The Roy Stories Read Online Free Page B

Ireland and spoke Gaelic in their house. They let their sons drink coffee in the morning and Margaret McLaughlin made great peach and strawberry pies in the summer. Roy couldn’t wait to go live with them.
    Sid Wade and Roy’s mother began arguing. She closed her eyes and fell down on the floor. The baby was screeching and Sid Wade wouldn’t stop yelling, carrying on about how Roy should be sent to reform school, that he’d never be any good just like his gangster father.
    â€œHe did time and you’ll do time!” Wade said. He snorted like a buffalo and his little eyes disappeared.
    Roy could hear his mother moaning.
    â€œYou’re killing your mother!” screamed Wade, though he made no attempt to pick her up off the floor, where she was now writhing like a Moroccan fakir’s cobra being replaced in its basket.
    Roy rose from the table and walked out the back door, down the steps, through the yard and into the alley behind the garage. It was windy and cold and he was wearing only a T-shirt. Mr. Anderson’s old red Studebaker was parked in the alley between his house and the McLaughlins’. Roy knew that Mr. Anderson never locked it, so he walked over, opened the passenger side door and got in. He sat there looking through the windshield. The sky was almost dark, there was a thin, pale yellow ribbon running through the gray. At the far end of the alley two men came out of the rear door of The Green Harp tavern. They were smoking and laughing. One of them was wearing a blue zipper jacket and the other was wearing a brown one. Both men were hatless. Roy watched them standing and talking and smoking, their hair waving in the wind. Mr. Anderson had left an opened pack of Lucky Strikes on top of the dashboard. Roy took one, put it between his lips and punched in the lighter.
    Three months later, Roy’s mother told him that Sid had defaulted on their installments for the house in Winnebago Gardens and forfeited the down payment, so they weren’t going to move there. A week after that, Roy came home from school one day and found Sid Wade picking up his clothes and other belongings from in front of the house where Roy’s mother had thrown them. Later the same day Sid moved out and Roy’s mother said she was divorcing him and going to work as a receptionist in Dr. Martell’s office.
    Jimmy McLaughlin came home from the army on leave for a few days after completing basic training. Roy and Johnny and Billy were sitting on Johnny’s bunk listening to him. Jimmy was lying on his bed in his uniform smoking a Chesterfield, telling them about life at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. Johnny had taken over Jimmy’s job washing dishes at the Chinese restaurant, Roy had taken over Johnny’s delivery days, and Billy, the youngest McLaughlin brother, a year younger than Johnny and Roy, who were five years younger than Jimmy, now worked at Kow Kow, too, sweeping up and taking out the garbage.
    â€œIt’s good to be back home,” Jimmy said, “even if it’s only for a week. You don’t know how much you miss it until you can’t be there.”
    â€œWhat did you miss the most?” asked Johnny.
    â€œStrange things, little things, mostly.”
    â€œYeah? Like what?” said Roy.
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” said Jimmy. “Just seein’ Mr. Anderson’s red ’52 Studebaker parked in the alley is one, I guess. It gives me a good feelin’ knowin’ it’s still there.”

 
    The Trumpet
    Marty the T worked at the Sinclair service station on the corner of Rosemont and Western when Roy lived in St. Tim’s parish. Marty’s last name was Sullivan but everybody in the neighborhood called him Marty the T or just T because he played a trumpet while he sat around when he wasn’t pumping gas. Old man Poznanski, who was about fifty but was bald and always had a grizzled, gray, six-day beard, owned the station and