Settright Road

by Jon Boilard

  Super Cop turns his back to me, talks into his shoulder.

  I take the opportunity to slip away.

  Seaweed specks the coastline in brown patches. Blood-purple jellyfish roll over for one decisive sting, horse flies leave large red welts, and sandpipers do their silly sand dance. Dark groove-number buoys and fishnets define the dry dock where Joey Mongeon weighs the day’s catch, thick fingers fumbling, poking at the intricate switches of the scale. The August breeze carries with it the flavors of the rowdy clambake at the south end where the public is allowed: a smoking pit, the crink-tinkling of cheap beer bottles breaking.

  Then a daunting dusk rips the world asunder.

  Perfect darkness drops in stages like a carpet bomb campaign, bonfires appear and pop teenage delight. Eight-cylinder American engines howl around Blount Park, white-wall tires screech in wicked syncopation, stereos spill vintage Van Halen and Def Leppard and Bon Jovi into Lexington Avenue, backdropped by an odd cacophony of crickets. Somebody shakes a clacking can over his shoulder and spray paints the words SUCK SHIT on the glass storefront of Collin’s Bike Shop. Other drunks, older and more established in their vices, stumble from Lion’s Lair smelling of pizza and Jameson and two-stroke motor oil.

  My father bought the apartment here with money he made selling grinding wheels for Bendix, and now I’m staying with him as part of the conditions of my parole. There is some wealth around town, but it’s mostly working class. The Magnolia Bath and Tennis Club is off limits to people like me, although I know my way around a little bar called the Fort. It’s dark inside and just a handful of other regulars and of course Sally McNamara pouring drinks. The Red Sox are on the television. I order a whiskey and bitter. Sally is wearing tight faded jeans and a pink tube top. She’s barefoot, as usual.

  Her husband, the owner, is out front hanging sheets of half-inch plywood over the windows that face Raymond Street. With the storm getting closer, he’s having a tough time staying on the ladder. His face is turning red and he’s holding nails in his mouth, they’re sticking out like rusty vampire fangs. I watch him struggle and not even for a second do I consider lending him a hand. He comes inside when he finishes his task. He’s soaking wet; a real mess. Sally laughs at him. She hates his guts and I’m screwing her on the side so I laugh along with her but not because it’s funny. It’s more complicated than that. He removes his vintage Carl Yaz No. 8 T-shirt, throws it at her, and she ducks. It lands with a splat on the floor behind her and cowers like a dying thing.

  She picks it up and rings it out in the stainless-steel sink.

  You fucking prick, she says.

  You ungrateful cow, he says.

  Even their bickering lacks passion.

  He slaps me on the back and tells Sally to give everybody one on the house, which is a rarity. She shakes her head but does as she’s told, another rarity in itself.

  Sally rings the bell, we all drink up.

  Then she brings me a bowl of salted peanuts.

  The man of my dreams that one, she says to me in a hushed tone.

  I look at her husband’s reflection in the long mirror behind the bar. He is short, fat, hairy and pale; not somebody who should be walking around in public minus a shirt, but he doesn’t give a rat’s ass. That’s what I love about the guy.

  Like I said, it’s complicated.

  His name is Bob or Bobby Mac to his friends. I guess he was some kind of all-star ballplayer back in the day, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him now. And that gets me thinking about all of my former selves: the son with potential, mighty patriot, brother with a spine, the protector of innocent children.

  How far the mighty have fallen, I think.

  Sally wants to close up shop like every other business in town, but Bobby Mac tells her to relax. He wants to make a couple extra bucks off the storm. Get something out of it besides the opportunity to haul sandbags from the cellar. Eat, drink, and be merry, he says. For tomorrow we’re all fucking dead.

  He isn’t supposed to drink. There are a stack of DWIs he has to consider, which maybe he does just before he streams the cheapest rotgut directly from the bottle into his throat. Then Collin from the bike shop emerges from the shitter and stands next to me and tells me that he’s just seen my big sister, Lisa.

  In the shitter, I say in mock amazement.

