Games We Play (2 page)

He didn’t imagine any of them would dare come back for a good long while, not after Senior had given them their marching orders. He didn’t doubt their desire to help the young man they’d watch grow up, but there was no crossing Senior.

Hank waited a while longer, almost longer than he could stand, before running to his friend’s side. He looked down at Coop’s body lying on the ground and willed himself to pull it together.

Coop was a mess of blood. It covered his face, blended into his hair, and ran down to the front of his shirt. Both of his eyes were starting to swell. Hank had to throw his friend over his back, which bothered him, but there was nothing else he could do. It was the most comfortable way to transport Coop’s otherwise too-heavy self. Hank settled him into position and took off in a cross between a run and a walk, trying to limit the amount of jostling his buddy had to endure.

He finally arrived at Cooper’s truck, still parked where they’d left it, and laid Cooper on the ground. He reached a hand into his friend’s front pocket, searching for the truck’s key. He found a .22 instead. He was glad it had gone unused. Hank removed the gun and placed it in the front seat of Coop’s truck. He wasn’t sure if he’d be capable of using it, even if he needed to, but he felt better with it riding next to him. He found the keys in Coop’s other pocket. He slid them into his right front pocket, then removed Coop from the grass, and positioned him in the backseat as gently as he could.
Now, where to take him?
Hank thought.

Home was out. Hank’s father would be there, and his father hated anything to do with Cooper. He couldn’t take him to the hospital, didn’t want to have to answer questions, and he was sure he couldn’t take him to the police. He’d heard the stories about people disappearing from the jails, plus Senior and the law were friends. He and the sheriff had a standing tee time on Sunday afternoons, and that was another reason to steer clear of the sheriff’s office. He wasn’t taking him to the Cooper mansion either, not when Senior might choose to pick up where he’d left off.

He made a right turn out of the parking lot. His eyes were filled with tears from what he knew his friend had endured at the hands of his daddy. This wasn’t the first time, but it was by far the worst. Cooper and Hank were brothers in more ways than one; both had suffered at the hands of their daddies. Today he’d just stood by and watched, like some coward, like his father had stood by and watched his mother make a fool of him with Senior.
Like father, like son,
Hank thought. A bunch of weaklings the Ryder men were.

He knew where to take Coop. Over to the Millers, a place Coop had been spending a lot of time lately. Mr. Miller was teaching him how to brew beer, he’d said. Hank bet Mr. Miller would know what to do. Five minutes later, he turned onto their street and parked on the corner. Three houses down from him was the Millers’ home. He scanned the street for signs of life.
All good, all quiet and empty
, he thought. He cut the truck’s engine but didn’t have to turn the lights off—he’d hadn’t even turned them on.

He removed Cooper from the backseat and slowly made his way to the Millers’ house. He stepped onto the front porch and softly laid Cooper on the ground in front of the door, so you couldn’t miss him. He looked down at his friend, sad to be here, then glanced down the street. It was still quiet and empty. He pushed the doorbell and took off, running around to the left side of the house, lingering there.

A few minutes later, Mr. Miller stepped out, looked down at the figure lying on his porch. He didn’t recognize him at first. “Oh, lord Jesus,” he said when he did.

“What is it, George?” Mrs. Miller asked before she let out a moan, all sorrow. Hank had to fight back tears upon hearing it.

“Bring him in,” she said, and Hank listened for a few minutes as they moved Cooper inside, or he assumed that was what all the shuffling of feet had been about. He stayed put until he heard the sound of the door closing. Then he was gone.

Memorial Day weekend 2013

K
endall turned up the music, her playlist filled with let’s-get-this-party-started-type music, a jump start to her day. She was done teaching for the semester, and all her grades had been calculated, turned in, and posted. She felt light and free and open to all of life’s possibilities, or at least all of the possibilities to be had in Coopersville, USA.

Today was the Friday before the start of the Memorial Day weekend, and everything was moving forward according to plan. She’d left town at about eight this morning, wanting to make sure she was ahead of the crowds on this first official holiday of the summer. She was visiting her Aunt Myra, her mother’s one and only sister, for the first time in too many years to count. She only had memories of one summer spent with her aunt. She’d been ten at the time.

