Читать книгу Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride - Brian Sweany - Страница 30

Chapter twenty-two

Abe’s Place is a hundred-acre plot of trees and farmland along the Sycamore River, about ten miles outside of town. It’s owned by the Abel family but on weekends presided over by their oldest son, a stocky, near-sighted redhead named Horace Abel. Horace, or Abe as we call him, is the Ridge’s starting nose tackle. He sticks chewing tobacco inside his mouthpiece at the beginning of every game and swallows the spit. Talking with a pronounced good ol’ boy drawl, he hurls indecipherable expletives at his teammates like, “Kick ‘em in nuh fuckin’ hey-yid.”

Abe’s Place can get out of hand. But if the knives and guns are locked up before Horace breaks into the whiskey—and granted, that’s a big “if”—there isn’t much of a problem. Abe’s Place sits far back from the highway, accessible only by a two-mile long, winding, and rutted dirt path. It’s perhaps the one spot in Empire Ridge where our nothing-better-to-do police force will never visit.

We all come in the Subie—me, Hatch, Claire, and Beth. The party is hopping, what you’d expect for ten o’clock. The real partiers are just finding their groove, while the underclassmen with curfews are starting to peak, especially the girls.

The freshmen and sophomore girls are always the easiest ones to spot—trying too hard to fit in, drinking too fast. About a dozen of them huddle around a large bonfire, plastic cups of keg beer in hand. In the middle of this sea of estrogen, two very average-looking guys are playing guitar. Jerry Randolph and Clem Hogan are their names. Jerry and Clem are downright homely, and yet, solely based upon their ability to strum a few notes on a piece of mahogany, they’re poised to walk away with the hottest girls at the party.

The bonfire pulsates in a small clearing of tilled-over corn. Four old aluminum travel trailers rim the campsite where the clearing meets the tree line, tucked among a patch of silvery sycamores. The trailers are small, not one of them longer than ten feet. The green splashes of moss on the faded white siding and the cracked tires speak of their conversion into semi-permanent single room hunting cabins by Abe’s family.

Jerry and Clem have started up a group-sing rendition of “Over the Hills and Far Away” with two of their freshmen concubines, one of whom looks to be more of a Taylor Dayne or Salt-N-Pepa fan and knows Led Zeppelin as “that old ‘Stairway to Heaven’ band from the sixties or something.”

I’ve already lost Beth in the crowd.

“Come on over here, Hy-ink.” Abe waves at me from the opposite side of the bonfire.

Abe has always pronounced my first name as “Hy-ink,” dragging the word out to two syllables like my Grandma Eleanor’s cousins in Kentucky.

I circle the bonfire. Abe stands up. I shake his hand. “Abe, my man. How you doin’?”

“Oh, all right I guess,” he says. Abe is wearing an orange hunter’s vest over an insulated flannel shirt. The bonfire reflects in his glasses, illuminating the hundreds of freckles that blanket his face and frame a bushy red mustache, all of it crowned by an old Cincinnati Reds baseball cap.

“My mom says your grades are up.”

“I s’pose they are.” Abe’s left cheek is filled with wad of Red Man Loose Leaf Tobacco. He spits a stream of tobacco juice on the ground near his feet. “How’s your family doin’ these days?”

“Fantastic, couldn’t be better.”

For someone who hates animals, my mother has a soft spot for lost causes when it comes to her students. She’s been Abe’s guidance counselor at Empire Ridge since he was a freshman, transforming him from a drunken casualty of a broken home into a straight-C student.

Abe isn’t a casualty anymore, but he’s still a drunk. He tips his cap to me. “I got somethin’ for ya, Hy-ink.” He reaches into his coat pocket, pulls out an unopened fifth of Johnnie Walker Red Label.

“What is that?”

“Been savin’ it for ya, Hy-ink. Fuck that bourbon shit. Real men drink Scotch whiskey.” Abe cracks open the bottle and powers down multiple swallows, the tobacco still firmly entrenched in his left cheek. He hands me the bottle. I take my first cautious sip.

