Page 32 of Sprog
Today it makes me feel like I'm missing something.
I think about going to Ruby's for lunch. I don't know why Ruby's specifically. I usually just eat at the clubhouse, but the thought comes and sits there with a particular weight to it. Ruby's. Lunch.
I pick up the coffee instead and drink it at the bench and think about the brake lines.
After the job's done I stand in the yard and look at the street for a while, which isn’t something I normally do. The street is the street. Nothing's happening on it. Seb comes out the side door still on the phone, catches my expression, and raises his eyebrows at me.
I shake my head. I don't know what I'd tell him.
That night after I've put EJ to bed I sit outside his door for a while in the corridor and listen to him breathe. I do that sometimes when things feel off-kilter and I can't name why. The sound of him asleep, steady and even, is the most reliable thing I know. It has been for nine years.
I lean my head back against the wall while I sit with the feeling I can't name before I eventually go to bed and I don't think about it anymore.
I wake up at three in the morning and I'm thinking about Savannah.
I haven't woken up thinking about Savannah in a long time. Long enough that it surprises me, the sharpness of it, like something has been switched back on without asking my permission.
I lie in the dark, breathing through it, until my mind caves and I finally fall asleep.
In the morning I take EJ to school and drive back through town but I don't know what I'm looking for. I just look.
CHAPTER 7
Austin
Three Weeks Later
"Come on, EJ, you're going to be late again."
I hate shouting at him in the mornings. He's nine years old and he moves through the early hours like time is a concept that applies to other people, which I've been told is genetic and if so the irony is not lost on me. I remember my own mother's voice from the bottom of the stairs, the particular pitch it had when she'd been calling me for the third time and I still hadn't moved. I smile at the kitchen table and wait.
He appears in the doorway with his backpack on, his helmet under his arm and his hair going three different directions. His birthday is in two weeks, and he's already told me he wants his friends to come to the clubhouse for the party. I know I should say no. The clubhouse isn’t exactly a child's party venue. But the other brothers' kids have had parties there over the years and the old ladies always make it work, and EJ's face when he asked me was the face he uses when he already knows the answer but he's making absolutely certain, so I'm going to give in and he knows it.
"Ready," he says.
"You've got your backpack."
"Yes, Dad."
"Lunch?"
"In the bag."
"Math homework?"
He pauses. "In the bag."
"EJ."
"In the bag now," he says, and ducks back into the kitchen and I hear the rustling of the homework folder being relocated from the table to the backpack. He reappears. "Done."
"Good man. Helmet on."
We live in one of the houses on the compound. Razor sorted them out years back for the brothers with families, far enough from the main clubhouse to give the old ladies some separation from the club's daily noise, close enough that everyone's inside the gate. EJ has grown up with the other club kids as his closest neighbours, which means he's been riding bikes since before he was steady on his feet and he knows what a Church meeting is and he calls patched members by their road names and once used the word sweetbutt in front of his teacher, which was a conversation I'd rather not repeat.
He climbs on behind me and grabs the handles at the side, helmet on, chin down, exactly the way I've taught him, and we pull out of the compound and ride the ten minutes to school. When we get there he climbs off himself, no help required. Heinformed me of this about a year ago and he was extremely clear about it.
"Dad." He stands next to the bike and squints up at me in the morning sun.
