No Story to Tell

by K J Steele

  “Uh-huh. You’re the Queen of the Fine-Fine.”

  Victoria laughed. “Okay. Fair enough. So, let’s say I’m that honest. Where would it get me?”

  He set his coffee down beside hers and rested his hand lightly across her foot.

  “Everyone has options, Victoria.”

  “Really? So what are mine?”

  “Don’t know. That’s something only you can decide.”

  It wasn’t the answer she was hoping to hear and her body, her mood, even the air around them seemed to grow agitated.

  “Well, maybe I’ve decided my options don’t look so good. What then?”

  He squeezed her foot. “Well, maybe then you just need to look a little deeper. Try to see things from a different perspective.”

  “Well, right now what my perspective sees is my husband and his friends staggering this way.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “When Bobby’s drunk, everything is a problem.” She smiled as if it were a joke and shifted her leg away from Elliot’s arm.

  “Should I leave?”

  “Too late. It’ll look like you’re running away.”

  Bobby knocked his way through the crowd, saw her sitting off by the house with Elliot and attempted to fix her with a damning stare as he made his way closer, but the interference of people and potholes and a gut full of booze made it all but impossible to maintain. Avoiding his eyes, Victoria examined her cup and concentrated on carving it full of nervous Xs. Looming up on her, he nudged her foot with his boot, focused his frown and spit into the lilac bush beside the stairs.

  “How’d you git here?”

  “In my car.”

  “How the hell you git it started?”

  “The key.”

  “Bullshit! I got the frickin’ key.”

  “Well, I got the frickin’ spare,” she jousted, feeling somewhat insular surrounded by the polite restrictions of social mores.

  “That right? You thinking you’re pretty bloody smart, ain’t ya?”

  She kept her head bowed, the foam cup slowly imploding inside her fist. “Hey! I’m talking to you!” He nudged her again harder and the cup collapsed completely, spilling the coffee over her hand and down her leg.

  Elliot rose up beside her, the easy looseness gone from his limbs. “Hey Buddy, hold on there. Let’s just—”

  “Keep your face outta where it don’t belong, pretty boy,” John Jr.’s voice warned with bitter amusement.

  Wisely Elliot ignored him, touching Bobby’s arm, which was attempting to steady him against the rails. “Come on, Bobby. Everyone’s just having a good time. Let’s just—”

  “Let’s just you mind your own friggin’ business how’s about!” He tried to square off with Elliot, but the step beneath him tottered under his weight and kept him off balance.

  “Better watch that stair. Doesn’t seem too safe.” Elliot reached out to help steady him, but Bobby pushed his hand away, lost his balance and half-fell, half-sat beside Victoria. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tipped her toward him, the sweat of his underarms cold and rancid against her cheek.

  “Bobby,” she whispered. “Let go. You’re hurting me.”

  “That so?” he returned evenly as he fished a half-chugged mickey from his pocket, squeezing her tighter as he took a swallow.

  “Drink?”

  Elliot declined the offer, held his coffee up in defense. He tried to catch Victoria’s attention, but she kept her eyes riveted to the stair beneath her, mortified at having Bobby join their conversation, furious at finding herself trapped beneath his arm. But the situation reeked of explosive potential, and the mere thought of what might happen should Bobby be set off was enough to internalize her fury into shame.

  “Heard ya was gone this winter.” Bobby mumbled the words and finished with a loud belch.

  “Pardon?”

  “Heard ya was gone. Where’d ya go?”

  “Nowhere really. I just—”

  “Heard ya went to Bally or somewhere.”

  “Bali?”

  “Ya. Where ’bouts is that anyways?”

  “Well, it’s a part of Indo—”

  “It’s part of India, you nitwit,” Petey volunteered.

  “Not India you jackass! It’s just below Africa,” John Jr. cried decisively, the matter settled and Bali relocated. “What the hell you do down there all winter, anyhow?”

  “Actually I wasn’t down there this winter. Haven’t been down there since I went with my brother, oh man, I guess almost ten years ago.”

  “I heard ya was down there most the winter,” Bobby challenged as he took another guzzle.

  “Hmm, well, not that I remember. I spent a few days on the island though.”

