Read Online Eye Lake by Tristan Hughes - Free Book Online Page B

Billy,’ I heard Sarah shouting from inside. ‘I’m not your fucking fallback when your whores are out of town. Nine years, Billy! Nine fucking years! We’re either your family or we’re not!’
    â€˜That’s good,’ I said to Bobby. ‘They like rocks.’
    â€˜Fuck you!’ Billy whined. ‘This is my family’s frigging property, if you’ve not noticed. And that’s my kid.’
    â€˜Where you keeping it?’ I asked Bobby.
    â€˜Down by the lake.’
    And I was going to get him to show me it when the door flew open and Billy strode out in a big huff. We looked at each other in what light was still left.
    â€˜What the fuck are you doing here, Eli?’
    I didn’t say nothing. I was thinking how I wished Billy had been number four thousand or something, so I wouldn’t have to have grown up with him.
    â€˜I mean, what the fuck?’
    â€˜Eli came to see the minnow I caught,’ Bobby said. ‘We went fishing.’
    â€˜Now this takes the frigging cookie,’ Billy shouted at no one in particular. He was standing in the same way he’d always stood, ever since he was a kid, with his legs bandied out wide like he’d just got off a horse, like he was a cowboy having a tantrum. His new moustache was twitching up and down as if it were an inchworm walking over a leaf. ‘Eli-fucking-O’Callaghan. Is that what this is? You’ve got so frigging desperate you’ve started banging Eli?’
    â€˜You’re such a spoilt goddamn prick,’ Sarah said. She was standing in the doorway behind him. Her voice had gone still and calm now. ‘As if that’d be any of your business, Billy. Nine years on and off, waiting for you to grow up. As if it’d be your business anymore who I banged.’
    â€˜Damn fucking right it’s my business,’ Billy said. ‘It’s my kid, Sarah. I don’t want some frigging retard playing daddy to my kid.’
    Sarah’s face turned as hard and white as quartz.
    â€˜He’s not,’ she said.
    â€˜Not what? Retarded? I’ve known him my whole fucking life, remember!’
    â€˜He’s not your kid, Billy.’
    Billy turned around and punched her in the face.
    â€˜You better go now, Billy,’ I said.
    Billy said nothing, he just climbed into his truck.
    Afterwards I got Bobby to show me his minnow, while Sarah was cleaning up her face. It was too dark to see it in the bottom of the bucket but I pretended I could anyway.
    â€˜It’s a shiner,’ I told him.
    â€˜Who were you shouting at?’ Bobby asked. ‘When we were fishing.’
    â€˜Oh,’ I said. ‘That wasn’t nobody.’

Crooked River: Population 1
    I don’t have a phone but there’s one in the office building. When Sarah knocked on my door and said I had a call I wasn’t really sure what she was talking about at first – I never get calls; I can’t remember ever getting one. I walked with her a bit, towards the office, and there were bruises under both her eyes and a cut across the top of her nose. I didn’t know what to say at all.
    â€˜Your face looks pretty bad,’ I said.
    â€˜You know what, Eli,’ she said. ‘In a strange way I’m glad it does.’
    She put her hand up to her cheek and said: ‘This is a full stop. This is absolutely a full stop. This ends the whole miserable page.’
    The office had a big boulder right in front of it with a sign that said: This represents the obstacles we can overcome . There’s a bunch of other stuff like that in the grounds of the Poplars – for the business people who never overcame the bugs and snow I guess. There’s even a statue of Buddy Bryce that he paid an artist to make. He wasn’t that happy when it arrived, though. It didn’t look like him at all: it was a mushroom-shaped piece of iron, with a kind of stalk growing out the top. It had a