Page 35 of Keg's Revelation

Chapter Eleven

Keg

“I’m done. Can you tellus the story now?” Ry asked.

“Me, too,” Reagan said around the last bite of hamburger she’d shoved in her mouth.

I grinned across the table at Ry and Reagan. It felt like I’d known the two forever, and it had only been a little over forty-eight hours. I wiped my mouth and took a drink of my tea.

“Quit stalling. If you aren’t going to tell, I will.” My dad was enjoying himself. It was usually only him and me on Sundays with the occasional drop-in by one of the brothers. We’d eat, talk, then hang out and watch TV. If the weather was nice, we’d take a ride together. So, having Raven and the kids at the house was not only doing him good, it was uplifting for me, too.

“I’ll tell them.”

Raven chuckled. “I don’t know why you’re hesitant. It’s funny.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“Only ‘cause it happened to you. If it would have been one of the others, you would be telling everyone who missed seeing it.” My dad was right, I would have.

“Alright. I told you how the prospects get tagged with names.” At their nods, I continued, “Well, as a prospect, you are always doing some type of work or running errands or any other thing no one else in the club wants to do. I’d been prospecting for a couple months, and I finally was getting a night off. The club was having a party that night and supplies needed to be picked up. Pinch, who was a prospect then too, and I were sent to pick everything up: meat for the grill, chips, nuts, alcohol. Anything they needed.

“After Pinch and I do this, we take it back to the clubhouse and we had to unload it. I wanted to get the job done fast because it was the last thing I had to do before I could leave. I was going to see your mom.

“To save time, I decided to carry two containers of beer at one time. One on each shoulder. The containers are round and a little tall. They look like cylinders.” I showed the size using my hands. “One of the cylinders weighs around eighty-seven pounds. I pulled one from the truck and hoisted it on my shoulder. It wasn’t heavy as much as an awkward fit because of the bulkiness.

“After I had one situated, Pinch lifted another one and placed it on my other shoulder. I held them by the handle on top. The two together were only a hundred and seventy-four pounds. For my size, even though I wasn’t as big as I am now, the combined weight was nothing for me to carry.

“I carried the two to where they were supposed to go, so they could be set up for the party, then returned for the last two. Pinch helped again and positioned the second one for me. This time, though, when I stepped away from the truck, the one on the left shifted and started to roll off my shoulder. I leaned to the right side trying to get it to roll back in place.

“It didn’t work. The other one began to roll, and before I could stop it, they both rolled off my shoulders and landed on the ground. When they first hit the ground, nothing happened. In the next minute, the pressure had built inside from the shaking of all that beer.”

“Like shaking a can of soda?” Ry asked.

“Exactly. The seal broke on the cap top, it’s where you put the nozzle in that dispenses the beer. The cap blew, spraying gallons of beer in every direction as the containers spun.” I used the salt shaker on the table to give the kids a visual.

Ry was listening with a smile on his face, but Reagan was frowning as if she didn’t understand. Which for her age and the topic, she shouldn’t understand. Ry maybe knew a little, picking some up from the TV. At least I hoped he had no experience, then I cringed a little inside as I thought about him being an official teen in a few months.

“The containers of beer are called kegs. So after that, everyone started calling me Keg, and it stuck.”

Reagan pursed her lips. “Wild Bill’s story was funnier.”

Ry looked at me and said, “It was kinda...boring.”

I shrugged. “You wanted to know. And that’s it.”

“Yeah, I just thought...”

“It’d be more interesting?”

“Well, on—”

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