Authors: Geoff North
June 1982
“I can’t take it anymore, I just can’t
stand him.”
Hugh nodded without saying a word. What
could he say to make her feel better? He knew what Andy Alexander was like.
Everyone in town knew what a dick Cathy’s step-father was. He didn’t earn the
nickname
Andy Asshole
for nothing.
Cathy looked away, out through the passenger
window overlooking a sleepy Braedon at sunset. They’d driven up there a lot in
the last nine months. There was a little path, less than a road, but more than
a trail that led out to an open spot on the north hill. It was a good spot for
young couples to come and park with little fear of being caught, (if being
caught by kids with the same idea in mind posed any kind of threat). “He’s
drinking more than ever now, which is probably a good thing. He’s usually too
drunk nowadays to beat my mom.”
“He got fired from his town dump job, didn’t
he?” Hugh hadn’t wanted to ask, but didn’t know what else to say.
“Yeah,” she said. Her bottom lip quivered. “I
should’ve told you days ago. Sorry. Who gets fired from a shit job like that?
“I guess that explains why he’s drinking
more.”
“You make it sound like an excuse. That’s
something my Mom would say.”
“No, not an excuse, just a reason. Has he
ever…has he ever hit you, or well, touched you in any other kind of way?” Hugh
knew the answer was no, or at least he was sure he’d never touched her in his
first life, but now? Had something changed to make the prick an even bigger
threat?
She looked into his eyes and he saw the
truth there. He hadn’t laid a finger on her. “No. He called me a lazy bitch
because I did a half-assed
job of vacuuming the house.”
“Did you do a half-assed job?”
She smacked his chest and smiled through a
face wet with tears. “It’s not funny! Don’t make me laugh when I’m crying.”
Hugh reached for a box of tissues behind
the driver’s seat. “So what do you want to do about it?”
She blew her nose into one and pulled out
another for her eyes. “What can I do? My hair-dressing course doesn’t start for
another three months, and even then I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford to
live in Winnipeg when the time comes.”
Hugh desperately wanted to make the move
with her. There was no way he was letting her out of his sight now, not after
all this time. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her away in the city on her own,
he just wanted to make certain no one or nothing else could get in between
them. There was still so much for them to do. So much could go wrong.
“We graduate in two days. Why not move into
the city right after that?” She started to shake her head but he didn’t give
her time to say no. “What’s keeping us here? I got some money put away, enough
to pay for rent and groceries until fall, and I can get a construction job long
before then.”
“They’d never let me leave, not like that
anyway.”
Oh yes they would, especially Asshole
Andy. It will give him more money for booze.
“It’s a crazy idea, Hugh. We’re only eighteen.
We’d never make it on our own.”
“So you like the way things are now?” He
kept pushing. “Seriously, we could make it work. As long as we’re together we
can make it work.”
She leaned
across the seat and he wrapped his arms around her. “How much money have you
got ‘put away’?”
***
Hugh didn’t tell his parents the entire
truth. As far as they knew, the two were only going into Winnipeg for a few
days to celebrate completing school. He only had one suitcase packed in the
trunk of the car. A few changes of clothing was all any kid needed for a day or
two away, or a few months.
“Call us when you get to your brother’s,”
Marion Nance said. She kissed him on the cheek and stepped back as Hugh’s
father clapped him on the shoulder.
“Drive carefully, son.”
Another lie, Hugh thought. There was no way
in hell they were going anywhere near Gordo or his bitch wife, but his parents
didn’t need to know that just yet. He would feed them bits and pieces at a
time. A phone call on Sunday night to let them know they’d be staying a few
more days, another call on Wednesday telling them he was considering looking
for work. Another call at the end of the month informing them that he’d found a
cheap apartment, and maybe a few days after that he could tell them that Cathy
was moving in with him.
It was better than saying goodbye to them
now, easier to break away without explaining how a couple of teenagers could make
it on their own.
He hugged his mom and shook his father’s
hand. “Don’t worry about me, Dad. I’m a good driver.”
A minute later he was on the road for
Braedon. There were a couple of stops to make before picking up Cathy. Hugh
pulled into the local Shell gas station first and filled up with sixteen
dollars, then a quick trip across town to say goodbye to his best friend. Billy
met him on the small porch of their trailer home. The farm had been gone for a
few years, land and house gobbled up by a bank that didn’t share or give a damn
about Tom Parton’s religious beliefs.
“I still can’t believe you’re leaving
before me,” Billy said. “You got time to come inside for one last drink?”
By drink he meant pop, or perhaps iced tea.
Alcohol had ruined too many lives in Braedon already, and Billy, wise beyond
most people three times his age in a small town had decided to go the rest of
his life without. “Better not. Cathy will be expecting me soon.”
“You want me to come along? Make sure
everything goes okay?”
Hugh shook his head. Unlike his parents,
Cathy’s had no idea they were leaving for the weekend, a very long weekend. Most
of her belongings had been packed up and smuggled out during the night of grad.
As far as they were concerned, or cared, the two were just going out on one of
their regular Sunday afternoon dates. They wouldn’t even suspect something was
up until well after they’d checked into a hotel room within the city limits,
four hours and two hundred miles away. “We’ll be alright.”
Billy sat on a porch step. “We had some
good times together, eh?”
Hugh nodded again and smiled. He was glad
he’d played a part in saving the boy’s life. Even though he’d fucked things up
in so many other ways, the fact that this good-looking kid could now sit here
and reminisce made him feel that it had all been worth it. “You still planning
on backpacking across Europe?”
“Applied for my passport last week. Should
be London bound before fall.”
