The Wait Read online

  the wait

  a novel by Frank Turner Hollon

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-59692-879-4

  M P Publishing Limited

  12 Strathallan Crescent

  Douglas

  Isle of Man

  IM2 4NR

  via United Kingdom

  Telephone: +44 (0)1624 618672

  email: [email protected]

  Other Books by

  Frank Turner Hollon

  The Pains of April

  The God File

  A Thin Difference

  Life is a Strange Place (Barry Munday)

  The Point of Fracture

  Glitter Girl and the Crazy Cheese

  blood and circumstance

  Originally published by:

  MacAdam/Cage

  155 Sansome Street, Suite 550

  San Francisco, CA 94104

  www.macadamcage.com

  Copyright © Frank Turner Hollon 2008

  all rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hollon, Frank Turner, 1963-

  The wait : a novel / by Frank Turner Hollon.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-59692-291-4

  1. Life—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.O494W35 2008

  813’.6—dc22

  2007050807

  Paperback edition: May 2008

  ISBN 978-1-59692-293-8

  Book design by Dorothy Carico Smith.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Between the wish and the thing, life lies waiting.

  —Unknown

  the wait

  a novel by Frank Turner Hollon

  CONTENTS

  Part 1 Chapter 1

  Part 1 Chapter 2

  Part 1 Chapter 3

  Part 1 Chapter 4

  Part 1 Chapter 5

  Part 1 Chapter 6

  Part 1 Chapter 7

  Part 1 Chapter 8

  Part 1 Chapter 9

  Part 1 Chapter 10

  Part 1 Chapter 11

  Part 2 Chapter 1

  Part 2 Chapter 2

  Part 2 Chapter 3

  Part 2 Chapter 4

  Part 2 Chapter 6

  Part 2 Chapter 7

  Part 2 Chapter 8

  Part 3 Chapter 1

  Part 3 Chapter 2

  Part 3 Chapter 3

  Part 3 Chapter 4

  Part 3 Chapter 5

  Part 3 Chapter 6

  Part 3 Chapter 7

  Part 3 Chapter 8

  Part 4 Chapter 1

  Part 4 Chapter 2

  Part 4 Chapter 3

  Part 4 Chapter 4

  Part 4 Chapter 5

  Part 4 Chapter 6

  Part 4 Chapter 7

  Part 4 Chapter 8

  Acknowledgements

  PART I

  in the beginning

  one

  My father almost never got drunk. When he did, it was usually a happy, goofy drunk. But one night when I was nine years old, after a Christmas party, for reasons still unknown, he told me the story of my conception. This is how I remember it.

  Bobby Winters stared out the motel window. From behind he could hear his little brother in the bathroom. It was a day like any other day, except Bobby knew something bad would happen soon. He could always tell when his brother was about to do something stupid. It was just a matter of trying to keep the damage to a minimum.

  Mark came out from the bathroom completely naked with a pistol in his left hand.

  “We’re gonna rob this motel,” is what he said.

  Bobby just kept staring out the window. He knew better than to argue. Everything had already been said before.

  Mark continued, “We ain’t got no money left. After it gets dark, I’ll go into the lobby alone when it’s clear. You keep the car runnin’. We’ll haul ass outta here. Maybe go to Texas or somewhere.”

  Even though they were only nineteen and twenty years old, it seemed to Bobby he’d been keeping Mark alive for centuries.

  Bobby turned around and said slowly, careful to control his voice, “Don’t hurt anybody, Mark.”

  Mark smiled. “You worry too fuckin’ much. Like somebody’s grandmother or somethin’.”

  When the sun was gone and the lobby empty, Mark pushed open the glass door and walked quickly to the man behind the counter. The man was standing alone, bent at the waist, reading a magazine open on the counter. Before he could raise his face from the page, Mark placed the barrel of the pistol against the crown of the man’s head and pulled the trigger.

  Bobby heard the shot. “Jesus,” he whispered, and then began to count out loud quietly for no particular purpose. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.”

  The car door slammed. Bobby spun the tires on the gravel and yanked the steering wheel to the right. Mark counted the cash. Twenties in one pile, tens in another. The odd bills were stacked to the side.

  “Two hundred forty dollars. Shit, that’s pretty good. It’ll get us to Texas. That’s for damn sure.”

  The siren ended the sentence. Bobby saw the police car in the rearview mirror.

  “Where’d that son-of-a-bitch come from?” Mark asked, like he couldn’t believe it. Like he couldn’t believe a police car might actually be there.

  Bobby ran through a yellow light and tapped the gas. His chest pounded.

  “What did you do back there, Mark?” he asked, looking in the rearview mirror.

  “It don’t matter,” Mark answered.

  “I need to know,” Bobby said.

  Mark turned around to see another police car joining the chase.

  “It don’t matter,” Mark repeated.

  Bobby raised his voice, “I need to know what I’m runnin’ from, Goddamnit.”

  Both men were aware, on different levels, and for different reasons, who held the pistol and who didn’t. Mark felt himself squeeze the handle.

