Summer Sons(19)

“Yes, fieldwork. Over the summer he was collecting oral traditions from families in the area with significant histories,” she said. “He started with me. The Troths have lived outside the Nashville area for seven generations. It’s the reason I became involved in his research; it appealed to me, the way his work joined the Southern gothic and the ethnographic.”

“Weren’t you both originally from over on the route to Townsend?” West asked.

Another choked response crawled out of Andrew while cold sweat broke out under his armpits: “Yeah. Grew up outside town, haven’t gone back.”

“Edward said that his research was spurred by his own, how did he describe it, spooky childhood experience in the hollers,” Troth said, her smile edged with invitation. Andrew’s lips glued themselves together, chapped and sticky. No one was supposed to know about those childhood experiences, and “spooky” didn’t begin to cover the horror crawling out of his memories like an oozing swamp. She carried on: “It’s a solid foundation for you to build from, since you do share it.”

“That was his business,” he forced himself to say over the pounding of his pulse in his ears. The corners of the books bit into his shin again as he stepped toward the door. “Thanks. I’ve got somewhere to be.”

“Andrew,” West said, rising startled from his slouch near the door.

He ducked past the other man without acknowledgement. He wasn’t running, but he was close. His shoes slapped on the tiles. He burst into the stairwell and slammed the door behind him with both hands. The cold metal against his forehead, the quiet of the enclosed concrete staircases: he zeroed in on those things, those things alone, then on the strap of the cloth bag biting into his wrist. White specks floated at the corners of his vision. I don’t want to be here. He swallowed the bitter acid crawling up his throat. Fuck going to class after that.



* * *



Riley’s modest pipe sat on the coffee table in the quiet of the abandoned house, but his weed was nowhere to be seen. Andrew’s lungs squeezed around nothing in a choking cramp. Troth’s careless conjuring of the night of the caverns—childhood experiences, goddamn—had kicked his head crooked, especially with the dream so close to the surface after the bleak nights in Eddie’s room. Sunlight warmed the stretched length of his calves on the couch, pouring through the front room’s big windows, as he hunched over his phone. The air conditioner hummed along, struggling to keep pace with the dog days. His thumb hovered over the screen before he flicked it to scroll down and selected his thread with Eddie. The penultimate messages from August 6th, at 3:32 in the morning, read:

come home

i’ll be waiting

And just below, his unknowing response:

keep it together I’ll be there soon

A drag of his finger spun the thread further into the past, stopping on a handful of messages that he heard in Eddie’s voice:

what’re you doing right now biiiiiitch

I hope you’re getting lit

but maybe not without me hmmmm not too lit

are you already drunk

I mean of course

sam and riley treat a boy right

The photo he’d sent was blurred, taken at an outdoor table on a second-floor deck with fairylights strung up all around, which threw the shading off something fierce. Eddie had turned his chair and lifted the phone to an exaggerated selfie angle above his face, grinning so hard his eyes narrowed, shaggy curls askew, streaked with pale grey washout dye that had already disappeared by his funeral a month later. On the opposite side of the table Riley held a tall glass in one hand, the other tilting the straw to his half-open mouth, startled, no glasses.

Halse wasn’t startled. He made strong, smirking eye contact with the camera—sprawled in his chair, one arm hooked over the back, T-shirt pulled tight over his full chest and the white lights casting a deep shadow into the divot of his collarbone. The table between them was littered with empty glasses and one sad tipped-over PBR tallboy. Andrew swallowed the knot in his throat. Eddie’s next text just said cmere, followed by Andrew’s response, would if I could asshole. He imagined the edge of a laugh in Eddie’s voice as he teased, endlessly, always fucking with him. It was unfathomable that he would’ve abandoned Andrew of his own volition. The brackish wrist-cut gore in his haunted dreams remained a fact without explanation.

What next, he thought.

No classes for the afternoon. No one prodding him to come with them or speak to them or do things for them; no next steps implied in Eddie’s leavings; no role to step into or space to inhabit. All he had were questions, with no idea how to begin looking for answers; he oscillated between a frantic crush of ignorance and a hollow exhaustion that turned him to stone. The combination of adrenaline crash and lack of direction provoked a miserable shiver. What next?

A wellspring of need dragged him up the stairs with the grace of a zombie. He froze as he turned the landing’s corner. One sheet of notebook paper, filled top to bottom with purple gel pen, sat on the step above him. The end fluttered, dangling. He tracked the spilled sheets in visual slow-motion, skin crawling, to the point where the trail disappeared into Eddie’s room. The door was still closed. The thought of sidestepping the pages and giving them his back flipped Andrew’s nerves on end, so he gathered them as he ascended the final steps.

The floor of the room was no better. The book he’d used as a paperweight stuck out from under the edge of the bed as if someone had thrown it there. Pages were scattered in a whirlwind around the room, chaotic except for the trail that led out to the hall with utter disregard for the door—as if an immaterial hand had dragged the remaining sheets out like a trail of breadcrumbs to lead him inside. Andrew’s shuddering hands collected the mess in a much messier pile than before. He cast around for a better hiding spot, and ended up stuffing it under a stack of towels in the dim, doorless walk-in closet.