Page 8 of Walking Red Flag

In our travels, we’d all come down to visit Copper as much as we possibly could.

To help him when he did finally get out, Chevy, Keely and I were saving twenty-five percent of our income and putting it into a high-yield account that would hopefully set Copper up for life when he came out.

Because that was what we all owed him. Our lives.

It could’ve been any of us that had walked in that day and come up on that scene, and all of us would’ve reacted the same way.

It was the least we could do.

And it pissed off Dorie that I wouldn’t spend the hefty sum of money on a house for us.

Which was quite funny because I’d never seen Dorie as anything more than a steady fuck.

I’d never given her promises.

I’d never seen her as anything more than a pussy in my bed every night that I didn’t have to worry about STDs with.

Maybe it was better this way.

Maybe tomorrow I’d look into a new place. One that wasn’t known by a certain someone.

Though, just sayin’, but I doubted it’d be any better than the one I had now.

After my run, I got home to a luckily empty house and took a shower.

Once I was clean, I got dressed in my work clothes and headed over to the shop on my bike.

I was a carpenter and had been for a couple of years now.

I started my own business a few months after getting out of the Navy, and my grandfather, who was all alone up in Michigan, moved down to Texas to help me.

He was the first person I saw when I pulled into the lot.

He was bent over a piece of maple, running his hands over it lovingly.

That was one good thing about moving up to Michigan for a year.

Granddad had taught me everything I knew, and he was the reason that I had the skills to do what I loved.

He’d taught me a way to release the anger that I had built inside, and he’d done that by giving me an outlet.

Needless to say, in that year that he’d taught me his trade, I’d fallen in love with it.

Not enough to stop myself from joining the Navy and seeing the world, but enough that when I was done with the world, I could come home and still live a good life.

It also didn’t suck that I was doing really well.

“Granddad,” I said as I got off the bike. “Tell me you didn’t lift that all by yourself.”

Granddad turned and grinned at me. “I can neither confirm nor deny.”

Which means, he’d gotten it up there himself, and tomorrow he’d be paying for it.

“You’re gonna throw your back out again,” I pointed out as I came to a stop on the other side of the maple slab. “Whatcha makin’?”

Granddad didn’t necessarily help me with anything much anymore.

He pretty much did his own thing and stocked our store room with new pieces that would sell for a fuckin’ mint—he, too, was contributing to Copper’s exit plan.

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