by
phair
Sam grimaced pulling up his damp pants. They remained clammy from the soaking last evening. His shoes were likely to be soggier. Nothing fully air dried as close to the ocean as his grandfather’s house stood. Still, Sam felt better than he did yesterday. Having slept well and eaten a filling breakfast, restored some of his usual confidence. Even though his lip was swollen from Coyote’s well aimed punch, Sam was able to devour the French toast sticks with sticky maple syrup like it was his last meal.
The finality of the thought lodged in his brain. Sam’s career was likely over. His romance with the first really descent woman he’d met in years was swirling down in a death spiral. And, the idea of a child which he had not ever truly entertained but which had now taken root in his heart was probably not going to materialize into a living, breathing baby. It was that singular reality which hurt the most. He shook off the lingering bleak emotion and exited the bathroom intent on rebuilding whatever remained of his lifestyle as best as he could.
“Finally finish playing with yourself?” Coyote hissed as she pushed past him in the hallway.
“All you had to do was knock,” Sam defended. “Didn’t know you were in such a hurry.”
Coyote hooted before slamming the bathroom door behind her, “Right, only rich, republican, government drones need to use the shitter after breakfast. Fascist!”
Sam’s grandfather snorted a laugh drawing Sam’s attention to the living room. In the light of day, a gray rainy day at that, the room looked quite bleak. The furniture was old and ragged. The carpet was a filthy mess and reeked of aged grime. Windows rattled in their panes with each gust of rain laden wind. Still, the old man paid no heed to the obvious unkempt surrounds. Thom trudged to the front door in just his droopy boxer shorts and a tank top undershirt to retrieve his morning paper.
“Thanks for lending me the couch, Grandpa. I should be heading out,” Sam stated with an awkward shuffle of his feet.
Thom gave him a nod before returning to the living room. His shuffle showed his advancing years and maybe the early signs of a neorological disease. Perhaps, a Parkinson’s Syndrome or such. The old man settled into an oversized upolsctered chair which seemed so swallow him whole.
“What’cha gonna do, boy?”
Sam shrugged, “I’ll fiddle around with the truck and see if I can get it moving. There’s a service station just back a mile or so. The walk will do me good, I suppose. No cell service this far out on the peninsula.”
“I mean, what’cha gonna do about your life. How are you gonna handle your girl and the baby?”
“She made it pretty clear she’s not interested in being ‘my girl,’ I think. And, the baby? I don’t think she wants it,” Sam blurted unable to hide the hurt behind the words. “I mean, it’s her choice, right?”
“Oh ho ho, now that you’re the one in the jam you start clinging to Roe v Wade, Hip-fuckin’-crit!” Coyote snorted as she shoved Sam out of her way. She dropped onto the coach before launching the remainder of her venom. “It’s all well fuckin’ fine to tell the rest of us scum what to do and how to friggin’ do it as long as you don’t get stuck playing by the same cranked out rules. Rich boy don’t got to play by no fuckin’ rules his daddy’s lawyer can break, right? So, what’ll you do, creep? You just gonna toss this poor girl fifty bucks for a quickie fuckin’ abortion? Is she even old enough to get one on her own or are you gonna pretend to be her daddy? Not that you haven’t already been playin’ her sugardaddy.”
“What?” Sam’s pitch hitched up an octave or two. “Old enough? Abortion? Fifty bucks? What are you talking about? I know you’re suppose to be speaking English but you talk like drunken sailor.”
“Fuck you, shit face!”
Sam frowned, “This is not any of your concern anyway. You have no right interrupting the conversation I was having with my Grandfather.”
Coyote pulled a face of feigned shock, “Is your personal, important man talk too mature for my delicate feminine ears? Oh, I’m so sorry Mister Sir, please forgive my rude menstruating existence in MY OWN HOME while you continue your discussion with OUR GRANDFATHER!” Coyote sat up and hurled a dusty sofa pillow at Sam nailing him in the gut. “Fuck you, dick wad! This is my house too and I get to say anything I want in it. I can even tell an elected official to drag his scrawny, pompous, self righteous ass out of here! What’cha gonna do? Call your storm trooper Staties?”
“Lighten up a little, girl,” old Thom tried to get a word in edgewise.
