Chapter 35 [YS: Twin brother]

After a few days passed, I was out in the garage one afternoon, same as most days, working on a truck. My hands were filthy, and my work clothes weren't much cleaner at that point.

"Pass me that wrench," I said to Missy, and she handed it over eagerly.

"You know I wanna be like Madonna when I grow up," she said. She had a habit of wandering out to talk my ear off while I worked, and most days I just let her ramble since she did most of the talking anyway.

"Yeah, that'll definitely give Mom a heart attack," I said, not looking up from the engine.

"But she's so cool," Missy said, sliding a CD into the boombox and starting up one of Madonna's songs. She loved her music and danced around the garage while I worked.

"Why does she keep saying she's only like a virgin? What’s a virgin anyways?" Missy asked, completely innocent, right as the chorus kicked in.

"I think Mom's calling you," I said quickly, hoping to steer her off that particular question. Explaining that one to a ten-year-old was not a job I wanted any part of. That was squarely Mom's territory.

Luckily, she bought it and went off to find Mom. Before she could circle back and realize I'd fed her a lie, I decided to make myself scarce. She'd bring the question straight to Mom now, no doubt about it. Not my problem anymore.

I cleaned my hands off with a rag and made my way over to Meemaw's place. She was out on the porch, same as always, a beer sweating in one hand and a cigarette burning down between the fingers of the other. That was just how she looked if I had to imagine her in my head.

Trying to think back through years of memories with her, I honestly couldn't come up with a single one where she didn't have either a drink or a cigarette within arm's reach. It was practically part of her uniform at this point, right up there with her sharp tongue.

I walked over with a scowl already forming and snatched the cigarette straight out of her fingers.

"Meemaw! I've told you already, don't smoke," I said.

"I've asked you so many times now. Don't you want to be around long enough to watch me get rich?" I pleaded, and Meemaw just sighed.

"Never agreed to any of your little requests. This is Texas, sweetheart, not California. I’m going to outline y’all" she said, stubborn as ever.

"But Meemaw—" I tried to reason with her again. I'd already brought up the smoking a dozen times by now. The drinking I could let slide, but smoking at her age felt like a whole different category of bad idea to me.

"No buts. What do you actually need from your Meemaw," she said, giving me that easygoing smile that suggested she didn't much care either way.

"I don't even know where to start, but you can't tell Mother about this," I began, and she cut me off.

"I promise. Now go on and spit it out already," she said, at least holding off on lighting another cigarette for the moment.

"How do you place a bet, Meemaw? Gambling's illegal, right?" I asked.

"I've got my ways," she said, smiling like she had a secret worth keeping. I sighed. Here we go.

"I want to place a bet," I said, getting straight to it.

"A bet? On what, football?" she asked.

"No. On a boxing match, next month," I told her.

"Boxing, huh. Since when do you follow that?"

"I've been following boxing for a while now, and I ran the odds, the punch stats, his recent sparring reports, everything lines up," I said, laying out my case. I shouted some mathematical jargon to confuse her.

I kept going for a bit, but Meemaw's attention drifted fast.

"Alright, I'll do it for you. But you promise me you won't breathe a word of this to your mother," Meemaw agreed easily enough.

"How much are we talking?" she asked, probably assuming it was pocket change, maybe a hundred dollars at most.

"How does six thousand sound?" I said, and she very nearly dropped the beer bottle out of her hand.

"What? Have you lost your mind?" Meemaw exclaimed.

I explained where the money had actually come from, since she clearly didn't believe I had that kind of cash sitting around. She'd assumed Georgie and I were burning through everything we made on bikes and nonsense like every other teenager in town, never once realizing just how much we'd actually pulled in by now. Nobody had, really.

"Charlie, listen to me. You'd better save that money. There's no way I'm letting you drain that much on a single bet. Your Meemaw's got plenty of experience in these things. House always wins," she said, putting her foot down completely.

I tried reasoning with her further, but she came right back at me with a threat instead, promising to march straight to Mary and give me an earful herself if I went through with it regardless. She launched into a lecture after that, dragging up her own past mistakes as a warning to get me to back off the whole idea.

"Meemaw, please, just trust me on this," I said, one last attempt.

"Go on home, Charlie," she said, already turning to head back inside and shutting the door behind her.

"Alright, I'll give you time to think it over. I'll even cut you in on the profit if we win," I called after the closed door. Damn, and here I'd figured Meemaw was the cool one.

Turned out she was still just another adult underneath all that swagger, same rules, same caution, same instinct to protect me from myself whether I actually wanted the protection or not.