  Bobby slapped his thigh. “That damn Ferguson. Pot-licker ain’t never got his stories straight. Watcha do on the island?”

  “Stayed with my brother. Fished a bit.”

  “You got a brother?”

  “Yup. Two of them. This was my youngest one. The one I went to Bali with.”

  Bobby glared up at him suspiciously, not too sure he wasn’t being played for a fool but eager to show himself up for the challenge.

  “Thought you just bloody said you didn’t go there.”

  “No. I said I did go there. With my brother. The one who lives on the island.”

  “I just bloody asked you that and you just bloody said you didn’t.”

  “Asked me what?” Elliot returned evenly, without a trace of emotion, so innocent in fact that Victoria had to look up and catch the devil in his eye to be sure he wasn’t.

  “Asked you if ya went to friggin’ Bali this winter!” Bobby took an extended pull from his bottle in an attempt to clarify things.

  Elliot shook his head. “Nope, not this year. Maybe next year I’ll get back down there. Hey, I need a coffee. Anyone else want one? Victoria, can I get you something?”

  She slipped him a smile as she shook her head. Bobby, still confused scratched his.

  “You bin lots of places?” John Jr.’s words ran across Peter’s just as he, not one to refuse a free anything, was on the verge of accepting a coffee.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I have.”

  “Ever bin on one them safaris?”

  “Couple times.”

  “Git anything?”

  “Just photos. Not really a hunter in the true sense of the—”

  “Ever seen a lion?”

  Elliot’s nod brought the boys closer around him. “Oh ya, lots of lions. One time we were going down this trail and—”

  And he was off. Leading them down a sunburned trail, creating for them a mystical beauty that they could never, not even in their deepest dreams ever fully imagine. Victoria relaxed as Bobby’s arm slipped from her, and he and the boys dissolved into Elliot’s tale, slack-jawed and daze-eyed as schoolboys at story time.

  So. He had been home for the winter. Or for most of it anyhow. She watched his lips play as he spoke, tried to imagine his voice traveling a static-filled line into her ear. It was possible, she conceded. But just as possible it may have been Sam or Mark or Billy Bassman, for that matter. The voice had offered her little in the way of clues. And what purpose would there be for Elliot to hide behind anonymity? He seemed to have no problem speaking to her directly, perhaps even a little more directly than she appreciated. Then again, maybe Rose was right. People could not always be accounted for. Sometimes they did strange things. She searched Elliot’s face, turned and found Sam doing the same to hers. Embarrassed, they both looked away quickly, he back to Elliot’s oracle and she back to the sale.

  The pressure cooker was on the block now, and the right to its title was brewing into an all-out war. Mrs. Lyn-croft and her twin sister, Hilda, deadly competitive since they’d fallen in puppy love with the same boy in sixth grade, had both set their hearts on owning the heavy silver pot. Pearl, having arrived at the sale earlier than either of them, felt by rights the pot belonged to her. Unwittingly underestimatin
g the powers of twinship, she set about warning them off of it and unintentionally combined their efforts against her instead.

  The price of the pot had started justifiably low and risen frantically on waving arms and seething faces to where it was now trading at a multiple premium of its worth. No one appeared to care. The crowd cheered or jeered each new bid, the three women frothing with the quest of attainment. Finally, the competition tired and Mrs. Lyncroft surged into the lead, captured her prize and raised it overhead like Olympic gold. Today was a day to celebrate. Never mind tomorrow when she’d search through the catalogue and find she could have ordered a new one for less than half the price.

  Bobby was butting in now, Elliot’s story reminding him of one of his own, although he didn’t seem to make the connection that while Elliot’s had stemmed from the adventures of a real life, his own was nothing more than an old joke.

  “Hey. Hey. I got one. There’s this guy, eh. Jus’ bin married and him an his wife they’s driving down the road—”

  “Naw, not that one, Bobby,” Peter whined. “Tell the other one. That hooker that worked as a nun one.”

  “It was a nun who worked as a hooker, peckerhead,” corrected John Jr.

  “Whatever. Tells him that one, Bobby.”

  “Can’t never 'member that one.”

  “Can’t 'member it? Ya got shit fer brains or what?” John Jr. spat beside Peter’s foot and slapped Bobby’s arm for a drink of his whiskey.

