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It was the Saturday before Easter and Mike was at the diner having fried chicken for lunch.
The owner and head waitress Cheryl refilled his coffee cup. “You know anything about plumbing, John?”
“A little,” Mike answered.
“The hot water’s not hot. Is there any chance it’s not the water heater?”
Mike wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “Well, let me check it out.”
He started to get up, but Cheryl put a hand on his shoulder. “Finish your meal, hon. It'll still be broken when you’re done.”
Mike asked, “You wanna join me?”
Cheryl looked around at her tables and said, “Sure, just for a little bit. Everybody in here knows my name if they need anything.”
Mike moved his newspaper out of her way. “I was just reading about how bad things still are in Haiti.”
“Isn’t that horrible? It could happen here, you know. Alaska has had earthquakes. 1964. That was a bad one. One hundred and thirty one dead.”
Mike said, “Terrible.”
Cheryl started doodling on her notepad, “Where’s Johnny?” she asked. “Oh that’s funny. Like Johnny Carson.’”
Mike said the line, “Heere’s Johnny,” without dragging it out to long.
“Ah shit, you’re right. It’s ‘here’ not ‘where.’ Do you still watch it with the new hosts?”
“No. I prefer my TV in black and white.”
“I hear ya,” she agreed.
“To answer your question, Johnny’s rock climbing today.”
*
Mike sat down on the couch when he got home from replacing Cheryl’s water heater. It occurred to him that he wanted a recliner like he used to have. It wouldn’t fit in the room. They’d have to remodel, but there was really no way around that, anyway. Their clothes were busting out of the closet, they had to store boxes of stuff in the garage, and they were on top of each other (in a bad way).
Mike took off his shoes and laid down on the couch.
*
“Hey,” Jesse said softly as he rubbed Mike’s hand.
“What’s happened to me?” Mike asked in an awake voice.
“Nothing. What do you mean?”
“I never would have slept through someone entering the room. It’s not like you’re a ninja either.” Mike looked up at he ceiling and said, “Fuck.”
“You don’t need to be that way here. You can take a nap. You can go around without a gun. That’s what we paid Ed for. That’s why we came here.”
“You’re right. I just don’t like it. I locked the door at least?”
“Yeah, It was locked.” Jesse sat cross legged on the rug and held Mike’s hand. He kissed it.
Mike squeezed Jesse’s hand as a sign of acknowledgement.
“Did you have a good climb?” Mike asked, facing Jesse, but still laying down.
“Yeah, it was awesome. I met some people who knew what they were doing, so they helped me figure out how to use my gear and everything. They said that the book I got is a good one. We exchanged phone numbers. I’m going to meet up with them again sometime.”
“Good for you.”
“It’s a couple. They want to have a baby, but Amy doesn’t want to stop rock climbing so they’re putting it off. The guy’s name is Steve.”
Mike felt warm and fuzzy that Jesse had had fun and made friends.
Jesse went on, “They were talking about better spots that we could travel to.”
Mike sat up. “Good for you. I mean it. Did you actually use the harness thing?”
“Yeah. I can’t do what they can do, but it was fun. I want to get a pull-up bar somewhere in here.” Jesse looked around the little cabin.
Mike said, ”I think we need to expand the house this summer. If we add a room, you won’t be on the couch and we’ll have closet space.”
“Sold. I’m into that. So, did you go anywhere today?”
“I had lunch at the diner and replaced her broken water heater for her.”
“Was it heavy?”
“Lighter than an acid barrel full of body parts.” Mike wasn’t sure why he said it. He went on quickly, “The tanks were about a hundred pounds empty, Noah was there and he helped me move them onto the hand cart.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” Mike said
Jesse looked him in the eyes. “We can’t make up for what we did, but we can be good to Maggie’s family and our town and just . . . each other. We can be good to each other. That’s something.”
“Yeah, but you remember everything?”
“Of course, I remember everything, but we made it out. We’re free.”
Mike sighed and tried to get back on course. “Did you talk to Maggie about getting together tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I’m making scalloped potatoes. Do you still want to make carrot salad?”
Mike nodded as he regarded Jesse. “You have dirt on your face.”
“Uh oh,” Jesse said playfully. “You gonna jump my bones?”
Mike laughed. “No time, I have all those carrots to shred.”
Jesse smiled at him. “Not to mention the raisins. It’s gonna take forever.” Jesse sat next to him on the couch and changed his tone. “Seriously, don’t get bogged down in what we did before. All that matters is here on out.”
