Settright Road by Jon Boilard

Author:Jon Boilard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Settright Road
ISBN: Settright_Road
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2017-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

DAMN THE WIND

Gramps said it was a hurricane. We used candles that were in pickle jars and almost smelled like purple grapes. We used a transistor radio, and the ocean was loud and white and came into the yard of the house on Raymond Street. The wind was a rowdy bully too. It whooped and knocked down trees and telephone wires and pushed white sailboats onto their sides in Kettle Cove, smashed them on the rocks along the beach in front of the Bath and Tennis Club where the rich kids went. Gramps let me take a flashlight to bed because my owl nightlight didn’t work from the storm. He told me the flashlight was for emergencies, and he told me my mother had a screw loose. That’s why they’ve got her locked up, he said. They should throw away the fucking key, he said. You shouldn’t listen to any of her nonsense, he said.

I listened to the wind, and the unbreakable rain that was popcorn on my window. To the ocean that sounded like gunfire. I didn’t sleep for fear of it and all the rest. Gramps didn’t sleep either for his own private reasons and in the morning his eyeballs were maraschino cherries floating in grenadine and he used an iron garden rake to knock wires off the roof. The alcoholic watched from the porch. She always watched everything. She wore a blue raincoat and a blue rain hat. She had a whiskey bitter in her good hand. Be careful, she said. Careful careful careful. He ignored her and slapped at the wires that were fat and patient snakes.

Gramps didn’t talk to the alcoholic because he was mad about the wind and the rain and the ocean coming into the yard. He was mad about the maple trees that were sideways in front of the house. The trees are dead, he said. God and the trees are dead. I had on a rubber coat and the alcoholic buttoned it up to my neck. The wind pushed sand and rain against me and I could hear the sharp shards of them on my coat and feel them on my face and legs like a million bee stings. I waved at the alcoholic up on the porch and she waved her drink at me. She had her free hand on the collar of her blue raincoat and she shrugged and shivered. Then she watched Gramps. She took a drink. Before the stroke in the basement that Gramps called a stroke of bad luck, she liked to say she loved me to death. Now all she could muster was Love love love.

Gramps was big and wet. He finally got the wires off the roof. Watch out, he said. For Christ sakes watch out, he told me. He put the garden rake in the shed where he kept the riding lawn mower and his tools. I followed him around but he didn’t talk to me because he cursed at the wind and the rain.

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