Prodigal Sons

I’d known the Guilfoyle clan near thirty years. They’d been in Corceadus about that long, but since the grandsire never saw people or went without drink, it wasn’t until Beverly, his missus, started stepping out on her own that she made our acquaintance. We're at the Bramble Batch eating tacos on Wednesdays.

It started innocently enough. We could tell from her feet she'd be amenable to joining our happy group. But posterity and pride, a rare abundance in this town, prevented her joining until Lila was able to pry out a mutual interest in arboretums. From that, the pair cultivated a quiet, enduring friendship.

It was after those first trips through the topiaries that Beverly Guilfoyle’s weekly take out order of three chicken, four carnitas, and six jackfruit tacos, changed to two chicken, three carnitas, and six jackfruit. She consumed the difference in our presence, accompanied by an occasional chardonnay, provided the time of year gave good visibility on the drive home.

Beverly’s two children went their separate ways, though Rance stayed in town and became a machinist. The daughter, whose name eludes me, moved away, naught to be seen and thereafter talked sparingly of. The husband found a more permanent slumber not long before the girl finished school and Rance was promoted to journeyman.

Rance took over the family house, and Beverly lived there until the innovation of online dating offered the company of a neat man from Pascagoula, Mississippi, with whom she moved in, settled down, and, I’m told, is still quite happy with.

Rance’s penchant for fixing things and not sitting still transformed their dilapidated property on the edge of town into something abstractly enviable. Though I doubt his skill with a lathe is what caught the eye of the roguish Baxter girl. They were quickly married and proliferated a new generation of Guilfoyles. Maddy and Quantrill.

I will not say much of the Baxter girl, except that she did have the decency to call on us whenever the Guilfoyle’s fortunes allowed a midweek sojourn to our enclave.

They didn’t share our table, and though the reserved Rance always flashed his easy smile, afterward he retreated into himself, content to stare at the cannisters holding the Hunt’s and C&H until his food arrived. Maddy wandered aimlessly by the dart boards while the younger Quantrill always had his face in a book.

And while this is not the venue to share the whole of my thoughts on the Baxter girl, I can appreciate the sort of exemplary mundanity required to pull off the same ‘doing well and how are you’ over and over in half as many weeks of days as there were years spent raising her children.

And despite the emptiness of her words, combined with Rance’s unbeknown stoicism, these were a people better equipped for the changing of times in Corceadus than others.

Take our original crew, for example. Lila, after divorcing Mark for his detachment and nonexistent libido, found in that same hapless gene pool fished by Beverly, a commodious man who oddly enough, sprinted off with her every last penny. Her sister ended up taking her in, but the prognosis isn’t good, and I doubt she could splurge on our bastardization of a Mexican staple, much less the propellant required to join us.

The Kidwells had the privilege of rearing children bereft of currency and contraceptives. Their progeny’s tablet-addled, squealing replicants make Maddy Guilfoyle look like the Dalai Lama. Since we couldn’t have one without the other, I’m content to go without the Kidwells on Wednesdays. Though I look forward to their company once again between the time those children get out of diapers and before Davis Kidwell gets into his.

Times changed for the Guilfoyles, too, and once the children were off cavorting through a town teeming with adolescence, they stopped coming by the Bramble Batch in all its placid stability. I learned through Mark Owens, not Lila’s ex, but her cousin, that Rance and his wife now frequented Cedar Creek and its new bar and grill with a wall of screens occupying your every other ounce of time not spent staring the server’s bust.

I’m not sure I see the appeal of such a place on a Wednesday; a doldrum of a night when there aren’t enough games to cover a fraction of the LCDs. Furthermore, the postgraduate pinup stays at home while the barback's burdened to bother: ‘anywhere you like!’

Corceadus, for all its sameness, changes in ways one can see but not easily express. Offspring could stay in menial labor like their parents but trade collared shirts for sweatpants. The next keeps the slovenly clothes but works in the cities, or the more recent trend, the comfort of their homes.

Perish the thought that I am jealous, or against the concept. I’m not too proud to admit that detachment from the inertia of one’s art is a degree of ownership. And indeed the ensuing vividity of freedom gives a meaning to each day that wasn’t found in the punching in and punching out I endured as the town arborist.

Even that industry consolidated, no longer composed of men (and some women) who plan a spread or introduce a genus, rather it's a careful contract with a subsidiary of a subsection, purchasing a package with a payment plan.

The path of least resistance allowed me to find peace with the true nature of things. You experience enlightenment once the arc of your life refracts all visage of the future, reflecting only what’s past.

That past resurged in me when the young Quantrill broke a barrier last Wednesday, becoming the first Guilfoyle in at least half a decade to cross into the Bramble Batch. Though I do not believe it was for the express purpose of taking tacos.

I’d seen it all before, especially on that most holy of Wednesdays, when the migratory flocks return to their empty nests in anticipation of, oddly enough, a Thursday turkey. In years past, when our numbers were strong, we’d have to camp out a full hour early to claim our rightful seats, and even then it wasn’t guaranteed.

