Small Town Glory

Small Town Glory

  by Eli Godbolt

  Copyright 2012 Eli Godbolt

  Original cover artwork by Matt Cory:

  A Note to the Reader

  About the Author

  Contact Information

  Sample of The Specters in Books

  Stories

  Let me be very clear. I need you to understand this.

  I write stories to cope. To wrap around my neck in the midnight ink. I hold stories tightly and they breathe slow against my chest and whisper like constellations. Their strength seeps and permeates skin.

  I tell stories because if I don’t, I spend half the night smoothing out my blankets while gazing at the moon and wishing I could scoop it out of the sky and place it in my ribs.

  I am eighteen and a senior and I don’t know you.

  I want you to see things through my eyes, because it’s the only way I know to speak. I want you to feel the weight of my words.

  I want you to feel these stories work through your veins. Like the words have mass and can pound their fins desperately upstream to your heart. I want to tell you about a town in the middle of a yawning countryside, a speck on a map, a place that smells like pungent manure and diesel. It is 1998. I am an eighteen-year-old boy with tree bark eyes.

  Can you see me when you close your eyes? 

  Walk with me for a little while.

  Please.

  Eleanor

  There is one stoplight in Millbury. One.

  It isn’t even a stoplight, really. Just a flashing red light that reminds Bobby O’Shaye to slow the hell down when he comes to the only four-way stop in this town that smells like straw and honey-rain-atmosphere. Bobby is in his blue rusted out Ford pickup truck that has slashed seats with cottony stuffing throwing up out of the slats. It smells like a gym sock on the inside. It’s like his skin has melded with the flannelled seats. Like the man and machine joined for one hot minute and smoked a menthol cigarette afterwards.

  I see Bobby every day, and I know he sees me. Waves. Bastard. Sees me through the bakery window wearing my floured apron fishing out raised glazed and apple fritters by the dozen. Waves and grins through his greasy stubble-face and even tips his camouflaged baseball cap at me, as if he never touched my sister five years ago when she was ten and he sure as shit should have known better. Double bastard.

  But this isn’t about Bobby, the police chief’s son. Not yet.

  Keep a finger pinned on him though. He might slip away from you, with his buttery face and sweat that smells like beef jerky and malted hops and failure. Might just snake his way right out from underneath your palm that is steady and doesn’t move. Your hand that is cool and rock-granite and cupping the scuffed-up cheek of your sister who is shaking so damn hard you’d swear a crack will split wild in the abandoned parking lot beneath you and swallow you both up. She’s quaking and sputtering and whispering to the darkening night oh god, oh god, oh god and pleading to the stars that shimmer beautiful but remind her all the same. In the years to come, she won’t be able to look at the moon all white and large like young love, at the sky that is flecked and sparkling, at anything that is beautiful and not see Bobby O’Shaye. His oily face. His awkward fourteen-year-old whiskers. Whispering how it wouldn’t hurt. Promising. And not letting go even when the delicate fists are formed.

  But like I said, this isn’t about Bobby.

  It’s about my sister.

  She’s ten and terrified and turns her face up to the black horizon with her eyes squeezed into tight stars. She has on the shirt I bought her for Christmas. It is the one-hundred percent cotton shirt with the fabric and the tin-silver buttons that were just so. “Perfect,” she had said. She had pointed to it with a slender finger through a smudged mall window and I had pretended to be disinterested, but I wasn’t. She’s wearing that shirt, with its silver snap buttons fastened all the way up, one left open at the top, the way she always wears it. Modest little thing with her feather-hair.

  She is trembling in the night.

  Ten-years-old and collapsed on me like her bones have dissolved. Hiccups in the chest so deep they rack her whole body. She’s wearing jeans streaked brown with oil stains and worn through the knees. Frayed. Dotted with blood. Her blood.