  “Put it this way, they ain’t takin’ me. I ain’t goin’, so you better haul ass.”

  Bobby took a slow, deep breath. A promise was a promise, he thought. Blood is blood, and you can’t turn your back. Whatever happens, that’s just the way it is. You gotta ride it out.

  So he pushed down on the gas and the car topped one hundred miles an hour. In the darkness, down the country road, the bushes and trees passed so fast they were only shadows. The blue lights of the police car spun around, reminding Bobby of a toy he had as a little boy. It would shine with colors in the sunlight, and for a moment he wondered where it had gone.

  Bobby passed a truck on the two-lane road and then another truck. He could see houses and lights up ahead in the distance. The two police cars got stuck behind the second truck, unable to pass because oncoming cars couldn’t pull over in a construction area. Space grew between the chaser and the chased.

  Bobby pushed the accelerator against the floorboard. He looked in the rearview mirror. Sweat eased slowly down the skin underneath his arms to the waistband of his underwear. His heart still pounded.

  “Those stupid motherfuckers,” Mark said, looking back over the seat, laughing like a crazy man.

  The hill came so fast. The road was flat, and suddenly there was a hill. No time to slow down. No time to know until the car was in the air, the road curving to the left, and the car flew into the field, landing hard, flipping over and over, slinging mud and grass and bits of plastic until it slammed sideways into a cow and finally twisted to a hissing stop, quiet on the downslope of the hill, o
utside of sight from the road.

  The police cars barreled past, slowing down for the hill the drivers knew would come and then turning left around the curve, the drivers looking ahead into the distance for red taillights.

  Bobby’s first thought was nothing. Then he knew something bad had happened, like he was sure it would.

  “Mark,” he said.

  It was dark in the field. One of the headlights of the car shined out away from the road and Bobby could see a cow on its side.

  “Mark.”

  Bobby crawled out the busted window. He could feel burning on the side of his face, and his right arm hung limp. Bobby walked around to the far side of the car, and in the darkness, like a mannequin in the grass, he saw his brother’s body. The shirt was yanked up over his face and his pants pulled to his knees. Dirt and grass covered a portion of his underwear and stuck to the blood from the peeled back flesh.

  In the distance, Bobby could hear the sirens.

  “Mark,” he said, bending over his little brother.

  But Mark was dead, and the promise had been broken, no matter who was to blame. It was over, just like he knew it would end, sooner or later.

  Bobby felt a strange relief. A heaviness lifted from his body. Something he could not define or admit, a lonely freedom.

  Bobby Winters stood and looked out across the field. He could see lights through the woods, far off, flickering as the tree limbs moved gently in the evening breeze. He began to walk toward the lights and away from the car, and his brother, and the cows. As he walked he didn’t think of much, only walking. Beyond the lights he didn’t wonder where he might go, or what would happen, because it didn’t matter. He was alive, and Mark wasn’t, and there was a reason, whether he understood it or not.

  At the edge of the field, Bobby turned back for one last look. He could see the blue lights circling down the long road. He could see the one headlight from the upside-down car, and the cows, and a bump on the ground he knew was his brother. He turned and walked into the woods and kept walking until he reached a house. It was a small house, with a front porch and rocking chairs. Bobby saw a light in a back window and followed the light. He looked inside and saw a woman lying naked on a bed. Before he could decide what to think of her, a man, wearing only socks, the lady’s husband, came to the bed. He stood looking down at his wife in a way Bobby had never seen before.

  The man touched his wife on her leg with the back of his hand and then ran his hand slowly up to the edge of her hip. And she let him touch her, but not in a way Bobby had ever had a woman let him touch her before, but instead, in a way he couldn’t possibly describe.

  He knew it was wrong to watch, but it wasn’t a choice. The man leaned down and they kissed. His hand slid to his wife’s breast, and he squeezed gently and released, leaving his hand resting on the breast. Bobby could see her breathe. The air pulled in, the chest expanded, and the air pushed out. The man opened his wife’s legs and positioned himself in between, rising above her like he was floating, careful not to touch until she guided him inside.

  Bobby watched as they moved, the man floating above, the husband and wife only touching where he entered her, slowly back and forth, where she accepted him, the two looking only at each other like there was nothing else in the world worth seeing. And rising, and building, deeper, and a tiny bit deeper, until the man closed his eyes and pushed one last time while Bobby Winters watched at the window and witnessed the acts leading to the conception of James Early Winwood.

  There was a sound behind him, but he didn’t turn around. He didn’t stop watching until the gunshot opened the night, and the bullet tore through the neck of Bobby Winters, shattering the skin and slicing through the cord, bringing Bobby to his knees, his cheek skidding down the brick wall until he was in the dirt, face down under the window. And his heart stopped.

  The gunshot spewed blood all over the window. The man inside dismounted like he had taken the bullet himself and fell to the carpet in complete nakedness, leaving his spread-eagled wife afraid to move a muscle until she saw the outline of the police officer’s head at the window. She jumped upright, covering her nipples with the palms of her sweaty hands.