Sam dumped the pillow on the floor and made a grab for his shoes. He could hear the ensuing argument erupt between his grandfather and newly found cousin. He didn’t bother to try to process the words. None of what they said made any difference in what he needed to deal with. Nothing they said or did could change what was happening in his life. Only he could change his life. For better or worse, Sam Allerton was on his own. Of course, being on his own was nothing new.
Without a word of goodbye, Sam headed for the front door. He didn’t linger to put on his shoes. He carried them as he crossed the cold, rain soaked grass. His toes numbed before he reached the sandy and gravelly shoulder of the road. He followed the road into the small town instead of back out to the service station. There was somebody else he needed to see on this patch of land jutting out into the fierce currents of the frigid Atlantic waters.
Sam was almost to Cemetery Hill when he heard the choking coughs of a motor cycle slowing near him. He stepped closer to the grass at the soft shoulder of the road allowing the driver ample room to navigate around him on the narrow road. The bike did not pass him. Instead, it slowed to a crawl along side of him and kept pace. Sam glanced to his left and frowned. The biker was Coyote. Her visorless helmet was perched on her head unsecured by the dangling chin strap.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going? There’s nothing out here to help you. The gas station is back over the line in RichBitch Town,” she called to him over the puttering gasps of the bike’s engine.
“Leave me alone,” Sam shook his head with the words. “It isn’t your road. It is a public street. Anybody gets to walk on it. That includes fascist, republican nazis like me.”
Coyote stopped chugging along next to Sam. He stayed his course and headed up the winding road of Cemetery Hill. He shifted his attention to focus on the cracked and broken tarred path. Little had changed in the two decades since he was last here. The rotting old oak tree next to the weather sign still stood but seemed smaller to Sam.
He let his feet find the way. If he thought about where to go, he knew he’d get lost. Sam knew his heart would remember the way so he let his feet just move. He was breathless when he crested the top of the hill. The stone marker looked even larger than his memory of it. A boxy square of gray stone with letters etched deeply into the rough surface; Marlo Allerton. There was no maiden name, no dates, no loving tributes for the woman laid to rest beneath the granite slab. Just her name. It looked lonely and abandoned and forgotten. Sam felt his eyes moisten at the sight.
“Dude, what the Hell? It is fuckin’ freezin’ up here. Let’s go before your dick freezes to your balls and I have to thaw you out with a blow dryer,” Coyote shouted above the whistling wind.
Sam glared at her but held his tongue. He stepped closer to his mother’s headstone and rested the palm of his hand on the rough cut rock.
“Look, I’m sorry. Okay?” Coyote actually sounded contrite. “Let me drive you back to the house. I got your truck running. No charge or nothing. You’ve got a bad fly wheel, is all. Figure out a way to leave it with me for a couple of days this week and I can put a new one in for you. Okay? Other than that, it’s in pretty good shape under the hood. The body’s a mess but it’ll run you a few thousand more miles before the scrap heap.”
“I don’t care,” Sam muttered then knelt in the water soaked grass.
Coyote stepped up next to him. Her voice was soft as she leaned over his shoulder and spoke, “It’s just a grave, man. She ain’t there. She’s long gone. You can’t hide from your life up here. Come on, let me give you a ride back to the house.”
“Your mom alive?”
“Naw, she died a couple of years ago.”
“You were all grown by then, right?” Sam didn’t wait for her answer, “I was nine. Just turned nine three days before. She’d been real sick for the whole school year. I thought, I thought we’d be able to spend the summer together down here with grandpa. I worked so hard to hurry the year along so we could get one last summer down here. But…,”
“She was too sick,” Coyote finished for him. “She couldn’t suffer any longer. Her body needed to get away from all that pain. She wasn’t leaving you, Sammy. She didn’t have no choice in it. It happened to her. She lived as long as she could. She didn’t want to leave you behind.”
“But, she did anyway,” Sam took a deep breath to pull his emotions back into check. “We didn’t ever get to have a summer again. None of us. Dad shipped me off to a camp no more than a week after we buried her. Jess got sent to a different camp. Then there were boarding schools and summer vacation camps and au pairs to watch us at the house for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and spring break.”
“Dude, you’re a grown man now. Let it go. Your Dad did the best he could. At least, he stuck around and you knew who he was.” Coyote said with a hint of envy.
“Yep, I did know who he was,” Sam nodded in agreement as he stood up. “He was the man I could never please. And, he’s the man I’m going to let down once again.”
