End of the Road Page 18

  “Don’t you say a goddamn thing, Edith May, or I swear I’ll beat you till you scream.”

  Edith kept laughing. Hilda raised a hand for another round of whiskey and the two women sat glaring and snickering respectively until the band returned.

  The trio came out again and took their places beneath the two dim stage lights and began once more to play. Almost immediately Hilda was caught up and taken away again, her spirits lifted and floating upon the bubbling rhapsody of a “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” as if she were being buoyed by a cloud. She’d heard the song a million times before, a thousand million, but never like this.

  His hands moved in a blur, and the picks on his fingertips were silver streaks sparking hypnotically beneath those two lights suspended above him as if the sun and moon had sent surrogates to pay tribute and to watch him play. No one had ever been so beautiful as him, of this Hilda was sure, and a need for him began to fill her like grain pouring into a bloating gunny sack, swelling her and threatening to burst her at the seams. She nearly couldn’t take it, it swelled so much inside.

  “I got to meet that feller,” she said, leaning across the table to Edith. “I just got to.”

  “So go and meet him then.”

  “I can’t just go up to him like I was some child in heat.”

  Edith shook her head and laughed again.

  Hilda spat, this time with perfect accuracy. “Goddamn it, Edith, you’re supposed to be my friend.”

  “Well, what am I gonna do? Go and do it for you? ‘Say Mister, you see my friend over there frog-eyeing the hell out of you? She wants to know if you’ll come buy her a drink.’” Edith wrinkled up her face like as if she’d just sucked a lime. “Come on, now. We ain’t fifteen no more.”

  Hilda leaned back and drew in a long breath. The chair creaked and groaned beneath her weight. Edith was right. She had to do it herself. She was acting like a silly girl. She spat again, and got up and went to the bathroom to fix herself up.

  Standing before the mirror she stared at her reflection, studied the lines of her face in ways she hadn’t done since Eljin died nearly thirty years ago, studied herself as a woman. The pretty blue eyes Eljin had loved so much were still blue enough. Lilac blue, he told her once. She’d laughed and had to tell him Lilacs weren’t blue. He’d laughed too. Then he kissed her and brought her Lilacs every anniversary for eleven years. Nobody brought her Lilacs anymore. And nobody kissed her. She grunted and spat into the sink.

  “Shit.”

  She pushed a strand of coarse gray hair off her broad forehead and tucked it behind her ear. Had that many years gone by? She wished she had some makeup or something, not that she’d ever been much good putting that stuff on.

  She stepped back and straightened her dress. Once white with a busy floral print, it was mostly faded to gray now, the flowers long since past the springtime brilliance of younger days. Right dingy, she figured. Still, she pulled it down, straightening it round her thick hips and lining up the front to best amplify her titanic bosom. She stared at herself and spat again. Hope he likes big women.

  She returned to her seat across from Edith. “Well, how do I look?”

  “Same as when you went in.”

  Hilda spat again.

  They sat and watched the band for another half hour, Hilda getting more and more nervous as the minutes went by. By the time the band stopped, Hilda was so agitated that her stomach made noise: one long growl, traversing the winding innards buried beneath the layer of gravy-grown belly fat, rumbled loud enough for Edith to hear from across the table and despite the low murmur of the modest crowd.

  Hilda spat.

  “Well,” said Edith. “There he is at the bar. You gonna go talk to him or what?”

  “Shit.”

  Edith laughed. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

  Hilda ran her fingers down the corners of her mouth as if stroking a beard. “I’m fixin’ too. Just figuring what I’m gonna say.”

  “Start with ‘hello’ and maybe ‘your music is great,’ see where that gets you.”

  Hilda spat again.

  “You sure I look alright?”

  “You look fine. Go already.”

  Hilda worked the wad of Red Man in her cheek furiously with her molars, grinding juice out of it like a chewed-on oil can. She sent another jet of brown through the yawning brass mouth of the spittoon. “I can’t do it.”

  Edith watched her for a time, her jaw moving back and forth, lips pursed and her left eye squinting some. Wasn’t much she could say.