Barring a large cup of Mountain Dew to chase things down with, I’m not a whiskey drinker. I don’t care whether it’s from Scotland, Ireland, Kentucky, Tennessee, or Bigfoot’s ass crack. The peaty flavor of the Johnnie Walker hits my tongue, sliding to the back of my throat. It’s an immediate struggle not to vomit it right back up. I cough, trying to clear my throat. I take a slow, deep breath through my nose.

“Clear a path, folks. We got a live one here!”

I raise my hand and shake my head. “Fuck you, Abe.” I tilt the bottle and choke down a couple more shots in one drink.

Abe pats me on the back. “Now that’s what I wanna see. Fuckin’ pony up, Hy-ink!”

By the time Beth makes it over to the bonfire, the bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label is almost gone. I, on the other hand, am all the way gone. My diction is right there with me. “Whereveyoubeen?”

Beth points to no place in particular, her red eyes and slurring giving her away, too. “Over there somewheres.” She sits on my lap and sticks her tongue in my ear. Beth is drunk, maybe even a little stoned. And maybe a lot horny.

Abe nudges me, tilting his head in the direction of the most isolated trailer. “It’s empty, and it’s the only clean one.” He shoots me one of those maniacal, tobacco juice-stained smiles of his that always freaks my shit out.

I lean in to nibble Beth’s ear. “Hey.”

“Yeah?” she asks.

“Youwungozumplazeprivate?”

Beth’s face perks up. Her eyes refocus, as if she’s willing herself to sobriety in real time. “With you, Hank? Anywhere.”

I open the trailer door for Beth, follow her in and shut the door behind me. The inside of the trailer smells sour, like that washrag or towel that overstays its welcome in your bathroom. A mattress rests in the shadows on the far wall, covered in a loose-fitting sheet. A layer of cold dust clings to everything.

It’s forty degrees outside, if that. Beth and I are separated from the elements by nothing more than an inch-thick sheet of aluminum. You’d think nudity would be the last thing on either of our minds.

You would think.

We get naked except for our socks. On cue, Jerry and Clem transition from Zeppelin to Meatloaf. Through the thin walls of the trailer I can hear them singing. Either the girls have a good handle on the lyrics to “Paradise by the Dashboard Light,” or else Jerry and Clem have moved on to different girls. I’m guessing the latter. Jerry and Clem go first, nostalgically remembering every little thing as if it happened only yesterday, bragging about their girl being the hottest chick in school and being none-too-subtle about groping her by the light of their automobile’s dashboard. Then the girls, shameless sluts that they are, affirm that yes, indeed, they are doubly blessed for being naked minors.

I love this fucking song, a song whose ultimate message is that life is all about being young and naked.

Beth pulls me on top of her. Her movements are sudden and awkward, like she’s afraid I might run out on her at any moment.

Things are moving too fast for me. I’m getting the spins.

“Something wrong, Hank?”

I’m still slurring, and the cold is just making things worse. “Izzzreally fff-fuh-fffucking cold.” I want this as bad as Beth does. But between the temperature and me sorting out the three different Beth’s circling beneath me, I can’t get an erection.

“Here, let me help.” Beth slides out from under me and pushes me onto my back. She moves down and drops her mouth over me. I pull a condom from my pocket, hand it to her. She does the rest.

She wants to be on top. She takes me inside her. It’s warm inside her. She starts pounding up and down on me, springing off her knees, which are hinged under my ribs. The pounding slows to a sliding motion. The angle of this position seems to excite Beth while at the same time prolong my own orgasm.

My bladder has had enough. How long have we been fucking, anyway? Five minutes? Ten minutes? A half hour?

“Beth.”

She can’t hear me over her moaning. I focus all my energy into making my lips obey me.

“Beth! Rezdroom.”

“Rez droom?” Beth is out of breath, still sliding.

“Tryingtuhholdit. Juscantdoit.”

“Oh, restroom.” Beth frowns. She pushes herself off me with a disappointed sigh.

“Umzorry.”

Beth shakes her head, but then smiles. “It’s all right, Hank.” She crawls onto her stomach and writhes beneath our remnants of clothing, arching her back. “I’ll be here…waiting.”

