Selected Stories

by Nate Southard

  Silence. For a long time.

  “I understood,” Carla finally said.

  “Right.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Can we change the subject please?”

  “Sure. You’re in charge here.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t feel like it.”

  “It never does.”

  Sid climbed to his feet and returned to the Buick. There was a six-pack of longnecks inside, and they were good and cold. He grabbed them and popped one open, took a sip as he returned to Carla’s side.

  “Wish I could have one of those,” Carla said.

  “I got more. Want one?”

  “Wouldn’t do me any good.”

  “Guess not.”

  “Sid?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m glad you brought me out here, to the clearing.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Seems like most of our good moments were out here.”

  He felt a slight smile play across his lips. “We did have a few good moments, didn’t we?”

  “We had more than a few. It’s not like we were at each other’s throat all the time or anything.”

  “Sure felt like it near the end.”

  “I know, and the funny thing is that we weren’t even arguing that much. It was closer to a cold war than anything else.”

  “It was a bit.”

  “All those hours, the two of us just staring at the walls because we didn’t want to look at each other. Going to bed without saying a word, just a little peck on the forehead from you.”

  “Didn’t think you wanted me to kiss you on the lips.”

  “I didn’t,” she said, “but maybe it would have helped.”

  He waved his hand at the clearing, at her. “What? Like one kiss would have stopped all this?”

  “It might have,” Carla answered. “I’d be willing to try anything now.”

  “Guess I can see that.” The words had barely escaped his lips before he felt guilty for saying them.

  “Don’t feel bad,” she said. “I could do with some comedic relief myself.”

  “Want to hear a joke?”

  “One of yours? No thanks.”

  “My jokes aren’t so bad.”

  “They wouldn’t be if you could tell them worth a damn.”

  “Good point.” He drained the last of the longneck and cracked open another.

  “Be sure not to leave those bottles out here,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Fingerprints. Besides, you’re leaving enough out here anyway.”

  “Wonder if anybody else comes out here. Wonder if they’ll see where I dug.”

  “Who knows?”

  He shook his head. “Maybe I should just…”

  “You want to finish that thought? Just what? Take me home and leave me in my apartment? Take me to the cops and turn yourself in? Maybe you should just what?”

  “I don’t know! Jesus! Why do you always do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Ride me! You fucking ride me all the time, every time I have to make a decision. Doesn’t matter how important it is or anything. You just like to push. Well, I fucking hate it, okay? Stop it!” He hurled the bottle into the woods.

  “Touched a nerve, huh?”

  “Shut up.” He climbed to his feet and grabbed the pickaxe. He stomped away from Carla, stopping ten feet away, and set his feet. He raised the tool over his head and brought it down into the frozen earth. The icy ground broke apart in rough clumps.

  “You know you’ll have to find all that glass, right? That’s evidence, Sid. Even a sliver will probably tell the cops all they need to know.”

  “So?” He was really moving with the pickaxe now, attacking the ground again and again, opening up a hole he could later dig out with the shovel. He felt tears in his eyes. He tried to force them away, but he couldn’t. Carla had stirred him up too much.

  “Fine,” she said. “If you want to get caught, that’s fine with me. It’s not like they’ll have any other suspects anyway.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do, Sid. There’s nobody else.”

  “Shit.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You didn’t think you’d get away with it anyway.”

  She was right. The thought ran through his head as tears raced down his cheeks, freezing on his chin. He hadn’t expected to get away with it, had known from the beginning that he wouldn’t. He wasn’t a murderer, wasn’t a criminal of any kind. He was an idiot flying blind, just waiting to smack into the side of a mountain and hoping it wouldn’t hurt too much when he did. He would be caught. He would go to jail. He would probably die there.

  He felt so alone.

  “Here comes the self-pity again,” Carla muttered.

  Sid wiped his eyes dry, sniffled. “No,” he said. “I’m okay. I’m sorry about that. I just…I never really thought it all through.”