  “Oh God, Eli, God, Jesus.” A broken record skipping over and over. She is clutching my shirt with fingers forever fumbling around on the fabric. She holds me close and pushes and squeezes, squeezes her eyes tighter. Her hands grapple at my sweater, fistfuls of Jersy-knit security. Grabbing and pushing and she can’t look at me. Not even close.

  All the while “God, Eli, don’t let go. Please. Please.”

  In the beautiful-ugly night I found her. Ten years old, shivering in an abandoned lot by the feed store. The same one Bobby works at. Luck. On my way home from Ryan’s house. Just fabric and skin and breathy whispers to God in the powdered light of the moon.

  So don’t for a damn second think this is about Bobby O’Shaye. He will come back, believe me.

  It’s about a ten year old girl in a Christmas shirt and bloody jeans calling out quiet to God at 1 a.m. on a frosty Tuesday morning. About how it feels when her bones shiver through her slight frame. How she buries and buries her face and breathes moisture onto my shoulder. How she turns her head and looks up at the sky which is shining dark just for her. Never looking at me. Never.

  The asphalt digs into my skin, but I stay there all uncomfortable and trembling in the parking lot and whisper gentle to her; “I’m sorry, Ellie. It’s ok. It’s going to be all right.” Again. And again.

  And I mean it. I sure as hell do.

  Eleanor, or Ellie for short. In my arms. Terrible convulsions and near throwing up. Breaths coming out in short smoky gusts that wisp madly into the black air. And she can’t look at me. And God, I want her to.

  Scotty

  There are many ways you can die in a small town.

  People like to think because of the location, how the foothills are all majestic and green with young fir trees jutting soldier-straight and needled into the gray sky, that somehow they’re invulnerable to death here. Like living in this town scares it. Makes death run away, all whimpering and limp-legged. Because beauty like this could never coexist with something that horrific and broken.

  Tell that to Scotty Charleston.

  I am at the bridge and shivering when the police find him. When Chief O’Shaye and Vincent Landon pull his body, which is ballooned up horribly and purpled and near-bursting, onto the riverbed while his mother doubles over with galaxy-tears that I can see from far away. Crying over her nearly-bursting blueberry-son.

  He is eighteen years old. Just like me.

  You see, I am there. I hear the sickening slosh as Scotty comes onto the shore. See his lungs that erupt between his teeth like gelatin. I see his fingers that are sausages. They point eerily at the opposite shore, like there’s something he sees and we’re all missing it. I am eighteen and holding my breath squeezed tight in my chest because I know this person.

  Scotty Charleston is a quiet boy. More so now than ever. He is the one who comes to school in black with slick hair that is combed straight back with grease. “Hey vampire. You find yourself a nice boyfriend this weekend? Drink their blood and kill them and then rape them? Did you like it? I bet you did. I bet you enjoyed every minute of it, you faggot.” Voices that float in the hallways and are all garble and radio-static. I hear them and it makes my shoulders sag. For Scotty.

  Because I know him. His mother helps my parents at the bakery. Lovely woman with dark satin hair and soft, pink hands that feel like sunsets. A woman who goes home at night and wonders silently to the ceiling about many things. I see her some nights when I am walking home late and the world is quiet. Nights when
Eleanor is at home because it is dark and she remembers and shakes all silent and involuntary.

  What does Olivia Charleston think about when the night is dark and her living room lamp is a dusty veil on her face?

  About the voices that loom large and menacing at school? How they float about in her house and flutter in occasionally from her open windows when the weather is hot and sticks to pinked skin?

  About her son who comes home after school and stays in his room and never opens his mouth except to eat?

  About her husband who held a chainsaw as it chewed its way through a massive trunk, slipped near the end, and opened up his leg like it was hungry for more? Does she think about the femoral artery that bled and bled even though he shoved in sawdust and a sweaty red handkerchief that looked like the kind a cowboy drapes on his neck? About how he sat there in the woods, blood pooling and pooling all thick like corn syrup, and all he ever thought about was her and how sorry he was and how could he ever have been so careless?