“I still can’t figure out how a guy with
four hundred bucks can travel across the Atlantic in the first place.”
“Dad had a bit of cash stored away. When I
told him I was going church-hopping from country to country he gave me another
thousand.”
Hugh laughed. “Church-hopping? You? I can’t
see it.”
“Stonehenge was a kind of church, wasn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say that too loud if I were
you.”
Billy stood up and hugged his friend
tightly. “Sure you can’t come with me?”
“Maybe next time, in a few years.” He held
his friend out at arm’s length. “I won’t have to pay for a guide by then.”
Hugh started down the path toward his car
when Billy called out. “Hey, Hank! Thanks for whatever it was that you did.”
He had to think for a moment what he was
talking about. “Hank was just a story.”
“Yeah, but a damn good one.”
“I never finished it, did I?”
“And I hope you never do.”
Hugh jumped in his car, gave him the thumbs
up and drove away. There were other friends to say goodbye to, other places he
wanted to take one last look at, but the car clock told him it was time to get
moving. Besides, he thought, the less amount of people that knew what they were
up to, the better.
They weren’t out of Braedon yet.
Cathy lived three blocks from Billy’s. His
heart began to pound when he saw her waiting outside the house, pacing
nervously near the road. No sooner had he turned the car off, he heard the
screen door slam shut and the yelling started, or at least the yelling he was
there in time to hear.
“Go on then, you little bitch!” Andy
Alexander was screaming from the porch step. He threw a handful of old teen
magazines into the air. They scattered onto a growing pile of Cathy’s things
strewn about the front yard. “Take all this shit with you! Why the fuck should
I be stuck cleaning your room out?”
Hugh stood out of his car and watched the
overweight alcoholic pitch more stuff out. A glass figurine of a unicorn broke
into pieces, followed by a dozen framed pictures. Glass exploded against the
cement walkway, a faded picture of a Cathy as a child enjoying a campout
fluttered across the grass.
She ran to the car and jumped in the front
seat. “Let’s get out of here! Now!”
Hugh took a few steps toward the lawn and
hesitated. A box of cassette tapes crashed onto the ground. Next came a
monstrously large ghetto blaster, all black and chrome plastic. It made a
bigger explosion than the pictures did.
Probably made in China.
Funny what goes through your head in times
of crisis, he thought.
“Hugh!”
He looked back at her, questioningly. A small
chest toppled out from the house. The top snapped off and landed a few feet
away from him. An old teddy bear with one eye stared up at him from the inside.
“But--but what about your stuff?”
“Leave it! I don’t need anything else!”
Andy Asshole swayed in the doorway. His
arms hung limply at his sides like a brain-damaged ape. He was obviously out of
throwing ammunition. “Have fun with the little whore, jackass.” His lips puckered
out and formed a little ‘o’ as he pronounced the word in proud redneck fashion.
Hoo-er.
“Take her good and far away, and don’t go bringing the little
slut back!”
Hoo-er, bitch, slut. What a great dad.
“Please, Hugh,” Cathy pleaded through the
half-opened car window. “Don’t make things worse. Please just get me out of
here!”
Hugh wasn’t listening. He took a few more
steps toward the house. The porch door behind Andy Asshole was still open. Was
that Cathy’s mom sitting in the living room watching television? Yes, it was.
The volume on the set cranked so high she either couldn’t hear her wonderful
husband yelling or maybe just high enough to drown out most of it. She would
plead innocence later on; maybe even chastise her husband a little bit for
letting her girl go.
Alexander continued to sway in the doorway
as Hugh approached. His gut hung over the top of his pants, the piss-stained
work pants he no longer needed. He didn’t bother wearing a shirt at home. A lot
of fat guys with hairy bellies and hairier nipples went around like that. It
didn’t seem quite fair to the rest of society.
Hugh stopped a few feet in front of him. “You’re
going to have a massive stroke in four years.” He said it in a low voice that
Cathy wouldn’t be able to hear. “It’s going to leave the left half of your face
a droopy, dead joke. You’ll be stuck in a wheelchair, but that won’t be the
worst of it. You’ll have to quit drinking and smoking, and your life will leave
you. You’ll be placed in a personal care home and the orderlies will treat you
like shit.
No one
will lift a finger to help you. You’ll be too fucking
useless to even kill yourself.”
“What the fu--?” He stared at Hugh through
a drunken, hate-filled haze, a hint of fear glimmered behind the half-shut,
bloodshot eyes. Was the kid crazy? What kind of little fuck says shit like
that?
Hugh gave him the finger and walked back to
the street.
“What was that all about?” Cathy asked
after they started to drive away.
“I just wanted to say goodbye.”
They pulled onto Main and headed south, past
Reynolds Liquor Mart, past the old drugstore where Hugh had bought thousands of
comic books over the years, past the new Small City Food Store where Billy
Parton had been working after school for the last three months. He picked the
speed up a bit as they drove by the residential houses; the giant elms lining
both sides of the street shadowed the road. Sterling’s two-story home on the
left, the old McFarlane house on the right. The elementary school another block
ahead.
The McFarlane house?
Hugh slammed on the brake hard enough that
Cathy had to jam her hand out against the dashboard. “What is it? Did you run
over a cat?”
He adjusted the rear view mirror so he
could see the old house peering back at him, complete with its stain glass window
on the third floor, the window that should’ve been busted out years earlier. How
could the place still be there? It was supposed to have burnt to the ground on
Halloween night in 1979. What had changed? Why had it taken him three years to
finally notice? It sat there in the mirror, a great grey block out of place and
out of time. Like him.
Cathy touched his hand and he jumped. “Are
you okay?”