did to get by, what gave him all that free time, but it's not the kind of thing you ask, once the first hints get ignored, right?
They got pretty tight over the next month or six weeks.
One afternoon, almost night really, they'd had five, six beers by then, he guessed, and the after-work crowd had started drifting in, Hollis's phone went off. He laughed at all of them reaching for their phones, then realized it was his and skipped outside to answer. Came back in time to buy the next round, and along about the third sip maybe, Hollis asked if by any chance he might be free the next couple days and up to picking up a nice chunk of change. Naturally he asked for doing what. His man had just canceled on him, Hollis said. He had a pickup to make, and sure could use the company. Nothing to it. And it paid three hundred clear.
So he said yes and found himself in this godforsaken place, no offense intended.
Things started going wrong from the first. Their flight was delayed, the woman across the aisle puked in her plastic tray of beef tips, some kid kept kicking the back of his seat. The first rental car stalled out two miles from the airport in Memphis. They had to call, wait over an hour, then take whatever was available, which turned out to be this clunky van that pulled hard to the right.
He didn't know what Hollis's intentions were, he was looking for someone, he knew that—then for something he couldn't find. By the time they got to the first house, where the old lady was, he was getting crazy, tearing up everything, hitting her—just once, but it didn't take much. It was like you could see that kid on the playground coming out of him all over again, you know? And it kept on getting worse. At the second place, he watched the woman while Hollis went through the house getting angrier all the time. It was when he realized Hollis planned on taking the woman that he got . . . not scared, but. . . sick. Physically ill. Heart pounding, skin crawling. Like he was going out of his body, leaving it behind.
He was in the backseat and he kept asking Hollis to stop this, take her back, this was just flat-out crazy, and Hollis kept telling him to shut up. At one point, scooting forward in the seat, he kicked the woman's purse, which was on the floor by him. Something heavy in there. He took it out, told Hollis to stop the car, and when Hollis laughed, he shot him.
He figured there had to be a farmhouse or something somewhere, he'd carry him there and get help if he was still alive, but there wasn't. And he couldn't. He was going to call, get help for the woman too, but when Hollis died, he just got scared, really scared.
Hollis had made him memorize that phone number and name, in case anything happened to him. To Hollis, that is. He was just supposed to call, say where they were, nothing more.
And that was it. He stopped talking and sat looking down at the table, lost in thoughts of Brooklyn and the past, maybe thinking how far away that past seemed now, or maybe just used up, empty. I stopped the tape. The light outside was muted, tentative. I could hear wind coming down Main Street, the shake of roofs, the shudder of doors and windows. I smelled dust, and rain. And I felt all about me the sadness of endings.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MUCH OF THE REST of the story, we got from Milly two days later up in Memphis, what she'd pieced together from Troy's and Hollis's jagged conversation. She was propped up in bed, leg in traction, tubes running out of her chest into a Pleurovac, right arm in a cast. One or another caretaker, a nurse, an aide, had brushed her hair on the right, the left side having been shaved and stitched, and (at Milly's request?) put on blush and lipstick, unsettling against the bruises and wormy scars. She looked half little girl's doll, half ghoul.
It was all about something Billy'd got messed up in. Something he'd stolen, or found, or was holding, she still didn't know. Didn't know where either, if it was here before
They got pretty tight over the next month or six weeks.
One afternoon, almost night really, they'd had five, six beers by then, he guessed, and the after-work crowd had started drifting in, Hollis's phone went off. He laughed at all of them reaching for their phones, then realized it was his and skipped outside to answer. Came back in time to buy the next round, and along about the third sip maybe, Hollis asked if by any chance he might be free the next couple days and up to picking up a nice chunk of change. Naturally he asked for doing what. His man had just canceled on him, Hollis said. He had a pickup to make, and sure could use the company. Nothing to it. And it paid three hundred clear.
So he said yes and found himself in this godforsaken place, no offense intended.
Things started going wrong from the first. Their flight was delayed, the woman across the aisle puked in her plastic tray of beef tips, some kid kept kicking the back of his seat. The first rental car stalled out two miles from the airport in Memphis. They had to call, wait over an hour, then take whatever was available, which turned out to be this clunky van that pulled hard to the right.
He didn't know what Hollis's intentions were, he was looking for someone, he knew that—then for something he couldn't find. By the time they got to the first house, where the old lady was, he was getting crazy, tearing up everything, hitting her—just once, but it didn't take much. It was like you could see that kid on the playground coming out of him all over again, you know? And it kept on getting worse. At the second place, he watched the woman while Hollis went through the house getting angrier all the time. It was when he realized Hollis planned on taking the woman that he got . . . not scared, but. . . sick. Physically ill. Heart pounding, skin crawling. Like he was going out of his body, leaving it behind.
He was in the backseat and he kept asking Hollis to stop this, take her back, this was just flat-out crazy, and Hollis kept telling him to shut up. At one point, scooting forward in the seat, he kicked the woman's purse, which was on the floor by him. Something heavy in there. He took it out, told Hollis to stop the car, and when Hollis laughed, he shot him.
He figured there had to be a farmhouse or something somewhere, he'd carry him there and get help if he was still alive, but there wasn't. And he couldn't. He was going to call, get help for the woman too, but when Hollis died, he just got scared, really scared.
Hollis had made him memorize that phone number and name, in case anything happened to him. To Hollis, that is. He was just supposed to call, say where they were, nothing more.
And that was it. He stopped talking and sat looking down at the table, lost in thoughts of Brooklyn and the past, maybe thinking how far away that past seemed now, or maybe just used up, empty. I stopped the tape. The light outside was muted, tentative. I could hear wind coming down Main Street, the shake of roofs, the shudder of doors and windows. I smelled dust, and rain. And I felt all about me the sadness of endings.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MUCH OF THE REST of the story, we got from Milly two days later up in Memphis, what she'd pieced together from Troy's and Hollis's jagged conversation. She was propped up in bed, leg in traction, tubes running out of her chest into a Pleurovac, right arm in a cast. One or another caretaker, a nurse, an aide, had brushed her hair on the right, the left side having been shaved and stitched, and (at Milly's request?) put on blush and lipstick, unsettling against the bruises and wormy scars. She looked half little girl's doll, half ghoul.
It was all about something Billy'd got messed up in. Something he'd stolen, or found, or was holding, she still didn't know. Didn't know where either, if it was here before
Similar Books
