I didn’t figure he was going to get it fixed but I hoped he didn’t. As I’d noted thus far in my journey through life, there were some imperfections that were perfect. Jim-Billy’s missing tooth was one of them.
“What’s shakin’?” I asked.
“Nothin’,” he answered.
“I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about that,” I remarked.
“I do. Simple life, simple pleasures.” Jim-Billy lifted up his draft. “Means you always avoid disappointment.”
I stared at him a beat, rocked by this wisdom, before I asked, “What are you, a mountain man maharishi?”
“Yup,” he muttered and looked away, chugging back a big gulp of his beer.
I burst out laughing.
I finished laughing with Jim-Billy again looking my way and grinning.
Krystal appeared, throwing a beer mat on the bar in front of me.
“What you drinkin’?” she asked.
“Beer. Cold. I don’t care what kind but none of that fancy shit or you’ll make me testy,” I answered.
She looked from me to Jim-Billy. “I know this is goin’ against all I am, but I already like her,” she declared, jerking her head my way.
That felt great.
“Pregnancy is softening you up,” Jim-Billy commented.
Uh-oh.
Wrong thing to say.
“Take that back,” she snapped, proving my assessment right.
“Not a bad thing, darlin’,” Jim-Billy pointed out.
She leaned in to him. “Take that back.”
“Krys—”
“My name is Justice Lonesome,” I blurted the reason I was there (outside to hang, have a beer and get to know my Carnal neighbors some more).
Both Krystal and Jim-Billy looked to me.
I’d started it, it was time. Shambles and Sunny knew. Although I’d asked them to keep it quiet until I was ready to let it loose, and they’d promised to do that, the more I got to know these folks, the longer I left it unsaid, the bigger the chance of me courting the possibility of hurting people’s feelings. Because anything important left unsaid eventually became a lie if you let it get to that.
“My father is Johnny Lonesome. Aunt and uncle Tammy and Jimmy. Granddad was Jerry.”
I sallied forth even though both of them were staring at me, silent.
“I cut a record six years ago. It did well. I toured with it. I did well. Then my drummer overdosed. He was a good guy. A good friend. He’d been with my dad before he went on the road with me so I’d known him years. He was part of the family. It tore me up. On tour, I hooked up with another guy in my band. He was into that shit and us losing someone didn’t make him stop. He wanted me on that trip with him. I wanted nothing to do with it. The pressure was heavy because the life is extreme and there’s a lot of times when you just need something to keep going. We weren’t serious but it was an ugly break. That tore me up too. A lot of the shit I did and saw and had to eat to live that life tore me up. So I left it.”
Jim-Billy and Krystal kept staring.
I kept blathering.
“Dad died of an aneurysm four months ago. No warning except he ate anything he liked and drank all he wanted and didn’t take care of himself, but he ran around onstage like he was still twenty-one, so the doctors said if it wasn’t that, he’d have a stroke or a heart attack and not later, but sooner. He was Johnny Lonesome but to me he was just my dad. I loved him. He loved me. A lot. And I miss him.”
“Jus,” Jim-Billy whispered.
I knew why. I felt the tears brimming in my eyes.
I focused on him because Krystal looked pissed.
“I didn’t tell you because I wanted peace,” I whispered back to Jim-Billy. “Just some time where I was Jus. Not Justice Lonesome, not Johnny Lonesome’s daughter, Jerry’s granddaughter. I wanted you to get to know me. And lots of stuff is happening since Dad’s died and it’s a pain in my ass. So I wanted that peace. I’m sorry I didn’t share right off the bat. But can you understand why I wouldn’t?”
“Of course, sweetheart,” Jim-Billy said immediately.
“Justice Lonesome,” Krystal said over him.
I looked to her and braced.
“Heard Johnny’s daughter cut a record. Heard a song. It was slow and sappy. So, hope you don’t mind, but I gave my cake to your old man. Bought every album he put out seein’ as he was a goddamned rock ‘n’ roll genius,” she declared.
“I don’t mind,” I told her quietly, warmth stealing around my heart at her words about Dad, still braced because she wasn’t sending warm vibes to me.
“Saw him in concert twice. Two best concerts of my life,” she stated.
“Yeah. He was great live,” I agreed.
All of a sudden, her hand came out, palm flat on the bar in front of me.
She didn’t touch me, not even close.
What she did was look me in the eye and say in a tone in my not-very-long acquaintance with Krys I’d never heard or suspected she could take, “His loss was a great one.”
And there was the warmth.
I couldn’t hack it.
Grief was a tricky thing. When we lost Granddad, I’d learned that, for me, it wasn’t those who gave you sorrowful looks, gazing on you with understanding, keeping their mouths shut.
It was the folks who offered sympathy.
It meant the world and it was necessary to have to file away and take out at a time when the loss was less raw and those words could be soothing.