LUMINIS BOOKS
Published by Luminis Books
1950 East Greyhound Pass, #18, PMB 280,
Carmel, Indiana, 46033, U.S.A.
Copyright © William Alton, 2015
PUBLISHER’S NOTICE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-941311-45-5
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-941311-46-2
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Joel MacDonald. He taught me that I could be as crazy as I needed to be without being an ass.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Chris Katsaropoulos and Tracy Richardson at Luminis Books for taking a chance on a very dark story I thought would never see the light of day. Chris, especially, thank you for helping me hammer a blunt ending into something compelling. Thanks to Teresa Hively and Alan Jones, Jr. for being first readers.
Advance praise for Flesh and Bone:
“Conventional wisdom says a book is great when the reader says, ‘I couldn’t put it down.’ You will put this book down. And you will pick it back up. Again and again. In my days as a therapist Flesh and Bone would have been on my bookshelf labeled ‘Truth.’ Alton’s book is the reason no book should be censored.”
—Chris Crutcher, author of Whale Talk, Deadline and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
“Flesh and Bone captures the reader with its beautiful prose and haunting imagery. I felt like I was let into Bill’s life, privy to his heart-breaking journey. Like him, I was scraped raw by his struggle. Alton’s words grabbed me from the first page and have stayed with me days after finishing the novel.”
—Margaret Gelbwasser, author of Pieces of Us and Inconvenient, a Sydney Taylor Notable Book for Teens.
“Alton delves deeply into the dark and desolate side of adolescence where the lost boys and girls—the outsiders—endure the emptiness of existing, wanting so much to fill the void, but not knowing how. Bill describes himself as a smalltown boy, a baby queer, neither courageous nor outrageous. He’s a 21st century Holden Caulfield that troubled teens can embrace, and that those in authority will surely want to ban.”
—Laurie Gray, award-winning author of Just Myrto, Summer Sanctuary and Maybe I Will, YALSA Teens Top Ten Nominee
“Told in lyrical spare chapters, William Alton’s Flesh and Bone resists easy categorization. It is a series of elegant flash-fictionesque episodes narrated by Bill, a teenager whose life is upturned when his parents divorce and he and his mother move back to her hometown in rural Oregon. Searching for acceptance and a sense of his place the world, Bill, instead, finds himself caught in a string of unexpected sexual encounters that both confuse and console him. Alton’s prose is rich and his characters are sharp and compelling.”
—Toby Emert, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Education, Agnes Scott College
“After reading Flesh and Bone, I was left with a feeling of amazement, sorrow and hope. This novel chronicles Bill’s youth in a small town. Bill’s story is not your average coming of age story though. It is full of struggles with loneliness, depression and the search for meaning and happiness where it is sometimes extremely hard to find.”
“This beautifully written novel leads the reader through a dark journey of self-discovery and the yearning to reach out to the teen and offer support and understanding where there was none. We all have our own struggles, and Flesh and Bone makes you wonder how you would have reacted had your circumstances been the slightest bit different. For anyone who has ever felt lost (all of us), I highly recommend this book.”
—Teresa Hively, former Washington State Registered Counselor
“In a style that manages to be both stark and lyrical, Flesh and Bone is an unflinching portrait of one young man’s pain, desire and search for self.”
—Julia Watts, author of Secret City and Finding H.F.
The Night My Parents Split
MIDNIGHT. THE MOON hangs like a hook in the sky. Clouds stream past, long, frayed strings. My parents sit in the kitchen talking. They’re going through the papers that’ll end their marriage. I haven’t heard them talk like this in years. Divorce has brought them closer together. Their voices float through the house, but the words are just mumbled whispers. I stare out the window and wonder when they’ll be done.
We had dinner together tonight, in the dining room, at the table. They sit in the dining room now and divvy up their lives.
After an hour or so, Dad leaves. I watch him through the window. He walks like a scarecrow down the driveway and leaves in his truck. I wonder where he’ll go, but it doesn’t matter. He’s gone now and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Mom comes and stands in the door of my room. The fire of her cigarette burns red and black and lights up her face when she breathes.
“He’s not coming back, is he?” I ask.
“Sorry.”
“When will I see him again?”
“Soon,” she says. “Soon, I hope.”
She watches me for a second before turning away. That’s what they all do when they don’t know what to say. They turn away and leave. Someday, maybe I’ll turn away too. Someday, I’ll leave.
Packing Up
WE GATHER EVERYTHING in the living room. We take the pictures from the walls, the beds from the bedrooms, the clothes from the closets and stack them in boxes. Everything is bare and simple. Mom scrubs the walls while I go to my last day of school.
“Where you moving to?” my teacher asks.
“Oregon.”
“Pretty,” she says.
After my last class, I stand out in the parking lot watching everyone come and go. No one stops to say anything. I’m alone already. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. Soon, I’ll be somewhere new and nothing will be the same.
