Lucky Billy by John Vernon

Author:John Vernon [Vernon, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

10. May 1881

Escape

WHICH WAY, WHICH WAY? It all looks the same. Fireweed along the Roswell trail, the sun in his face. Torrey yucca, new evening primrose, cholla everywhere, the resurrection of the grama grass. The earth to his right breaks in successive waves against the north-facing slopes of the Capitans. Green-gray clearings in trees near the summits. He'll be past the mountains soon. Then where to go. North to Fort Sumner. South to Mexico.

Go to Mexico, Henry, you'll have your fill of chicas there.

Or they'll have their fill of me, he wants to answer, but it never will do to potty-mouth his mother. I'm Billy now, Ma.

To me, you'll always be Henry.

Fans of erosion up there in the mountains. Pale yellow dust. It's as dry as sin here. He wishes Yginio had come with him a ways just for the companionship. Alone, his mind flounders. To keep going east is to avoid studying the matter, is to dilly-dally shamelessly. He can't listen to his mother. Her disgust unmans him. She scraps them right back, Ma always did, she's a proudy, that one. I say one thing, she says the other, then I drop down a hole. I lick the dust, cowed. It happens every time. Sleep in your own piss and shit, Henry Antrim, for all I give a damn. His table manners at home were never as good as they were out in company, once she took to bed. She lay on her deathbed for three long months in the house in Silver City, turning more and more gray, spitting up gouts ot blood, while thirteen-year-old Henry found a hundred occasions, a constant press of business, distractions galore, which happened to prevent him from going home and opening the gate and knocking on that awful door and softly entering that terrible room, as was his duty, and sitting there with her. Look at you, you're a mess. How often do you change your underwear, Henry?

Underwear?

Blankets of bluebottle flies ripple from the stinking hides when Henry passes the butcher's. A man sorting through the stacks is pulling some out to freight to his tanning pits and needs the boy's help. Two bits. The tanning pits are south of town in what they call Chihuahua, Silver City's Mex hill—how can Henry go home? The school ceiling collapses in the heavy rains and the older children have to help with repairs. I lenry must rehearse for the minstrel show, in which he'll dress as a girl and dance in the chorus of Buffalo Gals, to raise money for the school, which regrettably chops his time at home short. Henry and Tony Conner smell joss sticks on Hudson Street passing a building that Henry calls a boarding house. Tony demurs. That ain't no boarding house. It's what my mother called it, says Henry, indignant, she had a friend there she much liked to visit. Some friend, says Tony. Your mother's friend was the opium pipe.

They must stone a Chinaman and of course that eats up time.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.