Stress Test Ch. 38

The sun was rising and Elwood had passed out spread-eagled on the spool by the time Otis dropped Billey off in the bugmobile. Billey felt tired—more tired than he'd ever been—but all the things spinning inside his head wouldn't let him sleep. They wouldn't even let him close his eyes.

Instead, he walked past the tank which you couldn't even see anymore except for its mouth sticking up from a fresh mound of dirt. He followed the creek a long way, calling out for Black Wolf, but never getting an answer. He sure did miss the way that dog stood on his hind legs and waved his stubby paws when he saw Billey.

Billey had trudged nearly all the way to the railroad trestle when he heard someone shouting his name. It surprised him so much it took him a moment to recognize the voice as Uly Bondarbon's. He ran toward it, thrashing his way through the bushes, hollering, "Uly! I hear you now, Uly!"

"Billey Elwood, I swear I never thought I'd see you again," said Uly, who was swinging his legs from the same black cross beam he'd been on the first time Billey met him. "Thought you'd forgotten Uly, your best friend in this poor old world."

"How could I find you when I didn't know where you went?" Billey felt defensive. He listened carefully to his words to make sure he was thinking straight.

"You can bet yourself a dime to a donut you'll always find me right here." Uly patted the trestle like it was his favorite dog. "Trains come from ever' part of the world right to this track here. I have to signal them when they go by. Let the engineers know everything's okay on this end."

"You must keep awful busy." Billey had heard the trains in the distance late into the night.

"Sure do, but I'm never too busy to see my friend Billey." Uly winked. "Even if you have been spending all your time with that false daddy of yours."

Billey lost his smile. "My daddy's been doin' some bad things, Uly. Real bad things."

"That's what I told you. Don't you remember that anymore?"

"I mean new bad things. Not just to me and Black Wolf. And Otis."

"Like I say, he's a false daddy, but he's not the only false daddy in the world, Billey. Lots of people try all their lives to get rid of one false daddy and when they finally do, they turn around and ring-a-ding-ding, here's a new false daddy waitin' on the doorstep.

"Some folks even got two, three false daddies fightin' each other for a chance to be mean to them."

Billey liked the way Uly knew about so many different things, even if he didn't always understand what he was saying. "One daddy's plenty for me," Billey pointed out.

Uly hopped off the beam and looked up, shading his eyes from the sun. "You see them cross ties up there?"

Billey nodded.

"You see them, Billey?" Uly raised his voice and Billey nodded harder. Uly glanced over to his friend. "Oh, you know I can't hear that head of yours goin' up and down, Billey."

"I see them, Uly."

Uly looked up again and pointed. "You're like one of them ties, Billey. "You're just as strong as a hardwood tree, but things run you over ever' live-long day of your life. Folks think a train's big enough, 'portant enough to go any damn where it pleases. But it ain't so. What lots of folks don't understand is that a train can't go nowhere without them cross ties."

Billey's head stopped moving. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Uly jumped back up and stood on the beam so he looked down at Billey. "I mean your daddy done you bad. A lot of folks' daddies done them bad. Everywhere I go in the world I see folks been done real bad. It like to break my heart into eleven pieces.

"Fact is, Billey, I know where your mama is today. And I know right where the man is who's doin' her badder than you ever seen."

"My mama?" Billey's ears pricked so high they nearly lifted him off the ground. "Where is she? Who's been doin' her bad?"

"She lives in a fine, fine house, Billey. It's a house to make you proud. You could pop your brain clean out of its socket tryin' to think of some item a person might want that she don't have, but she gets done bad just the same.

"I tell you what the truth is, Billy. I see her close to ever' day on the calendar and ever' day I see the bad things that eat away at her like ants a'crawlin' all over a lump of sugar. Somebody sure ought to do somethin' for your mama, Billey."

"What can I do, Uly?"

Uly patted his shirt for a smoke. He checked to see if he'd parked one behind his ear. "You got a cigarette, Billey?"

"No. How can I help my mama?"

"That's right, you don't smoke." Uly nodded slowly. "Reckon that's how you got to be such a big old critter. Never stunted up your growth with cigarettes."

"Tell me, Uly!"

"What?"

"About my mama."

"Tell you, hell! I could show you the house she lives in if I had a car. I could show you right where to find the man that does her so bad ever' day."

"Show me where."

"Oh, Billey, you know I gotta wait for this next train comin' along here by and by. They'll be lookin' for my signal."

"I've got a car," Billey blurted, surprising himself as much as Uly. "It's my daddy's pickup truck, but he won't wake up until dark."

Billey could hardly keep from running as he led Uly back home. He had to keep remembering that his friend's legs weren't as long or as strong as his own.

The sun hadn't even reached the top of the sky by the time they got to the shack. Uly turned his head slowly to take in the whole landscape—the shack, the camper, the dead catalpa, the trash that rose up from the dirt. He whistled and said, "So this is the place where Billey Elwood lives!"

Billey shushed him. "You don't want to wake my daddy," he whispered. "You won't be callin' him a false daddy anymore if you do. Ain't nothin' false about the way he can whup you."

Elwood never bothered to take the keys out of the pickup. Nobody would steal the thing and he never in a million years imagined that Billey would take it for a hell ride on his own.

Billey saw his daddy's arm twitch at the sound of the engine, but the man never lifted his head off the spool as they backed out onto the road.

Billey drove right past the railroad trestle where he met Uly. Then Uly showed him the way to a place where the streets all wound around in circles. Billey paid close attention so that he could find it by himself next time.