  He guffaws and removes the coaster from the top of his glass of house wine that had been setting there the whole time. If I had noticed it, I would have sat somewhere else on the off chance that it was his.

  She’s a fucking cunt, he says. She almost ran me down.

  Collin has a way with words. He’s quite known for it. A real gift. He’s spitting bits of chewed peanuts on me when he talks. I turn the other way to avoid the shrapnel, but he won’t let it go.

  What’s her problem anyway, he says.

  I can feel him staring at the back of my head, waiting.

  He repeats himself, and the muscles in my neck begin to tighten. Collin lets out an impatient breath that smells like clam dip.

  Besides being a cunt, I say, hoping against hope that that’s the end of it.

  But it never is with guys like Collin. That is one thing I know for sure. Some people just can’t leave well enough alone. There’s really only one way I know how to end this conversation.

  Your family, he says as though those two words form a complete statement.

  I wait a couple three heartbeats before turning back around to look at him. Please, I say in the nicest way possible. Just shut the fuck up.

  A simple request because I’d rather not get any deeper into it with this clown. I’m trying to turn over a new leaf and all that. But he’s really pushing my buttons.

  I’m just saying, he says. That cunt has problems. And then he’s off and running again, showering me with his peanut bits and harsh words. Jesus fucking Christ. I guess I should have seen this coming a long mile away. And I guess I actually did.

  He is right, though. My sister does have problems. Lots of them. For example, the state is in the process of taking the boys away from her, and justifiably so. She blames me for it and claims that I turned them against her. They’re young and don’t know any better so they love her anyway. But none of this is any of Collin’s business. He doesn’t have a right to weigh in as far as I’m concerned, on my sister or the boys or any of it. It’s a family matter. So I tune him out as best I can. But eventually I can’t take it anymore.

  I close my eyes. And I know again what it means to see red. Then that familiar sensation inside my brain—a rubber band stretched to its limit. I open my eyes. And there’s no stopping me now, no turning back once I get to this point.

  I reach up and take his windpipe between my thumb and bent index finger. An efficient and almost gentle human transaction. And I hold him there at arm’s length. It’s a subtle move I learned from a skinhead at Cedar Junction. Collin flails about trying to break free but I’ve got him trapped. He’s quickly losing his wind. His drink goes flying everywhere, and it would probably be comical to watch if it weren’t so fucking sad. Bobby Mac rushes over and tries to make me stop.

  Jesus H. Christ, he says in my ear as he karate-chops my forearm.

  I let him try for a while, but he can’t break my grip, the funny little prick. I shove him aside with my other hand. Ex-athlete or no, he’s not used to dealing with a man like me. He’s got a certain strength that’s developed on the playing field, but my power comes from a deeper well. A darker place. And there’s just no match. So he gives up.

  People are freaking out now and there’s a lot of commotion around me, but I stay focused on efficiently disposing of the perceived threat of the moment; and that is my true gift, a skill honed in barrooms and back alleys and various state correctional institutions. I learned a long time ago that only during violence can I correct my mistakes in the very same instant that I make them. And that’s the beauty of it, this brutish thing I do.

  I watch up close as Collin’s face turns differen
t shades of blue.

  Call the motherfucking cops, somebody says.

  The war hero has gone mad, somebody else says.

  Well, if I have, then it was a short trip.

  After a while I release Collin and his legs give out and he falls down, his limbs collapsing in on themselves like a marionette puppet whose strings have been cut.

  Bobby Mac helps him sit up on the floor.

  Collin is covered in peanut shells and he massages his throat and his eyes fill up with tears. He tries his voice box but it will be a few minutes before it works again. Bobby Mac stands him up and guides him by his elbow to a stool far away from me.

  Sally gives Collin a glass of tonic.

  He sips some of it and coughs.

  Sally looks at me and makes her way over. What the fuck, she says.

  I take a long pull from my drink because I don’t want to talk about it. Not with her, not with anybody.

  Sean, she says, leaves my name hanging in the air.

  Exactly how much shit I’m supposed to eat, I say.

  She knows what I mean. She holds both my hands in hers until I take them away. Think about the boys, she says.

  When am I not thinking about the boys, I almost say.

