Settright Road

by Jon Boilard

  He looks around to make sure nobody’s being nosy.

  Keep your trap shut about this, he says.

  Fuck you.

  Sonny can’t believe how disrespectful she still is. He pulls his leg back to give her a good one in the rib cage and she balls up, and lucky for her he changes his mind at the last second.

  You bring it on yourself with that mouth of yours, he says.

  He gets two beers from a cooler in the back of the El Camino and pops them open and offers one to her. She won’t even look at him. He drinks his and then he drinks hers too. He looks at her again. Mary looks up from what is now a sitting position and keeps quiet.

  See, now that’s better, he says.

  Mary sniffles.

  Sometimes you just got to know when to shut the hell up, girl.

  Sonny puts seven ice cubes from the cooler in the Ziploc bag he’d used for coke and he scoops Mary up off the street. She makes him so angry sometimes. The way she laughs at him isn’t like he’s in on the joke at all and that’s almost always what pushes him over the edge.

  You just need to check yourself, is all.

  She looks at him this time and stays looking at him for a long time. She half smiles.

  Fuck you, she says.

  But he does love her spunk. She’s a little spitfire. You’re going to be all right, he says.

  She’s in a certain amount of pain and he hates to see that but he also knows deep in his heart that there are some hard lessons that have to be taught. He tells her about these lessons and how it’s good for her in the long run. She moans, puts her head on him.

  It’s about respect and it’s about knowing your place.

  She nods her head up and down and he strokes her dark hair.

  I hate when you make me get like that, he says. When you make me do like that.

  I’m sorry, she says.

  I don’t know why you do that, he says.

  She apologizes again and he cradles her just like he might a baby or a small child and she wonders if he’ll be a good daddy someday.

  Spider is connected. That’s what Sonny says when he meets Harlan at the Bloody Brook. No shit, Sherlock, Harlan says back. Sonny is thinking maybe he can help with the Greek. But the truth of the matter is Sonny has troubles of his own where he could use a boost. In debt up to his eyeballs. There were some ventures that hadn’t proved as successful as he had hoped. The comic book store. The sandwich place. The coffee shop in Greenfield. He always has good ideas and he has balls enough to get things going but his problem is that he isn’t a finisher. He’s had a good run on the horses, though, and he plays poker at the Polish Club most Friday nights and he has the backwoods fight scene working pretty good. But he never gets his head above water.

  Sonny meets with Spider. He doesn’t bring Harlan along because he’s being such a wet blanket about the whole damn thing. They drink coffee at the pharmacy.

  You play, Spider says, indicating the chessboard on a nearby table, and when Sonny says he doesn’t Spider asks why not.

  I don’t know. I’m too impatient, I guess.

  It’s a wonderful game, Spider tells him. Not unlike fighting.

  But it’s so fucking boring.

  It’s strategy. For both, it’s strategy that wins.

  Sonny thinks he’s crazy but he doesn’t mind crazy much. Spider explains that there are serious consequences if they back out now. Once the ball is rolling and expectations are set.

  Got it, Sonny says.

  There’s lots of details, Spider says.

  Sonny is happy and relieved to not have to worry about the details.

  Harlan is nowhere to be found. Sonny checks his old man’s house and the Conway Inn and Mike’s Westview, where he likes to go sometimes when it isn’t too crowded with all the damn college kids. He even takes a ride into Turners Falls to see if he’s with Annabelle.

  Why would he be here, she says.

  I don’t know, Sonny says. Why fucking not.

  Annabelle’s making coffee and invites him in for some. He follows her to the kitchen. She isn’t wearing much, just an old T-shirt and a pair of pink cotton underpants that are going up her butt. She uses a finger to pick them out while she pours him a cup with the other hand and he watches and she catches him looking. She smiles at him, and Sonny sure knows what she’s thinking, what she’s up to here, and that is simply out of the question. Not that he would mind. To her it would be a sweet form of revenge perhaps, but to him it would be the same as suicide.

  Well, she says. He doesn’t stay here anymore.

