This is a companion piece to Michael Fitzgerald's "Last Man,"
https://www.literotica.com/s/last-man-1
. That story ends happily for everyone, while the person who sacrificed to pay for those happy endings is ignored. He deserves a chance to tell his story.
This companion piece is posted with the kind permission of Michael Fitzgerald.
Many thanks to BlackRandl1958 for her editing suggestions and review.
"Why, let the stricken deer go weep;
The hart ungalled, play.
For some must watch while others sleep,
So runs the world away."
Hamlet
, Act III.
Simon MacTavish was a big, strong, outgoing, good-looking, obnoxious son of a bitch. He was good at fighting, I hear. From him, anyway. And his loyalty to his clan was second to none. Whether or not either of those is a virtue, you can decide for yourself. I just heard the old bastard is dead. Killed himself, I'm told. I would go and dance on his grave, if this damn leg would work right. I'd piss on it, if I thought he would care, but he wouldn't. Besides, Jilly won't let me. She's been with me for a round dozen years now, and sometimes I think she knows me better than I know myself.
I had been a big, strong, obnoxious kid in my day, too, and when they let me out of high school, I thought I knew everything I'd ever need to know. That's true of most 18-year-olds, but most of my peers had parents to help them come to a different conclusion. I didn't. So I looked at the money it would cost me to get a college degree, and the money I could make working construction, and the money the aunt and uncle who raised me didn't have, and then I started at the bottom of the construction business. Literally. I did basements. I did them well, too, and rose fairly quickly the first couple of years. Then it all fell in on me. Literally. I never figured out what actually happened, but by the time I could tell which way was up, I was strapped flat on my back, all wrapped up in plaster and stuff, with tubes sticking out of me every which way, and was being informed that my left leg and left arm would never work right again. My career in construction, or anything else that required physical labor, was history.
I'd done decent at math in high school, so my uncle suggested I go in for accounting. I told him that accountants are either pencil-neck dweebs or skinny four-eyed girls. He reminded me that I had to do something in order to eat, and crippled as I was now, either the pencil-neck dweeb or the four-eyed girl could take me in a fair fight. Besides, he'd become buddies with an accountant while he was in service, and said the guy was mighty with a pencil or a sausage, and had the hottest wife and most adorable kids you ever saw. He showed me their picture, and accounting it was. Workman's comp kept me eating while I took my associate's degree, and the rest I learned on the job. I was doing pretty well by the time Mairi crashed into my life. Yep, literally.
My left leg had gotten to where I could get around okay, though I had to watch my step pretty carefully. Most people who didn't know me would assume I just had a strained hip or something and was favoring it. I was waiting for a walk light when this tallish, skinny person with a flag of red hair flying behind her whizzed around the corner and cannoned into me, knocking me on my kiester. She threw a "Sorry!" over her shoulder, then looked back at me while I was trying to get up. This was an involved operation, because I could only trust my right arm and leg.
"Oh, come on, I didn't hit you that hard. You don't have to make a production out of it." She stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at me as I managed to roll onto my hands and knees. I ignored her as I put my good leg under my center of gravity and slowly got myself vertical, then used my right hand to reposition my left leg.
"Are... are you okay?" She'd lost her glare as she watched me struggle.
"Yeah. Construction accident. Left arm and leg aren't much good."
Her face turned almost as red as her hair. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know," she kept babbling until I shushed her. Long story short, we went for coffee, we went on some dates, and we became a couple. Mairi was Irish-born; she had come to the States for college and stayed. If you look in the dictionary under 'fiery redhead,' you'll see her picture. Soon enough, she was unapologetically running my life.
"I know you'll eventually admit I'm right; I'm just saving you the trouble of discussion," she would say. Thing was, she just about always was right. She pushed me mercilessly at my career and at the physical therapy exercises I still did. It worked, too. I was never going to be the physical specimen I once was, or see the inside of the executive suite, but I was making a lot more progress than I had on my own. She pushed me out of comfort zones that I didn't even know I had.
