We'll Fly Away

by Bryan Bliss

  “What about him?”

  “All I’m going to do is sleep. You know that.”

  “I could go get the VCR from the apartment,” Luke said, continuing to ignore him. “There’s nothing on.”

  Toby’s voice spiked. “Why don’t you ever fucking listen to me? I don’t need you here. Damn.”

  Luke stopped messing with the television. Leaving Toby right now meant going against every instinct he had. And this had never been a question before. Luke stood there, silent.

  “Look at me,” Toby said, his voice still tense. When Luke turned around, Toby sat up completely, flinching. He rubbed his ribs gingerly as he spoke.

  “It’s going to be fine. I’m just . . .” Toby took a breath and finally met Luke’s eyes. “This shit can’t change anything. You know?”

  “I don’t know what you want me to do,” Luke said.

  “Go to school. Go to the match.”

  Luke reluctantly nodded. “I’ll come back right after it’s over.”

  Toby, exhausted, nodded and then lowered himself back on the air mattress. They stared at the silent television for a few minutes before he was asleep again.

  Luke was watching him when he noticed Annie standing in the doorway. She motioned to the front door and Luke followed her, looking one last time at Toby before he stepped outside.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, closing the door until it was just a crack.

  As Luke was opening his mouth to downplay it, to tell her it wasn’t a problem—that Toby was as tough as he was annoying—Annie leaned over and kissed him. It was awkward, mostly her lips on the side of his mouth. As if she had missed. His entire body froze, and then an explosion of energy shot from his toes to his ears to his stomach. He wasn’t sure if he was going to throw up or kiss her back.

  “I’ll take care of him,” she said. “I promise.”

  He nodded. And still feeling frozen inside—or was it fire?—he grabbed his bag and started sprinting toward the road.

  It was the fastest he’d run in years.

  10

  TOBY woke up confused, calling into the alien apartment. It smelled like Italian food. Or maybe it was burgers. And in the vague darkness, a shape moved. Toby instinctively pushed himself against the wall until he heard a girl’s voice.

  “It’s okay. It’s Annie.”

  Toby was still up against the wall, fighting the impulse to jump off the mattress and sprint out the door. Even if he wanted to talk to Annie, a wave of shame swallowed him whole. And right below that, something new surfaced: a weird fury. Luke shouldn’t have brought him here.

  “I made you some food,” she said.

  Beside her was a paper plate covered in aluminum foil. Toby was still trying to calm down, but Annie stood up and brought him the plate anyway. She was inches from him, looking both embarrassed and unsure of what she should do.

  “Luke went to school, for his match.”

  “I know.”

  Before he knew what he was doing, Toby stood up. Annie took him by the shoulders, gently trying to guide him back down to the bed. How many times had he wished for something like this to happen? But now he shrugged her off. All he wanted to do was get out of there. He was at the door when Annie said his name.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Outside,” he said, hoping the cold air would shock his lungs.

  He fumbled with the lock until she came behind him and let him out. Walking through the door felt like breaking through the water after a long dive to the bottom of a lake. He dropped to his knees and nearly choked on the gulps of air he took in.

  “Are you okay?” Annie asked.

  “I’m fine,” Toby said, sounding so desperate and fragile he could barely stand to hear himself.

  “Are you sure? I don’t want you to get sick or—” Annie stopped herself. “I don’t know. It’s just really cold out here.”

  His mind raced—how long had he been out? What had Luke told her? Probably the highlights. And she’d never be able to erase it, making him forever something to pity. That, more than anything else, brought the sourness to his lips.

  “Just leave me alone,” he said.

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  “No!”

  It was all Toby could come up with. The pale yellow lights of the parking lot were too bright. The ground too hard. And Annie’s voice was worst of all—dripping with a concern Toby had learned to live without. All he wanted to do was lie down and close his eyes until there was nothing left inside him. But he couldn’t, not here. Not with Annie watching him like some kind of wounded puppy.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But you need to come inside, because sitting out here is stupid.”

