Just East of Nowhere by Scot Lehigh

Author:Scot Lehigh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Islandport Press
Published: 2023-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 27

“IF MY MOM comes in, you’ll have ruined the whole point.”

“Which is?”

“To show that we actually do some smart things.”

They were in Griff’s room on a rainy Friday night, playing Scrabble, a game whose principal pleasure for Sonny was forming off-color words. “Tits” and “dicks” were his first two, and he had just played “ass.”

Sonny snorted.

“I could walk across the bay, and your old lady would still think I’m a loser. You know why?”

“Umm, because you are?”

He’d expected Sonny’s lazy laugh, not the edgy tone of his reply.

“Because I’m not like Bobby’s friends. And that means you’re not like Bobby.”

“Nah. They just want us to be doing worthwhile stuff.”

“Face it, Griff. The sun shines out of his butt as far as they’re concerned. Big basketball star, good-looking, popular, sure to go to a good college.”

He locked his jaw together and tilted his nose up.

“He’s such a credit to Eastport.”

Then, switching to a deeper but equally plummy tone, he started an imaginary dialogue.

“But what about the younger son, Grit?”

“You must mean Griff.”

“Yes, yes, Griff. What’s the story with him?”

“I hear he hangs out with that Beal boy.”

“Oh my. A regular juvenile delinquent, that one. Why, he doesn’t even play basketball.”

“Worse yet, I hear he smokes. And they drink. Neither one will amount to anything.”

“It must be so hard for poor Carlton and Estelle to bear.”

“Estelle and Carlton. She wears the pants in that family.”

Griff got up from his chair.

“Fuck you, Sonny.”

“And did I mention they occasionally employ profanity in their conversation?”

“Knock it off.”

“Just telling it like it is.”

There was, he had to admit, an uncomfortable truth to Sonny’s commentary.

Although they made a regular effort to draw him out about his doings, his parents’ world revolved around Bobby. He’d respond to their queries with a banality or two about his classes, then wait for the conversation to follow its natural course back to Bobby and last week’s triumphs or Bobby and the upcoming game with Calais or Woodland or Sumner or Narraguagus. Or Bobby and his application to the Naval Academy and the choice he might have to make between a free ride there and the pricier prospect of acceptance at Bowdoin or Dartmouth or Middlebury.

They didn’t inquire about Griff’s own post-high-school hopes in dinner-table conversations. Maybe they thought it was too early to push, but more likely, they knew his modest goals would pale alongside Bobby’s.

Bobby, after all, had plans to travel the world, once he finished at the Naval Academy or Bowdoin or wherever. And then to go to law school and rise up through the JAG ranks or move to Portland or Boston or Washington DC.

“I want to go somewhere big and make it there,” Bobby said on one such occasion.

“On the other hand, if you stay in Maine, you could run for office,” his mother said. “Someday you could be governor, or maybe even a US senator.”

“Don’t you have to win an election to get those jobs?” Griff had almost interjected.

Of course, even if Bobby chose to

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