Expiration Date by Eric Wilson Read Free Book Online

property was on the outskirts of town, but the sender must’ve been on the premises this very morning, slipping the note between the newspaper’s pages. Gerald had been up and about, but maybe it’d happened while he was mowing.
    Regardless, someone had been out here. Someone who knew Clay’s secret.
    How was that possible?
    Clay tore the envelope from the elastic at the back of his shorts and once more read the hand-scrawled message.
    You like to push your secrets down, don’t you?
    But this is one bill you can’t run away from!
    Fear punched Clay in the chest. He wanted to discount the handwritten words, but they touched on the truth. Someone
knew
. He
had
pushed down his “secrets”—literally. He
had
run from that “one bill”—all the way to Wyoming.
    Here he was back in JC, and the past had resurrected.
    Or maybe it had never really died.
    Moving to the side of the garage, he shredded the note and then shoved it deep into the garbage can full of lawn clippings. Burying his sins. It was what he did best.

5
A Stubborn Leech
    Clay watched a man with a hand truck browse through blank headstones. Monday morning at Glenleaf Monument Company. Compared to Clay’s satellite mapping business in Cheyenne, this place was hopping. If the gravel lot was a desk, the stacks of stones were reams of paper, ready for appropriate data, waiting to be filed into the graveyard for safekeeping.
    Another life. Another death. Sinners and saints.
    “You catching all this?” Stan Blomberg asked. “Think you can handle the job?”
    “Yes, Mr. Blomberg.”
    He followed his new boss into a corrugated metal building where black marble slabs and white crosses rolled over chest-high runners toward a sandblasting chamber. Annoyed by the interruption, two men and a woman looked up, steel hooks and rollers poised in canvas-gloved hands.
    When Blomberg explained that Clay would be joining the team, the woman’s look changed into a shy smile. Clay shook hands with the male workers, then gave a sharp nod.
    He issued a softer nod to the lady. She could read into it what she wanted.
    “Then after the lettering’s been etched,” Blomberg was explaining, “and the stones’ve been sent through the sandblaster, they come here to be brushed and sealed. It’s vital that we get the lettering peeled correctly. Our work around here is as unto the Lord. A sacred task. Now see this right here? This is what happens when we get rushed. Are you guys getting paid to cost me money?” he barked. “You gonna show Ryker here how it’s done, or do I have to come back and show him myself? For the life of me! See that nick? That’s where the blaster found their mistake. You think the grieving parents want that on their little one’s stone?”
    The words tugged at Clay. Jason’s face swam into focus.
    “You with me, Ryker? You grasping the nature of this job?”
    “More than you know.”
    “Glad to hear it. Because,” Blomberg prattled on, “when mistakes like this happen, we gotta start all over again. A stone wasted. Money dribbled down the drain. And if that happens too often that means less for me. And when there’s less for me, I become a real bear … which is no picnic, let me warn you now. Instead of smiling and throwing you a bone for a job well done, I start breathing down your neck. If that doesn’t do the trick, I kick your can through the front gate, and you find yourself hoping and praying you don’t stumble into me in the Bi-Mart parking lot anytime soon.”
    Clay gave a laugh, recognizing humor’s ability to communicate a point.
    Blomberg stared at him.
    “I get your meaning, sir.”
    “I hope so. You’re Gerald Ryker’s son, and I’m bringing you on ’cause I owe him a favor. Your qualifications have diddly to do with it. Warning you now that if you let me down, you’ll let your old man down. I’ll show no mercy. You gonna laugh again?”
    “No sir.”
    “Good thing, because I’m serious as a heart