Hollow by Owen Egerton

Author:Owen Egerton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Published: 2017-07-11T04:00:00+00:00

‘We have come into our own,’ my father said to me. ‘This is the fulfillment of the tradition told me by my father and my father’s father, and still back for many generations of our race. This is, assuredly, the land beyond the North Wind.’

—Olaf Jansen

As I’m walking down the gravel drive from the shed, Jenny steps from salon and calls out to me.

“Yo, Ollie. You got a call this morning. A guy named Martin. He nearly coughed a lung through the phone line.”

I take a deep breath and step toward her door.

“Friend of yours?” she asks.

“Dear friend,” I say.

Using the salon’s counter phone, I call. Martin sounds groggy and slow.

“Were you sleeping?” I ask.

“Been up since five.” He coughs. “Having trouble getting moving today.”

“You need anything?”

“Chemo. Metro says I didn’t reserve a ride. I know I did. I always do.” He coughs again. “I don’t mind. I hate that shit.”

“Martin. You can’t skip these.”

“I’m actually feeling pretty good.” He coughs so loud I have to hold the phone from my ear. Jenny cringes.

“Is Sam . . .”

“He’s not here. Just me.”

“What time is your appointment, Martin?”

I get the information, hang up and call Lyle.

“Dude,” he says. “Get your ass to REI.”

“The camping store?”

“Get on a bus and get here now!”

Tents hover in a suspended rapture and the vast room smells of nylon and trail mix. I hear Lyle almost immediately.

“Oh no, I want the neon one. Something you’ll see in the snow.”

I find him near the back towering over a young woman in hiking shorts and a worn smile.

“Does this glow in the dark?”

“No, sir.”

“It should. That would be awesome.”

“It would make it hard to sleep with a glowing coat in your tent.”

“Oh shit, that is so true—Ollie!” He slaps my back. “This is Janet. She’s helping us stock up. Janet, I’m going to need a matching coat—Teflon, is that right?—a matching one but a few sizes down.”

Lyle is decked out in a neon green jacket, a felt camping fedora, and yellow polarized glasses. He hands me the glasses off of his face.

“Try these. They actually make things brighter. It’s amazing.”

“Lyle, these glasses cost four hundred bucks. How are you going to pay for these?”

He whips out a Visa credit card. “I’m not.”

“You know how those work, right? You do pay, eventually.”

“Not if I don’t come back.” He turns to a full-length mirror and admires himself. “I woke up this morning thinking, Jesus, I’m so worried about money. Why? We’re either staying down there—and you know they don’t have money—or we do come back, we’ll have proof, we’ll be getting money thrown at us. Either way, my days of material worries are coming to an end. And there it was in the mail. Visa begging me to spend their money.”

“It’s not their money you’re spending.”

“I made the call and got the card. It was more than easy. They said they could only advance me five thousand as cash. I’ve got these credit checks. I figure we send one to Horner, or give it to him in person at the book signing.

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