Whiskey picked up Mason a block away from Kristen’s house in the old Ford pick-up truck.  Mason opened up the tailgate so Sutton could jump in the back.  “You been waiting long?” Mason asked his friend behind the wheel.

“Just long enough.  How’d it go?”

“Forty years of things to say and forty minutes to say ‘em.  ‘Bout as well as you could ask, I suppose.”  Mason didn’t have much else to say about it, which Whiskey had gotten used to.  “Let’s head back to the house.”

Once back home, the two of them grilled a couple T-bones out on the patio and downed a few beers each.  Not much was said.  Not much of any consequence, anyway.  Mason poked at the glowing briquettes as the steaks cooked above them and listened to the soulful sound of Waylon Jennings album, Lonesome, On’ry and Mean playing on the speakers.  He seemed to relate to the songs more than he used to.

It was sunset by this time, Mason’s favorite time of the day.  Back when guests used to frequent the place, Mason told them that sunset was the magical time at his place.  He’d make them pull up a chair and face due west and try to be as quiet as possible.  Depending on the number of margaritas or longnecks that had been consumed, the level of silence that could be maintained was disputable.  It wasn’t uncommon for giggles to start, then clothes to be removed, and eventually people jumping into the pool in all manner of lewdness.  By the time the sun had completely set, only Mason would still be sitting in his chair, staring off still looking at something nobody else had apparently ever even noticed.

There was no lewd frolicking anymore.  Hadn’t been for some time.

“It’s time to get the Continental ready,” Mason finally said to Whiskey as they finished their steaks.  He was slowly rubbing Sutton behind the ears, still looking off into the distance where the sun had set.  “And by getting the Continental ready, I mean just load it up on the car hauler.  Give it a wash so it looks good, but don’t worry about any maintenance.  Just load it up.”

Whiskey thought it was odd, but had long since abandoned the attempts at clarification.  He did what he was told whether he understood the reasons or not.  “Where you taking it?”

“Kenny Dillon,” Mason said.  Whiskey just chuckled and understood a little more than he had before.

Kenny Dillon was famous in Fort Stockton.  Or infamous, it might be better to say.  Someone who’d made and lost more fortunes than most anyone else in town.  A lot of folks said they were surprised he’d stuck around, having pissed off as many people as he had, and pissed away as much money as he did.  “Where else am I gonna go?” he smiled and said whenever he heard such a thing.  “Startin’ over is a bitch!”  He had a point.

He wasn’t that much older than Mason, but he’d crammed a lot into the few years that separated them in age.  Wives, businesses, enemies, bankruptcies.  A trail of folks who hated him, and at least a couple kids who thought he’d be better off dead.  But all that didn’t happen overnight.  When Mason and Kenny Dillon first went into partnership, all that drama laid ahead.  Or at least most of it.

The great philosopher J.R. Ewing said, “Once you give up your integrity, the rest is a piece of cake.”  Kenny Dillon could put J.R. to shame.  Of course, Mason didn’t know that in the beginning.  Nobody did in the beginning.  Kenny was a good looking guy who could talk a blue streak and make it seem like he was your best friend.  Maybe that was even the case, back in the beginning.  Before the vices and demons.

Kenny had pulled Mason into a business venture and put the first real money in his pocket he’d ever had.  Of course, it was Mason that ended up doing most of the real work, once the deal was put together.  But the deal never would have happened without Kenny’s connections.  Those connections and Kenny’s way of using words that were smoother than butter paved the way for Mason to step in and make it work.  

The deal they worked together for a piece of commercial real estate on Highway 10 led to bigger parcels.  Their friendship turned into a partnership.  After the negotiations to build some apartments on Broad Street were finished, the partnership became a corporation.  That was probably about the time Kenny started drinking.  It was good for business, at first.  Drinks at the club helped seal some deals.  The best prospects were the ones who were loosened up ahead of time and treated to well placed entertainment opportunities.

Mason shied away from those and left that end of the business to Kenny to handle.  Mason was the detail man.  Or tried to be.  Before long, there were a lot of details.  Years later, Whiskey would say he saw the end of the partnership coming, but who knows if he really did.  Mason must have had suspicions, himself.  If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have had a ‘Texas Shoot Out Clause’ written into the incorporation papers they both signed.