Travelling
DESERT TURNS TO mountains. Valleys crease the ridges. Clouds snag on the pines and cedars like cotton caught in a comb.
The house is huge and red and surrounded by berry fields, pastures and forest. We stop and the windows stare down at me. I sit in the car and the house rises like a tombstone from the fields, a giant’s grave.
“This is it,” she says.
This is it. This is where she grew up. This is where her parents are. This is where we’ll live from now on.
I close my eyes and imagine it. This is it. This is all there is.
Forever
MOM GETS A job waiting tables. She works nights. Weekends, she tends bar.
“We need the money,” she says. “We can’t stay here forever.”
I don’t know. This seems like forever. Breakfast before the sun. Dinner after it sets.
She works too many hours and I go to school. The day is sliced into slivers of time. Nights, I lie in my bed and watch the cars on the road, counting them. One, two, three. They come and go, bright and loud. In the pasture next to the house, the cattle stand in the rain. Corn and peas grow in the truck garden. Out in the yard, a ’possum waddles through the mud, the grass.
We can’t stay here forever. Where will we go? What will we do?
Baptismal
THE BARN STANDS in the tall grass on the other side of the fence. Behind the barn, the pig sty lies like an open wound at the edge of the woods. Sitting in the hayloft, I can see the pigs lying in the mud and shit, the trough pushed against the split rail fence. This is where I smoke. This is where I watch the world.
A creek lies at the bottom of the hill below the house. Stones are fuzzy with lichen and moss. Oaks and spruce, maples and elms
rise up over me, over the green water. I have never been skinny dipping, but there’s no one around.
Lying naked in the water, watching the speckled surface, the frogs and tadpoles flitting to the shallow edges of the little pool in which I baptize myself. The bottom is slimy and cold, but there are stones too. I come up to breathe. I rise like Aphrodite and stand in the rain, absolutely shivering. My bones ache with the wind. I light a cigarette. It’s amazing how many sins can be washed away in the everyday gathering of water and light.
Chores
MORNING WHISPERS IN without the sun. In the east, Mt. Hood stands like a giant broken tooth bathed in dawn’s bloody light. Clouds thin the light, make it soft as silk. He comes to my room.
“Bill,” Grandpa says. “There are chores.”
Chores? I wash dishes after dinner. I take the garbage out. What could possibly need doing this early in the morning?
“You have five minutes,” he says.
Jesus. I wait for a moment, but not too long. He scares me. I’ve heard tales of the beatings he used to lay on my mother and her mother. I dress and hurry through the kitchen where Grandma makes griddle cakes and eggs, biscuits and gravy.
Grandpa rolls a cigarette in the yard with its long, green grass. He takes me to his truck and shows me the buckets of slop. I have to carry them to the pigs behind the barn. They’re heavy. The handles cut into my fingers. The slop sloshes onto my thighs. It smells of grease and mold. The pigs come grunting and squealing. I take the buckets to the barn and rinse them with the hose.
Now it’s time to gather eggs. The coop smells of dust and shit. A plain bulb hangs on an exposed wire from the ceiling. The hens peck my hands while I steal their eggs.
Now it’s time for breakfast. Mom’s sleeping. She got home at three, maybe four, this morning. I don’t want to be here. I want to go to someplace where no one bothers me.
“Pigs and chickens,” Grandpa says. “Those are your chores. Don’t forget.”
I’ve decided I hate him a little.
First Day at School
BLUE LOCKERS ALONG the creamy walls. Wooden doors stand open, waiting to swallow us whole. I’ve never been the new guy. I stand on the edge of the crowd and watch the people move past. No one watches me. They move around and no one notices me standing there, gray and faded.
At lunch, we talk about Whitman and Poe. We talk about writing and love. None of us knows anything about anything. We pretend to be bright and complex. After a burger and fries, we go out to the Pit and smoke cigarettes.
“Do you think he was gay?” Richie asks.
“Who?” John John asks.
“Whitman.”
“Does it matter?” John John asks.
“Faggots,” Richie says. “Jesus.”
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” John John asks.
“I don’t know,” Richie says.
Me either. I don’t know shit. Maybe faggots are scary. Maybe they want to take over the world. It doesn’t matter. They can have it. Straights haven’t done shit for it so far.
Girls
NO ONE BOTHERS me. John John tells me there are people, but I have yet to meet them. I go to class and stare at the teacher and wait for the bell to ring.
“Come out to the Pit at lunch,” John John says.
Lunch comes and I eat a Salisbury steak and go to the Pit. The Pit is at the end of the school’s third wing. It’s not a pit really. Cars park along the street. A sidewalk goes behind the school to the Ag shop. People stand and smoke and talk. I have nothing to say. I light a cigarette.
John John brings out a pipe and passes it around. He calls me over.
“A little buzz for fifth period,” he says.
The pot is a one hit wonder. It sears through my head and my eyes water and my head spins. Everyone smokes and talks.
“What’s your name?” one of the girls asks.
“Bill.”