  My father told the story like he was the man at the window, knowing things he couldn’t possibly know. My mind has filled so many gaps through the years it’s not possible to reconstruct what my father actually told me that night after the Christmas party. We never spoke of it again.

  Perhaps the single most important moment in each of our lives is the moment of conception. Thank God most of us are spared the nasty little sexual details of our parents churning away on one another. Although I’m fascinated by my father’s story, I wish he’d never told me. I already had some vague feeling of oddness surrounding my creation before I knew about the Winters brothers, but now the oddness has taken form. I’m left with a trap door of anarchy shaped unfairly by events beyond my control. The fact it happened before my birth makes it no more or less unfair.

  Certain cultures believe the soul of the person who dies travels to the nearest new life and takes up residence. It’s a curious belief, perhaps predicated by our desire to continue, or at least exist day-to-day with the hope of unlimited life. But let’s be honest, how much of Bobby Winters do you think drifted through the cracks around the window, floated invisibly into my mother’s vaginal canal, and affixed to the embryo, invading like a bad smell caught in the fabric of a boy’s underwear? Probably not much, but the way my dad told the story, who the hell could say what’s not possible.

  When I was in high school, a group of us drove to the beach for a party one Saturday night. There was this girl there, the younger sister of a friend. I’d seen her before, but she was two years younger, and two years is a lot when you’re eighteen. I tried not to look at her, but there was something beyond my control happening. I was attracted to her like a mayfly pulled to a yellow dock light.

  I went outside just to break away from the tension. She came outside behind me, took my hand in the shadows, and led me away without a word between us. She started to run, pulling me behind, and my heart beat like a bank robber’s. We veered between two houses and ended up in the backyard next to a pool. It was so dark I couldn’t see her face.

  “The Prestons are in Mexico on vacation,” she whispered.

  I heard the snap of her blue jeans, and the sounds of undress. I tried to equalize my breathing so she couldn’t possibly hear the wheeze of my asthma, so she couldn’t possibly tell I was on the verge of hyperventilating, maybe fainting, and cracking my stupid head on the patio cement.

  She giggled. “Take off your clothes.”

  My eyes began to adjust to the moonlight and there she stood, as naked and pure as anybody had ever stood, anywhere, in the history of mankind. And I felt this feeling I’d never felt before, maybe like my father felt about my mother on the night Bobby Winters watched. I don’t know.

  I took off all my clothes, and we walked down the steps into the coolness of the black water. I kissed her, and touched her body like a starving man. We held on to each other, and then she stopped me from doing what we had no business doing, what I couldn’t stop myself from doing, and it was the last time I ever saw the girl. Even now, this many years later, when I’m alone in my bed I can think about her and touch the feeling again. Like I’m there, in the dark waters of the Prestons’ pool, in the summer moonlight.

  People are born with ranges of potential. One man may be born with athletic potential and, if left unfulfilled due to worldly circumstances or laziness, it may be wasted. On the other hand, the man may reach levels unreached before, taking advantage of the possibilities. I cannot hit a baseball out of Yankee Stadium. I cannot get my bat around on a ninety-five-mile-per-hour fastball. My individual potential lies in awareness. As a young child I remember sitting in new surroundings, watching. There is so much to notice if you know what to look for. So much to be aware of around you.

  My mother said when she took me to a new place I wo
uldn’t speak for at least an hour. Just looking around at movements, listening for inflection, establishing the walls of the fish tank. I wonder if my range of potential awareness has anything to do with the strange circumstances of my conception? I wonder if the feeling caused by my friend’s sister was a result of the blinding darkness of the night, the quickness of the situation, or the finality of our contact? I don’t know, but I’d love to see her naked in the darkness again, if only for a minute.

  The first moment which I am aware of being alive is the flash of a memory. I am looking up from the confines of a crib at the face of a man with a black mustache. I can see him clearly, but I don’t know who he is. The man is wearing a white button-down shirt. His hair is medium-length black. He’s neither smiling nor frowning, just leaning over me like a stranger.

  I’ve never figured out who the man could be, but surely there must be a reason the moment remains my first memory, as opposed to the moment before, or the moment after. We are forged by a handful of events from conception to death. These events, together, form the sound that life makes.

  And so I was born nine and a half months from the date Bobby Winters was shot to death watching my parents on the other side of the window. Born unto this world, another soul amongst many. A tiny, cold, wet-skinned child, filled with the fear of this life and the outcry of potential. But I can’t remember anything until the mustached man appeared over my crib rail. I imagine my father was both amazed and overwhelmed at the miracle of my birth. I imagine my mother was absolutely sure she would never have another child, for any reason, ever, and I was blessed at such an early age with the inability of being aware of anything whatsoever. Instead, my lungs concentrated on drawing the next breath, the simplest possible act of living, and in this simple act, set in motion the rest of my life.

  two

  It would be best if we could tell the intelligence of a person instantly by the size of their heads. A big-headed man has more brains and therefore more intelligence. A little-headed guy is obviously stupid and will be treated accordingly.