  “I kind of figured that.”

  “Yeah. I’m an open book.”

  Carla hushed while he pulled himself together again. He felt the beer rush to his head, all tingles and softness. He was getting drunk, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t feel his hands anymore—could barely force them to hold the pickaxe—but he didn’t care. He was pretty sure he didn’t care about anything anymore.

  Anything but Carla.

  He turned to her. “Sorry about that. You’ve probably seen me cry enough.”

  “It’s okay. Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yeah. Anything.”

  Carla paused, her eyes searching his. He wanted to turn away, but he kept his gaze steady, letting her search.

  “Why?” she finally asked. “Why did you do it?”

  He closed his eyes. He knew the question would come, but it still hit him like a fist to the belly. He owed her an answer—he knew that—but he wasn’t sure he had one that would satisfy her.

  “I’m not sure,” he said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. I wish I could tell you something else, but I can’t. I don’t know. Maybe I…”

  “What?” There was a silver tone of kindness in her voice. The tone told Sid she didn’t want to know for her sake, but for his.

  “I think,” he managed before his throat seemed to seal shut, a lump the size of a planet in there somewhere. He cleared it and tried again. “I think I didn’t want to hope so much. I knew we weren’t gonna last much longer, and I just didn’t want to be without you, thinking there might be a way to win you back.

  “Y’see, that’s what hurt; thinking that we might get together again somehow. It was that hope that hurt me so fucking much, like a weight that was crushing me, so I decided to take the hope away.”

  “Oh,” Carla said. “I think I get it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, I really think so. That’s not what you really wanted though, was it? You didn’t want to kill off the hope.”

  “No,” Sid said. He had begun to cry again. The pickaxe slipped from his numb fingers and fell to the clearing’s icy floor. “That’s not what I really wanted.”

  Carla’s eyes looked sad, apologetic. “So what do you want?”

  Sid’s eyes closed. A sob racked his body.

  “To be together again.”

  The words hung in the clearing like a vapor, penetrating the both of them. He sat and hugged his legs to his chest, burying his face against his knees as his body quaked with each exhalation. He didn’t want to look at her again. It hurt too much. It hurt too much to be without her.

  Something brushed his elbow.

  Fingers.

  “Hey,” Carla’s voice rung soft and comforting. “Don’t do that, okay? Don’t cry. It hurts to watch you cry.”

  “I can’t help it!” he yelled into the clearing. “You’re gone! You’re completely gone, and it’s all my fault!”

  “You could stay.”

  His eyes fluttered open. He looked to Carla and found her smiling again.
r />   “What?”

  “You don’t have to leave me,” she said. “You can stay here, and we’ll watch the stars come out. It’ll be like the good times. We’ll smile, and we’ll laugh. Come on, Sid. Look up at the stars with me.”

  He smiled, the frozen trails of his tears cracking on his cheeks. “Okay.”

  He unrolled the blanket from around Carla, spreading it out on the ground beneath her. He lay down next to her, wriggling up against her side. Her fingers brushed his, and he took her cold hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “Don’t be,” Carla replied. “Just make it up to me.”

  He took a deep breath, smiling as the air burned in his lungs. He would fall asleep out here, asleep with Carla. Together again.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I know.”

  Sid kissed Carla’s lips, then looked up at the sky and waited for the night to come, together with his only love in the clearing, beneath the firs.

  THE BLISTERS ON MY HEART

  Shelly keeps her eyes glued to the scorched two-lane as she reaches for the radio. With frantic fingers, she twists the dial, finds Jack and Squat with a whole mess of Not-A-Damn-Thing in between. It’s the quiet radio that scares me the most. Whoever said silence is golden was a goddamn liar. Silence is terrifying, and don’t ever let nobody tell you different.

