by Jesse Binger
Jeannie has a voice like Lucinda Williams. I hear her sometimes at night. I’m wrapped in heavy blankets. Furnace gone funny again and that diner paycheck won’t put a dent in it. Jeannie’s singing something warm and fuzzy. That rasp in her voice hadn’t been there in the beginning. But that was before. Back then, there was no reason for a girl like that to let her soul bleed out in a raspy whisper.
#
Brett had been bugging me again. He’d strum his beat-up Dobro so fast and make it all sound so good.
Two nights. My old hot rod. A picnic basket loaded with bologna sandwiches. He’d supply the Pabst. Big spender and all. Only Jeannie didn’t like that idea much. Didn’t like Brett much. Called him hardboiled and callous.
Jeannie was filled with those type of words. One year at Morris Community would get you that. American Lit 101, she called it. I just called it one big ass book flooded with words that didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Except there was that one. About the black dude and his brother. That one did.
Still does.
I even read it three times. Jeannie caught me. Big ass book held out like a dumbbell as I simmered in the bathtub. The furnace was working back then. And me and Jeannie too. So much heat, she even slid in beside me. Tub barely fit for one, let alone two, but Jeannie and I made it work. We always did.
The night we go it’s miserable. One of those nights you want to crawl back into bed. Hard rain and wind that has skinny trees begging for mercy.
Type of night that cries out for a bottle of gin and a warm woman. Maybe even a TV hammering out some sports match or an old black and white movie. Jeannie’s favorite was Fred MacMurray. And shit, even in black and white, that Barbara Stanwyck could sure get my blood boiling. How fast was I going officer?
Too fast. Too much Pabst. The Fairlane’s wobbling all over the road and can’t say I blame it. I’m usually fine to drive with a six in my system. Maybe even a twelve. But with Brett, it’s always more. The drink alone ain’t gonna get me to where I wanna go, he’d say, like it was a fact of life. Slick back his pompadour. Spit something ugly out of the side.
Albany’s thirty-five hard miles from our sleepy little town. Two deer barely give me the slip, side roads so dark you might as well be guessing.
Jeannie’s shooting me daggers from the back. She don’t like Brett. Don’t like his schemes. Don’t like the way he can always make a bad choice feel like a good one.
By the time we pull into the Red Roof Inn lot, my gut’s lurching. I’m over on the side by the grass, blasting out bologna. Brett’s laugh stings from the open window. Springsteen on repeat. Jungleland’s coming to a crescendo and Brett’s shouting something loud and obscene, and I can almost hear Jeannie crying but know she’s not. She wouldn’t give good ole Brett the satisfaction.
Y’know Jeannie never cried. Not once in the first seven years of knowing her. But in the
last year, barely a week went by without it. It burned me every time. It always started slow. A whimper like the kind your dog makes when he’s clamoring for some table scraps. But then it built. Harder and faster. I think of the bathtub again. The strings are blaring from the radio.
The two guys in Room 17 seem harmless enough. One guy has his eyes closed but he’s talking. Going off about something that happened back in ’83. A guy by the docks. A two by four and a bottle of trouble, and a whole lot of heat that hasn’t left him since.
The other guy’s got a quiet voice. Soft like someone’s bedroom slippers. His plaid shirt is ripped by the chest, thick clumps of hair escaping. Brett and he act like best friends. Hands slapping. Dude hugs. Sharing chugs like they’re mates in the service or something. I’m by the door. Because I’m not stupid. Only reason I’m still standing.
Shit’s the real deal, the quiet guy says and Brett believes him. He gives me that nod.
Then Jeannie honks the horn twice. Hard. Horn on that Fairlane sounds like a sick seal. A warning. Brett’s counting money by now. I want to run but I can’t. Ain’t the type of man I am.
But by then, the door’s busted open. Guys with vests and hard hands, no remorse. I’m on the ground in a beat. Brett’s up against the wall. He looks so small, struggling to find the right place for his hands.
It only takes me a few seconds to realize they’re not cops. And a few seconds later to recognize her scream, too close to the door. Brett’s hands still moving, until they ain’t. I shouldn’t be the one that makes it out, but I am.
I run and make sure not to look down.
#
The tub feels too roomy nowadays.
And tonight, it’s Brett sliding on the Dobro. Jeannie’s voice has more rasp in it than ever.
Can’t let go.
Jesse Binger is a fiction writer from New Jersey. His debut novel The Penitent Hours is currently on submission. His work appears in or is forthcoming at Rock and a Hard Place, Cowboy Jamboree, Bending Genres, Punk Noir, Stanchion, Roi Faineant, and elsewhere. Find him at jessebinger.com, X: @jessebinger.