“Emily’s ten. When Matty was ten I let him ride his bike to his friends’ houses, the store, the arcade. We didn’t live that far from the mall. His mom didn’t want him to ride out to the mall though. I’m not sure why.”
Mike was staring straight ahead.
Jesse said, “Drew Sharp didn’t die because of us. He died because Todd shot him. Plenty of other bad stuff we’ve done, but that particular blood isn’t on either of our hands. Todd killed him.”
Mike was going to bring up that he literally drove Todd out there to the site, but there was no point.
He told Jesse, “It’s not all guilt. I miss my son and my granddaughter.”
“Yeah. I know.”
*
Emily greeted them at the door, wearing a pink and purple plaid shirt and pink jeans. She had on some of her trademark slippers as well, purple ones.
“Happy Easter Johns!” she said.
Mike said, “Happy Easter sweetheart!” as he gave her a hug.
She hugged Jesse next.
Everett and Maggie were close behind and everyone hugged everyone in a boisterous mess of well wishes and embraces.
Everett was wearing a regular T-Rex shirt, but he made up for it with bunny ears.
“Lookin’ good,” Mike told him, in reference to the ears.
Everett flexed and held out his bicep for Mike to feel.
Mike laughed and felt it. “Very impressive! You know who’s going to get buff? Johnny. He’s into rock climbing now, so he’s going to get a pull up bar for the house.”
“I can almost do a pull up on the monkey bars at school,” Everett replied.
Emily said, “I can do a pull up. And I can do about a third of the rope climb.”
Jesse said, “Dang, keep that up and you could be a rock climber.”
*
While the kids were out nailing the shit out of their birdhouses in the garage, and grown-ups were standing around in the kitchen, Maggie said, “Listen I want to ask you guys something and it’s okay to say ‘no.’”
Jesse guessed jokingly, “What? You need a sperm donor?”
Maggie smiled. “No. I was wondering if you two wanted to hang out with the kids on Father’s Day.”
Mike and Jesse shared a look then nodded at her.
Mike said, “Sure. We’ll have a game night or something.”
“Cool,” Maggie looked down for a second then up at him. “And, so, it’d just be you four. And I was thinking, well. . . Mostly it’s that I want the kids to have positive men in their lives, but the other thing is I have a date, kind of. I don’t know if I even like this person, but he invited me to go to a music festival. We dated in high school and he recently called me and invited me to this thing. We've been talking on the phone. I don't know if it's even a thing."
Jesse asked, ”You want us to take the kids camping? That way we’ll be gone longer and give you your space. Our house won’t work, but camping would be fun. Father’s day is in the summer right? Toast some marshmallows. Do some other camping type stuff.”
Mike said, “I know how to camp. We’ll go someplace easy where you camp with your truck and don’t have to hike in. It’ll be fun.”
“They’ve been camping lots of times and helped me hunt, so they’ll be able to help make a shelter and help cook and everything.” Maggie said.
“Sounds like a plan,” Mike said. “Although, I want a tent. No offence, but I’ve seen their pinecone fort, and I don’t want to sleep in some moss and fern igloo.”
*
Around one o’clock, Maggie went outside to get the venison from the smoker.
Everybody else was in the kitchen getting ready to feast. Mike stood back and out of the way as Emily got her corn muffins out of the oven and Everett got the deviled eggs he’d made out of the fridge.
Mike asked Everett to grab the dish of carrot salad while he had the fridge open, which he did.
Jesse took off the foil off of his casserole dish, revealing nicely browned cheese and potatoes with a sprinkling of chives on top.
Everett told the guys, “We didn’t make dessert because we had Easter candy instead.”
Mike considered pretending to hassle him about sharing.
“Make way. Hot meat coming through,” Maggie called. She set the plate of smoked, bacon wrapped deer backstrap tenderloin on the kitchen counter.
Everybody gave her space and complimented her on how good it smelled.
"Thank you. Thank you. Lets see how it tastes," she said.
They fixed their plates and ate in the dinning room. They all ate so much that they weren't even interested in the kid's Easter basket candy afterwards.
As they were leaving Maggie asked Mike and Jesse, "So you're sure about that thing we talked about?"
Mike said, "Absolutely."
Jesse said, "Yeah. It'll be fun."
"What thing?" Emily asked.
Maggie told her and her brother, "The Johns are going to take you camping in June."
"You won't be there?" Emily asked.
"Nope," Maggie answered, "So there won't be any hunting. You can just mess around and have a good time." Emily gave her a look, so she added, "I'll be on a date."
"A date?" Everett said incredulously. "But you're so old."
Maggie kissed the top of his head. "Happy Easter to you too, son."