Page 79 of Red Rooster

16

Farley, Wyoming

Rooster was from a small town originally, though that seemed a lifetime ago, now. After he got blown up, when he was discharged with a mountain of doctor referrals, crutches, and the kind of limp that inspired kids without filters to ask probing questions, the idea of returning home to that small town had sent him into a downward spiral of panic attacks.

He imagined all the horrors:

Bob at the hardware store shaking his hand and declaring him a hero, staunchly not looking at his crutches.

Mrs. Peterson across the street welcoming him back with a too-familiar, warm hug, her grip faltering when her hands patted across the chunks of muscle and fat that were missing, the places where the doctors have carved him up so they could piece him back together.

His old friends from school, the ones who’d never joined up or gone off to college, Ty, and Everett, and Jason, grimacing as they slapped him on the bad shoulder, flinching away when the pain made him sweat.

The church ladies bringing him casseroles that he ate straight from the dish, standing up over his dead mother’s kitchen sink, watching his dead father’s grass grow too long in the backyard because his own body was half-dead and he couldn’t even push a goddamn lawnmower.

He would have become the reclusive, skittery, broken vet who lurked behind his door when neighbors came calling, the kind of guy the kids started telling haunted house stories about. He’d known, the second he got his first real glimpse of his full-body reflection in a hospital mirror in Germany, that he would never marry or have children. No one would ever want him. But to be that brand of sad in the town where he’d grown up, where everyone shook their heads, and clucked their tongues, andpitiedhim…unbearable.

He could have kissed Deshawn for his invitation to come and live in Queens – hehadcried a little, Deshawn gripping his good shoulder in reassurance. In New York, no one knew anything about him except that he had his back up and he walked with a noticeable limp. Deshawn and Ashley lived in a nice neighborhood full of families, but he was never pestered, never suffered any awkward questions; no one wondered why he wore long sleeves and long pants even in the summer months, or why he never came to any of the block parties. In New York, he was no one’s friend, or former employee, or ex-friend; he was just the weird white guy who lived in Deshawn and Ashley’s basement, and everyone seemed fine with that.

Even now that he could walk, now that he was once again a broad-shouldered, capable tank of a man, small towns made Rooster’s skin itch. Too many close relationships; too many curious eyes following the newcomers. The strangers. The ones who didn’t belong.

But of course, Red, deprived of any kind of normal childhood, loved little single stoplight places like Farley.

She cupped her hands around her eyes and pressed her nose to the front window of a shop crowded with colorful, western-print fabrics and mannequins wearing fringed leather jackets. “Oh,” she breathed, breath fogging the glass, that single syllable full of delight and longing. “Look at that, Roo.”

“What?” he asked, distracted, scanning the street for the tenth time.

It was evening, and after a day cooped up in the hotel room, Red had pleaded for a walk around town. He hadn’t denied her that simple pleasure, but the back of his neck was crawling. The citizens of Farley, on their way home from work and school, stopping into cafes and diners for dinner, passed some looks their way. The late, slanted sunlight caught Red’s hair in a dazzling shower of copper; people would remember her hair, and no doubt the cagey man who’d trailed along after it.

A box of hair dye hung from a drugstore bag around his wrist.

“This jacket,” she said, and then sighed. “Rooster, you’re not looking.”

He sighed too, inwardly, and turned to give her his attention. “Which jacket?”

She tapped the window and leaned back in.

The jacket she indicated was on a mannequin positioned deeper in the store, a cropped, light brown suede number with motorcycle lapels and fringe along the hem and all down the insides of the arms.

He snorted. “That gaudy Pocahontas shit?”

“It’s beautiful!” she insisted, scandalized.

“Uh-huh.” In truth, it would look cute on her, but he didn’t want to imagine the price tag.

Too late, he realized that the shop’s proprietress had spotted them and was now waving at them. Then crooking her finger and inviting them inside.

“Damn it,” he murmured.

Red turned to him, trying and failing not to look plaintive. “Can we?”

Like he could tell her no. “Sure.”

The jacket fit like a dream, and Red made it work. Over her plain white t-shirt, jeans, and boots, paired with her brilliant hair, she looked like one of those candid celebrity-on-the-street photos in the gossip magazines, making something throwback look chic.

“It’s perfect on you,” the shop owner said, clapping her hands, beaming like she knew she’d just made a sale.

Rooster jammed his hands in his pockets and thought about the credit card that was working through some sort of miracle, and the cash that wasn’t going to last through the next week.