Her mother had stopped speaking to her sister after that. So Kendall had been surprised by her mother’s out-of-the-blue request for her to spend the summer with her aunt. The question of why had infected Kendall’s brain afterwards, keeping her awake at night. In the end, it had all come down to one simple word. Money. With her mother, “the” Vivian Edwards, an old-school supermodel, it was always about money. Her mother could forgive any grudge, slight, or infraction if money was attached to the end of the line.

Her aunt was losing money, and it was disappearing faster than it should be for a widow living alone. Money from her husband’s life-insurance policy and proceeds from some device Uncle George had invented, patented, and sold to a company.

It was her daughters’ money that was disappearing, was the way Kendall’s mother probably saw it, and no way would she put up with that. So what if Vivian had made more money than she knew what to do with. There was no such thing as too much money in her mother’s world. No, Lark and Kendall stood to inherit, and this potential inheritance must be protected. That was the conclusion Kendall had come to after she’d done some investigative work of her own. Vivian had driven up to visit herself, and apparently the answers she’d received from her sister weren’t up to snuff, so she’d asked Kendall to make the trip.

“Coopersville, here I come,” Kendall said in her car. She’d broken up with her boyfriend of three months, Houston Black, an ex-NBA baller and businessman extraordinaire, so her aunt’s invitation to visit, or her mother’s push for her to visit, whichever way she wanted to view it, had come at an ideal time. She was thankful to get out of Dodge.

She had started to look forward to her trip too, regardless of the whys. A summer spent resting, relaxing, and getting to know her aunt, with maybe a side serving of sleuthing. Those were the only items on her agenda.

She’d learned from her limited research that Coopersville, Texas, was four square miles of small town, population approximately three thousand, with one of everything—one high school, one middle school, and one elementary school. It had been founded by the Cooper family, hence the town’s name. The family-owned quarry had been the major, and only, source of employment for the small town until the cement plant had arrived in the early 1970s. All that was left was the cement plant, which was humming along quite nicely, she’d learned.

Coopersville, Texas, did have other notables, and chief among them was its reputation for being inhospitable to people of color, particularly if said people of color thought to stick around past sundown, which was one for the history books. It was hard to fathom that such prejudices still existed in the year 2013.

People were always singing the praises of small-town life. Countless newspaper articles, movies, and books extolled the quality lives to be lived in small-town America. Stories crammed full of the quirky and the quaint, all ease and welcome, all occupied with an odd assortment of colorful and funny characters posing as residents.

But not all small towns were created equal, and as with Coopersville—or, at least, the Coopersville of the past—there were plenty little towns that were small-minded, suffocating, and dangerous.

Coopersville was famous for a few other more uplifting things. Number one on that list was its close proximity to the one of the largest state parks in Texas. Two, it was home to a golf course, which she was itching to play, a chance to test her ability and skills with a golf club. It was no longer private, so maybe that meant that it was also no longer off-limits to colored people.

And finally, the town was famous for its beer, homegrown and brewed, served at the famous Coopersville Brewpub Cooperative, owned and operated by the only remaining Cooper, one Barnabus Lee. Her mother had advised her to begin her search into her aunt’s finances there, to look into this B. L. Cooper person. It was not her first choice, beer.
Yuck
, she thought.

“Hello, whoever you are,” she said, interrupting her musings to focus on the fine specimen of man who was standing outside at a gas station, pump in his hand, refueling an old grey truck. She was thirty miles away from the turnoff that would lead her to another turnoff, which would eventually bring her into the heart of Coopersville.

Her new single status, along with the free and breezy summer feeling, had her stopping to check him out. He was just plain old beautiful, and out here in the sticks too.
He deserves a second look
, she thought. And why the hell not?