  The house band came on to replace the banjo man and his group. Hilda slumped in her chair pushing a packet of sugar around the table with a thick forefinger.

  Every so often she’d look up and watch the banjo man visiting with patrons at the bar or bobbing to the sounds of the local house band. She thought it was noble and beautiful that a man so capable of magic like he was could appreciate the sounds of these homegrown boys. Showed his makings on the inside. Genuine.

  She spat and went back to pushing the sugar packet around.

  When the house band took its first break, Anders Jackson, a great hulk of a man, a steer wrestler and the guitar player for the local group, headed for the bar, moving through the sparse crowd with too wide smiles and touching frequently the wide black hat he wore, making sure it was pressed down tight and the secret of an encroaching bald spot only his to keep. He ordered a bottle and commenced to drinking heavily.

  Hilda watched Anders settle in to his bottle at the bar. Having taught him when he was in third grade, she’d known then what kind of man he’d grow up to be. She watched him eyeballing the elegant banjo man with jealousy in his eyes. Hilda shook her head and, with a glance at Edith, pointed with her chin.

  Edith saw the inevitable shaping up too, and she sighed in that exasperated way people do when some things can’t be helped.

  Anders took the bottle with him back onstage and nursed it steadily over the course of the band’s next set, tilting it up between songs and chugging it while the two dim stage lights reflected off the glass and the bubbles rose noisily inside, the gurgling broadcast over the microphone and garnering chuckles from the crowd. Some of them anyway. By the time the band’s next break came, Anders was wobbling some.

  He put the empty bottle back on the bar and ordered another. He was really eyeballing the banjo man this time. Even the banjo man noticed it and tried to look away, which of course pulled Anders to him like the scent of chickens draws a fox.

  “What you looking at banjo man?” Anders said in a voice that was thick with whiskey and misshapen with a snarl.

  The banjo man, unable to ignore the brute before him, was forced to look up. Hilda could tell he was intimidated as hell. Anders leaned over him and ground him down with his gaze, causing him to wilt like a flower under an evil heat.

  Hilda felt heat rising of her own. Edith reached a hand out and tried to hold her back. “No,” she said, but she was too late.

  The sound of Hilda’s chair hitting the wall and tumbling to the floor made both Anders and the banjo man look toward her. She stormed across the room and grabbed Anders by the shirt front, spinning him to face her and shoving his back against the bar. “Anders Jackson, if you don’t stop right goddamn now I will beat you till you bleed. You hear me, boy?”

  Ander’s eyes went wide. Fury flared in his face and his body swelled with ignited rage.

  But somehow Hilda swelled more. She gripped him tight, his shirt wadding and popping a button in the vice of her powerful fist. She leaned into him, her eyes narrow and earnest, and she pinned him with a look of such wrath that his mouth fell open even as he tried to find the nerve to strike.

  “Do it,” she said, eyes narrow as she pushed her face forward right at him. “Do it!”

  He seemed to teeter, a great boulder wobbling on the brink of some terrible fall. But he settled back on his heels, glaring at her with hatred before pushing past her and out of the bar with a “Fuck you�
� for everyone in the room.

  A few moments passed in hushed silence, but finally the Busted Jug’s quiet clamor returned to normal again. Hilda turned to face the banjo man. At least she was up here now.

  But she could see his shame. It blossomed red on his face like an opening rose of self-reproach, the dawning recognition of a man whose masculinity is lost. She saw it and watched it spread all the way to his ears, saw it and realized with horror what she had done.

  “No, no,” she started to say, and her words clamored for grip. Embarrassment filled him, drooped him at the shoulders and the mouth like a tent that’s lost its poles. He mumbled something, faked a smile, limp and flitting, then left through the same door Anders had, leaving her to turn and watch him go. She followed him with her eyes all the way out the door, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps, attempts to fill lungs that were flooding with helplessness instead. How could she be so stupid?