I lean over, kiss her on the back of the neck, trying to rediscover the English language one damaged brain cell at a time. “Somethun to membermeebuy, till I gihback.”

My bravado is short-lived. The spins are almost incapacitating when I stand up. Free from the coital distraction, the Johnnie Walker Red Label is kicking my ass with an inebriated vengeance. I fumble with the latch on the trailer door.

“You okay, baby?”

“Doors duck.”

“Doors duck?”

“Stuck!”

“Oh, the door. It’s stuck.”

“Yez. Zwuttisaid.”

Beth opens the door for me. The trailer faces the river on the opposite side of the bonfire. I’m guessing I can whip it out unnoticed. I walk down the two aluminum steps to a nearby tree. I stand there wearing only my socks. My dick is in my hand.

Either I’ve drunk myself deaf, or I am the world’s quietest pisser.

If you pee in the forest, and no one is there to tell your drunk ass to take your fucking rubber off before you start peeing, does it make a sound?

My eyes look down just in time to see a giant urine balloon hanging off the end of my cock. The balloon grows heavy. It slides slowly down my shaft.

Warm urine is quite comforting on bare skin in forty degree weather, a point of fact I discover as the urine balloon falls off my cock and explodes at my feet with a great big sploosh sound.

I step back into the trailer. “Weeshoodgetdrezzd.”

“Get dressed? This is a big night for us.”

“Notliethis. Notuhnight. Wurdoodrunk.”

“You mean you’re too drunk.” Beth stands in front of me, defiant. She’s also naked except her socks. “I’m fine. Speak for yourself.”

I point to my flaccid penis, it being the other part of the wur in my equation. “I am speeginfurmuhself.”

I reach around her to grab my clothes. I trip over my own feet, fall flat on my face.

Beth helps me up. “You really are wasted, aren’t you?”

“Yeahhh-uzz.”

I tell Beth the urine balloon story, or at least try to. She falls off the bed, laughing. “Okay, the jury concedes you’re too drunk to be having sex.”

We get dressed—well, Beth dresses both of us. I stumble out of the trailer. My arm is around Beth. My feet are heavy. “Lezzguhhome.”

We track down Hatch and Claire, say our goodbyes to Abe. He tells us to wait and comes running back with a plastic, two-gallon milk jug. “Got somethin’ for you guys.”

I raise my head. “Wuzzatfur?”

“Consider it a goin’ way present.” Abe pulls a large hunting knife out of a leather sheath attached to his belt. We all take a precautionary step backward. Abe flips the plastic jug upside down, cuts off the bottom. He makes sure the plastic cap is fastened tight and hands the jug to me. “One ho’made portable puke bucket fur my good buddy, Hy-ink.”

Hatch steps in. “We don’t need that. Fitzy can hold his liquor.”

Abe shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

“No really, Abe.” It’s Claire’s turn to stand up for me I guess. “Hank will be fine.”

“Maybe…” Abe looks at me, pointing at my face. “But judgin’ by his color, and the fact I just barfed my brains out ’bout five minutes ago, I’m uh guessin’ Hy-ink ain’t too far bu’hine me.”

Hatch volunteers to drive us back. These days it’s all too easy to guilt him into being designated driver. One casual reminder about disintegrating into a weeping pussy and leaving you for the cops, and presto—instant DD. We figure it’s best to drive around the country roads outside Empire Ridge until I can string more than three syllables together without needing a translator.

Beth and I take the backseat, my head in Beth’s lap. Beth gets all karaoke on me, singing along with the radio while she runs her hands through my hair. A post-Cetera Chicago tune called “Look Away” followed by Phil Collins’s “Groovy Kind of Love.” Cheesy-ass songs. Beth doesn’t have the best voice. But I don’t care.

“Beth?” I’m on the road to recovery, or at least cognizant enough to now realize how far away my genuine recovery still is.

Beth pushes back my hair behind my right ear, kisses me on the lips. “Yeah, babe?”

“Can you hand me my puke bucket, please?”