The Burgess Boys: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout

Author:Elizabeth Strout
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781400067688
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

The next morning Jim was talkative as they drove away from Shirley Falls. “See that?” he asked. They were about to get on the highway. Bob looked to where Jim pointed and saw a prefab building and a large parking lot with yellow buses. “Catholic churches are emptying out, have been for years, and these fundy churches are big-time. They go around in those buses scooping up any old person who can’t get to church. They love their Jesus, they do.”

Bob did not answer. He was trying to figure out how drunk he’d been last night. He had not felt drunk, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. Maybe what he thought he’d heard was not what he’d heard. Also, he kept picturing Susan this morning, standing on the porch waving as they pulled away, but Zach had bent his head down and gone back inside, and Bob kept picturing that too.

“You probably wonder how I know that,” Jim went on, merging onto the highway. “You learn all sorts of things reading the Shirley Falls Journal online. Okay, be that way.” He added, “So I told Susan this morning, when she was outside with the dog, that Zach might have done this to impress his father. Didn’t mention the girlfriend. Just that Steve had emailed Zach some vaguely negative things about the Somalis. And you know what she said? She said, ‘Huh.’ ”

“That’s what she said?” Bob looked out the window. After a while he said, “Well, I’m worried about Zach. Susan told me he’d soiled himself in the cell that day. That’s probably why he didn’t come down for dinner when I was up here. He was totally humiliated. He didn’t even tell you yesterday when you were asking what happened to him there.”

“When did she tell you that? She didn’t tell me that.”

“This morning, in the kitchen. When you were on the phone and Zach had taken his stuff upstairs.”

“I’ve done everything I can,” Jim finally said. “Everything to do with this family depresses me profoundly. All I want is to get back to New York.”

“You’ll get back to New York. Just like what you said about Pam, some people get what they need.”

“I was a dickwad. Let it go.”

“I can’t just let it go. Jimmy, did she really come on to you?”

Jim exhaled through his teeth. “Oh, Christ, who knows? Pam’s kind of crazy.”

“Who knows? You know. You said it.”

“I just told you—I was being a dickwad.” Jim paused. “Exaggerating, okay?”

They drove in silence after that. They drove beneath a gray November sky. The bare trees stood naked and skinny as they passed them. The pine trees seemed skinny too, apologetic, tired. They drove by trucks, they drove by beat-up cars with passengers sucking on cigarettes. They drove by fields that were brownish gray. They drove beneath underpasses that spelled out the names of the roads above them: Anglewood Road, Three Rod Road, Saco Pass. They drove over the bridge into New Hampshire, and then into Massachusetts. It wasn’t until traffic came to a halt outside of Worcester that Jim spoke.

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