  When the door closed behind the banjo man, she turned towards the wall, shaking, her whole body one great tremor rising. She saw the jukebox sitting there, shining and blinking its stupid lights, filled with mockery and its stacks of musical ghosts. She kicked it in. Kicked in the whole front of that juke box with a heavy booted foot, her leg pumping into it like a diesel piston and sending bits of shattered plastic and paint chips skittering across the floor. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she yelled, and kept yelling until her rage finally turned to acid tears and the acceptance of a lonely truth.

  The other patrons could only stand and watch. Even Edith did not dare to intervene.

  Eventually Hilda stopped kicking and stood staring blankly at the wall again, fighting for calm. She closed her eyes and willed the tears to stop. Once they had, she wiped them from her cheeks with the backs of her hands.

  “Fuck it,” she said. Then she went away.

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  About the author:

  John Daulton is a novelist best known for his bestselling science fiction and fantasy series The Galactic Mage, but he does, from time to time, make forays into literary fiction and short stories like he has done with “Hilda’s Song.” For more information or to find his other work, visit his website at http://DaultonBooks.com.

  Chapter 24

  Sinners in Church

  By Kathleen Steed

  Bert, Jerald and Chuck tried to stay awake through the service. Chuck told them they would get free food when it was over and the house across the street sold marijuana after church. Besides he wanted them to get a look at the gold cross. The pastor was slamming his fist on the wooden podium where he stood to preach.

  “Give it up! God knows what you are thinking. He knows what you are planning.”

  Bert was startled. It was okay if God knew what they were going to do. God wasn’t going to come all the way down to Earth for the likes of them. What was worrying Bert was how the pastor found out about their plans?

  He whispered to Jerald, “How did he find out?”

  “What? God? How stupid are you?” Jerald whispered back.

  “Not God. That freaking pastor.”

  Chuck leaned over and gave Bert a look and kind of growled at him softly.

  Chuck and his friends were sixteen years old. Chuck wore nice clothes and kept his hair cut because his father demanded it. The other two looked like they’d worn their jeans and t-shirts to bed the night before. Jerald had pink highlights in his unwashed hair. Bert’s hair hung down unevenly over his ears. The group started smoking pot in middle school. There was a group of old spinsters sitting in front of them. One with very curly gray hair turned to give the boys a frown. They sat back and got quiet. She turned back to listen to the sermon. They sang the last hymn and the service was over. The boys avoided the pastor and snuck down the stairs to the fellowship hall for the free food. They got a paper plate and filled it with snacks and tiny sandwiches. Huddled together in a corner they smiled and nodded at anyone who said hello to them. Chuck was the son of the Sunday school superintendent. After a bit a young black man who was smiling and talking with everyone seated in the fellowship hall put his jacket on and left saying ‘see you next week’ to everyone.

  Chuck made sure his parents were engaged in conversation and the boys snuck out of the church quietly. They met the young black man across the street and handed him fifty bucks. They took their bag of weed and crossed back over to hide behind the parsonage where the furnace oil tank was located. They rolled a joint and each took a hit. They passed the joint around until it was consumed.

  “You guys know the pastor figured out our plan?” said Bert.

  “You ass. He don’t know nothing,” said Jerald.

  “What the hell are you talking about Bert?” asked Chuck.

  “He heard the pastor talking about God knowing what people are thinking and this idiot thought he meant us,” said Jerald.

  Chuck laughed.

  “Bert you are so dumb. Dumb Bert, Dumb Bert, Dumb Butt,” said Jerald.

  Bert took a swing at Jerald, tripped and fell down on the ground.

  “What are you boys doing?” It was Chuck’s father who was approaching from around the church side of the parsonage. Chuck was holding the bag of weed and quickly stuffed it behind the oil tank next to the parsonage.

  “Nothing sir. We’re just talking,” said Chuck.

  “Your mother is waiting at the car. You remember she wants to go eat with the pastor and his family at that pancake place she likes so much, right?”

  “We’re coming now,” said Chuck.

  The three of them followed Chuck’s dad leaving their precious weed behind.