  “You jus’ never bloody mind what I got fer brains.” He reached over and retrieved his bottle, attempting without success to straighten himself on the stair.

  “So anyhow, they’s driving along and all-a-sudden his dog starts howling and whining and carrying on in the back of the truck, eh? Bugger hollars back at it to shut the hell up an sure 'nuff the bitch settles right down. Guy turns to his wife. ‘That’s once,’ he says. Keeps on driving.”

  He paused here to fumble a cigarette into his slack mouth. “All a sudden, you can’t bloody believe it, eh, frig-gin’ mutt starts up again. Whining and crying an’ carrying on. Well, that’s it. Bugger’s pissed right bloody off now. Pulls the truck over, jumps out—”

  “Hey, Bobby . . . pass me a slosh will ya?”

  “Petey ya dumb-assed dickhead! Will ya shut the hell up? You’re wrecking my friggin’joke!”

  “I jus’ wanted a—”

  Bobby answered him with a smack that knocked his cap into the lilac bush and scattered what little was left of his hair.

  “Now, where was I?”

  “He just got out of his truck,” Elliot replied as he retrieved Peter’s hat and handed it back to him.

  “Did he have his rifle?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Okay. Well, he grabs it eh, goes to the back of the truck, BOOM! Blows the friggin’ dog away. All over hell and back, hey?” The edges of his mouth began to fan upward with the promise of expectant laughter. “Gets back in the truck and holy shee-it if his woman don’t start freaking out on him. Whining and crying and carrying on. Bugger takes one look at her, hollers ‘Shut up bitch.’ Pulls the bloody truck back on the road says, ‘That’s once.’ Ya get it?” He exploded with laughter. “‘That’s once,’ he says. Same’s the dog!”

  Elliot smiled dryly, looked at Victoria his eyes opened in mock exclamation. Bobby’s mood soured dramatically when he found himself laughing a solo.

  “Hey! What’s the matter with you? Didn’t ya git it, or what?”

  “Ya. Ya, I think I got it.”

  “Why ain’t ya laughing then? You got a problem with my joke?”

  “No. No, I don’t have a problem with your joke. I just didn’t find it particularly funny. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Ya just didn’t git it, did ya?” Peter sneered. “He jus’ didn’t git it did he JJ? Dumb as that other potlicker we hadda explain it to.”

  “That was you ya dumb-shit,” John Jr. shot back.

  “Bull-shit JJ! Wasn’t me. Was that friggin’ what’s-his-face. I got it first time I bloody heard it I did.” He jutted his chin accusingly at Elliot. “You didn’t git it though, did ya?”

  Elliot looked around, assessed the situation and nodded. “Yep. Guess you’re right Peter. Maybe I didn’t. Anyhow, looks like this sale is about sold.”

  The group of them started to make their way across the emptying yard toward the vehicles, Peter still questioning Elliot on why he didn’t shoot the lion when he had the chance. Bobby kept his arm locked around Victoria in an iron embrace.

  “You guys need a lift back to town?” Elliot offered.

  Bobby squinted at the others thickly to see if any of them had understood the question. “What fer? We got my truck.”

  “Hmm. Don’t think you might have had a tad too much to be thinking about driving?”

  “Whoo-ee!” Bobby bellered like a bull-calf on branding day. “You sound just like my friggin’ granny. Us boys drink twice the hell as much as a fella like you, still drive ten times as good.”

  “Hope so,” Elliot replied as he slipped Victoria the hint of a wink.

  “Drive ten times better’n any city boy anyway, drunk or sober. Ain’t that right, Petey?”

  “Oh ya, Bobby. You’re friggin’ Superman. Just won’t mention what the hell ya did to my garbage cans.” Peter, after a lifetime of abuse was not one to forgive and forget, not one to concede when a point could be taken.

  “Hey, asshole. Leave the buggers in the middle of the road . . . whadda ya expect?”

  “Ya managed by them just fine on your way into the yard,” he challenged back, moving just beyond belting distance.

  “You criticizing my driving skills?”

  “Criticizing more than that. You got stuck in the garden twice for ya got your ass turned around.”