  Shelly whines a split second before she hits the only pothole for miles. I brace myself, but it’s too late. The Mercury jolts up and down, and the hole in my gut tears a little, ripping a barking scream out of me. When I look down, blood weeps between my fingers. That can’t be good, not that anything good is coming down the pike.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  “No.”

  “What do you need?”

  “A…bed. Just get me a bed.”

  Her face pinches, and she shakes her head without once tearing her eyes from the road. “If we stop—”

  “I know. Just get me a bed.”

  She nods, biting her lip. We both know there’s no outrunning the thing behind us. Best we can do is get ahead of it for a little while. Sometimes the small victories are just so damn hollow.

  After a moment of road noise, I spot a motel on the left, a squat, dirt-caked building that would probably be ringed with buzzing neon if it were night. I point with a bloody finger. Shelly gives me another one of those nods and eases onto the brakes.

  “Careful entering the lot,” I say. “Please.”

  We enter the lot at a speed that wouldn’t even count as a crawl, and still my gut burns liquid fire. I hiss out my pain as tears leak from Shelly’s eyes.

  “I’m okay,” I tell her. “Just park…by the rooms.”

  “But you’re bleeding!”

  “Been bleeding a long time. Blisters must’ve popped.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Wish I could. Just…Just not that easy.”

  The Mercury groans to a stop, splitting a pair of parking spaces. Shelly turns to me, her face lined with worry, black hair a tangle.

  “What do we do?”

  I almost grin at the question, but everything hurts too much. Instead, I nod toward the first motel room. “See if it’ll open.”

  “But—”

  “Just check, baby. Please.”

  Her teeth work that lip again, her eyes shifting toward the motel room, and then she shoulders open her door and climbs out. As she walks toward the room, pale denim sheathing legs I know all too well, I grab the flask from the dash and swallow a belt. The bourbon rips down my throat and sends warmth through my insides, drowning some of the pain. Not nearly enough, but some.

  Shelly reaches the door—a number 3 hanging crooked on it—and tries the handle. It jiggles but won’t turn. The door to room 2 gives her the same deal. When she turns back to the car, her face looks panicked for a second, but then it goes hard, and I can see the resolve deep in those brown eyes. She stalks back to the car, and I know what she’s coming to get even before she opens my door and reaches over my lap. Her eyes don’t so much as tick my way as she opens the glove compartment and snatches the .38 snubnose from inside. She pops the cylinder, and I see four bullets inside. With ruthless efficiency, she slaps the pistol shut again, and then she stomps away, leaving my door wide open.

  My vision dims as I watch her walk to the office, her fingers tight around the pistol and her entire body tick-ticking back and forth with each step. The fire in my belly’s getting colder, and I know that’s not a good thing. How she can walk like that in her condition beats the hell out of me.

  Maybe I can just slip away, just be cold by the time Shelly returns. Then she can keep running. Then she can—

  Two cracking shots snap me out of my daze. I jump, and a new jolt of pure goddamn torture kicks another scream out of me. Flashbulbs pop in my eyes. They don’t clear until Shelly tosses the gun at my feet and puts a warm palm on my face.

  “Look, baby,” she says. She jangles a room key.

  I force a smile. The pain makes it hard, but the whiskey helps. “Did good, babe.” I try to ignore the flecks of blood on her cheek. They almost match her lipstick.

  “I love you.”

  “Come here.” She pushes toward me, and I grab the back of her head, mash her warm lips to mine.

  “Let’s get you inside,” she says, and then she slips an arm under my shoulder and lifts.

  The world goes electric hot as she gets me on my feet. I feel another rip and press hard against my gut. Don’t want anything slipping through and slapping the concrete. Shelly gets her weight under me. She feels so small, but she supports this idiot better than any crutch.

  As she walks me toward the room, telling me to watch the curb, I lift my head and look west. The sky looms black. Most folks would say it looks like a bank of fat storm clouds, but I know better. It’s something much worse—even from here, I can see the fire inside it—and it’s my fault.

  Least I did it for love.