  Because she’s right there. In front of me. Like she has been so many times before when I walk home late at night. She’s doubled over and is choking on her words. She is cradling a son who is elastic and near exploding. Scotty is blue and disfigured now and cannot hear the voices any more. She is sitting on the polished river rock, the mud streaking her thrift-store jeans, and is clutching and rocking and smoothing out wet and matted hair.

  Chief O’Shaye tells her, “It’s all right. We’re right here, Olivia. It’s going to be-”

  And then she shakes her head emphatically. Her dark curls are springing about her pale fine-china face as she shakes and shakes her head and wails low.

  The officers step away and let her rock gentle on the gray riverbed which touches murky liquid with a delicate hand. The river cascades cloudy and babbling. She is cradling the blueberry-boy and moaning soft as she looks off into the distance and not at her son. The officers can’t quite understand why, but I do.

  She can see what his sausage fingers are pointing at.

  Origami Skin

  Something about Scotty spooked us. Bad.

  Maybe it was the way he went. No note scrawled out in the middle of the night all riddled with tears. No cryptic comments at school said in passing that would float like mist and haunt for days. Nothing.

  He just went. Jumped.

  Skin and warm blood and the brief feel of the elusive September sun and then he hit. I can imagine the sound too, the exact moment when his body pummeled the water. How it must have sounded like raw marbled steak slapping down on a wood cutting board.

  But here we are, in Ryan’s house. His parents are gone. They are always gone. Always building and callusing their hands at a property I’ve never seen. This Elysian field that Ryan swears to God is real. And the way he tells it, with his eyes all fired yellow and dreamy and focused on something in the distance, I want to believe him. I can see the grass and the mountain view and the creek that winds around the back of the house like a translucent snake and sounds like silver. And I want it to be real. More than I’ve wanted anything before in my life.

  “We have to do something,” Ryan says.

  Nels agrees. His name sounds Norwegian, but he’s not. His parents are just big fans.

  I am sitting on Ryan’s itchy couch, flannel and knife rips. I want you to see Nels, because he is laughing now. He does that when he is nervous. But when he laughs, his round face stretches tight and is magnetic. You can’t help but look. Toothy grin that looks like ivory and peaches, and it makes you feel satisfied. Satiated. Can you feel it, in your stomach? It sounds crazy, but if you look at him, at just the right angle, in just the right light, he can help unwind the tangled day.

  Riley is there. Ian. Donnie. Nels. Ryan. And me.

  Six boys who are freaked out, because death came close. And now we have to make sense of it, somehow.

  “We should write a column for the newspaper. For the school newspaper, you know?” Ian says. He is practical. Has farmer’s hands that are rough and stained brown. He knows the dirt and the smell of green. The smell of water. Long hair that is pulled back tight and curls down the nape of his neck. Tall and skinny. A rail that would blow away in the wind. But he speaks straight and has eyes that are softer than his words. We know what he says is sensible.

  “Nobody will read it.” Donnie says. He is white-fire and blister-emotion. Head shaved clean and rubbed down with oil. People see Donnie and bury their chins down deep into their chests. Pass on the other side of the hallway and stare intently at nothing. But we see Donnie and know the softness. The vulnerable belly that pulsates beneath.

  “A song. My band could have a concert or something. We could dedicate a song to him.” Riley says. He is large – a massive square shaped man-child. All tattooed and pierced and shiny. Sits with his black clothes and boots laced up to mid-calf. He talks and you are enraptured. A storyteller with golden silk erupting from his mouth. He talks and you stare and open your mouth slightly at the dust and the gold and the glow that forms in front of your eyes, and it is amazing to behold.

  Too clichéd, they say. Way too normal. And then they look to me.

  What would you do, Eli?

  Ten eyes are on me. Waiting.

  And what can you do? You are sitting there with five people who are not people. They are family, and you would cut out pieces of your anatomy for them. People who are close. So damn closer than anything you’ve ever known. They’re looking at you and their eyes are expecting the impossible – for you to say something that will make them turn to each other and smile and nod their heads slowly and say yes.