  “Wasn’t stuck, ya little dwarf pecker. Ya ain’t never stuck long as ya still’s moving.”

  “Ya was only moving ’cause Samson an me was pushing ya.”

  “Ya. Wasn’t stuck then, was I? You wanna criticize my driving maybe ya better put some money where your yap is.”

  Victoria looked up quickly into Bobby’s drunken, frozen face.

  “Bobby, don’t be stupid. You’re way too drunk to—”

  “Yee-haw,” whooped Peter, “even your woman don’t think you can drive!”

  “That so?” Bobby lurched sideways toward his truck, roughly pulling Victoria with him. “Guess she best come along and see how much she don’t know then, hey?”

  “Bobby, don’t. Please,” she pleaded quietly as she tried to twist away without drawing any more attention to herself. “I have my car, Bobby. I have to take it home.”

  Seeing the pain in Victoria’s face, Elliot stepped forward, his body steeled, jaw tight.

  “Hey, Bobby. Come on now. Let her go. I think she’s made it pretty clear she’d rather not ride with you right now.”

  “That so?” Bobby snarled back in surprise. He was not used to being openly challenged on his own turf. “So, just what the hell you planning to do about it, huh?”

  “Not planning on doing anything about it, okay? She has her own car here. Why not just let her drive that home?”

  “Cause it ain’t safe. She ain’t even bloody ’sposed to be driving it yet, that’s why!” he hollered violently.

  Victoria avoided Elliot’s eyes.

  “Well, look. Why don’t I give her a ride home, then? If you don’t mind.”

  “Mind! Why the hell should I mind?” Bobby blustered, fear boiling up alongside the rage filling his mind. “Hey, Vic. That what you want to do? You want to get a ride home with this here guy, huh?” His thumb bruised hard into the bones of her wrist and she bit her lip so she wouldn’t cry out. Then suddenly, he let her go. For one fragile breath freedom bloomed within her then perished just as quickly.

  “Hey, Vic. You wanna play cards?”

  “Bobby, no—” Victoria whispered frantically.

  “No? Why not? You liked it last time we p
layed, didn’t ya?”

  “Bobby, please. Don’t—” she pleaded, Bobby ignoring her as he swung open the door of his truck and dug something silver out from behind the seat.

  “Holy shit, Bobby,” exhaled John Jr. “Put that fricken’ thing down before someone gets hurt. You goddam crazy?”

  “Don’t know, JJ. Maybe I am. Whadda you think, Vic? You think you’re married to a crazy man or what?” He loosely waved the revolver around and laughed.

  “Oh, my god, Bobby. Don’t. There’s kids—” Victoria whispered, hysterical voices rising around her as horrified parents shoved crying children into vehicles and quickly drove away with one frantic eye on the rearview mirror.

  Electricity sizzled around them, tense breathing driving like pistons through the constricted air. Seeking out Sam’s face she held his gaze for a desperate moment. A thousand words could not have hoped to articulate what passed silently between them, and slowly Sam’s head began to lower, his mismatched eyes sliding shamefully away.

  “So? Whadda ya think, Vic?” Bobby sneered, the gun now nestled into the folds of his crossed arms. “You wanna play cards again or not?”

  “No, Bobby. You know I don’t.”

  “You sure?”

  Dropping her head, she nodded back tears.

  “You think you’re married to a goddamn crazy man or what?”

  Victoria looked at Elliot helplessly, then shook her head. “Of course not, Bobby. Now, just put the gun down, okay?”

  “You still thinking of going home with this here joker?” Bobby flicked his head toward Elliot who stood in appalled disbelief at the scene unfolding before him.

  Hot tears slid free of her eyes as she looked at the ground and shook her head.

  The air began to move again as Bobby finally lowered the revolver and took a drink of his whiskey. She heard Elliot clear his throat and speak softly, his voice imploring her to look up at him, but she could not.

  “This isn’t right, Victoria—” he said gently.

  “Leave her alone, priss-ass! She’s fine,” Bobby yelled. “You’re just fine, ain’t you, Vic? Ain’t you?”

  Victoria’s head gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  “Victoria, I can—”

  “You can’t do nothing!” Bobby fumed, snapping the gun up toward Elliot.