  That’s what I heard.

  She looks at him. What else did you hear.

  Her voice has turned bitter and he knows he has to walk on those eggshells now. Just that you were taking a break.

  My ass, she says. That motherfucker is two-timing me.

  Sonny laughs and the steam of the coffee soothes the skin of his face where he shaved.

  What’s funny, Annabelle says.

  He shakes his head at himself for being so stupid. Nothing, he says. Nothing’s funny. He’s nuts about you is all.

  Well, she says. He has a different way of showing it.

  Yeah, you know how he is.

  They drink their coffees and she stands even closer to him now.

  Look at me, she says.

  It takes everything in him to not look at her.

  What are you scared of, she says. She puts her empty cup down and stands right up against him. She runs her hand up his leg and she can feel how excited he is. Maybe scared’s not the word, she says.

  Sonny finishes his drink and gently pushes her away from him but she holds his arm.

  Come on, Sonny, she says. I see how you look at me.

  Looking’s one thing, he says.

  She takes his hand and places it on her and she pushes her pelvic bone against him.

  Are we gone to do this, she says, or what.

  He keeps his hand there for a little while. Yeah, he sure as shit knows what she’s up to here. He’s tempted but he considers the consequences and whether or not it would be worth it. He’s on the fence when lucky for him the phone rings and breaks him out of her trance.

  Annabelle goes to the phone.

  Yeah hello, she says.

  Sonny puts his mug on the counter.

  Oh hey, she says. The fuck you want. Then she pauses. Yeah, he’s here right now, looking for you as a matter of fact, she says, fake smiling at Sonny. We were just having a nice chat, she adds before handing Sonny the phone.

  Sonny takes the call in the living room so she can’t listen. Harlan wants to hook up for a beer. He doesn’t sound pissed but something is definitely wrong. He doesn’t even ask what Sonny is doing at Annabelle’s.

  How’d you know I was here.

  Lila said you came by and were headed there next. He says, Just meet me at the Inn, and hangs up.

  Sonny hands the phone back to Annabelle, who snatches it from him and slams it back into the cradle. She puts her hands on her hips and cocks one of them to the side. Well, she says.

  Well what.

  What did that motherfucker want.

  Just looking for me, Sonny says. We’re gone to get a beer.

  He didn’t say nothing about me.

  Nope, he says. What’s there to say.

  That no-good prick, she says. So you’re gone to see him now.

  Yeah, I’m gone.

  Then let him smell me on you, she thinks, flipping hair out of her face and giving him the puppy-dog eyes. He sees it coming from a long mile away. She peels off her shirt over her head and she’s not wearing any kind of bra.

  Sonny thanks her for the coffee and tries to slide past her to the front door. She follows him and even grabs hold of his collar, and he tries to duck and squirm away.

  He really does try.

  Harlan is waiting for Sonny out in front of the Conway Inn, having a smoke. What took you, he says.

  That girl of yours.

  What abou
t her.

  She’s a real pistol is all.

  They go inside the bar. Sonny considers telling Harlan what happened back there in Turners but he can’t see any good coming from it. Except if he doesn’t say shit now, Annabelle might try to turn it around on him and make it look bad so Harlan would side with her. In that case it would be better to come clean up front, he figures. But he doesn’t think she’ll do that. And even though Sonny has never given Harlan any reason to mistrust him, he decides then and there to clam up about the whole thing. He’ll tell the whole truth later if it comes down to that.

  Did she make a run at you, Harlan says.

  Sonny swallows some beer wrong and Harlan slaps him on the back. Jesus, Sonny says. What’d you say.

  That’s her thing when she’s pissed at me, Harlan says. Then she uses it to get at me, you know.

  I hope you know I’d never.

  I know, Harlan says. But she’s got me all twisted.

  Sonny fingers the bowl of stale nuts and pretzels.