  “A movie,” I say. “We can make a movie. Interview people in Millbury? Kind of like a documentary? Damn it. I don’t know.”

  As I shake my head, they nod theirs. They look at each other. Nodding like bobble-heads.

  But I’m not there with them anymore. My mind has shot off. See, I looked at Ryan’s eyes. The yellow flame. The billowy grass and the mountains that loom shadowy and whisper of peace. The silver water. How it feels tangible and breathes against my fingers. And Ellie is there, all smiles and dainty-lipped and origami-thin skin.

  Ryan

  He is alone all the time.

  He will tell you he likes it that way. That it suits him just fine because then the house is quiet and there’s something peaceful about waking up on a Saturday with the sun knifing its way to your face. Something so right about the dusty slivered sun being your alarm clock. And I have seen it before. I’m not perverted or creepy or any other stalker-related adjective that you can throw out there. I’ve spent the night before because sometimes being alone gets old. Sprawled out on the couch with its fabric that itches you to sleep, left arm dangling off and brushing the brown shag carpet. The occasional cat or nuzzle of a wet-nosed dog.

  I wake up in the morning to floating specks in the sunshine and quiet. As if the world has stopped turning and someone has encased everything in glass. The canary grass out back bending slight in the ten-o’clock breeze and letting out an audible shush. Like it’s longing for silence.

  Ryan is there, in his room. It’s a tiny little square at the back right corner of his double-wide manufactured home which has paint peeling off in great flakey strips because the sun beats hot and glaring on it. A room you get to by walking down an uneven and thinly carpeted hallway. But he’s there on his bed and the whole place is a sun-splash glow. Fake wood walls yawning in the warmth and the margarine-glory of the morning, and he’s there, on his bed, cheek all swathed in sunshine.

  And I feel an intense twinge of envy at that moment. Not because he is alone. Not because he has a freedom he never asked for.

  No. Not that at all.

  It’s the way his mouth, which has awkward stubble and always looks a little crooked, curls up at the corners. I know he’s dreaming. In the heat of the gold morning, he is dreaming.

  And I’m happy for him.

  But at the same time, I want it too.
<
br />   Tuesdays

  Ellie is on the couch and has shriveled into herself.

  Again.

  I see her there after I walk through the huge oak door. It is the door that we tattooed our names and other hieroglyphics into with thick silver butter knives when we were young and smiled wide. It is a door that looks like a coffee stain and sighs heavy on its hinges.

  I see her lying on our couch. She is a deflated balloon, the latex once expansive and proud and tight, now just sad wrinkles that stick together and powder-puff onto your fingers. My little sister, now fifteen and still trying like mad to look at my eyes without shaking.

  “I threw it away again, Eli.” She says this as I sit down by her head. Scoots. Scalp just against my thigh.

  She needs the contact.

  She is talking about dad’s pipe. Not a corncob one that is stuffed with tobacco and smells like vanilla and convalescent homes. A stone pipe. A pipe that looks like a cold eraser. Hole burrowed in the top and then one down the middle. It looks like something a caveman would use to smoke, and it smells like molded grass and stomach-turns and nights where I lay sleepless. She says those words and I am glad. Put my hand which is warm, always warm even in winter, on her shoulder.

  We sit in the living room with its pillow-soft light from the hippie-bead lamp and the orange corduroy easy chair and the fire that licks yellow and lazy. Sit there and say nothing. Silent. Ellie sighs deep and I feel it in my bones. The untwisting of her insides.

  “Do you remember our swimming pools when we were young?” I say to her scalp.

  “The holes we would dig?”

  “And cover over with a plastic tarp. Yes.” I smile. She does too. I can feel it. Can see it in the way the back of her head seems to glow harmonious with the room.

  “I remember how we would jump. How the water was so clear. Remember that? It was clear until one of us eventually ripped the tarp.” Her body is unfolding and it makes my smile stretch. Makes it consume my face.