Under the terms of a ‘Texas Shoot-Out Clause’, if one partner in the corporation wants to buy out the other, he can serve notice that he wants to buy out his partner’s shares at a specified price. However, the person being served notice has the immediate right to actually buy the other partner out instead, at a price one dollar over the original offer proposed. While that language was made clear in the agreement they both signed, Kenny hadn’t taken the time to read, absorb, or fully understand its implications when the documents were signed.

By the time the clause, hidden in plain sight, became an issue, Mason had already caught word through Lucinda over at the Grounds for Divorce that Kenny had been shopping the company to out of town interests, some of which did not have what was known to be a sterling reputation throughout Texas.  “In fact,” she told him one Friday afternoon, “I hear that he’s got an offer twice what he is going to offer you to buy you out of the company.”

At that point, Mason knew full well of Kenny’s character, or lack thereof, and wasn’t surprised at Lucinda’s revelation. He was hurt that someone he’d worked with for several years could treat him in such a manner, but not really surprised. Mason saw how Kenny treated women. How he abused alcohol to a level that was increasing exponentially, and how he’d even started to dabble in drugs that were not only illegal, but addictive and mind altering. The circumstances of their partnership, coupled with Kenny’s spiraling behaviors along with Lucinda’s helpful information prepared Mason for what was to follow.

Several weeks later, on a Friday afternoon, when Kenny came into the office and sat down across the desk from Mason, put his feet up on the desk, and stuck a Hoyo de Monterrey Hoyo de San Juan cigar in his mouth, Mason knew all too well what was about to happen. As Kenny lit the cigar and talked about how the relationship had been good for both of them, they’d both made money, and how times had changed since they’d partnered up, he slid a contact across the desk to buy Mason out at the exact dollar figure Lucinda had mentioned earlier. He even had the temerity to make it seem like the price was fair and that he was doing Mason a favor.

Calmly and without any sign of rancor, Mason reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a contract and a check.  He filled out an amount on each, one dollar more than the one he’d just been offered, and slid them across the desk towards his soon to be former partner.

“What the hell is this?” Kenny asked.

“We are, indeed, dissolving the partnership,” Mason explained.  “However, it is me buying out you.”

What followed was yelling, screaming, stomping around the office, and threatening lawsuits, none of which changed the legality of the transaction or the outcome. Kenny eventually signed the paperwork letting go of his share of the company. The friendship they’d had evaporated with the partnership. Of course, in these situations there is never a clear winner and loser. While Kenny lost out on the opportunity to seemingly double his money when he sold the company, it became clear that the folks he was chomping at the bit to get into bed with had plans that were not in his own best interest. In fact, he was only being bought out to be set up for a bigger fall down the road.

For Mason’s part, while he bought out his partner at a bargain price, he also was on the hook for thousands of dollars Kenny had charged to company accounts off the books.  Some bullets were dodged, others were bitten.  

There was, in fact, such a mountain of off the books debt that some advised Mason he should bankrupt the company and walk away from it.  “Cut your losses,” Mayor Goodman told him at the Piggly Wiggly one Saturday.  “Start over again with a clean slate.  That’s what Chapter 13 is for.  No need to ruin yourself.  Let everyone else take the hit.”  That was the type of reasoning that Mason expected from someone like Mayor Goodman, but not the philosophy he could ever live with.  

Mason worked for nothing for a couple years. He sold some assets that he’d plan on keeping forever. He delayed purchasing anything he didn’t have to and mortgaged the ranch for extra funds. After about six years, everyone who had been owed money by his company had been paid off in full. Kenny, on the other hand, had gone through the funds he’d received from his half being bought out within a year. Then he started accumulating debt again. He’d entered rehab a couple times, but his demons were stronger than any 12-step program available in south Texas. At least three marriages failed. There were a number of arrests for DUI and other sordid situations.

When they’d see each other in town, Mason would nod and say hello, but it never went much further than that. At least, not until he pulled up in front of Kenny’s house in the old yellow Ford car hauler with a 1959 Continental Mark IV strapped down on the flatbed.

Kenny wandered out of the house and over to the curb, a Lone Star Longneck firmly in his grasp. “What the hell?”

“It’s a gift,” Mason told him.

“For what?”

