Billy Summers

Yes, and because it’s true. He’s changed the names a little – Cassie instead of Cathy, and his mother’s name was Darlene, not Arlene – but mostly it’s true. The child’s voice is true. That voice never had a chance to speak, not even at the hearing. He answered the questions he was asked but no one asked how it felt to hold Cathy with her crushed chest. No one asked how it felt to be told take care of your sister and fail at the most important job in the whole round world. No one asked how it felt when you held your wet hand in front of your sister’s mouth and nose, hoping even though you knew hope was gone. No one ever knew that the gun’s recoil had made him burp as if he had done no more than drink a soda fast. Not even the cop who hugged him asked those questions, and what a relief it is to let that voice speak.

He goes back to the open MacBook and sits down. Looks at the screen. He thinks, When I get to the Stepenek House part – only I’ll call it Speck House – I can let that voice be a little more grownup. Because I was a little more grownup.

Billy begins to tap the keys, slowly at first, then picking up speed. The summer rolls on around him.

3

After the hearing me and my mom went back home. We buried Cassie. I don’t know who buried the boyfriend and don’t care. In the fall I went back to school where some of the kids started calling me Bang Bang Benjy and I got held back that year. I didn’t get in trouble for fighting but I skipped school a lot and my mother said I had to smarten up if I didn’t want to get taken away and put into a foster home. I didn’t want that so next year I tried harder and passed my courses. When I got sent to Speck House it wasn’t my fault, it was my mom’s.

She started drinking heavy after Cassie died, mostly at home but sometimes she would go out to bars and sometimes bring a man home with her. To me those men all looked like the bad boyfriend, assholes in other words. I don’t know why my mother would go back to the same types of men after what happened but she did. She was like a dog that pukes and then laps it up. I know how that sounds, but I will not take it back.

Her and those men, there were three at least and maybe five, would go in the bedroom and she said they were just rassling around but of course by then I was older and knew they were fucking. Then one night when she was drinking in the trailer she went out to the 7-11 for a box of Cheezits and on her way back she got pulled over. She was charged with drunk driving and put in the jail for 24 hours. She got to keep me that time too, but she lost her license for six months and had to take the bus to the laundry.

A week after she got her license back she got stopped for drunk driving again. There was another hearing, this time just about me, but what do you know, that same man who told the story about the scorpion and the frog was sitting at the table along with 2 new ones! He said you again. My mother said that’s right, me again and you know I lost my daughter. You know what I’ve been through. The man said I do know, and you don’t seem to have learned your lesson, Mrs Compson. My mom said you have never walked in my shoes. She had a lawyer that time but he didn’t say much. After, she gave him hell and asked what he was good for. The lawyer said you haven’t given me much to work with, Mrs Compson. She said you’re fired. He said you can’t fire me because I quit.

When we came back to the hearing room a day later they said I would have to go into foster care at a place called Speck House because she was an unfit mother. She said you are bullshit artists and I will fight this all the way to the supreme court. The man who told the story about the frog and the scorpion said have you been drinking. My mother said kiss my ass you fat bastard. He didn’t come back on her for that but said you have 24 hours to put Benjy’s things together, Mrs Compson, and to say goodbye. It will mean more to him if you’re sober when you do it. Then him and the other 2 walked out.

We took the bus home. My mother said we’re going to run away, Benjy. We will go to another town and change our names. We will start over. But we were still there the next day, and that was my last day in Hillview Trailer Park, the last day I lived with my mother. A county cop came to take me to the Speck House. I wished the cop had been the one who hug me, but it was another one. Deputy Malkin wasn’t so bad though.