Grit & Shadows Boxed Set by J D Brink

Author:J D Brink [Brink, J D]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fugitive Fiction
Published: 2019-10-04T06:00:00+00:00

It isn’t until we’re pulling back onto the street that I realize where I knew him from.

“Robbie Watersworth,” I whisper sharply.

Rummy looks over.

Virgil, Indiana. Hayes High School. In my senior year, a new freshman—a lanky, red-headed kid named Robbie Watersworth—moved up from somewhere in Georgia. Robbie the overly eager, clumsy kid whose feet were too big for his straw-like legs, who spoke with such a thick southern accent that he had to say things twice to be understood. Robbie Watersworth who tried with such vigor to make the spring musical but was laughed off the stage by teachers’ pets who already had parts reserved. Robbie who got his nose bloodied in senior hall for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I remember walking him to the bath room and sending the vice principal down the wrong track while Robbie stuffed toilet paper into his nostrils.

Of course, this was half a lifetime ago. Four or five identities back for me.

Felix and Rummy get a big kick out of my Robbie Watersworth story. They’re laughing all the way back across the Marshman Bridge.

“No shit?” Rummy asks. “Robert Waters is really Opie Taylor? No shit?”

“No shit.”

The big man slaps the steering wheel twice. “Oh, Eddie’s going to love this one.”

The car dodges effortlessly around a red Buick, then cuts back in front of it.

“So he bought it, huh?”

“Damn right he did,” Felix says. “That jerk-off wouldn’t know Stanley from fucking Stan Lee. He went from Redneck, Georgia, to Bumfuck, Indiana, to Hollywood, California. We could sell him a paint-by-number and tell him it’s a fucking Van Gogh, he’d buy it.”

Rummy’s eye-bushes crowd over his eyes and he shoots me a suspicious look. “Indiana, huh? What town did you say?”

I smile, him trying to pry another clue from my past. “I didn’t.”

Felix scoffs behind me, mumbling, “Secret fucking identity.”

“Jack of spades,” I say, turning back to the open window.

That’s my card. I have a person assigned to most of the face cards, people from my past. It’s like a tarot deck in reverse. As I’m placing cards in a hand of solitaire, a ghost will crop up in my game. It’s the past coming back to haunt me. Or to warn me about the future.

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