Plow the Bones Read Online Free Page A
Author: Douglas F. Warrick
all over the place. Beneath the seat of Daddy’s car. Down in the basement behind the dryer. Even after Daddy’s Big Breakthrough, the day he and Mommy sat Gordon and Annie down in the living room and Mommy said, “Guys. Daddy’s got a problem with alcohol. We’ve got to give Daddy some space and some extra love, okay? He needs us to help him get better.” So, yeah, Gordon knows what booze is, and he knows that his dad was a drunk. Is a drunk. Whatever.
He hides the bottle beneath his coat, hard up inside his armpit, and he reaches inside his dad’s jacket and steals a few cigarettes too. Then he slips out, closes the door behind him with the same slow care he took in opening it. And he leaves the house.
Outside, Mark Milligan is waiting for him with his hands shoved in his pockets, his eyes darting from Gordon’s front door to the street and back again, checking for the hidden cameras, the signs of the trap. He says, “D’ja get it?”
Gordon nods. They cut across the street and through somebody’s back yard. An Irish setter growls at them, and they spit at it and flip it the bird. They vault the fence and sit beneath the bushes by the railroad tracks, trading swigs of the forty and smoking Winstons. Mark says, “My dad says your dad is gonna start giving sermons sometimes. Like, as practice.”
Gordon says, “Yup.”
Mark says, “Is he any good?”
Gordon cocks an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”
“Like, does he want to be a pastor or something?”
“I guess. I dunno.”
They sit in silence for a while, smoking and taking little sips, too young and too scared to drink enough to get drunk. Then Gordon says, “I don’t believe in God, anyway.” They spend the rest of the afternoon like that, silent, pretending to drink, pretending to smoke, until the sun starts going down and they both have to sneak away home and brush their teeth so no one smells the smoke on their breath.
§
They like this memory. It is typical, vintage human behavior. Delicious in its predictability. They’ve tasted it before, and they note its flavor, write a few lines on the similarities it holds to other memories like it.
— Poor baby was an angry teenager. We weep for you, Gordon.
— Is he an atheist? He doesn’t burn like an atheist.
— More! There must be more!
After the fear, the thing that was Gordon Dratch feels intense, awful, cold regret. He feels it freeze inside him, even through the slow fire that burns and bursts him over and over again. They observe the change with joy, watching a favorite play, coming to a well–remembered and well–beloved scene. He weeps until his eyes are gone, and then weeps some more once they are rewound back into his head. They watch the realization work its way across his soul, spreading through his veins like a blood–sickness. He made the wrong decision. Faced with a million spiritual doors, he opened the wrong one. There was such a thing as a wrong door! All of those red–faced old men with their fists bound up into tight, sausage–fingered slabs on the pulpit, those men who had raged against the follies of a Godless world, those men had been RIGHT! Oh, God. Oh, God, forgive me now.
They applaud. Their favorite line. No man enters the kingdom, and all that.
And then they dig deeper. So much to learn about this perfect, typical number of the damned. So many beautiful, repetitive layers to wonder at.
§
Witness Gordon Dratch in fast–motion, the high school years, filled to bursting with parking lot fights, stolen liquor, three–day suspensions, detentions, Saturday schools, cigarettes, CDs from Scandinavian metal bands with face–paint and leather gauntlets who wore upside–down crosses and sang songs about the devil. Witness the first few years of college whiz by, time–lapse photography of Gordon becoming a sullen young man, the kid whose every relationship would ultimately be scuttled by daddy issues and a latent anger toward a God he claims he
He hides the bottle beneath his coat, hard up inside his armpit, and he reaches inside his dad’s jacket and steals a few cigarettes too. Then he slips out, closes the door behind him with the same slow care he took in opening it. And he leaves the house.
Outside, Mark Milligan is waiting for him with his hands shoved in his pockets, his eyes darting from Gordon’s front door to the street and back again, checking for the hidden cameras, the signs of the trap. He says, “D’ja get it?”
Gordon nods. They cut across the street and through somebody’s back yard. An Irish setter growls at them, and they spit at it and flip it the bird. They vault the fence and sit beneath the bushes by the railroad tracks, trading swigs of the forty and smoking Winstons. Mark says, “My dad says your dad is gonna start giving sermons sometimes. Like, as practice.”
Gordon says, “Yup.”
Mark says, “Is he any good?”
Gordon cocks an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”
“Like, does he want to be a pastor or something?”
“I guess. I dunno.”
They sit in silence for a while, smoking and taking little sips, too young and too scared to drink enough to get drunk. Then Gordon says, “I don’t believe in God, anyway.” They spend the rest of the afternoon like that, silent, pretending to drink, pretending to smoke, until the sun starts going down and they both have to sneak away home and brush their teeth so no one smells the smoke on their breath.
§
They like this memory. It is typical, vintage human behavior. Delicious in its predictability. They’ve tasted it before, and they note its flavor, write a few lines on the similarities it holds to other memories like it.
— Poor baby was an angry teenager. We weep for you, Gordon.
— Is he an atheist? He doesn’t burn like an atheist.
— More! There must be more!
After the fear, the thing that was Gordon Dratch feels intense, awful, cold regret. He feels it freeze inside him, even through the slow fire that burns and bursts him over and over again. They observe the change with joy, watching a favorite play, coming to a well–remembered and well–beloved scene. He weeps until his eyes are gone, and then weeps some more once they are rewound back into his head. They watch the realization work its way across his soul, spreading through his veins like a blood–sickness. He made the wrong decision. Faced with a million spiritual doors, he opened the wrong one. There was such a thing as a wrong door! All of those red–faced old men with their fists bound up into tight, sausage–fingered slabs on the pulpit, those men who had raged against the follies of a Godless world, those men had been RIGHT! Oh, God. Oh, God, forgive me now.
They applaud. Their favorite line. No man enters the kingdom, and all that.
And then they dig deeper. So much to learn about this perfect, typical number of the damned. So many beautiful, repetitive layers to wonder at.
§
Witness Gordon Dratch in fast–motion, the high school years, filled to bursting with parking lot fights, stolen liquor, three–day suspensions, detentions, Saturday schools, cigarettes, CDs from Scandinavian metal bands with face–paint and leather gauntlets who wore upside–down crosses and sang songs about the devil. Witness the first few years of college whiz by, time–lapse photography of Gordon becoming a sullen young man, the kid whose every relationship would ultimately be scuttled by daddy issues and a latent anger toward a God he claims he
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