  “Where do you boys want us to drop you off?”

  “My place is good,” said Bert. Jerald nodded.

  The boys were pissed. It was half an hour drive from where they all lived to the church. They had planned on smoking all afternoon. Bert and Jerald got out of the car and watched their friend being driven away.

  “Scott’s?” Jerald suggested to Bert.

  “Yep,” Bert agreed.

  Chuck was good for money and weed but Scott was their source for alcohol and girls. As they walked they each lit up a cigarette. Scott’s house was right behind a strip mall. The trash bins and rats were the view Scott had from his back porch. When Bert and Jerald arrived there were already several people in the house. Teniko was there and she was already trashed at two in the afternoon. She had a friend with her today.

  “Teniko, babe how you doing?” Bert asked as Jerald headed for the beers in the fridge.

  “Bert, come sit with me.”

  She was on a couch with her new friend. She reached up and using both hands grabbed Bert’s neck and dragged him down onto the couch with her. He flopped down between the two girls.

  “Who is your friend?”

  “That is Reeta. Say hi Reeta.”

  “Hi,” said Reeta.

  “I’m Bert.”

  “And I’m Jerald,” said Jerald as he handed a beer to everyone.

  He popped open his own beer and sat on the other side of Reeta taking up the last of the room on the couch. They guzzled the beers and someone somewhere turned on some loud music. More people showed up. Some started dancing. Others were passing out bottles of hard liquor. Jerald grabbed a bottle of rum and took a swig. Tears welled up in his eyes as he swallowed the strong liquor. Reeta took it next and passed it to Bert. Teniko took a swig and passed it back down. They were all drunk now and still looking for more.

  “God I wish we had our weed,” said Bert.

  Teniko was laying her head back against the couch. It looked like she was passed out. Reeta was interested.

  “You have some weed?” Reeta asked Bert.

  “We had some,” replied Jerald.

  “We had to leave it at the church,” said Bert.

  “Well let’s go get it,” said Reeta.

  Reeta had a car. They left Teniko passed out on the couch. It was already getting dark outside. Reeta opened the car with a push of the button on her car key
fob. They wouldn’t all fit in the front so Bert took the back.

  “Which way is it?” asked Reeta.

  “Go out to the highway and turn left. It’s in Danderville.”

  “Oh, that isn’t too far,” Reeta laughed and started the car.

  “I hope the parsonage ghosts ain’t there tonight,” said Bert.

  “That’s just stories. It ain’t true,” said Jerald.

  “What stories?” asked Reeta.

  “It started when some kids disappeared,” continued Bert. “It was three little girls one year a long time ago, back in like 1968. They were at the church with their parents one Sunday morning but when it came time to go home they were gone. They never found them. Then people said they seen them playing around the parsonage at night. Lots of people over the years say they see children playing around the parsonage at night. But nobody is really there.”

  “That’s so sad. I wonder what happened to them,” said Reeta.

  “Then there is what happened two years ago,” said Bert.

  “He just ran away is all,” said Jerald.

  “Who?” asked Reeta.

  “Jimmy. He was kind of a slow kid. People made fun of him a lot. The pastor told people to leave him alone but the one that bothered him the most was the pastor’s son William. William didn’t care what the pastor said; he messed with Jimmy all the time.”

  “So what happened to Jimmy?” asked Reeta.

  “They found him hanging in the parsonage basement,” said Bert. “But he wasn’t dead. They took him down and took him to the hospital. He just disappeared out of the hospital. His parents went with the pastor to see him and the bed was empty. The nurses never saw him leave. Nobody ever saw him again. He might have come back though.”

  “He couldn’t have done that,” said Jerald.

  “What happened?” asked Reeta. “Oh, and should I turn here?”

  “Yes that’s the turn,” said Jerald.

  “What happened is last year on the same day Jimmy was found hanging in the parsonage basement, William was found hanging in the same exact spot. Only William was dead,” said Bert. “It’s William’s ghost we don’t want to meet. William was a nasty kid and his ghost is just as bad.”