  She smiled. It was almost enough that Toby wanted to accept the apology. Not to run off—the way he already knew he was going to—but instead to sit on the couch, watching the shitty television until Luke came back. Same as always.

  But he couldn’t.

  It was cold and it didn’t take long for Toby to start shivering. But he couldn’t move fast, so he focused as far ahead on the road as he could see. Everything hurt. His head felt like it had a ditch running through it. He couldn’t open one of his eyes completely. And the stiffness he had first attributed to sleeping on the cold ground now showed itself as pain. Bruises he didn’t remember receiving.

  He walked the road, not even glancing to the trees when he passed the plane, until he came to the long gravel driveway that led back to his trailer. He stood there, staring at the blurry collection of lights. From this distance, the five or six trailers set back in the road looked almost inviting. Of course, the closer you got the more reality came into focus. Everything here was falling apart.

  When he got to the trailer, his stomach jumped. It was anger, he told himself. He forced it to be. Whatever waited behind that door wouldn’t bring another stitch of fear.

  At first he didn’t think anybody was home. The kitchenette’s light was on, shining down on the hot plate that Toby didn’t remember ever using. He relaxed—which he hated because he kept telling himself he wasn’t tense. And then there was a cough from the bedroom.

  “That you?” his dad asked.

  If Toby came across a rabid dog, if it bit him, he wouldn’t stand there and take it. He would run. Wouldn’t ever walk that way again. But here he was, searching for something to do with his hands. Like every time before this.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  His dad stumbled into the living room. Toby’s stomach turned again when he saw the damage he’d done. Jimmy’s eye was black and there was a long cut across his eyebrow. He wanted to feel proud, but he couldn’t muster it. The strange concoction of fear and anxiety pushed into his bones, bled through his skin.

  “You didn’t go to school.”

  “What?”

  They didn’t have a phone and it wasn’t like Jimmy worried about his attendance record. But then he remembered Luke. He would never forget seeing Annie appear on the tree line, the way Luke didn’t even think about it.

  “I don’t need people bothering us,” he said.

  “Nobody’s coming out here,” Toby said.

  “Well, Luke did.” Jimmy paused a full five seconds after he said it. “All I’m saying is, I don’t need anybody with a reason to start sniffing around right now.”

  “It won’t happen again. Don’t worry.”

  And then what? He had nothing left to say. Not: “Hey, Dad, why did you beat the shit out of me earlier?” Or even: “I spent the night in the woods.” It was pointless. And Toby was tired. He sat on the couch and had started peeling off his shoes when Jimmy stopped him.

  “What are you doing?” Jimmy asked. “You owe me a ride to the Deuce.”

  Toby dropped his head. He didn’t know if he could take another beating, physically or in any other way. He threw up his hands and waited as Jimmy retreated to the bedroom, returning with a duffel bag, stuffed full. Jimmy set the bag at the front door and went to pull on a s
hirt and jeans. When he came back, he smelled like cologne and cigarettes.

  “Better late than never,” he said.

  The Deuce was just outside the city limits, not to mention the interest of the city cops, who were more than happy to let the sheriff’s deputies handle the brawls and occasional knife fights that broke out in the parking lot. It was home to bikers and metal concerts and the type of person who couldn’t give a shit about microbrews. Cheap beer ruled, the sort you could drink fast and, later, throw up without regret.

  Toby had been to the Deuce a hundred times. When he was younger, he’d sit at the bar and eat tater tots or grilled cheese while his dad laughed and held court for hours at a time. Back then, he thought it was the greatest place on earth. A place where his dad smiled and laughed and never laid a hand on him. In truth, it wasn’t much: a bar, a recently constructed stage in the corner, ten small tables, and five or six booths against the far walls.

  You couldn’t call it a biker bar anymore, even though that’s how it had gotten its start and there was certainly that population in the room most nights. In recent years, the scene was a weird mix of drunks, derelicts, and the occasional college students who showed up because the risk of getting a knife pulled on you sounded fun. A story to tell friends.

