Honky Tonk Christmas (5 page)

“Open six nights a week from eight to two. No live band. We’ve gotten a reputation for being a vintage bar. Got an old jukebox in there that still plays three songs for a quarter. The old stuff, like Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings, and Willie. Friday and Saturday nights I plug in the new box. Blake Shelton, Miranda Lambert, the Zac Brown Band, and Josh Turner.”

She clamped her mouth shut. Her biggest failing was that she talked too much, especially when she was nervous, and Holt Jackson sure enough made her nervous. She’d left Corn because she didn’t intend to ever get entangled with a man who wore bibbed overalls, and there she was, panting at the sight of Holt in striped overalls.

Kent looked over at Chad. “Sounds like my kind of place. We go home most Friday nights but we like the old stuff, don’t we?”

They were definitely brothers with their sandy blond hair and brown eyes, but Kent was taller and lankier than Chad. Both good looking men but neither was sexy as Holt. On a scale of one to ten, they were a good solid six and Holt was an eleven or maybe a fifteen.

“I’ll have to bring Coralynn down some weekend. She’s been after me to go dancing for a month. She heard about this place from a friend who comes down here pretty often when you got the old music going,” Bennie said.

He was the shortest one of the three, had a receding hairline, a white rim where his cowboy hat kept the sun from his wide forehead, and a round baby face. His eyes were crystal blue and his arms bulged beneath the knit of a faded T-shirt.

“Bring her around and the first beer will be on the house,” Sharlene said.

Chad chuckled. “Coralynn don’t drink beer. Will the first margarita be on the house?”

“You got it,” Sharlene said. “All right with you if I take these kids inside for a while?” she asked Holt.

“If they won’t bother your work,” he said. “Judd, don’t you shut your eyes. Waylon, you wiggle every now and then so you don’t fall asleep. Get your pillows out of the truck.”

“I got pillows they can use. Come on, kids. I’ve got that satellite stuff that gets the Disney channel. I don’t know if they’ve got cartoons in the afternoon but we’ll see,” she said.

Waylon shyly reached up and put his small hand in hers. Judd ran on ahead to the door and waited.

When she was in the house, Chad whistled under his breath. “Now that’s one sexy lady.”

Bennie grinned. “She’d be your dream girl, Chad. Owns a bar and plenty of beer.”

Kent pushed his brother’s shoulder. “This ugly old boy ain’t got a chance when I’m here. Besides, Gloria would beat him to death with a broom handle if he looked at another woman. I’m the good lookin’ brother and I’ll be the one who takes her home. Bet you ten dollars I’ve got that pretty redhead in my trailer by the time we finish the job.”

A shot of pure jealousy heated up Holt’s veins. If Kent got her drunk he might win the bet. Holt had seen what happened when Sharlene had too many shots. He wasn’t about to let himself get involved with another woman so soon after Nikki, especially one who owned a beer joint, but he dang sure didn’t want any of his crew to go after her either.

Bennie finished off a bottle of water. “Okay, let’s get the rules laid out before we bet. She can’t just go in your trailer. You got to get her into bed.”

Chad shook his head. “No, that ain’t going to work. He could get her to sit on his bed and we’d lose. He’s got to have real sex with her. Like Bill Engvall says, he’s got to have some hot pig sex with Sharlene or all bets are off.”

“Hell, that’s worth a fifty dollar bet,” Kent said. “How many of you are willing to give me fifty bucks if I sweet-talk Sharlene into a bout of sex?”

Holt stood up. “She’s our boss. All bets are off and the first one I catch flirting with her is fired. You’re all being disrespectful when you talk like that.”

“Whew! Who pissed on your scrambled eggs this morning?” Kent asked.

“Let’s get back to work. We’ve got a trench to dig, forms to build, and concrete to pour before we quit tonight,” Holt growled.

***

Sharlene turned on the television and tossed each child a pillow. Waylon laid on his back and laced his hands behind his head. Judd flopped down on her stomach and propped her face in her hands.

“
Little Mermaid
is coming on Disney in about one minute,” Sharlene said.

“Yes,” the kids said in unison.

“You want to watch it with us?” Judd asked.

Sharlene sat down on the sofa. “Maybe for a few minutes. Anyone need to go to the bathroom before it starts?”

“Where is it?” Waylon asked.

Sharlene pointed.

