Read Online Onward Toward What We're Going Toward by Ryan Bartelmay - Free Book Online Page A

you.
    â€œYes,” she said. “I’ll marry you.”
    Green slid back into the booth and picked up his fork. “We’re getting married.” He looked for someone to tell the news to, but there were only two other people in the diner, and the waitress was sitting in the back corner working a crossword puzzle.
    Mary took a bite of her scrambled eggs.
    â€œJesus, I have a headache,” Green said. “You have any aspirin?”
    â€œI think so.” She dug in her purse and came up with a bottle of Tylenol.

    â€œSo, you wanna get married tonight?” he asked.
    She shrugged. “Sure.”
    â€œThis is great. Just great. I know just the right place.”
    Mary smiled. “So what do you do? For work. I feel like I don’t even really know you.”
    Green thought about telling her about the bank. That would be a change. Honesty. But, in the end, he went in the direction he’d been going for the last few months. “I’m a bookie.”
    â€œA bookie?”
    â€œSports bets. A lot of basketball. College. Pro. You know . . . ”
    â€œA bookie in Las Vegas? Isn’t that . . . redundant?”
    â€œRedundant?”
    â€œUnnecessary, I guess, is a better word.”
    Green took a sip of his coffee, then motioned to the suit he was wearing. “I got the clothes to prove it, if you don’t believe me.”

Mary & Green Geneseo

    April–June 1998
    Since the day he had driven back to the Airstream after burying Jane, Green’s plan had been to find a woman, marry her, then ride east into the smack-dab center of Illinois: Peoria. At work one afternoon, he had overheard a young couple, both of them wearing a gleeful look on their faces like they had just gotten to the front of the line to ride the roller coaster, say to a teller, “We just moved here from Peoria.” Green stopped doing what he was doing, which was entering some numbers into a ledger, longhand. He liked the word, Peoria. It rolled off the tongue. It sounded sung. A church choir could do something incredible with the word. Peeeee-or-i-aaaaaaaa. In a place like Peoria, he wouldn’t have to remember watching his wife vomit into a bucket. The sun always shone in Peoria. The grass was green, the greenest of any place,
and the wind whistled zip-a-dee-doo-dah through the trees. Everyone had a skip in their step. Gas was cheap. Green knew nothing about the place, actually, but he longed for it, dreamed about it. He did some research. Peoria—a city named after the Peoria Indian tribe, who were mound builders. He liked mounds. Mounds of blankets in the middle of a bed. A mound of mashed potatoes on a plate. Mounds were not cancer. Peoria. It was on the Illinois River. He liked rivers, boats, anything having to do with water. Peoria had also been a vaudeville stop in the early 1900s: If it’ll play in Peoria . . . He loved to laugh. There was a college there—Bradley, the Bradley Braves. They had streets lined with houses, a minor league baseball team—the Peoria Chiefs. He liked baseball. He’d get season tickets. He imagined the pace of life was slower, the good life, flatland, cornfields stretching out to the horizon. Chain restaurants. Parking lots and strip malls. He loved those. Chili’s and Bennigan’s. The Gap. Starbucks. The people were probably so nice they blushed when you took the Lord’s name in vain. He had daydreamed about Peoria, without actually knowing he was daydreaming about Peoria, about meeting a woman and taking her there, and it was happening, had already happened, and he was ready to leave all of this—Las Vegas, Jane, cancer, all of it—so he could go to this better place, Peeeee-or-i-aaaaaaaa.
    â€œIf it’ll play in Peoria, it’ll play anywhere,” he told Mary.
    She was floating in the pool. It was a Sunday afternoon, and they’d been married exactly eighty-seven hours.
    â€œDid you hear me?”