Read Online The Next Time You See Me by Holly Goddard Jones - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Holly Goddard Jones
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after breakfast, buttoning the collar on his work shirt to hide a scratch on his neck and examining his reflection carefully in the harsh fluorescent light framing his bathroom mirror. Then heslipped into his quilted flannel jacket and called for Boss, accompanying the dog outside this time for round two. He had to watch, confirm, or else Boss would get indoors and have an accident while Wyatt was at work. Sometimes it happened anyway. The dog wandered around the yard, sniffing well-known landmarks like the picnic table and an ancient garden gnome, probably picking up on the scent of the neighbor’s cat. At last his steps became shorter and faster, and then he was walking his back legs forward and hiking up his bottom end, watching Wyatt over his shoulder again suspiciously—the look had always struck Wyatt as suspicious, anyway, and made him laugh, but not lately, not since last week—and then the dog was finished, coming back to the house without being called and giving Wyatt a wide berth as he entered.
The dog was balled up on the couch, chin resting on a pillow, when Wyatt came through the living room with his travel mug of coffee and sweet roll, fuel for the ten-minute drive. This was when he’d usually sit and rest a moment, catch a few minutes of the Channel 5 news out of Nashville, give Boss a good scratch behind the ears, a good belly rub to hold him over until nighttime. But Boss wasn’t having it: not sleeping at the foot of Wyatt’s bed, not greeting Wyatt at the door with his tail wagging, not taking treats directly from his master’s hand. If Wyatt were to sit at his usual place on the couch now, Boss would hop down heavily, cross to the opposite side of the room, and lie with his back against the wall, chin on his forepaws.
“Don’t move on my account,” Wyatt said to the dog. He sipped his coffee, checked the clock: 6:20, too early to be heading out unless he felt like sitting for half an hour in the break room, waiting to punch in. He didn’t know what would be worse: biding time in his own home under Boss’s wary eye or trying to hide from the young guys at the plant, the eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds who called him Tubs and then tried to play it off like they were joking, laughing with him instead of at him. Aw, Tubs, stop pouting. You know we love you, man. When’re you gonna come out for a beer with us? When you gonna let us get you drunk?
He rubbed a tight spot in his chest, the place where his breakfast crumbs always landed, where the hollow between his pecs surged out into the hard, round curve of his stomach. He carried his fat high and close to his heart.
“I’ll see you, then,” he said to Boss.
The dog stared at him with his tired, milky eyes, and Wyatt went on and left.
He took the long way to the plant, cutting through town instead of using the bypass, even circling the square so that he could drive by Citizens Deposit and see the temperature. Fifty degrees. It was supposed to be warm again after the weekend’s cold snap, maybe even up to the seventies, and Wyatt was of two minds about it. At fifty-five he felt the cold a lot more than he had at eighteen, when he first started at Price Electric, and so the short, halfhearted winters of recent years were in some respects a blessing. Saved him on electricity bills, too. But it didn’t seem right that you could walk around outdoors in almost-November in nothing but your shirtsleeves. A lot of things didn’t seem right about the world today, a lot had changed without Wyatt’s say-so, but what could a guy like him do about it? Price had been talking for years now about shutting down the Kentucky factory and moving to Mexico. They’d already closed a plant in St. Louis, and these had been some strange years lately, foreigners coming in and local guys, folks Wyatt had worked with since his mother was still alive, getting laid off or retiring early, tired of switching from one job to the next and fighting tooth and nail for
The dog was balled up on the couch, chin resting on a pillow, when Wyatt came through the living room with his travel mug of coffee and sweet roll, fuel for the ten-minute drive. This was when he’d usually sit and rest a moment, catch a few minutes of the Channel 5 news out of Nashville, give Boss a good scratch behind the ears, a good belly rub to hold him over until nighttime. But Boss wasn’t having it: not sleeping at the foot of Wyatt’s bed, not greeting Wyatt at the door with his tail wagging, not taking treats directly from his master’s hand. If Wyatt were to sit at his usual place on the couch now, Boss would hop down heavily, cross to the opposite side of the room, and lie with his back against the wall, chin on his forepaws.
“Don’t move on my account,” Wyatt said to the dog. He sipped his coffee, checked the clock: 6:20, too early to be heading out unless he felt like sitting for half an hour in the break room, waiting to punch in. He didn’t know what would be worse: biding time in his own home under Boss’s wary eye or trying to hide from the young guys at the plant, the eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds who called him Tubs and then tried to play it off like they were joking, laughing with him instead of at him. Aw, Tubs, stop pouting. You know we love you, man. When’re you gonna come out for a beer with us? When you gonna let us get you drunk?
He rubbed a tight spot in his chest, the place where his breakfast crumbs always landed, where the hollow between his pecs surged out into the hard, round curve of his stomach. He carried his fat high and close to his heart.
“I’ll see you, then,” he said to Boss.
The dog stared at him with his tired, milky eyes, and Wyatt went on and left.
He took the long way to the plant, cutting through town instead of using the bypass, even circling the square so that he could drive by Citizens Deposit and see the temperature. Fifty degrees. It was supposed to be warm again after the weekend’s cold snap, maybe even up to the seventies, and Wyatt was of two minds about it. At fifty-five he felt the cold a lot more than he had at eighteen, when he first started at Price Electric, and so the short, halfhearted winters of recent years were in some respects a blessing. Saved him on electricity bills, too. But it didn’t seem right that you could walk around outdoors in almost-November in nothing but your shirtsleeves. A lot of things didn’t seem right about the world today, a lot had changed without Wyatt’s say-so, but what could a guy like him do about it? Price had been talking for years now about shutting down the Kentucky factory and moving to Mexico. They’d already closed a plant in St. Louis, and these had been some strange years lately, foreigners coming in and local guys, folks Wyatt had worked with since his mother was still alive, getting laid off or retiring early, tired of switching from one job to the next and fighting tooth and nail for
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