  The rain is coming down so hard that it’s also going up. Sonny is drunk now and he watches Harlan fumble with his bike behind the bar. It’s no use. He’s in no condition to ride anyhow. But there’s no talking to Harlan sometimes and Sonny stands there and watches him and eventually Harlan curses and gives up just as a Cadillac edges alongside them. The window comes down a crack and it’s Spider inside. He has a couple black girls with him, probably from Holyoke, and a bottle of brown booze in his clutch. He opens the door and Sonny and Harlan get in. It’s warm and dry and the stereo is playing some kind of jazzy shit.

  My two friends, Spider says. We’re looking for you.

  The girls giggle. They’re all over Spider and it’s clear he has agreed to pay them.

  So this is how you train for a fight, he says.

  Harlan looks at Spider and he looks at each of the girls and he looks at Sonny. Shit, he says.

  What you mean.

  What I mean is shit, Harlan says.

  Sonny laughs. The girls giggle. Spider says something to the girls and they laugh at whatever it is. The driver laughs too and then parks across the street. Harlan pushes against the door, gets out of the car.

  Let’s have a little party together, Spider says.

  Sonny follows Harlan into the rain and stands in front of him. Come on, Sonny says. Just a few more drinks.

  I don’t like it, Harlan says. Don’t like that guy.

  Come on.

  Harlan sways. He’s having a hard time keeping his balance and Sonny helps him.

  Shit, I haven’t seen you this bad in I don’t know how long. He steers Harlan to the front door of the Inn and Spider and the girls follow them back inside. They sit at a round table and Sonny lets Harlan fall asleep with his head on it. Spider gets one of the girls to sit with Sonny and rub his leg. Her warm tongue darts in and out of his ear like a hummingbird.

  Maybe it’s better your friend is drunk, Spider says.

  Sonny looks at Harlan.

  You and me, we share the pussy tonight, he says.

  Sonny raises his glass and there is a funky foursome making its way slowly to the stage. They are old and white-haired but once they start playing rock and roll it doesn’t much matter. Spider dances. He twirls his whore around the floor and she throws her head back and laughs like a debutante. Sonny dances with his girl too and when he sits back down Harlan is long fucking gone. Sonny looks at the driver.

  Where’d he go, he says.

  The driver ignores him and stares straight ahead.

  Where the fuck is he.

  Spider barks at the driver and gets a terse response. Then he turns and faces Sonny and he smiles but not nice.

  Your friend, he left, he says. Now it’s just us.

  Sonny finds Harlan at his father’s house. They are both hung and Harlan is lying on the bed and Sonny is on the floor. Lila is making a pot of coffee, says they smell like a whiskey mill.

  Is there even a whiskey mill anymore, Sonny says.

  I guess there is.

  Where they actually make the whiskey, Sonny says. At a mill.

  That’s the official term, Lila says.

  Shit, Harlan says. Who the fuck cares.

  Well, she said it like she knew what she was talking about.

  People say all kinds of things with authority.

  Sonny looks away. Where’d you end up last night, he says.

  Here.

  Was the ride all right.

  I don’t know, Harlan says. I woke up and I was here.

  When did you leave.

  I don’t remember leaving anywhere.

  We are at the Inn dancing and then you were gone.

  Dancing, Harlan says. I don’t dance.

  Not you, Sonny says. Me and Spider and them spades.

  Harlan doesn’t remember any of it. He’d had one of his spells. He doesn’t remember seeing Spider. Sonny laughs and Lila comes back with two cups of coffee with milk.

  Here you go, boys.

  Thanks, Lila.

  Yeah, thanks.

  She leans against the doorframe and watches them. Maybe we can talk later, she says to Harlan.

  Sure, Harlan says. What about.

  Your father.

  What about him.

  Let’s do it later, she says. If that’s okay.

  Sonny gets up. I can leave if you want, he says.

  No that’s okay, Lila says. You boys rest.

  Lila goes back up to the house. Sonny sits down.

  Harlan closes his eyes and squeezes them. There’s no aspirin anywhere. The ghost of the old man starts screaming upstairs and there’s some light leaking through the garage and into the room where Lila left the door open a little bit, dust particles floating in the beam and looking almost religious. Harlan starts to snore and Sonny removes the mug from his hand so he won’t spill hot coffee on himself. He decides to wait until Harlan wakes up and then he’ll tell him the fight is scheduled for Tuesday next.