“For old times,” Mason replied.  “No strings attached.  It reminded me of you.  I’ve had it a while,  and I wanted you to have it.”

“I heard you’re sick.  Does this have anything to do with that?” Kenny asked him, completely caught off guard.

“Oh, when you step back far enough, everything has everything to do with everything.”  

Kenny had no idea what that meant and was still slightly put off by the sudden appearance of a former business partner from decades ago.  He noticed Whiskey in the driver’s seat of the car hauler and Sutton in the passenger seat.

“The old Continental looks great from twenty feet away. Looks like it would be fun to experience. Classic. A reminder of things in the past that looked good from a distance, but not so much up close.” Mason seemed to be describing more than just the huge old convertible on the back of the hauler. “Can’t really see the flaws on it till you get a lot closer. Fact is, while it looks good, nothing on the car actually works. Windows? Nope. Top? Can only get it up by hand,” he snickered. “The 460 V8 engine? A lot of promise, but not a lick of horsepower.”

Kenny wandered over closer to the hauler as Whiskey started unloading the big Continental.

“Fact remains, it could be worth a lot of money and be something to be enjoyed,” Mason said.  “But it is going to require a lot of work and quite a few bucks to bring it around.  Figured it might be good for you to have something to focus on.  Maybe work on it yourself.  Get it running again.  Make it work as good as it looks.  Breathe some life back into it.”

The two men stood at the curb and looked into each other’s eyes.  There was so much more to be said that had nothing to do with the old Lincoln.

“Maybe it’s a project we could take on together,” Kenny said.

Mason looked at the Continental, then back at his old partner.  He wasn’t sure which one had the most hidden potential, but he knew which one was going to require the most work.  “Can’t do it Kenny.  Wish I could.  But this is a journey you’ll have to take on your own, if you decide you even want to.”

Kenny walked around the car slowly.  He looked inside the cracked cream interior and admired the ridiculous dash.  When he opened the driver’s door it creaked like an old ship being hit by a huge wave on the open sea.

“You can sell it for scrap metal, if you want to.  Put it on Bring a Trailer.  You could probably get twenty grand for it like it is.  Keep the money.”  Mason moved in closer.  “Or, keep the car and fix it.  I’ve set up an account over at Prairie View State Bank.  There’s seventy-five grand in there.  It’s solely to be used on restoring the car.  You bring Mr. Tolbert the restoration invoices and he’ll pay them out of that account.”

“Why would you do this?” Kenny asked.

“We all need a purpose, even a small one.  This could be yours for a while.  Get your hands dirty and your life clean.  Fix up the car and enjoy it.  Or sell it and do another one.  Or scrap it.  Your call,” Mason said.  “It’s just an opportunity.  You’ve had a lot of those over the years.  We all have.  Maybe you need another one.  It might be your last one, you never know.”

Mason tossed him the keys.  

“Mr. Tolbert knows what to do with the money if you don’t restore the car.”

Whiskey, leaning up against the side of the car hauler, considered the offer and had a pretty good idea how it would play out.  But then, he’d been surprised before.  He opened the driver’s side door of the truck and signaled Sutton to hop in.

Next to the car, Kenny and Mason didn’t say anything else. There was too much to say, and really nothing at all. Mason held out his hand and Kenny shook it. Walking over to the hauler, Mason climbed slowly up into the cab. It looked like it was a struggle to get in.

Kenny opened the door of the convertible and crawled in behind the wheel. He looked around at the pleated seats and the tufted door panels and thought about when this car was new. When opportunities were a dime a dozen and possibilities were unlimited. When his whole life was ahead of him and bad decisions could be easily erased and mistakes could be corrected.

There, on the long pleated leather passenger seat of the old Continental, was a copy of Rich Man, Poor Man, the 1969 novel by Irwin Shaw. There was no note tucked inside. There didn’t need to be. Kenny had never read the book, but remembered the TV miniseries based on the novel that ran in TV in the 70s. As hard of a time as Mason had crawling up into the cab of the car hauler, Kenny had a harder time getting out of the Continental.

If you’re enjoying this series, consider buying the Captain a cuppa Folgers at the Grounds for Divorce to help offset the cost of maintaining the blog. He’d be grateful, and promises to leave a big tip for Lucinda.