“You put that lid down,” Judd said.

Waylon frowned at her. “Don’t boss me. I know what to do.”

Judd rolled her eyes. “Men!”

Sharlene grinned. “Where did you hear that?”

Judd sighed. “From my momma. Sometimes I miss her but I don’t tell Uncle Holt acause he misses her too and it makes him sad if I cry.”

Waylon came out of the bathroom when the music started at the beginning of the movie and threw himself down on his pillow. “I put the seat down.”

“That’s good. We don’t want Sharlene to fall in the potty like Momma did that time,” Judd giggled.

Waylon’s eyes twinkled. “She said some bad words, didn’t she?”

Judd poked him on the arm. “She said it was your fault that she cussed. And besides, she got her whole as… hind end wet and that ain’t funny. I fell in one time in the middle of the night when you didn’t put the seat down.”

“Well, it was your fault that she cussed more times than it was my fault,” Waylon argued.

“Which one of you is the oldest?” Sharlene asked.

“I am but only by four minutes,” Judd said.

Sharlene looked from one to the other. “You are twins?”

Waylon nodded. “Yep, we’re twins but I’m smarter than she is.”

“Well, I’m tougher than you are,” Judd said.

“Is your name short for something?” Sharlene asked.

Judd grinned. “Nope. It’s for the Judds. Them singing girls. Momma didn’t know which one to name me for, Wynonna or Naomi. I’m glad she didn’t name me either one of them names. I don’t like them. So she named me for the one that’s on television sometimes. Her name is Ashley and that’s my name too. Ashley Judd Mendoza. And Waylon is Waylon Jennings Mendoza. Uncle Holt is going to ’dopt us and then we’ll be Ashley Judd Jackson and Waylon Jennings Jackson. He said we could keep our names but we decided if he was going to be our ’dopted daddy then we want to have a name like his.”

“Momma said that the reason we call her Judd is acause I couldn’t say Ashley when I was a little kid but I could say Judd,” Waylon said.

“Shhhh, the movie is startin’. If we talk, we’ll miss the good parts,” Judd said.

Waylon settled into his pillow more comfortably. “I thought we were going to watch TV in the bar where we went yesterday.”

“It only gets the sports and news channel. I thought you’d be more comfortable in here,” Sharlene said.

“I like it in here. It smells good,” Waylon said. He was asleep in ten minutes.

Judd forced her eyes to stay open, blinking only when her eyes stung so badly she couldn’t bear it. She finally picked up her pillow, put it next to Sharlene on the sofa, cuddled up next to her thigh, and went to sleep.

Sharlene leaned into the corner of the sofa. She and the mermaid had a lot in common. They were both misfits in the world. Sharlene had grown up in Mennonite country where the puritanical influence was still prevalent. Her parents weren’t of that faith but they were very strict, very religious, and still adhered to the old ways. Girls grew up to be women who stayed home, raised babies, cooked three meals a day, and kept a spotless house. If they did work outside the home, they didn’t neglect their first duties to the family. They even ironed pillowcases and tea towels and God forbid that they ever had frozen dinners for supper. Sharlene wasn’t sure that a wife and mother could even look at the Pearly Gates if she didn’t make supper from scratch and that involved going to the garden to gather it in the spring and summer.

Boys grew up to be men who had jobs outside the farm only if necessary and who milked cows, ran cattle, plowed, planted, harvested, and brought home the bacon. Men did not do dishes, cook, or wash clothes even if they had the time and the wife had a job in town. One sink full of dishes would rob them of their masculinity for all eternity. Sharlene figured if her mother died before her father that he’d starve to death. She might need to suggest to her mother that she start putting frozen dinners in the extra freezer out in the garage so he’d survive long enough to rope in another wife.

She went to sleep with a smile on her face. If Claud Waverly looked at another woman before or after Molly died, he wouldn’t have to die to get a taste of hell. Molly would deliver it to him on a shiny silver platter.

The minute she drifted off to sleep the dreams started. Jonah was beside her in this one, asking her if she was ever going to ruin her perfect record. According to the U. S. Army, the average soldier would hit a man-sized target ten percent of the time at 300 meters using an M16A2 rifle. Snipers were required to hit the same target ninety percent of the time from 600 meters out. Sharlene was one of the elite who could hit it ninety-five percent of the time from 1000 meters. So far she hadn’t missed. Jonah kept joking about her falling apart the day that she did.

