New Story Excerpt Act Two

ACT TWO

            That letter.  That damned letter…he wished he hadn’t drank the whole bottle of whiskey. Lord could certainly use a shot; ‘the hair of the dog’ so to speak.  Carefully he turned the water off, keeping his head as high as he could.  He stepped out of the shower and toweled dry, brushed his teeth and combed his hair.  He went to the fridge looking for a beer.  No luck. “Damn!” he slammed the door and winced at the crash.  

            So he dressed and found his truck keys and his dark glasses.  He opened the door to face a different world.  Now, a world without Bree. “Not if I have anything to say about it” he told himself, “I’ll call her and get this straightened out. Gotta find a phone.  If I could see her face-to-face I know that I could talk some sense into her.  Well, a phone will have to do for now.”  He hadn’t spent the money for a telephone in the trailer so he had to find a payphone.  Lord walked to his old Chevy pickup and opened the door.  He heard his name called over the screech of the rusty door hinges.  Slowly turning his head, he still felt pretty woozy, he spied Lily, the landlord’s daughter. 

            “Poor girl”, he thought as he watched her waddle towards him.  She was skeletal thin, and heavily pregnant.  She had been friendly with him since the first day he had come looking for a place to rent.  He had made the mistake of asking her about the baby’s daddy one warm evening while they sat outside on the patio.  Lily’s eyes had filled with tears and she was silent for a long minute before she spat out, “The bastard said it wasn’t his!”  Lord guessed that she didn’t have many options. He could tell she didn’t have any money by her well worn and badly fitting clothes.  Lily’s father, the landlord, didn’t think too well about her either.  He heard the son of a bitch hollerin’ drunken slurs about her condition almost every night through the open windows of their ramshackle house.  The thing was, Lily was a pretty girl and real nice too.  And she worked hard all day everyday for that worthless father of hers. 

            “Where you going?” she asked. Lord looked at her closely and he saw something that he didn’t want to see.  He removed his sunglasses. He scowled, his temper rising at the sight of her pretty blue left eye peering at him from the middle of an ugly, ugly blue-black bruise.  The son of a bitch had hit her.

            Lord knew a lot about bastard adults hitting on kids.  His father (the man who had named him Lord) had died when he was 11 and his little brother Charlie was 9. Their Mom had been pretty well out of it for a couple of years.  Lord had taken over most of the chores around the house and watched over Charlie for her.  Then out of the blue a slick dude with a handsome face had charmed Mom out of her funk.  Lord never liked the bastard.  Preacher had told him that he thought that Lord was just jealous of another man taking the primary role in Mom’s life.  Whatever.  The wedded bliss lasted a month.  One morning at breakfast she walked out of her bedroom while Lord was making mush and toast for Charlie and him and she had a black eye and bruises on her arms.  When he had gotten mad and asked Mom about it, she said it was just an accident.

            Lord shook his head in denial at the sight of Lily’s face.  “He hit you.” he said flatly. “That ain’t right.”

            Lily’s face crumpled in dismay and tears threatened to spill on to her cheeks. “Yeah, he was drunk again. Said I was no-good. And other things…” she stopped, too embarrassed to continue.

            Lord heaved a deep sigh.  He didn’t want to interfere.  He didn’t know what could be done about it anyway.   He picked her hand up in his and told her, “Lily, I got to find a phone and call home.  Something’s come up.  I’ll be back in a while.  I promise.”

            Lily ducked her head in dismay, her shoulders shook with silent sobs.  She withdrew her hand from his, nodded, and walked away.

            “Damn” Lord growled.  If it wasn’t one thing, it was ten others. He jumped into the seat, started the pickup and drove. Just drove.  It may have been 30 minutes or more before he was aware of his surroundings.  He had been so deep in thought that he driven 20 miles from his trailer.  He came to in a startled way, not sure of what he was doing.  “It is a damned wonder that I didn’t drive into a ditch” he told the faithful old pickup.  Thoroughly shaken up, he swiveled his head back and forth looking for a payphone on either side of the road.  He lucked out, and found one within a minute.

            He parked right next to it and slid out of the truck seat a little too quickly. His head started spinning like it had earlier in the trailer. He swallowed fast and furiously as he tried to keep his stomach from giving him any more trouble.  He fished a handful of change from his pocket and fed $2.00 into the phone when the operator asked for it. The phone rang 6…no, 7 times before someone answered.                                    “Hello…” a voice that Lord recognized said.  “Bree…is that you?”          
            “Oh…Lord…how are you?”  Bree sounded nervous.

            “I’m okay, except for missing you. A lot…when are you comin’ down?” Lord waited for an answer, but there was only silence.

            “Didn’t you get my letter?” a distant small voice replied to his question with a question of her own. His heart sank. He was sunk.  All of their plans…down the tubes.

            “Yeah, I got the letter...but I don’t get it. What you meant, I mean. Damn! I can’t even talk.” he raised his voice, “Surely not KEVIN!”

            There was nothing but silence on the line.  Not even the normal buzz of a long distance call.  Finally, there was a sound like a sob that carried over the wires to his ear.  He couldn’t take it any longer. He made up his mind right there on the street with a phone handset hanging out of his ear. “I’m coming home! I’ll be there in a couple of days!”  He hung up the phone.