by Jon Boilard
Fucking redneck motherfuckers.
We left and took the back roads to Hatfield before Westy and LaPinta got the call and came by in the black-and-white. Jonesy had some killer green that he grew on the edge of his father’s property up north. He rolled up a fat one to the light of my stereo. His hands were teeth-cut and still shaking I guess from thumping on the guy out in the street, but he did all right with the joint. He was a year behind me but didn’t go to school anymore because of his temper. I was going to be a junior at Franklin County Tech in the fall. My mother wanted me to learn a trade and amount to something, but she wasn’t going to hold her breath. We stopped about a half mile up the dirt road to the reservoir and smoked with the windows all the way open to the smell of the corn harvest and the rest of Johnny Baronas’ farm. Jonesy told me a judge in Greenfield was making him live with his grandmother but he mostly slept in abandoned barns.
A mob of black bats passed before us like windblown leaves. Then we drove around some more and parked in the same spot across from the Hot L. Jonesy called it the scene of the crime. The music inside was loud but hard to figure out from where we were because of all the sloppy people talking and laughing and because of the August heat too. It sounded like ZZ Top. Jonesy said if he could just get one lousy game that would make his night. I told him maybe on a Wednesday or something but they were really cracking down on weekends. Kim Streeter from my driver’s ed class came out of the coin-op with some other girl. They were drinking wine coolers and they got in the car with us and I moved it back a bit to get out of the streetlight.
Kim asked me about my girlfriend, Beth, and the rumors she heard. Then I mugged on her in the front seat for a while and she was wearing one of those front-snap bras I liked. Her nipples were pink and hard like the unused erasers on a couple number-two pencils. I let Kim give me head while Jonesy got the other girl high. I adjusted the mirror so he could watch. Then he tried to kiss his girl and his sticky hand got stuck in her hair and she freaked out and he hit her and kept hitting her with his fist like she was a dude until I dragged her out of the car and told her and Kim to go away. Her nose looked broke. I said, Jesus, and Jonesy sat in front with me and finished his beer then got out without saying anything and walked right into the bar. I waited fifteen minutes and when there was no sign of any trouble I figured everything was all right.
I crossed the Bucktown Bridge and took River Road to see Beth. I parked in a small clearing in the wooded area on Hollabird’s property so her parents wouldn’t wake up. She let me in through a window and told me about her cousin Myra taking her down to the clinic in Springfield. She had to go twice because we waited so long. They had to put tubes in me, she said. I didn’t want anybody touching her like that but she was strong about it. I told her I was sorry and she said it was her fault too. I told her about Jonesy acting up and she said I had a responsibility to keep him straight. She said it made her nervous how he was always trying to impress me and I’d better be careful. Whatever, I said. I asked her if they had to cut her at all.
No, she said. They just had to stretch me and put tubes in there.
That’s good then, I said.
Then I watched television and she cried until she fell asleep.
Westy and LaPinta came to see me when I was starting my shift in the morning. I told Geno I was going to use his phone to get the specs on a water pump and I took them into the office and sat on a stack of used snow tires. They said that somebody saw my car out in front of the Hot L. They said there was some big trouble down there and did I see anything. They said Jonesy finally crossed the wrong person and got his block knocked off with a two-by-four. He was in a coma down to Cooley Dick. It didn’t look good. I told them a pack of lies about my whereabouts and they knew it but were too lazy to follow up. They were just part-time cops.
Jonesy died a week later and his grandma hired a lawyer from Hartford to sue the Hot L for letting him go in there in the first place. She called me on the phone to say that if I showed up for the funeral her nephews from Colrain would feed me into a wood chipper. In the paper they said he had dope and booze in him but other stuff too. The kind of stuff I could buy on a corner in Holyoke. The bartender at the Hot L said he didn’t serve Jonesy a single drink that night.
I saw Kim around town and she never mentioned it. I saw that other girl sometimes and her nose was crooked for a while but then she must have paid to get it fixed. Beth told me I was poison. She told me I was like a cancer that contaminated anybody who got close. She told me I could have stopped him but that I enjoyed exposing the rot in others. She said I didn’t recognize the influence I had over people. She blamed Jonesy and everything on me. She didn’t want to be my girlfriend anymore. What the fuck, I said. Her old man held a shotgun on me and told me to stop coming around and so that’s exactly what I did.