  When he hears Annabelle’s voice, Harlan thinks he’s dreaming.

  What the fuck happened, she says.

  There it is again. Harlan opens his eyes. Annabelle is crying.

  Look at you, she says.

  He tries to speak but something is wrong with his mouth. He sits up and looks around. It’s Annabelle’s apartment. Everything is all busted up, blood and pieces of broken glass and furniture everywhere. A kitchen knife with a busted blade on the floor nearby.

  What the fuck did you do, she says.

  His memory is coming back. It’s not a dream. Tuesday night, after he beat Spider’s guys, both of them, he came to get Annabelle and that Greek fuck was in her apartment and they both started yelling and throwing hands. That’s all he can remember before the fog settles back in.

  I think he’s dead, Annabelle says. We got to get out of here.

  She helps him stand. His left leg doesn’t work much so he drags it along. Annabelle’s Z28 is out front and she puts him in the backseat and he lies down to rest because he’s so tired. The car starts after two or three tries and he can smell the gas because she almost flooded it.

  Don’t pump the gas so much, he says.

  What the fuck, she says.

  You got the money.

  Yeah. Sonny gave it to me.

  Good. It’s for you.

  Jesus. I think he stabbed you in a couple places.

  You can go somewhere nice with that much cash.

  Oh, baby. Don’t talk like that.

  Like what.

  There’s no place nice without you.

  He feels along his upper thigh and it seems she’s right about him being stabbed. A homemade bandage is in place, an old T-shirt. Some fucking girl, he thinks. But she’s driving too fast so he tells her slow down because it doesn’t matter now. None of it does. She’s talking, but her voice is slipping away from him. He tries to curl up into a ball in his seat but the pain is finally too much, where he got stuck in the gut too, and so he closes his eyes. He
pictures a simple farmhouse on maybe twenty acres, a horse or two, and a big red barn.

  FURTHER MORE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  •A Conversation with Jon Boilard

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  “The characters in these stories have been haunting me for years. That’s why I wrote them down.”

  READ ON

  •Bonus Story

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jon Boilard was born and raised in Western Massachusetts, and he has been living in Northern California since 1986. His award-winning short stories have appeared in some of the finest literary journals in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia.

  Jon’s debut short story collection, Settright Road (Dzanc Books, 2017), is preceded by two novels, The Castaway Lounge (Dzanc Books, 2015) and A River Closely Watched (MacAdam Cage, 2012). ARCW was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. He has participated in the Cork International Short Story Festival in Cork, Ireland, the Wroclaw Short Story Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, and LitQuake in San Francisco, California.

  Jon currently resides in the Sunset District of San Francisco with his wife and two daughters.

  Why do you write?

  I write because I have to write. It’s just how I make sense of the world, and how I sort through my own personal shit. Writing fiction to me is certainly not a hobby and it’s not a part-time job, even though I treat it that way in terms of how I set aside time and prepare myself for a session. And it’s not a passion either—more along the lines of a compulsion. Quite frankly, if I don’t write for a few days, my head gets all fucked up. I simply must write. I imagine it’s cheaper than therapy.

  You tend to write stories that are full of dark characters and scenes. Do you ever become so engulfed in that world that you struggle to re-emerge into your own?

  That happens for sure when I’m working on a story. Because I do tend to write about these dark characters, or at least people who are in trouble or whose souls are in danger—sometimes it’s good people in bad situations. And it is easy for me to get lost in that world. I was talking to creative writing students at the international short story festival in Wroclaw, Poland, just last year, and I compared the process to what I imagine actors go through when they get into character, how challenging it must be to then slip out of character and go back to normal life. Daniel Day-Lewis comes to mind—how he throws himself into his craft and basically becomes the character he’s portraying. That takes a physical and mental toll, slipping into and out of those dark places.