  Toby helped Jimmy carry the duffel bag into the bar, fully intending to turn around and leave, until a voice—female and familiar—rang across the busy room.

  “Oh shit!” It sounded if she had a cigarette between her lips. “I remember when you were knee-high to a grasshopper. Get over here, boy!”

  Val was probably the same age as his dad, but had the look of most of the people in the Deuce. She could be fifty as easily as she was thirty. Her bleached hair had grown out enough that it looked as if she’d dyed just the tips. Skinny, but not in an athletic way. She motioned to Jimmy.

  “Put those in the back.”

  “Roger that, General.”

  Val turned to Toby. Nodded at his face. “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing. I had an accident.”

  Val nodded. “Good boy.”

  It was a test, a kind of perverted brotherhood. The way soldiers and cops and firefighters seemed to have each other’s backs, no matter what. Except this didn’t have anything to do with honor or courage, just silence.

  Val filled a glass with beer and put it in front of Toby. “Take the edge off that eye.”

  Toby stared at the beer. Once he had gotten old enough to see what the Deuce really was, he’d promised himself he would never end up here. Losing his nights to cheap beer and the nameless heavy metal band setting up in the corner. How many times had he and Luke had this exact same discussion?

  He picked up the beer and downed it, fast. It nearly made him throw up, and Val laughed.

  “Slow down there, champ.” She took the glass and, with a wink, filled it back up. “Better nurse this one until your dad’s done.”

  Toby did drink the second one slower. He told himself every sip was the last, that he’d stand up and leave. But when he finished the second glass, he didn’t stop Val from filling it up again.

  Across the bar, the bathroom door opened, and Toby looked. A woman—younger than Val and pretty in the neon bar light—barely noticed Toby as she came up to the bar and asked for a pitcher of beer. It might’ve been the weird lights, or the fact that Toby’s heart was bouncing, but he couldn’t stop staring at her. She was beautiful in a way that was incongruent with the dingy Deuce. As if she had wandered in accidentally.

  She sighed and turned to Toby, smiling.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Toby,” he said. “But my friends call me Toby.”

  “Can I ask you a question, Toby?”

  Val shook her head and started washing glasses behind the bar. Toby was all in. He smiled, nodded. Ready for anything.

  “Of course you can.”

  “Why the fuck are you staring at me?”

  Toby immediately shrank. Val was chuckling as she handed the woman her pitcher. “He’s just a young buck, Lily. Don’t kill him too quick.”

  “Young bucks don’t live long when they stare like this guy,” Lily said, not looking at Toby.

  “I just—” Before Toby could say anything else, Lily walked away to a booth at the back.

  Toby was afraid to turn and look at her, but she was gravitational. When he worked up the courage to glance in her direction, he figured the booth would be full of people—all of them laughing, with Lily at the center. But she was alone, staring at her phone. As if she could feel his eyes on her, her head popped up, and Toby nearly fell off the bar stool trying to turn around.

  “Lily’s a piece of work,” a man said to him. “Don’t worry about it.”

  He wore crisp new blue jeans and an equally new white T-shirt that still had the lines from being folded into its package. Standard prison issue. A present given upon release.

  “I should go,” Toby said, standing up. But the beer was already working against him. He stumbled a step backward, and the man smiled. A single gold tooth glinted briefly. It sent Toby back in time, when his mom was still around. It was her and his dad and another guy drinking beer and playing cards. Disappearing together, still laughing, into the back of their house—they had a house then—leaving Toby alone sometimes for hours.

  “You ain’t got no idea who I am, do you?” the man said.

  Toby didn’t say anything. He glanced over at Lily, still interested only in her phone.

  “You’re Jimmy’s kid?” the man said. Toby didn’t acknowledge the question, and the man laughed. “He do that to your face?”

  “Did somebody do that to yours?” Toby fired back.

  “Shit. You and your old man really are two knobs on the same tree. Biggest smart-ass I know.” The man held out his hand. “You know me. I’m Bo.”

