The 'Cousins'

Chapter Ninety-Six (alpha) : Reconciliation and Resolve

This chapter is dedicated to Rick Taylor(@ricktaylor18) and his adventure/thriller THE FARM. The Farm is soon to be published as a paperback and e-book, but is currently available on Wattpad and is highly recommended as a well written, fast moving, action packed story. Read it here while you have the chance - I doubt you will be disappointed!.

                                                 *  *  * 

CHAPTER NINETY-SIX (alpha)

A/N: After a bruising discussion and argument in the motel room, Greg and Wayne have made up enough to continue working together on a  business only basis with no personal attachments to their relationship any longer. They went out to dinner and suffered a harrowing experience in Harry's Place from which they were ejected. We rejoin them now as they are entering Ma Tooley's little diner. Now read on:

Reconciliation and Resolve

“Hey come on in out o’ that rain; an’ there I was just thinkin’ about shuttin’ up the shop fer the night ‘cos nobody in their right minds’d be out in this weather.”

  Ma Tooley finished her greeting with a loud hoot of laughter that rolled her folds of flesh all the way down from her chins to her knees. “Come on in and get them wet coats hung up on them hook’s an’ I’ll bring you over some coffee.”

  Greg looked around the empty dining room while Wayne did as he was told and hung up their topcoats.

  “Don’t let us keep you Ma if you were about to close up and go home.” He was still smarting from his rejection at Harry’s and spoke more out of politeness than consideration.

“Tchaw, Tchaw, goin’ home, you say? Don’t you know I is home, an’ I is open so long’s I got comp’ny. So sit yoursels’ down and tell me what can I get you? You want a stack o’ Ma’s special pancakes to keep you goin’ till breakfast time?”

  She brought down a large frying pan from a rack, rattled it on the stove and lighted the gas beneath it. She chuckled like a purring cat as she poured coffee into two mugs and carried them over to the table, standing back with her hands on her hips to regard her late-hour customers.

  “If you ask me, you boys is lookin’ fer something more’n pancakes. Am I right?”

  “We were hoping for a steak dinner tonight...”

  Wayne spoke wistfully, but Ma interrupted and pointed in the direction of Harry’s Place. “But you’s in the wrong place fer steaks, you need to be in Harry’s.”

  Greg winced and Wayne cut in to mutter. “We were in there, but got kicked out.”

  "What?” Ma whooped.“ Merv chucked you out?  What’d you do - throw up in the place? Nobody gets kicked outta Harry’s. You just wait there while I get that pan off’n the ring an’ you can tell me all about it.”

  She waddled over to the stove, pushed the smoking pan to the back of the stove and returned to the table, wiping her hands on a cloth tied around her waist.

  “Now what’s all this about you gennermen upsetting Merv in Harry’s tonight?”

  Ma looked from one to the other, open-mouthed, waiting for an answer. Wayne looked up at Greg, as if waiting for him to tell the story, but Greg sat and stared vacantly ahead and nibbled his lips as if he was elsewhere. Wayne took this as his cue to tell the story of their misadventure at the diner. 

  At the end of Wayne’s tale of woe Greg came alive to beat his knuckles gently on the table and ask nobody in particular. “But what I want to know is why? Why is it me that had to leave? What the hell have I done to upset the people of this town so they hate me so much? It can’t all be down to Wes Chandler and that vicious rumour he started. I told everybody it was nothing at all like what he said and I was only dressing the boy’s bruises; injuries I gave him. I swear it was nothing more than that.”