Read Online Gravesend by William Boyle - Free Book Online

gonna stay with Mommy and Daddy?”
    “He’ll stay with us,” Grandma Jean said. “Of course he will.”
    “Just for a couple days,” Uncle Ray Boy said.
    “How was the house upstate?” Grandma Jean said. “I had this guy from Monticello do some work on it, but you know these cheapskates. Middle Eastern guy.”
    “House was fine. Is fine. Nice up there. I’d forgotten.”
    “You never wanted to go up there, not since you were eight or nine.”
    Uncle Ray Boy was quiet again, looked depressed, defeated, not at all like Eugene imagined he’d be. He’d always pictured his uncle coming back to the neighborhood with sunglasses on, head shaved, pissed for being sent to jail, ready to throw down with the world.
    “You gonna tell us how you wound up down here?” Grandpa Tony said, over being happy about his son’s presence, now wanting to know what his ulterior motive was.
    “I don’t want to talk about it.”
    Aunt Elaine, throwing her arms up behind her head, said, “I picked him up off the Belt in his boxers. He called me from the last pay phone on earth. Collect.”
    “What is this about?” Grandma Jean said.
    “Nothing,” Uncle Ray Boy said. He got up, turned to Eugene’s mother. “There somewhere I can lie down for a little while, Doreen?”
    “Sure, yeah, of course,” Eugene’s mother said. “My room. Upstairs. First door on the right. Rest. We’ll catch up later.”
    “Thanks for the coffee and the sandwich.” Uncle Ray Boy went upstairs, and Eugene heard his mother’s door close.
    “He’s exhausted,” Grandma Jean said.
    “Is it drugs?” Grandpa Tony said.
    “Who knows?” Aunt Elaine said. “What that does to you, who knows? Sixteen years. Might take him a long time to reacclimate.”
    “It’s good he’s here,” Eugene’s mother said. “We need to convince him to stay, not go back upstate. It’s better for him to be around his family.”
    “There’s going to be press. That thing just ran in that paper about him.”
    “He needs his family.”
    Eugene got up from the table and went down to the basement. He had a room upstairs but he preferred to hang out in the basement. He had a sweet set-up down there. An old school boombox with some discs he’d bought at a Salvation Army—N.W.A. and Ice Cube and Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg—and he had some weights and some porno mags stashed under an old dresser in the corner of the room next to the washing machine. He went over and turned on the stereo, “Lil’ Ghetto Boy” coming on mid-song, and sat down on his weight bench and started to do curls with his fifteen pounders. He might’ve had a limp but he was planning on being built by junior year. He always felt soft in the locker room, wore his gym clothes under his uniform so he didn’t have to be naked for even a second, and he’d had these big dreams to get a six-pack for a long time. Now was time to act on it. He’d been taking Creatine in the mornings and pumping weights for two hours every afternoon. He wanted to talk to Uncle Ray Boy about it, see what he’d done to get the way he was. In prison there was probably nothing to do but lift weights. And get buttfucked by gangbangers. Eugene wondered if that had happened to his uncle, if maybe that was why he looked like he’d been crushed by the world, his asshole just torn to shreds.
    No way.
    Eugene had seen movies. He knew you did what you had to do to avoid that kind of shit. Took up with skinheads. Whatever. He knew if you were strong enough you could steer clear of trouble.
    It had to be something else.
    He lifted the weights and then threw them down, not getting the bounce he’d hoped for. They sparked against the cement, seeming almost like they’d bust through to dirt. He was happy his Uncle Ray Boy was home.
     

 

    Five
     
    Alessandra was buzzing, anxious to do something, anything, that didn’t involve just sitting in the living room with her old man. They were smoking together. The barrier down now. Just