“Do you like to eat pussy?” she asks.
How do I answer that? I’ve never done it before. I’ve sucked cock and figured that eating pussy would be completely different.
“Look at him blush,” she says and laughs.
Everyone laughs.
“Leave him be,” John John says. “He’s good folk.”
They shake their heads and the bell rings and it’s time to go in.
“I was just teasing you,” the girl says.
“Okay.”
“You’ll get used to it,” she says.
“We’ll see.”
“My name’s Tammy,” she says and kisses me. She goes into the school and I stand there for a moment thinking maybe someday I’ll get her into bed. Right now, though, I have Biology. Maybe I’ll learn something about girls there.
Fair Warning
IT RAINS TOO much here. I haven’t seen the sun in weeks. The ground is thick and soft. Grass gives way to mud. Moss grows on anything sitting still long enough, trees, stones, houses.
“Oregon winter,” John John says.
He lives next door. He lets me fire his rifles. I don’t hunt like he does. I’m good with cans and bottles in the dump by the creek, but not so much with squirrels or deer or anything living.
“We gotta eat,” he says.
We walk through the pasture to his house. He’s someone to talk to on the bus, on the weekend when there’s no one else around.
“Watch out for my uncle,” he says.
“Your uncle?”
“Just watch out.”
His mother stews a couple of rabbits for dinner. No one stays in the kitchen with her. She works alone, without noise or chatter. She likes things quiet.
“You in school?” his uncle asks.
“High school.”
Harold lives in a little room off the kitchen and smells of stale beer and chewing tobacco.
“You want a beer?” he asks.
“Cool.”
He gets me one and I swallow a swallow and choke. It tastes like nothing I’ve tasted before.
“Make you a man,” Harold says.
His smile is gap-toothed and yellow.
“You a virgin?” he asks.
“I…”
“Leave him alone,” John John says.
“Just asking.”
“He’s not interested.”
I don’t know what it is I’m not interested in. I know nothing about these people. I don’t know the answers to the questions, the things no one talks about.
Crush
BEKAH’S BEAUTIFUL AND popular. The guys gather around like a halo. They bring her things and try to make her laugh. I don’t try to make her laugh. I keep away from her. She makes me nervous.
I only have one class with her and she sits across the room. She’s so much more interesting than the teacher. I can’t help but stare. I want to ask her out, but I don’t have the guts. Girls make me shy and jittery.
Terry, the quarterback, knows what to say to her to make her smile. They’ve been going out for months. Still, I want her to like me. We’ve never spoken. Words are only so much air. How do you say ‘I love you’ to someone like that?
Cheating
IT COMES DOWN to what comes first and what comes next. I do my chores before walking down the road to the bus stop. I hate this rain, this wind. My fingers turn blue and white and ache as if they’ve been crushed. There is no blood flowing in my hands.
The bus is filled with people I don’t know. I cannot smoke. I sit as far back as possible and stare out the window at the trees. They’re starting to unfold their leaves. Fields filled with raspberries are beginning to blossom. Soon the bees will come. If the rain doesn’t shut them down, that is.
When we get to school, I wait to be the last one off. I hate the crush. I hate the feel of people pressed against me, hurrying to unload.
Richie stands in the Pit smoking a cigarette, leaning against his Chevy’s fender.
“Bill,” he says.
“Richie.”
We don’t know each other
well enough to talk about our lives. He’s not very good looking and his knuckles are scarred from fighting. He scares me a little, but I act tough. It’s important to seem like you can take care of yourself.
“Did you do the English homework?” he asks.
“Most of it.”
“I’ll give you twenty bucks to do mine.”
I take the twenty and sit in his car diagramming sentences. John John comes and taps on the window.
“What’re you doing?” he asks.
“Richie’s homework.”
“You’re going to get busted.”
“He’s paying me twenty bucks.”
“Jesus.”
“See?”
“Just make sure you change some of the answers,” he says. “Nothing gets you busted faster than conformity.”
I finish the homework and hand it to Richie. Richie tucks it into his bag and gives me a smoke.
“You’re a smart fucker,” he says.
“Not smart enough,” I say.
The bell calls us to class. We grind our cigarettes out on the asphalt and file through the glass doors where everyone swirls like corpuscles through the halls. I sit in my class and stare out the window at the gulls wheeling in the ashy sky. It reminds me of a dream I had. It reminds me that sometimes, I too can rise into the sky. Not now, but later, maybe, I’ll rise out of this sadness and into the light on the other side of the clouds.
Vanish
MY HANDS ARE hard and red from tilting the hay out of the loft. My hands are sore and crooked. The hay is for the cattle in the barnyard. The news says there might be snow this week. No one knows for certain. Feeding the cattle comes every day.
Rain seethes on the tin roof, whispering promises it can’t keep. The wind is sharp as chipped glass. Rats rush from bale to bale. I light a cigarette, a bad idea with the hay lying dry all around, but I don’t want to stand in the weather to smoke.
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