LISTEN TO THAT
TRAIN WHISTLE BLOW
We smoke dope in the graveyard next to the stone marked Harry Arms. There’s a cricket that sounds like a busted box spring. Shelly isn’t wearing a bra and we bump against each other and when I finish I tell her about the train and she cries. At first she doesn’t want me to leave. Then she wants to come with me. If I were old enough to legally drive a car, she could come. But hopping trains is not the kind of business a girl should get involved with. That’s how I explain it. She cries some more. It seems like she’s always crying about one thing or another. She scratches my name into her arm with a beer bottle cap where everybody can see. Stupid fucking bitch.
An early autumn breeze that smells like cow shit.
Get dressed, I say.
I thought I’d be your girl forever, she says.
Forever is a long fucking time, Shell.
My old man gets drunk at the Bloody Brook Bar and locks me out of the apartment on purpose so I hotwire his F-250 and drive it into the tri-town pond. Let him find it like that. I walk across Don Milewski’s empty pumpkin patch. The side door of Boron’s Market on Eastern Avenue is easy to jimmy and I need supplies for my train ride. I stuff a plastic trash bag with cupcakes, beef jerky, and chocolate milk. A flashlight and batteries. A pouch of Red Man chewing tobacco. There’s a dusty old cat with only one eyeball living in the back and he meows at me.
He hisses and spits, and I laugh at him.
You’re only a cat and that’s all you’ll ever be.
I want to go to California but I don’t even know what that means. I hide in a bush by the tracks. It will slow down to make the bend past Dry Run Bridge. If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a million times. Raping Ray is drinking coffee in a Styrofoam cup. I don’t notice him at first. He walks quiet like an Indian. Nobody knows for sure if he did it or not and besides it was a long time ago and he’s harmless now. I’m not scared of him. He asks me what I’m doing. I tell him my plan.
He says that it’s the Boston and Maine line so I can only go north or south. Forget California, he says. Maybe the French part of Canada.
That’s okay by me.
A mosquito bites him on the neck and he slaps it against his skin and leaves a smudge.
He sits on a stump. How’s your father, he says because they’re the same age, came up together.
I hope he gets hit by a truck, I tell him.
Raping Ray laughs hard and spills some coffee that stains his pant leg.
The train never comes. Motherfucker this and motherfucker that. My old man smacks me about the F-250 and more when I deny it. He passes out on the couch and I put his cigarettes in the toilet that doesn’t work and has not been flushed in days. Shelly meets me at the Bucktown Creamy. She’s happy that I didn’t leave and she cries. We share a large vanilla cone. Then I steal somebody’s two-tone Gran Torino to drive up Mount Toby. A giant tree casts a long shadow on a faded red barn. The letters of my name are scabs on her pale flesh. We get in the backseat and she begs me to leave it inside her and so I do. When I’m done it sounds like a cow pulling its foot out of the mud. She smiles white teeth. Van Halen is on th
e radio singing, I got it bad.
If I have your baby then you got to stay, she says.
If you do then I’ll throw it in the river.
She cries.
My shift pumping gas starts at five. Eugene tells me that LaPinta wants to ask me about a certain F-250 in a certain pond. I guess my old man called the cops. They towed it out and wanted to throw the book at him because there is already a stack of DWIs. Later in the evening, Janet from the pharmacy brings me a cheeseburger and fries for dinner. It’s one of the perks. There’s a busted button on her overalls and I can see a bit of her red nylon panties. I tell her about the train too. We both get off at eight and so she comes by with strawberry frappes and I know exactly where Killer Kowalski hides a bottle of rotgut in his red rollaway toolbox. I shut down the pumps and lock the doors, and we sit in the office and drink clear booze and then I let her jerk me off. Then she sticks her gum behind her ear and bobs on me with piston-like efficiency. I don’t consider it cheating, but Shelly might have a whole different opinion on the matter.