These twentysomethings, far removed from jobs or schooling to return from, cared not if their happy hour starts at four or five, but rather whenever they are able to summon themselves from some other fickle pursuit gracing the pointlessness of their ‘holiday.’

The week prior, I anticipated my steadfast counterparts declaring their abstention from attending the next iteration. ‘Dreadful, oh so dreadful! And growing more so by the year,’ they would say.

Morgan, mostly, but the others nod in approval. They say this to me, of course, because I am good for opposition, not out of principle, but exercise. Luckily, so rare is my agreement that relief overtook them rather than suspicion of something untoward when I did not give chase.

The next week I'd sit with Cheeky Andy, which requires timing my arrival to grab his chair. That means chatting up Kathy, Lila’s cousin’s ex, about the current state of the kakistocracy. Sadly, the maneuver's success requires an ongoing dialogue concerning how far she'd take it and how I’d burn it all down.

Theirs is a good spot, in full view of the room, with clear paths to the bar and the restroom, satisfying my voyeurism and then some. Andy, you see, doesn’t like Ray and I’ve been coming with Ray from the start. Andy doesn’t much mind my annual return to him like a son whose squandered his inheritance.

Plus, it breaks the monotony of this windswept plain and the abhorrent condition of our sports teams.

Cheeky Andy didn’t get his name from off-the-cuff remarks. No, it is a product of his harmless alcoholism, which as far as I’m concerned makes him one of the strongest, if not hardest men I know.

Debating Kathy doesn't require much more than the occasional ‘ya’ think so, huh?’ and before you know it she’s gone and bought you a drink while you’re able to continue spying on the starters sprinkling in.

They enter the same way, scouring the joint for someone they know or something more suitable than our specter. I proudly yielded the prime row of tables easily joined together but kept separate, which was quickly identified by the most enterprising and eager of the youngsters as the place to mount the pulling out of their mostly-fake-or-recently-legitimized identification.

There’s always the kind, of course, who, upon staring into the expansiveness of the small-town watering hole, becomes timid, stutters their steps and looks back to the more sure of them who entered second or third because of some banal delay like clearing the cupholder or applying the parking brake.

Either way, they may sit down or go to the bar saying ‘grab those seats!’ to the least inclined to spot the round, and eventually, after passive debate, they conclude they can bring the tables together, and perhaps even another chair for their unarrived co-conspirators.

“Anyone using that?”

“The question of it’s occupation is a matter of time.”

Eyes furrowed and not believing me a good sport, the former baseball standout resolves that I am bad before the smile can break my lips. No sooner, he grabs Peter Johnson’s swivel, which is fine by me because Andy hasn't arrived and I couldn't care less what happens to the favorite seat of a dead man.

At this time, Andy's rolled in, satiated by a flask along the short swerve from the supply store he partly sold off. Presently, he needs only a beer. Thankfully, Kathy’s latest scratch-off paid in spades and it already awaits him. He takes it in hand after giving a double-take to the youths and back to myself, then to the empty space across me. I'm just glad he won't block my view.

With inhibitions intact and just the droll sportsman for show, the ladies check their phones, allowing me snuck glances at pursing lips. Kathy keeps rambling to which Andy grumbles, and this goes on until Jolene takes our order.

“Put it on my tab, Jo’, for letting me bunk with 'em tonight.”

Not one of them find me funny, nor do they appreciate the gesture. It’s half past six before the basketball drops between a mid-Atlantic mid-major and a cellar dwelling stalwart. I’ve just finished the last of my pork strands jutting out from charred flat. I suck my fingers but only for effect.

That’s when I see him, Quantrill. Wouldn't know him for the nose, but Beverly's eyes give him away.

He’s cautious and careful to enter. He raises his eyebrows expecting excitement. It’s returned well enough, but most look up and smile without many words. He mustn’t know it matters not from how far you make the journey or what fortunes came to pass. Tonight, everyone is the same. Much like I'm no different from the reddened streaks in Andy's buccal.

The boy's apprehensions are soon set to rights as the bottles are downed and the straws stirred. The ice, no chance to evaporate; the condensation jerked of fuel.

The volume rises, a haughty chance to prove one’s worth. ‘Can Fordham cover the spread?’ ‘They better, I got a Benjamin on it.’ The ladies love a gambler.

Quantrill, he moves over, done with the lads and ready for actual fun. The prettiest at first, but when she tires of his conversation, he settles on the quiet one. I can tell she doesn’t indulge him for reasons he’d think. She’s talking to him for spite. I’ve seen it before.

Where does one take a flashback fling, anyhow? Not back home, surely? Fat chance the parents are out of town. This lad hadn’t thought of that before dropping his eyes and hints. She whispers the name 'Maddy,' and he gets up from his chair.

He goes to the jukebox, or whatever they call it now. Changes the song to something obscure and hollers, ‘long live the Barley Batch!’ The rest's lost to slurring. The ladies scoff and put on their coats.

I always had a problem with Rance naming him after his dad. Should've known then, like his grandsire, he couldn't much take a punch. I never intended for his head to catch a corner.

Least now, I might see Beverly. Fate has it that the sentencing falls on a Wednesday.