Free The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga) by Stan Hayes Page B

was the same way. Mom said they wouldn’t come into the city- they lived in a big rockpile out on Long Island’s north shore- to see their new grandson, i.e. me. They had to haul my ass out there for inspection. He tried to explain it to me a time or two; blamed the war. The War Between the States, that is. Great Granddaddy Mason, see, took a little sightseeing trip down here with General Sherman. Apparently he didn’t like what he saw, and said that neither he nor his offspring would ever set foot in Georgia.”
    “Pretty extreme reaction, wasn’t it? Particularly in the light of who were the burners and who were the burnees. It’d be more reasonable if, say, your great-great-granddaddy’d sworn to keep his issue out of Union territory.”
    “But then,” Jack replied, “you’d be operating within the province of normal logic, and that didn’t suit my ancestors, ancient or otherwise. The only one who ever made any kind of sense to me was Pap- and Gene Debs, now and then.”
    “So you’re saying that if your mama’s refusal to marry Mose left him free to repay a debt of honor to someone who’d saved his life, her sadness over his death was her just deserts.”
    “A little dose of motorcycle mania, and you’re reading me like a book. Mind you, I wasn’t taking any pleasure in it, but the fact that I’d sworn to keep his survival to myself didn’t keep me up nights, either.”
     “So if we were to compare your loyalty to your mother and your loyalty to Pete, he wins.”
    “Hands down, sweetie; hands down.”
     

5  GORY DETAIL
    Making do with half a bagel, and reminding himself to replenish the dwindling inventory on their trip to Atlanta, Jack promised himself an early lunch and eased the Vincent out onto the highway, banking left and heading for town. Might as well take advantage of this weather, which surely won’t last much longer, he thought, not in February. Should’ve checked the TV forecast this morning; I could be getting wet on the ride back. Wonder if Buster had any weather problems in Daytona; I’d better give ’em a call at the dealership and see how he made out. Be great if he finished up front in that lonesome Plymouth…
    He smiled, cheeks pushing against the cloth lining of the helmet’s leather skirt, at Buster’s modest success as both a seller and racer of Chrysler products. He’d gotten away from the Hudsons just in time, their moment in the sun as competitive race cars ended by the Big Three’s development of horsepower-heavy V-8’s. Jack wished that Pap had lived to see his baby boy do well, assuming that he’d define what Buster’s doing as doing well. As far as Jack was concerned, Buster had never done better; no longer in Pap’s shadow, or Gene Debs’s or Mom’s for that matter, he’d combined the modest fraction of Pap’s talent, and capital, that he’d inherited to build some genuine respect around town. A Big Three auto dealer always has a certain commercial cachet in towns like Bisque, and as a NASCAR driver Buster was the envy of every blue-collar Bisquite whose car sported dual exhausts, or who’d just priced them in Honest Charley’s catalog. Now if he doesn’t kill himself and Cordelia’ll behave, one of these days he may even consider himself worthy of comparison to his personal shibboleth, the mighty Gene Debs. But that day’s still to come.
    Shutting his engine down in the Hamm County Beverage Company’s parking lot , Jack sat in the saddle for a moment, pulling off his gloves and contemplating the property that would not much longer be his. Not that it hasn’t been interesting, he thought, but I’ll be glad when I’ve seen this place for the last time. The house that Mose built, and I’m still trying to figure out how he went about it. Stuffing the gloves inside his jacket, he walked across the lot and up the steps, steeling himself, as he had since the first day that he’d elected himself president, for the process of slipping into