  You’ll end up back inside with moves like that, she says.

  You say it like it’s a bad thing.

  Sally is a tough woman but even she starts to cry at that comment. Is that what you want then, she says.

  You don’t understand what it’s like for me out here.

  But is that really what you want, she says. Caged like an animal.

  I don’t fucking know what I want.

  That’s always been your problem.

  Inside at least they tell me, I say. They tell me what I want.

  I finish my drink and put the empty glass on the bar and go outside. Collin is calling after me; every name in the book. His courage is up again and he wants to put on a show for everybody now. But he’s smart enough to stay inside. Good for him.

  Be the victim, you fucking shitbag.

  Go ahead and get the crowd behind you.

  Semper Fidelis, motherfucker, he shouts at the top of his lungs.

  I try to light the roach from earlier, but the wind and rain prove too much. Plus I’m shaking. My hands are shaking the way they always do after a good session.

  The moon is a half-lidded eye, lazily surveying the hard little town that is slowly devouring me. I look up at my father’s apartment across the street and the boys are in the window—perfect faces pressed against the glass fogged with their breath. I almost smile and wave from my hip but they appear to be sobbing and trying to tell me something urgent. Maybe Lisa has gained entry; she’s a resourceful one and always has been. She has a key and my mother won’t let my father change the locks even though there’s a restraining order because Lisa has claimed on record that if she can’t have her sons then nobody can. Or maybe the storm has the little one spooked, the bending trees reminding him of skeletons. Then the boys disappear from my view, like a dream. I want to go up there to put them at ease, toss their hair, sit with them in the big chair, tell them everything is going to be all right, but I’m no longer convinced that that’s the truth. A stronger force is pulling me back into the bar to finish what I started.

  At first I think it’s the wind again, but what I hear is a police siren getting closer and closer.

  THE MOHAWK TRAIL

  The burning red of early swamp maples and a singular stand of white birches and a picket fence snaking along a hillside. My father parked the truck, and I breathed deep. The name of the place was Joey Mitch’s Horizons. There was a band there that afternoon but I don’t remember what they played. It was loud. Everybody was dancing and having a good time already. It was Saturday. I was on a stool at the bar that squeaked whenever I turned around to look at the drums and the people. There were three grown men with the hardscrabble beginnings of their winter beards playing pool. They looked up one by one and called my father Buddy.

  My father knew the bartender too. Then they were drinking shots of Jim Beam. My father ordered a glass of Michelob. And then another. The bartender’s name was Billy Fitzsimmons and they used to work the pits at Hinsdale together. My father told him about the 1967 Mustang convertible he picked up in Bernardston. He called it a cherry. He told him you could eat off the engine. He talked about the Windsor heads and the TRW pistons and the rebuilt V8 302. It runs like a top, he said. His hands were thick and nimble and dark-grooved with axle grease.

  Autumn hills were blushing gold and copper and a pale purple, but the gray threat of winter was lurking in the form of a cold snap and I remember outside my bedroom that morning bare sugar maple branches had been scratching at my window, beckoning, trying to lure me away from my father’s house. Then Fitz gave me marshmallow-topped hot chocolate because I could see my breath even indoors, even with the fireplace, a fresh log just tossed in and crackling. Paper-thin black flakes floated like broken promises when a pretty girl poked it with a black iron stick. I burned my tongue a bit. Fitz laughed, told me to go easy on the hot toddy. He said something else funny to my father and he looked at me and winked. I liked this man already. A hunter in a Double D’s cap called his name at the other end of the bar and he went to serve him.

  My father touched my arm and said, Just a little while more. He called me Sport. He stayed looking at me when I faced the long mirror behind the rows of bottles. There were pretzels in a salad bowl. Fitz came back and asked my father if I was the next Yastrzemski and my father told him that I was a chip off the old block. We played catch in the backyard sometimes before things got too bad. Pop flies were my favorite. My father threw the ball so high sometimes I waited forever to snag it. When he wasn’t around I practiced on the dented roof of the barn. Then my father shook me. It’s time to go now, he said. Come on now, boy.

