Southern Rocker Boy (Southern Rockers Book 1)

Southern Rocker Boy

By

Ginger Voight

©2014, Ginger Voight

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There were a lot of sounds in my ear as I watched them lower my Daddy’s coffin into the ground that deceptively sunny afternoon. There was the drone of the minister, reciting the 23
rd
Psalm as he reverently brought the service to a close. There was the soft, unobtrusive sound of his wife singing a familiar hymn in a low and soothing monotone, like programmed background music to set the mood. People sniffled into their handkerchiefs all around me, while birds played in the tall trees and curious squirrels scrambled nearby.

Most of all, and harder to ignore, was the sniffling of my mother, Violet Riley, as she tried to console my inconsolable sister, Leah, who gasped for breath in between each soft sob.

I stood strong, like a man should stand next to his vulnerable, grieving family. My chin was tilted up, my shoulders were squared and the tears remained unshed behind unfocused amber eyes.

They were the very same colored eyes I inherited from the man we were planting.

I tipped my chin a bit higher as I blurred my vision, to soften the reality of the sad events unfolding around me. I couldn’t risk taking in too much detail of that polished wooden coffin as it lowered slowly into the ground.

It would make Daddy’s death all too real. And I wasn’t ready for that yet.

Jackson Riley was only forty-nine when he died six days ago. It was a freak accident on our ranch. He was up on our roof when a stray Texas thunderstorm hit. A bolt of lightning struck a nearby tree, sending one of those big branches straight for him. He jumped out of the way, causing him to lose his footing on our loose and battered shingles he had been up there trying to repair. When he crashed right to the ground, the impact snapped his neck like a twig. It was an unfathomable way for a formidable man like my dad to die. He was strong, like the head of the household should be. From his tawny eyes to the powerful line of his jaw, and the muscular expanse of his shoulders, he was a man who had crafted our legacy literally from the ground up. He built our three-bedroom ranch house with his bare hands, and cultivated the forty acres it sat upon with respect and integrity.

Even when we hit hard times about eight years back, it was Daddy’s strength that kept all our heads above water so we didn’t have to worry.

Unfortunately, the Riley family had a lot of worries. My little sister Leah had been born with cystic fibrosis. She was ill from the crib, and in and out of more hospitals than I could count. In her short twelve years, her medical bills had forced Daddy to take out multiple mortgages on our property, working nearly twenty-hour days to pull whatever he could from our land to sustain us.

It was why he was out late that day. When a storm brewed up from the west, he wasn’t about to turn tail and call it a day until his job was done.

Mother Nature had other ideas.

In a flash, he was gone without warning. I’d never hear him laugh again. I’d never see those eyes looking back at me like a wise, loving mirror, letting me know that everything was going to be okay.

I heard someone gulp back a sob. It took Leah grasping my hand in comfort to realize that the sound had come from me.

I gripped her tiny hand as I stood a little straighter, trying to be the man he had always taught me to be.

I was all they had now.

I wouldn’t let them down.

I wouldn’t let him down.

That was my vow as I tossed that first fistful of dirt on that shiny, polished coffin.

I watched as the line of mourners collected, to walk past us and utter their helpless condolences.

“He was such a good man.”

“Never met anyone stronger.”

“Take heart, he is asleep in the Lord. One day, you will see him again.”

Most of their softly spoken words jumbled in my ear. Bees hovered over all of the floral arrangements, so I concentrated on that sound – nature’s melody. I heard the beat of every wing as they flitted from one flower to the next.

The circle of life.

Finally the last mourner had filed past and my mother struggled to her feet. I grasped her by the elbow, to lead her to the family car that would take us back to our ranch. The journey home was much different than the journey to the cemetery. All of us realized, acutely, that we were leaving Daddy behind.

Mama dropped her head into her hands and wept openly, something she had refused to do in front of our small community. She wanted to be strong for us, and for him. Leah clung to her, her thin, pale arms around Mama’s thickening waist, as she sobbed, too.

I refused to let one teardrop fall. I could hear Daddy’s voice in my ear, loud as thunder. “Jonah, you’re the man of the house now. The women need you. Be strong and lead them.”

It was the way he was raised, and the way every Riley before him was raised. We were Texas men. Southern gentlemen. Men of honor and integrity and strength.

It was my duty to care for my mother and my sister, who needed me every bit as much as they had needed Daddy.

So I locked those sad feelings up tight as I followed Mama out of the limo and toward our modest ranch house. She took over, the picture of southern hospitality, the minute she crossed the threshold. She refused for anyone to wait on her. She kept every glass and plate full as they passed around a smorgasbord of southern delicacies, most of which came from her very own kitchen.

Mama liked to cook when she was upset, almost as much as she liked to eat. And she had been doing both almost non-stop for the last six days. As long as her hands were busy, she could forget, momentarily, about her broken heart.

Strangely it reassured me to see her doing what she loved to do best. It gave me hope we could get past the pain and the shock of losing Daddy like we did. Things could still be normal. I could still depend on something in this world.

I worried most about Leah, who had fallen ill, again, with another lung infection. I heard her coughing every single night, unable to sleep as she fought through each spell. Though she knew how to treat herself on her own, learning specific techniques to clear her airways, I started helping her night after night, just so she wouldn’t have to go through it alone on top of everything else.

She used to get annoyed whenever I tried to help, but after Daddy died, it seemed to bring her comfort that I was sitting on the bed next to her, my hand on her skin, my voice in her ear, as we took each step, and each breath, together.

