Billy Summers

‘When I was doing it, when I was …’ She hesitates. Why is the word so hard to say? Why should it be? ‘When I was writing, I forgot to be sad. I forgot to worry about the future. I forgot where I was. I didn’t know that could happen. I could pretend we were in the Bide-A-Wee Motel outside of Davenport, Iowa. Only it wasn’t like pretending, even though there’s no such place. I could see the fake wood walls and the blue bedspread and the bathroom glass in its plastic bag with writing on it that said SANITIZED FOR YOUR HEALTH. But that wasn’t the most important part.’

She wipes her eyes, she wipes her nose, she watches the white clouds of vapor from her exhalations drift away.

‘I could pretend that Marge – fucking Marge – only creased you, after all.’ She shakes her head as if to clear it. ‘Only that’s not right. You were only creased. You did write me that note and put it under my door when I was sleeping. You walked to the truck stop up the road even though the truck stop was back in New York and you went on from there. Are going on. Did you know that could happen? Did you know that you could sit in front of a screen or a pad of paper and change the world? It doesn’t last, the world always comes back, but before it does, it’s awesome. It’s everything. Because you can have things the way you want and I want you to still be alive and in the story you are and always will be.’

She stands and goes over to the square of earth she and Bucky dug together. In the real world he’s under there. She takes a knee and puts the book on the grave. Maybe the snow will cover it. Maybe the wind will blow it away. It doesn’t matter. In her mind it will stay here. The book is Thérèse Raquin, by Émile Zola.

‘Now I know who you were talking about,’ she says.

10

Alice walks up to where the path ends at the knife-cut valley and looks across to the flat ground where the old hotel used to stand – the reputedly haunted hotel, according to Bucky. Once she thought she actually saw it, no doubt a hallucination caused by being unused to the thin air up here. Today she sees nothing.

But I could make it be there, she thinks. I could make it be there just as I was able to make the Bide-A-Wee be there, complete with all the details I didn’t put in, like the bagged glass in the bathroom or the stain, sort of like the shape of Texas, on the rug. I could make it be there. I could even fill it with ghosts, if I wanted to.

She stands looking across the gulf of cold air between this side and that, hands in her pockets, thinking she could create worlds. Billy gave her that chance. She is here. She is found.

June 12, 2019–July 3, 2020

 

 

Enjoyed this book? Leave a review here.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Robin Furth and Myke Cole helped me with research, found continuity errors, and made valuable editorial suggestions. My thanks to both of them. It comes with the usual caveat: If there’s something wrong here, that’s on me, not them. I also want to thank Bing West for No True Glory, his extraordinary account of the two battles of Fallujah. It was a great help.