that,” he said, “nostalgia?”

“God help me, I’m not that old and useless. I’m talking about today. Tonight. And our friends here.”

“No new restaurant and pub in Burnsville.”

She shook her head. “I have to stay.” She pulled him toward her and he put his forehead on her chest.

“We’ll stay,” he said into her shirt. “Shit.”

She put her hand over the top of his head. “Then let’s go into that bar of yours across the street, and prop open that big old door, and open up a couple of cold beers, and turn on the radio. There’s a cool breeze.”

He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “I don’t deserve you.”

“Deserve has nothing to do with what we get,” she said, and pulled him up. When they stood, May glanced out the window and grabbed Boyd’s upper arm.

“Now what in the hell,” he said.

It was a truck from a Burnsville towing company hauling the Walkers’ old blue Silverado through town.

“I have a feeling I better get Leigh.”