Page 2 of Finding Jeremy
The caption on the bottom read: You ever get the feeling you’ve stuck around a place a little too long?
Gray opened the card and was nearly hit in the face by the folded-up figure that popped out from between the bars Reggie had constructed on the inside of the card.
Happy Freedom Day, Fucker, the caption beside the bobbing figure read, making him laugh at the images of the cardinals in their uniforms, perched in a bar-covered window, little tears dripping from their eyes and off their beaks as they waved a wing at him, forced to let him go.
“Another Reggie classic?” Chaos asked as he guided the truck along the winding, treelined highway that led back to Foggy Basin.
“Hell yeah. I’ll show you later,” Gray grumbled when Chaos glanced back over his shoulder like he was trying to take a look. “Keep your eyes on the road. I wanna make it home, not be splattered up and down the blacktop.”
“I keep telling him he needs to open up an Etsy shop and start a line of unconventional greeting cards for those bitter-sweet occasions that deserve a bit of celebrating.”
“I betcongratulations on your divorce; hope the asshole has an unfortunate meeting with a fire ant hillwould constantly sell out,” Jeremy chimed in.
There was that snark that had made Gray laugh every time Jeremy had visited. Gray carefully refolded the pop-up figure and tucked the card back into the envelope before putting it in the mesh holder behind the passenger’s seat, where Chaos still kept a road atlas.
“I bet it would,” Gray said. “You two should put your heads together to see what else you can come up with.”
“Maybe,” Jeremy said, yet there was a somber tone to his voice that Gray didn’t care for in the slightest.
“What’s up?” Gray asked, “And don’t tell me nothing; you look like your old man did the time he ordered cold duck off a restaurant menu without realizing he was looking at the cocktail section.”
Sputtering, Jeremy at least cracked a little smile before glancing up front, to where Chaos had started grumbling about the whole thing being a combination of bullshit and false advertising.
“Was it a good drink, at least?” Jeremy asked.
“Not strong enough,” Chaos grumbled. “Not even close. Now quit stallin’ and tell him what’s goin’ on.”
Jeremy groaned before finally turning his attention back to Gray. “Porter broke his arm at the track last Sunday. He was supposed to hit the fair circuit with Trace and the band next weekend to help set up and tear down for their sets and man the merch table, so Trace asked me to go in his place. They’ve got several venues lined up at different fairs, so we’ll be gone about ten or eleven days.”
It took a moment, as Gray let the words sink in, for him to realize that the reason Jeremy was upset and disappointed was because he was going to have to leave so soon after Gray’s homecoming.
“I’d have turned him down, but Trace wasn’t the only one to fuck up at last Sunday’s races; my bike is a mess, and the parts to fix it ain’t cheap,” Jeremy explained.
“You’re damned right they’re not,” Chaos said. “I warned you about veering too close to the edge on the step-up. You weren’t in a good position for that drop-off and should have hung back a little until you had a chance to cut in towards the middle. You’re lucky you weren’t the one with the busted arm after you came tumbling down off the side of that thing.”
“Alright, Pops, I get it; I fucked up,” Jeremy said. “That’s why I told Trace I’d go. So, I could make my share for the parts so we can get my bike put back together before I miss too many races.”
“You ain’t got a backup yet?” Gray asked.
“I did, but we stripped it when parts on the main went bad,” Jeremy explained. “I’ve got my eyes on a couple backups for the backup, but nothing’s panned out yet, though I have spotted a few possibilities that might let me cobble something together.”
“Or leave you with another hunk of useless metal,” Chaos cautioned him. “You take your time picking one out this time and don’t rush to leap on the first deal you think you’re getting. Gently used is a bullshit marketing tag, especially when it comes to high performance machines. Ain’t nuthin’ gentle about what you put those dirt bikes through, whether you’re tearing around the track a couple dozen times or a couple hundred.”
Jeremy groaned and scrunched down in the seat but said nothing in response.
“No one wants to see you get hurt out there,” Gray cautioned him as he reached out to cup Jeremy’s face. “Especially me. Beenwaiting too long to see if you’re as good of a fisherman as you claim to be.”
“Oh, he is,” Chaos declared. “Outdoes me every time we go. I shit you not. It doesn’t matter if I’m using lures and he’s using minnows, or I’m using grubs and he’s using crickets; somehow, some way, he always manages to land the biggest, fattest fish in the pond.”
Jeremy laughed at that and scooted as close as the seatbelt would allow him to, prompting Gray to do the same, until their shoulders were pressed together.
“This one time, Dad was using these fat-ass worms he’d gotten from the gas station, only every time he cast them in the water, they either flew off in the opposite direction or immediately got bitten in half by something. I think one managed to stay on the line long enough to turn gray and stop wiggling, but the rest kept getting pilfered.”
“Because there were some severely undernourished turtles in there who decided to help themselves to a midmorning snack,” Chaos groused. “Of course, Jeremy decided to try a whole different approach, and damn if it didn’t work for him. He was the only one with anything in the cooler at the end of the day.”
“Oh yeah?” Gray said, locking eyes with Jeremy. “What did you use?”
“Cubes of cheese and cut up hunks of summer sausage Pops had thrown in the snack cooler for our lunch,” Jeremy explained, grinning like a Cheshire cat.