I could understand where she was coming from, honestly. She'd made her own share of foolish bets over the years and learned some lessons the hard way, and the last thing she wanted was watching her favorite grandson walk face-first into the same kind of mistake she already knew the shape of all too well.

I sighed and headed back to the garage, where Georgie had gotten home from school and was already elbow-deep in his own truck.

"Stupid school. Why do I even have to go there when I could be making money right here instead?" he complained the second I walked in.

"Yeah, that's life, and it sucks," I told him. I already knew he'd end up dropping out before finishing high school, though it never worried me much. Georgie had a good read on people, and I figured he'd land on his feet wherever he ended up.

"Hey, Georgie. I need to ask you something big," I said, and he looked up from the engine.

"What?" he asked.

I laid the whole plan out for him, start to finish, everything I knew about the fight, the exact date, how confident I actually was in the outcome, and just how much money I was thinking about putting behind it. I explained that this wasn't some wild guess pulled out of thin air, that I'd genuinely done the legwork on this one, tracking records and recent form and all the rest of it.

I told him straight that if this actually paid off the way I expected, it could set the two of us up with more capital than a dozen more cars ever could, and a lot faster too.

"You know that's dumb, and that's coming from me," he said once I'd finished.

"Do you trust me?" I asked, looking him dead in the eye, and gave him the same reasoning I'd already run past Meemaw.

"Ughhh. Fine, but I get to say I told you so a thousand times if we lose," Georgie said, clearly frustrated but coming around regardless. Meemaw was really the only one left to convince now.

"I'm gonna age ten years early because of the stress you put me through. Asshole," Georgie muttered, turning back to his work.

"Just think, if we win, we could open our own shop. Cooper Brothers Auto," I told him, letting him sit with that idea for a while. He went noticeably chattier after that, spinning out every possibility he could think of.

I decided I'd just keep pestering Meemaw daily until she finally caved. She'd come around sooner or later. I was still her favorite, after all.

_____

That night at dinner, everyone was gathered like usual when Dad made his announcement.

"Sheldon, me, Georgie, and Charlie are taking a little road trip this weekend. Gonna go see the shuttle launch."

"Guess I don't get a vote in this," Georgie said.

"Good, you're catching on," Dad said.

"But we've got a truck to fix this weekend," I complained.

"Guess you'd rather go to Sunday school with your mother instead," Dad said flatly.

"On second thought, road trips sound great," I said immediately.

"I wonder if we'll get to meet an actual astronaut," Sheldon said, practically vibrating with excitement.

"I remember when I was your age, I had the biggest crush on John Glenn. Would've given it to him no question," Meemaw offered, sharing far more than the table needed to hear. I gagged audibly.

"Mom!" Mom snapped.

"Given up what?" Missy asked, and Mom clearly had zero interest in wading into another conversation like the Madonna one from earlier.

"Her allowance. Just eat your dinner," Mom said quickly.

Dad ran through the trip details after that, with Sheldon filling in the rest, practically narrating the whole itinerary. We were headed to Cape Canaveral in Florida, a twelve hour drive each way. I felt tired just thinking about sitting in a car that long.

"How come I don't get to go?" Missy complained.

"Because you, me, and Meemaw are going to have our own kind of fun. Maybe shoot some guns at the range," Mom said, then immediately backtracked.

"You're too young for the gun range," Mom told her.

"Meemaw already took us there before," Missy said, and I felt my own exhaustion deepen just listening to this unfold.

"We pinky swore you wouldn't say that. What are you doing?" Meemaw said.

"Right, forget I said anything. I don't even know what I'm talking about," Missy said, though Mom was already fixing Meemaw with a look that promised this conversation was far from over.

Over the next few days, I made a habit of stopping by Meemaw's porch every afternoon after garage hours, wearing her down bit by bit the same way water works on stone. Some days she just shooed me off before I'd even gotten a full sentence out.

Other days she let me talk myself in circles just to watch me squirm a little, clearly enjoying the show more than she'd ever admit.

"You're back again," she said on the third afternoon, not even looking up from the book she was reading

"Just checking in," I said, settling onto the porch step beside her.

"Answer's still no, Charlie."

"Didn't ask yet."

"You were fixing to."

I couldn't really argue with that. She knew me too well by now to fall for anything subtle. Still, I kept coming back, mentioning the numbers again in passing, reminding her how solid the whole thing actually was, careful never to push hard enough that she'd actually snap and tell Mom out of spite.

That threat still hung over every conversation we had, though I was starting to suspect she wouldn't really go through with it. Meemaw liked keeping secrets a little too much to hand one of mine over that easily.

__________

Today I woke up earlier than usual to complete my workout before we had to leave for the trip……

___________

AN: I have a question. From which site did you come from?