  “Babe, you’re gonna break my heart, you keep that up.”

  Shelly chuckles a little—giggling doesn’t suit her—and leans her head back, sending black curls to break like angry waves against her pale shoulders. She wriggles on top of me, sending tiny jolts of pleasure from my lap through my entire body, and my hands find her hips, make her grind a little slower so I don’t explode then and there.

  We sit in a darkened corner of the club, draped in shadows, out of reach of the black lights and televisions tuned to sports, like any guy in here is watching something other than the latest dancer to take the stage.

  “That sounds funny?” I ask. I hope it sounds playful, but everything that comes out of my mouth sounds cold. Just the way it goes.

  “A little.” Her voice makes me picture honey, pouring slow and smooth.

  “Why’s that?”

  She leans in close. Her breasts press against me, and her hot breath finds my ear. She smells like soap, not the cheap, stinging perfume all the other dancers use. Somehow, I manage not to shudder.

  “Because hearts don’t break, baby,” she says. “They scrape against the inside of your chest until they blister. Then they pop and leak and blister all over again until they get tired and give up.” She arches her back and sets her hips going harder.

  “Speaking of popping, better slow it down.”

  A pout appears on her red lips. Then, it breaks into a wicked grin. “Don’t you want me to get you off?”

  “Not my game.”

  Shelly—she says that’s her real name, that she only goes by Ivy onstage—slides back until she’s sitting on my knee. She arches one smooth leg the color of milk and plants her foot dangerously close to my crotch. I’m trailing my eyes from her shin down to her ankle when both her hands close around me and squeeze.

  “This feel like a game, baby?”

  No, it doesn’t. It feels amazing, and my cock jumps in response. She slides her hands up, down, working me through my jeans, and my entire body feels alive. My eyes slip s
hut, and my breath comes in ragged bursts. If it’s a game, it’s the best one I’ve ever played.

  Pressure builds. My vision crackles red. I hear Shelly chuckle again, and I grab her wrists in my hands, move them to my shoulders.

  “Babe, I didn’t show up for a rub and tug.”

  She jerks away, and the look on her face makes me think I really wounded her. I figure it’s a practiced expression. A woman like her can use a look like that better than guys back in the yard can use a shiv. You never see it coming; you’re just bleeding all the sudden.

  The wounded look goes razor-hostile. Another good trick. “If you’re not worth my time—”

  I grab her hips and pull her close, press her hard against the bulge in my lap. She squirms, her lips slipping from a firm line to a smile, and a sigh breezes out of her.

  My eyes lock with hers. “Maybe I just want a little company.”

  She presses her weight down on me. Her chest rises and falls, a black bra mashing her breasts into a shelf of flesh.

  “If I’m worth your while or not is for you to decide, babe. I just know I ain’t paying for your hand.”

  “You know how to use it?”

  “Yeah.”

  She climbs off of me and starts to walk away. I reach for my drink, sure she’s decided to move on to another worm she can hook, when she looks over her shoulder.

  “C’mon.”

  She drives a beat-up Mercury, but it looks real nice with her stretched across the hood behind the club. The night’s sticky hot, but Shelly doesn’t care. Everything’s given way to animal lust, me included. I try to be gentle, tender, but her eyes keep finding mine. She arches her back and digs her nails into my naked chest, and it’s like a whip across a thoroughbred’s flank. My groans become grunts. Her moans become screams.

  When it’s done—when Shelly stretches her arms over her head and a smile fills her face—I button myself up and stand there with my hands in my pockets like some school kid. Shelly climbs off the hood and touches her hand to my face, kisses me.

  “Amazing,” she says. “You better come back for me.”

  I nod. She can tell I’m not lying. By now, she’s probably used to hooking guys like this. Give them the first one free, and then make them pay hand over fist. I know the game by heart, but her hand on my face feels so soft, so cool. I can almost feel the hook enter my skin, and I don’t think I care.