She was good for me and I knew it, but one evening I felt like I had to have it out with her, just to try to get some of my life back. You know, feel like I was in charge every now and then. I got a little heated, I admit it, but she just sat there with this angelic little smile on her face. When I was done, she looked at me. Her lilt (it was much too pretty to be a brogue) became more pronounced, as it always did when she had something serious to say.
"Dear Brian," (that's me), "I know you think I do all of this because I'm the fiery redhead and have to have things my way. Well, maybe I am, but that's not it. I push you on your exercises because I love you, and I want you around for a very, very long time. I push you at your work because I love you, and I want everyone there to know how wonderful you are, and you'll never tell them. I push you to try new things, but have I ever asked you to do anything you didn't like a second time? No, I haven't." She was right, though she had no hesitation about dragging me into things I knew I wouldn't like, "just one time." Do not get me started on sashimi.
"I think part of being a good wife is to help her man realize and achieve the best he's capable of. It works both ways. You've made me slow down and look at things, and see things about people that I would have missed just rushing by in my usual Mairi way. Remember how we met? You see, we're made for each other." She smiled, then she looked serious, almost worried. "Just promise me that whatever happens, we'll always talk it out, you won't just go all strong and silent and brood, or Heaven forbid, leave."
I could promise her that pretty easily. I didn't request a similar promise from her: getting Mairi to talk was never a problem.
We'd been married about five years, Ben was almost three and Gillian was an infant, when I finally met Mairi's younger sister, Eileen, or Ellie as she preferred. I'd heard about her, of course, but meeting her was something else. Ellie's hair was dark to Mairi's fiery red; her eyes brown to Mairi's blue; she was sweet to Mairi's spicy, but they were devoted to each other, all the more for the years they'd been apart. When Ellie came home from one of her sight-seeing tours, she brought back this loud, obnoxious hairy Scotsman, as if he were some kind of souvenir she'd picked up. He wasted no time making himself at home, drinking my beer, roughhousing with my kids, and worst of all, ogling my wife. He would slap me on the shoulder as if we were best buds, but somehow he always got the angle just right to throw all my weight on my bad left leg. A time or two when I lost my balance, Mairi had to help me up. She gave him a piece of her mind, but all he did was grin at her like he was oh so proud of himself.
No one was happier than I when Simon MacTavish took his new bride out of state to set up housekeeping, about three hours away from us. Mairi was less pleased, and was constantly thinking of reasons to have them over, or to visit them. I was equally constantly thinking of reasons to avoid the same. It came to a head one night when she accused me of trying to keep her away from her sister. I told her after all those years of being right, she had got this one dead wrong.
"Ellie is the sweetest of sweethearts, and I love her like the sister she is. I'm always glad to see her, and the more often the better. She could come live with us, if she wanted. The only people I love more than her are you and the kids. It's her to-go-with that's the problem."
"Why? What's the matter with Simon? I know he's pretty rough around the edges..."
"Rough? How about trying to belittle me every chance he gets? The war stories are bad enough, but rassling with Ben in ways he knows I can't; practically knocking me over every time he visits; drooling over my wife..."
Mairi laughed that silvery laugh of hers. "Is that what's bothering you? All that manly man crap?" She put both arms around me and smiled into my eyes. "Has it occurred to you, my dear husband, that he's jealous of you? That maybe he's trying to prove to himself that he's as good a man as you are?"
It was going to sound whiny and petty, but I had to say it anyway. "Yes, but you eat it up. You laugh at his stupid jokes, you smile when he pulls that best bud shit..."
"You're right, I do, because I feel sorry for him. For all his bluster, he's not half the man you are. I wish my sister had chosen better, but she didn't, and that's that. Yes, I'm nice to him, for Ellie's sake, and out of pity. He has no chance with me, because I have you."
I don't know if Mairi or maybe Ellie had a chat with him or maybe he just grew up a little, but he seemed to tone it down after that. Still, I was not a happy camper when Simon got transferred and he and Ellie bought a place about fifteen minutes away from us. It seemed like we were together all the time, usually at our place because of the kids, but to my surprise, he behaved himself mostly. We were never going to be best buds, and I still didn't like the way he looked at Mairi, but I was getting to where I could actually enjoy his company in small doses.