School is a joke. I get high with Shell out by the Dwire Lot during third-period English. Bobcat and Rosey are there too. We burn a fat one and laugh and listen to a bunch of brown-noser kids playing tennis during physical education. Viola Goodnow is yelling instructions and Bob is impersonating her dead on. Fucking hilarious. And then instead of going back to class with all the losers we hitchhike to Red Rock. We don’t get a ride and it’s a long walk down 116 and I tell Bobcat and Rosey about the train. Shelly cries when I say I’m leaving her behind.
Jesus fucking Christ, I say, it’s for your own good.
Bobcat’s mom strips at the Shed. He doesn’t like to talk about it. We steal some Swisher Sweets from my old man, who is in a booze coma as usual. The Red Sox are on the tube. We go into the hall and climb out the window and onto the roof and the moon looks like a banana. Bob has a half pint of blackberry brandy that he lifted from the packy. He takes a tug and gives it to me. Across the street there are some Puerto Ricans getting beat up in front of the Brook. Murph and a couple other guys from Double D’s are really pissed about something and smashing bottles all over the spics. By the time Westy and LaPinta show up with the flashing lights everybody is gone and there is just a lot of broken glass and blood and somebody’s torn shirt on the sidewalk. They look around and talk to Fydo, who owns the place. Then the game ends because my old man turns the volume down. Bobcat blows smoke rings.
This place sucks, he says, meaning the Hot L roof, the town, the whole valley.
We stay quiet for a few beats to let his statement sink in.
Yeah, I say, I’m a hop that fucking train tomorrow, boy.
It feels good to say it aloud, but Bobcat doesn’t say anything back and he doesn’t even look at me. Fuck him. I know he thinks I’ll never do it. I spit over my shoulder and it lands on the ledge. The problem is that I already talked it to death. The idea. The concept of getting away. That’s what happens sometimes when you put things into words: you kill them.
There is the smell of pickles from Oxford. I take my old man’s F-250 just back from the shop and drive it into the tri-town pond again. Janet is already there and we skinny dip. She asks me about the pickup and I tell her I’m testing it for leaks. She laughs. The water is warm and the harvest moon is reflected in it. She tells me about her shift at the BP Diner. She’s trying to save money for college. We swim to the middle and sit on the floating dock. I kiss her and she tastes like deep-fried onion rings. Then we swim to the rope swing and take turns diving and flipping. She’s athletic for a girl and can do almost everything I can do. We end up back on the beach. There’s some weed that I bought from Skid Syska and we torch a doobie under the white lifeguard chair. She asks me about the train. She says she can totally picture me hanging out in California, and then she uses her mouth on me again. Afterward she just sits there and I skip a flat rock on the pond’s smooth black surface.
I hear Shelly went to the clinic, she says, her eyes wide-set like a plastic doll’s.
I look at her and then away. You hear loads of stupid shit if you listen long enough, I tell her.
Chuck Smiaroski says he’s going to dock my pay for being late. I tell him a lie, that my old man crashed the F-250 again and I had to walk to the farm, but Chuck doesn’t care because he’s a redneck asshole. I cut field tobacco until noon and then Bobcat comes to get me. He tells me Chuck has been bitching all morning and wants to shit can me.
We use pitchforks to load up brown heads of cabbage that they can use for relish at Oxford. The sun is crazy hot and I take my T-shirt off and put it in my back pocket. Bob has a water jug in the Chevy and he gets it for me. We stand there for a minute. There are bugs flying into my ears and eyes and nose and I shoo them away. Chuck pays cash on Fridays and he makes a big point of holding some of mine back. He tells me I need an attitude adjustment.
I tell him to fuck off.
I tell him about the train.
See, I don’t need your dumbass nigger job, I say.
Oh yah hey, I used to have big dreams too, kid. He laughs when he says it.