They stopped across the street from the house and Billey studied it for awhile. Its front yard was as big as the playground at Billey's old school, but it was smoother and it had grass instead of weeds and sand.

There were no cars in the driveway and the garage door was open to show it was empty.

"Looks like nobody's home right now, Billey," Uly said. "But I tell you what. The man that lives here—the man that does things to your mama that would break your heart into eleven pieces just like mine—he drives a white convertible. He's not fat, but he's got a soft, chubby face and eyes like a pig. That's how you can tell him, by those piggy little eyes of his.

"Ain't no price in this world a man could pay to make up for things like he's been doin'. Fact is, that's the whole reason Satan keeps his flames stoked up in hell. He's the only one who knows how to make them false daddies pay what they owe."

Uly rubbed his chin. "You ever been to church, Billey?"

"I dunno."

"Well, you'd know it if you had, so I guess not. Church is where they teach you all about God," Uly held his left hand out flat, "and Satan." He curled his right hand in a fist. "Them two never agree on anything except for one, single thing. You know what that is, Billey?"

"I dunno."

"God and Satan agree that Satan gets to put all the false daddies in his hot old furnace. They're both gonna reward anyone who helps him do that. You just ask any preacher man in the world if that ain't so, Billey."

Uly talked so funny that Billey couldn't always understand him. But this time Billey thought he knew what Uly meant.

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Disbelief and terror churned together in Billey's guts when he got home and saw that Elwood wasn't asleep on the spool anymore. He wheeled the pickup around the camper and saw Elwood and Otis with the bugmobile out yonder by the tank. He figured he might as well take his whupping now as later, so he drove down to them, but he left the engine running, just in case.

But Elwood was too mad at Otis to whup Billey. "Where the hell you been with my truck, you little shit head?" was all he said.

"I dunno," Billey answered, but Elwood wasn't even listening.

Elwood pulled his big gun out of his jeans and shot it twice up into the sky. "Gah-dam, Otis, I can't believe you.

I thought I knew every stupid dick-brained thing you could ever think up and then you pull this on me."

He tucked the gun back into his waist. Otis's hand had been fidgeting around the butt of the little gun sticking out of his pants. When he moved his hand back, he bumped the gun so that it fell down his baggy pants leg to the ground.

Elwood took two quick strides and scooped the gun up. He waved it in Otis's face. "You're so fuckin' stupid you're gonna blow your foot off instead of blowin' your brains out like you oughta." He handed the gun to Billey and said, "Put this in the pickup until I'm ready for it."

Billey jogged to the truck, but he stopped when his daddy began yelling again.

"Even Billey's smarter than you, Otis," Elwood said. "I got me a million gallons of gasoline, enough gasoline to set me up for the rest of my natural-born life and you don't even have the pea-brained sense to get a pump!"

Elwood rose up on his toes and breathed fire right into Otis's face. "'Spose you tell me just how in hell's name we're gonna get that gasoline outta the ground? We gonna scoop it out one cup at a time? We gonna cram your mother-fuckin' head down there so you can suck it out with your faggot lips? Huh, Otis? How we gonna do that?"

Billey had never seen his daddy get this mad at Otis before, and he'd never seen Otis look quite this sick. Billey slipped into the driver's seat and let his foot hover over the gas pedal as he watched Otis fumble in his pocket for a smoke. The cigarette wobbled in the big man's fingers as he lit it. Otis took a deep drag and turned his head to exhale. Then he offered the pack to Elwood who slapped it to the ground.

"You better think of somethin' real smart now," Elwood snarled. "'Cause when I blow your brains out you won't be able to think of nothin' at all."

Otis squatted down and fiddled with the mouth of the tank while Elwood paced and muttered like he did when he was fixing to whup Billey real bad. Billey slipped the pickup into gear and began moving at walking speed across the field. He looked in the rear view mirror to make sure Elwood hadn't noticed him leaving.

That's when he saw Black Wolf's nose poking through the scrub that ran along the creek. When Black Wolf saw Billey, he barked and left his cover. His stubby legs beat like wings, but Elwood and Otis blocked his path to Billey.

Billey gunned the engine and swung the pickup in a big circle to draw the dog away to safety. "Black Wolf!" he cried through the shot-out window. "Get over here, Black Wolf!"

Elwood turned and saw the dog sprinting for the truck that bumped over the field. Otis looked up from the cap he'd screwed off the tank.

"I ain't got no time for your shit today, Billey," Elwood yelled, pulling the big gun out of his pants again.

Billey saw the wisp of smoke rise out of the gun barrel before he heard the deep report. The bullet slammed into Black Wolf and sent him skidding across the rocky ground.

The sound startled Otis who said, "Oh!" The cigarette dropped off his lower lip. It never even entered the tank before it touched off the fumes and sent the earth, Elwood, Otis and the bugmobile flying into the sky in a stinking ball of fire.

It seemed like Billey watched the fire forever, but maybe it wasn't very long at all. He couldn't tell that the sun had moved in the sky. A couple of old crows looked down at him from the tree by the creek, just like they always did.

He got out of the truck and picked his way through the flames to the black twisted thing that used to be his daddy. The thing looked like an old tree branch that had burned up, but it smelled a lot worse than that.

Billey held out the little gun and fired into the thing. It didn't move or cry out in pain, so he shot it again and again.

As he drove back to the road, Billey thought about all the mean, hateful things his daddy had done to him in twenty years. And this was the meanest, most hateful of all—not even living long enough for Billey to kill him.

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Go back to Chapter 1 of Stress Test.

Read the next chapter.

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