Page 2 of Codename: Dustoff
CHAPTERTWO
With the exception of the seasons, not much changes in Barren Hill. The same people who lived here when I was a kid, still do. Most of them live in the same houses, or on the same plot of land. We all shop at the local Pack n’ Sack, get our cars serviced by Jared and his pop, Larry Flynn. Flynn was their last name. I don’t know why everyone called him Larry Flynn as if we were in Georgia and that was his first and middle name. That’s just how we did it up here, I guess.
If you weren’t a mining family, you were a rail family. That is of course, unless you lived in the Abilene portion of Barren Hill. That’s where the fancy gated community folk hailed from growing up. The ones whose parents were suit and tie people that drove fancy cars to whatever job they had. Abilene was the place you rode your secondhand bike past on your way to school and imagined being one of those kids. Their Christmases surely were a parade of new suits and dresses, patent leather shoes and fur lined jackets, and oversized boxes wrapped up in gorgeous gold and silver wrapping paper containing video game systems or Cabbage Patch dolls.
Me and my pop were rail folk. He was a foreman for the rail yard and as soon as I graduated high school, he lined me up to start my career path at the good old BNSF. Finn’s dad owned the town’s watering hole, so like the rest of us, he too was born into his role. College? No one talked to any of us about that. When I lost my arm, I just had to deal because that’s what we did up here. We dealt with the hands we were given. We figured it out. Adapted. Found ways to continue spinning on the hamster wheel.
“Emmett, can you help me…please…I …it’s just barely…out of…maybe if I stand on my tippie toes…” Gemini stretched her fingers as high as her arm would allow it to extend, attempting to hang yet another piece of garland. It looked as if I’d stepped into a Christmas movie set. Every wall, fixture, booth, and tabletop at the Tuckaway Tavern was adorned in some kind of holly or jolly. In all the years prior to Gemini buying into our bar, The Old Lady, as she’d formerly been known, we’d never displayed much Christmas cheer. I guess revamping and rebranding also meant taking a more active approach in the holiday season too.
“Given your propensity for tripping, sliding, slipping, or falling how about you let someone who doesn’t need a step ladder hang that.”
Gemini huffed in my direction, never taking her eyes off of me as I hung her decorations and adjusted the ribbons.
“Tell me again why we’re doing all of this?”
“Because it’s the holidays?” She went back to rummaging through all the shopping bags she’d brought, in search of some glitter covered who knows what to accompany all of the greenery.
“I asked the same questions.” Finn walked up beside me, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “And also told her that hill folk don’t much care about all of this—stuff.” He waived his hand in the general direction of Gemini’s shopping bags.
The MetroCenter was over an hour away. I don’t know if I ever cared enough about Christmas to drive in the snow, to the mall to get a bunch of shit that would be out for a month collecting dust and chucked back into plastic bins and stored in the attic for eleven more months. It seemed pretty pointless to me.
“I swear I’m going to call the two of you Ebenezer and Scrooge!” She pointed a green and red plaid bow in my direction, the glitter that tinged its edges showering the table and floor.
Finn wrapped his arms around her, cradling her from the back.
“Nothing Scrooge-like about either of us, princess.” He kissed the back of her neck, resting his chin in the dip of her shoulder. “We just know this town. This ain’t suburbia. People here kinda stick to themselves.”
“You’re both wrong and I’ll prove it.”
The fight drained out of her, and the comment was more a sigh than an actual statement. Usually, their in-your-face burn for each other chemistry didn’t bother me. It actually made me really fucking happy Finn finally found someone so perfect. Sometimes though, watching the two of them hurt like hell.
“I’d love to tell you both to get a room, but Jasper is gonna be here any minute to talk to us about Gem’s new bourbon experience.”
I’m sure it was because Christmas was just around the corner. The whole holiday was one gigantic billboard that reminded lonely people like me, just how much their lives sucked in comparison to the Rockwell-like existence of everyone else. Like all those TV commercials where the wife with perfect teeth and a cashmere sweater wakes up looking like a fresh-faced Disney princess and skips outside to a snowy landscape to find a new status symbol parked in her driveway. Or even the simpler ones where the huge family comes pushing through the entrance to their mom’s house, weighed down by packages and pies, and they all gather around a gigantic table and break bread. Every day during the holiday season consumerism told us what happiness was supposed to look like.
My holidays growing up consisted of my dad taking both the morning and afternoon shift at the rail yard because they paid double time and a half. Working on Christmas day meant we could dig ourselves out from the credit extended to us at the Pack n’ Sack, or any of the other stores in Barren Hill. Christmas dinner was cold cults and milk if we were lucky, between my and Pa’s shifts. Finn and I would hang out together at the bar, which was where his pop spent his holidays. Sometimes, if we were lucky, the patrons of The Old Lady would give us each a dollar or two as a “tip.”
“Bourbon experience? What the—who’s gonna show for this?”
Finn turned the pamphlet from Jasper over in his hand. I’d been so deep in my trip down memory lane that I hadn’t realized Jasper and his associate Harmony arrived.
“Jasper is a private label distiller. His bourbon, Lakshmi is highly sought after, Finn.” Gemini smiled at our guests, explaining the purpose of the meeting to Finn. “Jasper is a friend of mine. I met him at Chef Tobin’s restaurant; he was Tobin’s exclusive distributor.
“Given the holiday season is so popular up at Echo Creek, I thought this would be a great local experience that gets them into the Tavern. We’re in hill country, bourbon and whiskey are practically synonymous with this region. What’s more local and touristy than a bourbon or whiskey tasting?”
I thought it was brilliant. Especially given the clientele up at the resort. Finn didn’t appear convinced.
“In addition to our Lakshmi private selection, my friend Harmony has created a new app to enhance the tasting experience.”
Harmony launched into an explanation of how the data obtained from app could help inform future purchasing decisions for the bar. It could be set up to ask questions about specific types of bourbon, or spirits in general. Finn at least seemed to perk up when she mentioned geo fencing and pushing advertisements to customers that are within a few hours driving distance of the Tavern.
“This is going to be great!” Gemini’s smile stretched across her whole face. When she got jazzed over things having to do with the restaurant, it was impossible to not get excited right alongside her. Given she was a classically trained chef, it was evident she knew her stuff and had a finely honed instinct for what would work and succeed. However, as her friend, and knowing all she’d walked away from to move here to be with Finn and help run our business? I just loved seeing her excited. Witnessing her enthusiasm, for me, showed me over and again how much we needed her without ever knowing. Plus, it couldn’t be overstated how perfect the two of them were together.
“I am so glad that the two of you were able to pay us a visit.” Gemini stood and pulled Jasper into a hug sometime later. “But I have to leave you in the capable hands of my partners as I’m needed up at the resort.”
As soon as she said the word hands, Jasper and his friend looked right at me, their eyes wide with mortification. It sometimes charmed me how afraid people were of offending me. But days like today, when I already had a burr in my britches, their discomfort is what grated me.
I didn’t need to be up at the resort for another thirty minutes. Usually, I didn’t like to be the first person there, because it made me look desperate. I also didn’t want to sit around the Tavern and have Jasper and Harmony stare at me like a zoo animal with manufactured sympathy in their eyes.