Yeah, yeah, he was a stranger, and she wasn’t so desperate she was about to pick up strangers at gas stations, but it wouldn’t hurt to get an up-close and personal look, ’cause he was yummy gorgeous. Plus she could always refill her gas tank—it was unsafe to drive on an empty—okay, half-full—tank, and it was also a wise decision to take advantage of the cheaper gas prices outside of the town. “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Kendall said out loud in response to her pitiful excuses for stopping.

She passed the first entrance into the station and pulled into the second, driving around the side and over to where he was parked in front. She slid her auto into the bay next to his truck and switched off the ignition. Turning her music down, she ran her eyes over him again. Yep, up close, he was the same kind of fine. Sexy, curly, dirty blond hair cut short, jeans that hugged in the right places, and a nondescript T-shirt covering his chest. Not too tight, but snug enough for her to get an idea of what lay underneath it. He wore sandals on his feet, which were just as gorgeous as the rest of him.

Overall, a very nicely put-together package
, she thought,
great ass and thighs
, and she laughed, ’cause that sounded like something you’d order at a your local KFC. “One ass and two thighs to go please,” she said into the emptiness of her car. She loved it when a man had a nice ass and thighs; they were hands down her favorite parts of the male anatomy. Think cowboys, either type—the ones that road those bulls at the rodeo or those who played for the Dallas Cowboys. Both were filled with more than their share of highly respectable asses attached to some highly respectable thighs.

She got out of her car and walked around to the back passenger side, where her gas tank was located. She was decked out in a soft, summery halter dress—pink and short, stopping mid-thigh—that made her feel extremely feminine and sexy, paired with matching pink sandals. Yes, she had shed her professor image this morning for summer, just like a butterfly sheds its cocoon.

She didn’t do conservative, professor-style clothes anywhere other than at the university and its environs. She was there to teach, not to get the new college students all stirred up, so she dressed accordingly, following the professor dress code of plain shirts, skirts, and slacks—okay, with some hint of personal flair, but all her body parts were totally covered when she was at work.

She input her PIN number and put the gas pump’s nozzle into her car’s gas thingy. She set it to continue on without her and headed toward the convenience part of the convenience store. She was thirsty and ready for her stroll by, and as she neared his truck, she put a little more swing into her step, but not too much. She didn’t want to give him a heart attack or some such thing.

He was sort of bent over, with one hand on the pump and the other on his truck, and she admired his body up close as she passed him. He was in shape, muscles rippled underneath his T-shirt, and she could see a bit of skin at the waistband of his jeans, which hung a little low. Trim waist, arms with guns—
must be active
, she thought. She checked out his rump again, and yep, still there, and still very, very nice. He looked to be in his early thirties, close to her age, or so she hoped. She smiled.

He smiled too, met her eyes as he checked her out from over his shoulder, eyes that did the once-over, from head to toe, then back up. He didn’t even try to hide it.
Oh
…She squealed in pleasure—internally, of course—pleased by his confidence, and moved closer to the doors, hoping he was paying attention to her back view. It was just as impressive as her front.

She stood at the counter, waiting her turn, and tried to act all nonchalant when he came in a few minutes later. She watched him head over to the drink section, where he picked up a bottle of Coke, and then it was back over to her at the counter, where a small selection of candy waited, a last-minute impulse for those who were impulsive. She selected the plain M&M’s, continuing with the impulsive theme she’d been working all day.

He was standing behind her in line now, and she could feel him at her back. He smelled like the outdoors mixed in with some fresh, clean-smelling scent of cologne. She moved up in line, the next to be served.

“Hey, LC, what are you doing here?” the man behind the counter asked, looking past her. He wore a dusty T-shirt and a baseball cap, had that little patch of hair on his chin that was scraggly looking.

“I had to run up to Austin yesterday, so I spent the night. I’m heading back home this morning,” he said, and Kendall put a name to a face. LC.

“How’s business?” the man asked.

“Good,” he said, and it was her turn. She handed over her money.

“I’ve got to get up to play some golf soon. You’ll have to give me that password again,” the man behind the register said, laughing. “You try and get too clever with those password questions of yours, and I ain’t into golf as much as you are.”