  Toby had heard his father described in any number of ways, but smart-ass was never one of them. Still, Toby knew Bo from the sort of beer-riddled nostalgia that Jimmy sometimes used as a replacement for throwing his fists around. Stories about Jimmy and Bo in high school. Playing baseball together—his father had been one of the best pitchers in the state until he got a taste for raising hell. Bo had gone in on a burglary charge, five, maybe six years before.

  Toby shrugged, ignoring Bo’s hand. Tried to make it all as badass as possible.

  Bo laughed and slapped Toby on the shoulder. “Listen, me, your old man, and Lily . . .” He paused, raised his eyebrows as Toby tensed. “We’re going to drink some beer. Celebrate my release and rehabilitation.”

  Toby shook his head. “I . . .”

  “Shit, when I was your age, I would’ve killed to get a beer any way I could.” Bo called out to Val. “I need a couple more glasses. And besides, where else you going?”

  The question rang in Toby’s head. Not to Luke’s match. This would be the first one he’d missed. He closed his eyes and imagined Luke’s hand being raised in victory for the hundredth time in the last four years. Toby usually sat at the top of the bleachers, giving him the best view of every girl who walked into the gym. Throwing Luke a nod when he looked up to Toby after a win. What would Luke think when he looked up tonight?

  Val handed Bo the glasses and he stood up, pausing and nodding toward Lily. “I promise the claws go away once she’s got a few drinks in her.”

  The bar had been slowly filling with people and, as Bo and Toby walked back to the booth, a terrible Metallica cover band started playing “Ride the Lightning.” They whipped their hair vigorously, hands flying up and down the necks of their guitars. Toby couldn’t decide if playing with such passion for a bunch of drunks was inspiring or depressing.

  When they got to the booth, Lily said, “Did you make sure these glasses were clean?”

  She glanced up and, seeing Toby, leaned her head back.

  “This is Jimmy’s boy,” Bo said, sliding next to Lily and dropping an arm across her shoulders. Toby’s heart sank.

  “Of cou
rse he is,” Lily said, shrugging off Bo’s arm. Without looking at Toby, she said, “Well, are you going to sit down or not?”

  Toby sat on the very edge of the booth, afraid to risk even a look at Lily. Bo laughed as he poured everyone a beer.

  “Shit, Lily. This boy is terrified of you.”

  But it wasn’t terror. The public takedown she’d executed on him, if anything, would embolden Toby—make him like her more. This was an emotion of a different stripe. The kind that sent heat up his neck.

  “Tell him about the time you Tasered that dude in the Carowinds parking lot.” Bo turned to Toby, laughing. “I never saw anything like it. Shit, I don’t even remember why she did it. Just that dude on the ground.”

  Bo pretended to get Tased, shaking the entire booth. Toby took a chance and looked at Lily, hoping she’d fill in the story. When she met his gaze, an invisible current nearly put him on the ground too.

  “He tried some lame-ass pickup line on me,” Lily said.

  Toby smiled, which was admittedly a risk. Lily could be packing a stun gun right now and Toby had no doubt she’d use it. Instead, she reached for her beer and Toby caught the briefest smile cross her lips in return. He was about to say something—“You can knock me out anytime,” perhaps—when Jimmy fell into the booth. Bo drummed the tabletop excitedly and poured a beer. But Lily froze. Nobody but Toby noticed.

  “True friends, right here. Not even going to wait for a man to finish his business before they tie one on,” Jimmy said, shaking his head. When he noticed the glass in front of Toby, he laughed. “Oh shit, are you drunk too?”

  “I wanted to get drunk with you, dickhead.” Bo pulled Jimmy’s neck close to his body in a half-hearted headlock. They wrestled briefly for a second. “But turns out your son’s an apple off that same tree. So now we’re all celebrating!”

  Toby stole another look at Lily. The tension was gone, and she was hiding behind her phone again. He must’ve stared a few seconds too long, because she sighed and dropped the phone.

  “What?”

  Jimmy laughed and grabbed Toby by the shoulders. “Careful with this one, son. Won’t think twice about using your pecker as target practice.”