The two cast a long shadow across the table. He didn’t need to look up to know who had joined him. He could feel the stiffness in the bar, hear the hush settle over the place when the doors had swung open. Some people didn’t dare to even speak the name Negan Grange. The police drew straws to see who would have to take the call to head into the marshy backwaters that the family called home.

A smarter man would have kept Grange at arm’s reach, but Waylon had had dealings with the family since they had arrived. Grange put a bullet in the old pastor’s back when he had threatened Waylon’s freedom, and in exchange, Waylon looked after their needs should any ever arise. Of all the bodies secreted in the graveyard, almost half could be tied back to Negan somehow.
Both men had served time, but where Waylon had become a skeptic of the US’s involvement overseas, Grange had thrived, going to war three times over, though Waylon suspected it was not by choice. 

Waylon looked up from his drink and eyed the two young men. Behind them he spied Ja-Ki, or “Jackie” in his South Tennessee drawl, nothing like her two brothers in terms of looks. He was surprised not to see the youngest, Kimber. The four of them rolled in a pack usually, but it wasn’t out of the ordinary to see the two boys causing a ruckus in town, or even on the pews in Calvary Hill on a Sunday. You never knew what was going to happen when the Grange boys walked into a watering hole, but it seemed that Hawkins’ Spirits was an exception. Everyone paid their dues to Amelia Hawkins, even Old Man Grange.

[color=82ca9d]“Boys”[/color]  he greeted them quietly, packing more tobacco into his pipe. [color=82ca9d]”You need somethin’? I’m here on business, tonight.”[/color] The two would pester him whenever they had the chance. Waylon didn’t mind, it was nice not to have to talk shop all the time, and Maverick and Alejandro reminded him of his own boys, in a way, and they were similar in age. Waylon Jr. may have had a few years on Maverick, but he wasn’t sure. The Granges were notoriously secretive of those sorts of details. In fact, Negan had told Waylon he had served in the Second World War, but Myers was sure he couldn’t be old enough. It just added to the mystery surrounding them.

He was lucky to be a friend to the Grange family, especially now. If things were going to go south with the outfit from Chicago, and Waylon suspected they might —he couldn’t imagine Rawlins or Harlow, or even Mrs. Hawkins, bowing to the same demands they had made of him— then the kind of family who fired first and asked questions later, might be a valuable commodity.
He needed to speak to Mrs. Hawkins first, to get a good grip on what her plans were. The Liquor Queen had never taken an order in her life. Hell, she was the Liquor [i]Queen[/i] for a reason. The Liquor Princess didn’t have quite the same ring to it.

She was conspicuously absent. Mrs. Hawkins was normally around at this time of evening, tossing out barflies personally. She was a strong woman, and Waylon admired that. O’Connor County wasn’t an easy place to be a woman, even less a widow, and Amelia Hawkins had carved out a piece of it tooth and nail that was all her own. A few years ago Waylon had considered trying to make her the second Mrs. Myers, but his business got in the way, as it always did. When you’re burying ‘shine for your business associate, it was straightforward. When it was your wife, it became a lot more complicated, or so he assumed.

Waylon was a little anxious. He lazily lit a match and re-lit his pipe. He needed answers, and Mrs. Hawkins was the only one who could give them to him.