He adjusts his balls and laughs and spits over his shoulder and gives us a six-pack of Budweiser and tells us not to drink it all in one place. Bobcat has his mom’s T-bird and we drive around listening to Billy Squire until he has to get it back so she can get to the Shed on time. He says that Philo Reno gave his mom a black eye last time she was late. He drops me at the common exactly when there’s a train running north. Bob waves and pulls away and I stand in the middle of the street. Brake lights and he waits at the crossing. Puffs of white smoke rise like seven little ghosts escaping from the tailpipe. I count and watch them disappear. Sense that he’s watching me in the rearview. That he expects me to do something. Anything. But I’m frozen. Then the train is too fast and loud and it shakes everything in town, even me. And then the red-and-white-painted arms go up and the orange light stops flashing and Bobcat drives off real slow.
I hit her and it feels good. Shelly cries, of course, and I say there’s a first time for everything. My old man laughs until he spits blood when I tell him she’s knocked up.
Holy shit, boy—cough—you done did her this time—cough cough cough spit.
He reminds me that I was an accident too.
That’s always been very clear to me.
Shelly’s too far along to get it taken care of proper and so her parents kick her out of the house when she starts to show. I tell her it’s probably not even mine and she gets sick on my brand-new Dunham steel-toe boots. She goes to live with her aunt with the horse farm in Shelburne Falls.
Bobcat can’t believe my bad luck. We get shitfaced and drive around town and up past the river and over Stillwater Bridge and down Old Hoosac’s Road. He parks in the corn for a minute so we can piss and he gets his brother’s shotgun from the trunk and we sit back in the car and then we shoot out some streetlights and put four holes in the stop sign at 116 and Sawmill Plain. Then there’s a party on Bull Hill and we stand around the bonfire that smells like burning tires. Janet is there with her new boyfriend from the Shutesbury AC. She gives me a sideways look because I never called her like I promised I would. But what the fuck, I never call anybody. Bobcat laughs and I laugh too, even though I don’t mean it as much as he does.
How was your big train ride, she says loud, like trying to get my goat.
All eyes are on me now.
Richard here says he’s going to California, Janet says.
That’s when Shutesbury really sizes me up, a wad of chew under his bottom lip. He lets go a stream of brown saliva that hits the dirt. That boy right there ain’t going nowheres, he says.
You can hear a pin drop for a few heartbeats, then everybody laughs as though I’m the biggest joke in town. Bobcat slaps me on the back. Minutes pass like one of Max Ante’s eighteen-wheelers. Black smoke all around makes it hard to breathe. Whosever bright idea it was to burn Eagle GTs. People start to leave. You can hear engines tur
ning and car radios cooing Bryan Adams and Janet is sitting right up against her new boyfriend in his shiny new GMC and they are trying to pass, if I’d just get out of the way. Vehicles line up behind him and he shines his brights on me and punches his horn and I just stand there and close my eyes. Bobcat is trying to say something but I can barely hear him. Shelly called from a payphone the other night to tell me it’s a boy and she’s going to name him after me, which is some fucked-up shit. As far as I’m concerned, my name is just a series of little white scars on her arm.
Somewhere behind me a train whistle blows, long and low. A farm dog answers the train and then a second dog joins in. They sing out like that for a long time. And when their voices fade away and I open my eyes I’m all alone, and it’s quiet as a dream.
SOMETIMES THERE’S GOD
The old man has a stroke some weeks after Harlan Bovet’s mother goes missing. Harlan hates his father even more now that he’s a fucking invalid. The emotion was already there, but deep and buried, and now it has bubbled to the surface. He visits because it’s a pleasure to watch him die. There’s a Puerto Rican girlfriend from the old man’s past who is nice enough and cleans him up when he shits his pants, which is all the time, as far as Harlan can tell. Her name is Lila. She waits tables at the Howard Johnson’s by the Greenfield rotary, and she suddenly reappeared when Harlan’s mother vanished. She wheels the old man around the house with his oxygen tanks and takes over Harlan’s old bedroom. There’s a stray cat living in the room next to the garage where Harlan crashes sometimes when Annabelle throws him out. His old man doesn’t recognize Harlan. Lila uses a paper towel to wipe spittle from his chin.
How is he, Harlan says.
Good days and bad days.
All right.
Mostly like this, she says.
I don’t know how you do it.
Some days I don’t either.
I hear how he talks to you.
Yeah, and that’s on the good days.