That was why she didn’t resist at all when, after a bad coughing spell during our reception, I helped her to her room to rest, away from the crowd of mourners filling every corner of our simple home. Seemed like everywhere I went there was someone else, someone new, to share my grief and try to ease my sorrow.

The later it got, the younger my comforters became. And they usually had three things in common: they were female, they were pretty, and they were all girls gunning for the job of becoming the next Mrs. Riley.

I had earned my title as the Most Eligible Bachelor of Williamson County since high school, where I played ball like every good Texas son should. And I’ll admit that I enjoyed those glory days. I dated well and often, never tying myself down to any one girl, just so I could sow my wild oats while I was still young enough to sow them.

Despite this full dance card, I prided myself on the fact that I had never used anyone. Daddy taught me to protect women and Mama taught me to respect them, so every girl on my arm was treated like a princess. I made no promises for the future and had never uttered the words, “I love you,” to anyone other than my family.

Those three words were a binding commitment in my book. It would take someone incredible to win them from me.

That wasn’t to say that I hadn’t dated some pretty fantastic girls. They were usually smart and ambitious, good Southern girls who could throw a punch as well as they could cook a meal. They were taught to mind their parents, worship their God and respect their land. While I loved spending time with them, hanging out with them, holding them, kissing them and even making love to them, there had been no one who made me think, “This is it. She’s the one.”

Mama and Daddy had set my standard for love. I wasn’t ready to settle for anything less.

And I certainly wasn’t ready to whisk some willing female off to my room to fuck away my grief, no matter how many soft, imploring hands touched me, or adoring eyes beseeched me.

I might have done that a few years back, when I was still young and foolish. But I was the man of the house now. I was held to a much higher standard.

“Are you okay, hon?” Fiona Andrews asked as she placed her hand upon my shoulder, that sympathetic look in her eye.

“I’m fine,” I assured. I refilled her grandpa’s coffee cup before moving toward the dining room, where I was stopped again.

“You let me know if there is anything I can do, sweetie,” said Vickie Barber, before she offered an unsolicited but emphatic hug.

I nodded and pressed on towards the living room, where six-year-old Mary Ann McCready played the old upright piano for the adults chatting quietly nearby. Her older sister, Missy, was by my side in a flash. “Let me do that. You should sit with your Mama.”

“It’s okay,” I assured with a smile I was frankly tired of wearing. I was more worn out from the social interaction than I was the emotionally exhausting events of the week. It seemed almost every resident in our town, with its modest population of 503, had darkened our doorway in the past seven days.

I couldn’t even count how many had turned out for the funeral and the reception that followed. Most didn’t leave until the ten o’clock news, which for country folk meant bedtime.

They all wanted to do whatever they could to ease our burden, either by cooking the meal, serving the food, or cleaning up the mess. These good, salt-of-the-earth people were the only family Leah and I had ever known. They were people from our church and our small town nearly fifty miles north of Austin. Though we didn’t live inside any city limits, and hadn’t since I was in grade school, we were always community minded, and as such had established many long-standing friendships.

Since my grandparents had died before I was born or shortly after, and Mama and Daddy both were only kids, we didn’t have any real extended family to speak of. But we had a solid support system in place. And I knew we could count on it.

I also knew that we had to count on ourselves more.

I was up before dawn the next morning. The weight that was on my shoulders made it impossible to sleep, especially when I could hear Leah alternately sobbing and coughing in the room next to mine. Mama was up early too, in the kitchen, her sanctuary, her church, making more food than we’d ever be able to eat. It was as though she worried if she stopped moving even for a second, the grief would finally crash down upon her and cripple her entirely. I gave her a kiss on her head, grabbed a biscuit sandwich, and headed out to the barn.

I stood there, looking at the equipment the barn housed, wondering where the hell to start. With a sigh I headed toward the broken down tractor and decided I could fix one damned thing that was broken. I practically took it completely apart, as if to undo all the events that happened the week before. By noon, I sat amidst all the pieces of the tractor that were now strewn across a patch of land in front of the barn, unsure what to do next. I had fixed this old tractor dozens of times over the years, starting when I was a mere boy. I was ten years old when Daddy first showed me how to fix minor problems. “A man who knows the nuts and bolts of his business relies on no one,” he had said. And I had stared up at him with all the wonder of a child, nodding as if he spoke gospel truth.

Now, as I sat among those scattered parts, I had no clue where to start to put it all back together again. No matter what I tried, it seemed as if one piece was missing.

With a frustrated roar, I tossed some random piece of metal at the barn door where it hit with a loud bang. Then another… and then another… tears pouring down my face as I raged at the world and raged at God.

“Jonah?”

I turned to the feminine voice that had intruded on my breakdown. It was Courtney Adams, one of our neighbors, and my last official “girlfriend.” We had amicably gone our separate ways two years back. It was clear she was ready for the next phase in her life. She hadn’t found what she wanted in college, so she came back home to settle down like her parents had always wanted her to do. Simply put, she wanted something more serious than I could provide. So I set her free to find it. We stayed friends in the casual, see-you-every-Sunday-at-church kind of way, though she was the first who called me after she heard about Daddy’s death.

Unlike so many others, she had stayed off to the sidelines, quietly providing comfort and service without trying to get much attention while doing so.

We had been friends for years before we dated. I was glad that our abbreviated romance hadn’t wrecked that. It made it easier to tell her the truth because I knew she wouldn’t judge me for it. I wiped any lingering tears away with my sweaty, greasy arm. “No,” I said as I started to gather my mess. “I’m not.”

She said nothing as she joined me, picking up the rest of the pieces. We worked in silence until the area was clean again, all the evidence of my failure removed. I closed the barn and turned to her. “What are you doing here?” I asked.