Markwildyr.com,
Post #157
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Got several comments on “The Tortoise,” last
week’s post. You seemed to like it. Thanks.
J M Snyder Books is reprinting The Victor
and the Vanquished, one of my non-historical novels. Vanquished is
the story of eighteen-year-old William Greyhorse, a talented Native American wood
carver trapped in a family with alcoholic parents as the caretaker for his two
younger sisters. He’s commonly called “Wilum” because the youngest girl, little
Junie can’t pronounce William. On October 1, 2020, I gave you a look at Chapter
1 of the book. I’d like to take a look at Chapter 2 this week.
THE VICTOR AND THE VANQUISHED
Chapter 2
He used to hang around
our place all the time, but lately my mom didn’t even try to hide the way she
felt about him. When my old man, Woodrow—his friends and drinking buddies
called him Woodie—came home, he’d chase James off by shouting curses and
slinging rocks at him. James wouldn’t show his face if the pickup was parked
beside the house.
We pulled off into a
roadside park sometime before nightfall and ate some of the bread and lunch
meat we’d brought with us. Actually, with the potato chips and pickles and
sodas and things, it was probably a better meal than we’d had in a while. I
always liked baloney. Liked the way it smelled and how it felt on my tongue.
And the taste too, of course.
My brother’d done most
of the driving because the old man was suffering from a hangover, and that was
a dangerous time for everyone. It was all right if he passed out, but if he was
conscious, he made sure everyone shared his pain. Mom wasn’t doing too good
either. I couldn’t tell if it was a dry drunk or her way of isolating herself
from the rest of us. Anyway, it was up to me to make sure Nola and little Junie
were tucked into their blankets in the bed of the truck that night.
I had trouble sleeping
even though I was tired. I kept thinking of James and what he’d said. And about
the things he wanted to do with me. My thing got hard again, and I put my hand
down on it, but with the girls in the truck with me, all I could do was turn
over on my side and try to ignore it. It took an awful lot of ignoring.
I remembered another
camp-out with James on the Beaver a few years back. We weren’t more than
fifteen, and that was before they started saying things about him. After we’d
eaten scraps of fried beef slapped between slices of light bread, we sat around
our little campfire and talked in the dark. We’d opened up and revealed things
we probably wouldn’t have in another time or place. I told him some of the bad
stuff my dad had done and how I felt about things.
He’d let me know how
it was with him and his mom. His dad and both his brothers were gone, lost in a
bad wreck that took them all at one time. Two uncles and a cousin died in the
same accident. James Longhunter was one of the few kids on the rez who didn’t
have a male relative he could look up to. Unless you counted me, that is. Mine
was living and breathing, but he was dead to me. That night, like it was bound
to happen, the subject had turned to girls.
“You like them?” James
had asked.
“Sure. You?”
“They’re all right.
But I ain’t sure they’re worth all the trouble.”
I thought that one over.
My dad put my mom through all kinds of hell, but she gave it back to him
sometimes when she had a hangover or didn’t like the way things were going.
Matthew was always sniffing around one girl or the other. So I tried to act
grown up about it.
“Piece of ass is worth
a little trouble.”
“You know that for
fact?”
I hadn’t expected him
to call me on it.
“You ever had any?” he
pressed.
“I guess not.” I
admitted.
“You guess not? Seems
like that’s something you oughta know for sure.”
“Mary Pilgrim felt my
thing in the coat closet at school.”
“Mary feels all the
boys’ pricks.”
“She ever feel you
up?”
“Tried it.”
“You ever…you know,
done it to a girl.”
He shook his head. “Uh-uh.”
Then he got real quiet for a second, and I was scared about what he was going
to say next. “Don’t know if I want to.”
“Why not? Man’s gotta
get a little relief,” That sounded more like Matthew than me.
“There’s other ways to
take care of that.”
“Like what?” Right
away I wished I could call those words back.
“Like doing it to yourself
or with a good friend. You know, a special friend.”
I’d been guilty of the
first, so I scooted over to the second and started babbling. “With a friend? A
friend’s not built like a girl. Well…uh…unless the friend was a girl. But then
she’d be a girl, and that’s not what you meant.” I ground to a halt and shut
up. I was glad it was dark so he couldn’t see me blushing.
Suddenly uncomfortable
around my best friend, I stood up and stretched. That wasn’t the smartest thing
to do because my cock had got hard, and by the firelight, I could see where he
was looking. Ashamed, I rolled up in my blankets with my back to him. After
that, he went off to take a piss or something and didn’t come back for a long
time. When he did, he spread his bedroll on the other side of the fire.
Had he been thinking
those things about me way back then? Inside my head I heard his voice. “I love
you, Wilum.”
I shivered in the dark
night. Nobody’d ever said that to me before—except little Junie.
* * * *
I hope this is
teaser enough to interest you I the novel. I do not have a copy of the new
cover, so have picked something out of the air to represent the book… the
silhouette of a gray horse.
I continue to
ask for reviews of Wastelakapi, on Amazon. I need stars, guys.
Website and blog: markwildyr.com
Email: markwildyr@aol.com
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr
Twitter: @markwildyr
See you later.
Mark
New posts the first and third Thursday of the month at 6:00 a.m., US Mountain time.
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