  In the glare of the dying day, that mist-filled dusk, my father’s face was red and his nose was red and his eyes were red around dime-sized black buttons. His skin deep-pocked like some rotten old rind. He walked almost sidesaddle, like he was going to fall, and then he put his hand on my back, the whole weight of him bearing down.

  We climbed into the old pickup. He stuck his head out and got sick on the door, then put the steering column shifter in neutral and hit the clutch and turned the key and a sputter and a rumble under the heavy hood soon became a hum.

  Route 2 toward Charlemont was jammed from Perry’s Pass to Whitcomb’s Summit. We drove behind what my father called the leaf peepers. They came from the city to look at the fall colors through fast-clicking and instamatic eyes. He had no patience for strangers. He punched the horn and used foul language. Goddamn, he said. Get the lead out, he screamed. He pounded the dashboard with his fist, and in his unchanneled fury he got reckless and put us into a ditch. It happened so fast. Tires screeched and metal crunched and glass broke.

  My head hit the windshield and I tried not to cry. I tried not to. The radiator hissed hot and busted. My father stopped the fast bleeding and carried me. I smelled the laundry detergent on his flannel jacket and the sweat and the gasoline, comforting and familiar. I could smell the other thing on him too, but I didn’t care anymore. He scrambled us up the embankment duck-footed for traction and walked in the narrow breakdown lane against the current of oncoming traffic. Ghostly faces peered from passing cars and my father followed the painted stripe painstakingly and stuck his jaw out. Now we were the show.

  I told him I was sorry.

  Not your fault, he said.

  He told me to keep awake. He let loose inside tears that didn’t show but I felt them in his chest. I breathed deep: pin cherry and tamarack and mountain ash. He said he would really quit it this time, now that he could see how all the repercussions played out. I wanted to keep believing him, but I was tired and I closed my eyes.

  SETTRIGHT ROAD

  You are toast. You’re in a 1962 Impala that was your dad’s before he split. It’s on cement bloc
ks in the backyard. There’s a heat wave going on, Indian summer. It’s muggy as hell and the mosquitoes are fat and lazy and everywhere. Your mom waits tables at the BP Diner and doesn’t get home until after midnight. There’s a washing machine in the backyard, too, and a dog on a chain and lots of dog crap in hard piles. NRBQ is in the Dwire Lot doing its last couple sets. You fire up another doobie. The dog watches you from the end of his chain with his head cocked. It’s your mom’s dog and she named it Shithead— after the old man, she says, because they have the same disposition. You suck on watermelon Now and Laters with your knees against the back of the front seat. Your big brother is behind the wheel with his hands at ten and two like he’s old enough to drive. He adjusts his mirrors. He moves his head to the drum solo that you can barely hear past the trees and the schoolyard and the train tracks and the long line at the beer tent. A warm breeze is like the restroom hand driers at the diner. You stuff the roach in your pocket and pretend you’re riding to Virginia Beach, where your cool cousin Floyd got herpes.

  You wait behind the packy in the dark with a handful of singles that smell like gasoline. The back of Fat Mike’s Chevy half-ton is piled high with flattened cardboard and he’s sleeping in the cab. Arnold Ogletree, who works the register on Friday and Saturday, opens the door when the coast is clear and hands you a pint of blackberry brandy, two bottles of Boone’s Farm, and a twelve-pack of Budweiser. You give him the cash and a joint that is mostly oregano. You hear him lock the back door as you duck around the side of the building. Fat Mike never moved a muscle. Then you sit in the town common that isn’t lit and drink your booze. The baby-blue half-dollar moon sits on top of St. Bonaventure’s spire like a fixture, and you keep an eye on the police station, the firehouse, the pharmacy, and the Hot L Warren. You listen to Hank Williams coming from the jukebox in the Bloody Brook. You smell the pickle shop, the plastic shop and the tannery. You drink until you get dizzy and loud and smash empty Boone’s Farm bottles on the stone borders of the wishing well. Your brother talks about the 1971 Nova in front of Gregory’s Gas on 5 and 10 for when he turns sixteen. He says that’s his only damn wish.