Read Online Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley - Free Book Online Page B

Poke's
Road.”
    “My
dad used to take me hunting toward Handle,” Burke says. “It gets wild
around in there.”
    “We
ought to go,” Roy says. Lightly touching Nathan on the shoulder, casual
but inclusive. “That's where the haunted house is. Remember I told
you?”
     They
sip beer and consider the proposition.
    “You
and Nathan ought to come up to Hoon Holler with us tonight.” Burke is
watching Nathan again, a direct inspection, almost a challenge.
    “We
might. We're going to ride around a little while too. We might see you around
there later.”
    “All
right.”
    The
easy conversation continues through another beer. Randy and Roy talk about the
deer hunting season and baseball. They agree that baseball is a better game
than football. Burke would be playing football except the team is mostly black
and his dad won't let him play with blacks. The night rises full of sound,
cities of crickets in one long ululation. Nathan watches the beer changes in
Roy's face, the slow relaxation of facial muscles, the heaviness of eyelids.
Randy tells a story about a girl from Hoon Holler who is supposed to be pretty
much of a whore, who will do it with anybody. Might as well stick your hand in
a cow pussy as that, Burke says. And Roy agrees and they all laugh.
    But the
conversation excludes Nathan. What is curious is that the fact seems implicit
in the circumstances, as if they all understand that Nathan will not
participate, that Nathan has nothing to do with talk about a girl of easy
virtue in Hoon Holler. He has only to add the smallest of laughs at the
appropriate moment. He comes from another world than the one in which these
boys live. He sometimes inhabits the same world as Roy, but right now it's hard
to tell. There follows a round of talking about girls in mechanical ways, about
how to slide your hands into a brassiere, or how many fingers a girl will let
you put inside her thing. There is the round of talking about cars. Randy asks
if Roy's dad still has that same John Deere tractor, and Roy says he bought a
new Allis Chalmers.
    So
finally they all agree they might see each other later at the Holler. Burke
cranks the truck and Randy climbs to the passenger side. Roy and Nathan watch
them disappear down the road. Roy crushes his beer can in his hand,
meticulously, till the flat ends are joined in a thin disk. He tosses the
weight a long way into the woods.
    “That
was all right.” Peering at Nathan. 'Wished I had another one."
    “I
thought you had some more.”
    “Naw.
I'm out.” Roy leans on the car. Mumbling the words of some song, across
the top of the car to Nathan. “I like to swim in that river. You'll like
it too, when I teach you how.”
    “Is
your girlfriend named Evelyn?”
    Have
the crickets ever sung so loud before? Roy seems to be asking this with his
sudden astonished look of listening. Opening the car door, swinging it outward
slowly, he says, “Yeah. I told you that.”
    The
assertion dies in the air between them. Nathan eases himself into the passenger
seat. Roy's weight settles into place behind the steering wheel.
    “I
was only asking.”
    “It's
okay.” Roy starts the car, looking straight ahead. The car rolls forward.
    They
follow the course of the river along the road, tall pines looming over them.
Darkness drinks the headlights. Nathan finds it hard to talk, for the first
time. Roy asks, “Are you okay?”
    “I'm
fine.”
    “You're
not talking much.” “I'm just quiet. That's all.” “Are you
having a good time?” “Yes.”
    “You
want to go somewhere now? You want to go to a movie? I don't mind.”
    But Roy
drives instead, down Island Creek Road to Catfish Lake, then back to the
millpond and along the quiet streets of Potter's Lake, then along another road
behind Riggs town. Roy parks the car at the end of a dead-end fork. Abrupt
silence when the motor dies. Trees press close on all sides. Roy sits tensely,
gripping the steering wheel as if the car still moves. Nathan waits.