They were belly down in the sand under deep camouflage waiting for the white limousine. Her first bullet was to take out the front passenger tire, then fire the RPG, rocket propelled grenade, and to leave no one alive. She blinked twice and fired and awoke with a start before it hit the target.

She wondered what Iraqi children were doing in her bunker. The noise of hammers sounded like machine gun fire. She looked up expecting to see Jonah’s dark eyes but instead the credits rolled at the end of the movie on the television. Waylon’s eyes popped open and he gasped when his sister wasn’t lying right beside him. He slowly scanned the strange room and finally sighed when he found her on the sofa beside Sharlene.

Sharlene inhaled deeply and banished the dream from her mind.

Judd wiggled and then opened her eyes. “Did you have a good nap?” she asked Sharlene.

“Yes, I did. How about you?” Sharlene hugged her closer.

“I didn’t go to sleep. I just gotted up here on the sofa and got you to sleep. I used to do that for Momma. She’d let me get her to sleep and then she’d feel all better after a good nap,” Judd said.

“Well, thank you for a wonderful nap,” Sharlene said. “Are you two hungry? I always wake up hungry when I take a nap.”

Both heads bobbed up and down.

“How about some cookies and milk? I’ve got those soft chocolate chip ones and some Oreos.”

“Oreos.” Waylon put his pillow on the rocking chair and pulled out a kitchen chair.

Judd followed his example. “The other kind and do you have chocolate milk? I don’t like white so good.”

“I like white,” Waylon said.

“You are so different to be twins,” Sharlene commented.

“That’s acause he’s a boy and I’m a girl,” Judd giggled.

They ate their snacks, made a hurried rest room stop, and ran out the door yelling at Uncle Holt. She stood on the tiny back porch and watched him stop work, gather them up in his arms, and listen to their chatter for a few minutes. Then they raced toward the oak tree with Judd yelling that the last one there was a dummy.

She walked out to the work site where a noisy concrete mixer turned slowly, getting the cement ready to pour into the foundation forms.

“Is all this machinery yours?” she asked.

Holt stopped and leaned on a hoe. “It belongs to the company and the four of us own the company equally. Do you want the outside to be rough wood like that part or are you going to paint it?”

She looked at the weathered wood. “Just like that if you can get it. Got any ideas about the front to make it look connected?”

“I’d just put two levels of the façade up, leaving three above the old part to hold the sign. That way it would look like it’s been here forever. That old stuff is weathered cedar. New cedar would be a different color. I’ve got some barn wood stored up in one of Bennie’s barns. There’s probably plenty to cover the outside and it’d look identical to what you’ve already got.”

“How much?” Sharlene asked.

“I reckon we could make a deal. You got time for two kids to take a nap and give them cookies and milk in the afternoons, it would make us even on the wood.”

She smiled up at him. “Sounds like a good deal to me.”

She turned around too quickly and ran into Kent. She started to tumble and he reached out and caught her pulling her close to his chest.

“I’m so sorry.” She pushed away and blushed scarlet. “Grace is not any part of my name.”

“Not me. That was the highlight of my day,” Kent said.

“Well, thank you for not letting me fall on my face.” She hurried toward the apartment.

“Might as well give it up, brother,” Chad said.

“Why’s that? She’s a fine looking lady.”

“Take my word for it. You ain’t got a chance. She’s already set her sights and they ain’t on you,” Chad told him.

“Who’s she got her sights on, then?”

“Boss man over there.”

Holt threw up both palms defensively. “Don’t go gettin’ me involved. I’ve got kids to think about, jobs to line up, and I sure ain’t got time for romance.”

Kent grinned. “Never know when romance might make time for you. I got to get me a couple of kids. They are regular chick magnets. Want to rent yours out for a night or two?”

“I’d sell them to you some days.” Holt grinned.

Chad turned off the cement mixer. “Don’t sell them to him until after Friday. Me and Gloria are taking them to see that new Disney thing. She says that you got to have kids to go to it and I was supposed to ask Holt already but I just now remembered.”

“Why do you have to have kids to go to the movies?” Bennie asked.

“Because Gloria says it’d look weird for us to go without them. It’s a cartoon movie and besides, she loves Judd and Waylon. Almost as much as she loves animated movies and musicals,” Chad said.