My name is Boyd Halverson, Boyd thought merrily, and I am a lying, bank-robbing, somewhat erratic alcoholic. I am the source of untold misery. I am a contagion. I am an infection sweeping through wheat fields and river valleys and forests and sleepy villages and internet chat rooms, a liar’s liar, mendacity incarnate, the stale, stalwart breath of birthers and Ruby Ridgers, the wind beneath the wings of fake unfake news, the last false hope of the disregarded and disappointed and plain old dissed.
It was two in the morning, a tick or two after, and Boyd sprawled comfortably in a chair at his mother’s kitchen table. Before him, a large bottle of potato spirits seemed to have swallowed itself.
Angie Bing sat across from him.
“Stop drinking,” she was saying, though oddly enough her voice emerged from the mouth of the mostly empty bottle. “I’m asking politely, Boyd. Right now. Dump it out.”
He examined the remaining half inch of liquid potatoes in his chipped coffee cup.
“I shot a bus,” he said. “A big blue one.”
“Right, you explained all that,” said Angie. “Probably ten kabillion times. You were lucky you didn’t get arrested. You’re even luckier that I’m still talking to you.”
“Yeah, I was wondering about that.”
“About what?”
“You know. How you make your voice come out of a bottle, how you never come up for air. Just talk and talk.”
Angie glowered at him. She was still securely tied to a kitchen chair. “Well, one thing for sure,” she said, “I’m definitely seeing the real Boyd Halverson now.” She waited a few moments. “Do you plan to untie me?”
“I doubt it. No offense. I already ungagged you, didn’t I?”
“Untie me, Boyd.”
“That bus I shot, it actually had a name—Big Blue Bus. Pretty strange, don’t you think? I guess now they call it Big Blue Bus with a Hole.”
“Boyd, I’m starting to get upset, so if you don’t—”
“Would you care to know why I shot a bus?”
“No,” she said, then frowned. “Why?”
“Well,” said Boyd, but no satisfactory answer presented itself.
His stomach wobbled.
He set down his coffee cup, smiled dizzily, then stood and moved with exacting strides toward what he hoped would be a bathroom.
He emptied his bladder, then his stomach. He wiped up the mess.
After an indefinite period of time—more likely minutes than seconds—Boyd found himself inspecting a mirror above the sink, where a sad, puffy-fleshed creature loomed before him, the eyes bloodshot, the posture defeated, an unattractive black and gray stubble coating the beast’s cheeks and jaw. Could this, he wondered, be I? Instantly, he congratulated himself on the impeccable grammar. Still the journalist. Still civilized, too, because what was grammar if not civilization, or the delegate of civilization, or its last decaying bulwark? It is indeed I in this mirror, Boyd surmised, and as he splashed cold water on his face, he noted something dark and flaky on what was pretty obviously his own upper lip. The substance, he reasoned, was no doubt a foodstuff, yet he had no recollection of consuming so much as a bite over the past twenty or thirty hours. He did, however, recall Evelyn’s white marble steps. He remembered a screenwriter from South Dakota and several overpriced glasses of extremely hard liquor. Most vividly, he recalled boarding the Big Blue Bus, and the shockingly loud retort of the Temptation .38, and a Pakistani gentleman’s yelp of dismay.
“I shot a bus,” Boyd said to the mirror, which flashed him a weary grin. “I do not lie. A bus.”
Boyd grinned right back at himself, plucked the suspicious substance from his lip, emptied his bladder once more, stood motionless at the mirror, and came to the conclusion that he was now a wanted man in need of one last nightcap. Wanted man—Boyd liked that. It had been a while since anyone had properly wanted him.
Refreshed, he found his way back to the kitchen, where Angie said, “How was the bathroom vacation?”
“Not bad,” he said, and rummaged through a cupboard. He discovered two mini bottles of his mother’s bourbon and carefully deposited their contents in his coffee cup. “Would you care for a slug?”
“No. Untie me.”
“Can you think of a good reason?”
“Because I’m sane,” said Angie, “and you’re not. Because, as far as I can tell, I’m your only friend on earth. And because I could’ve run away a million times and I didn’t.” She studied him for signs of weakness. “If you’d just trust me—if you’d try to explain things to me—maybe I could help somehow.”
“Help how?”
“Do you trust me?”
“Not a smidgen,” said Boyd.
Angie feigned a humorless little laugh. “Look, just because I sent Randy that totally innocent postcard . . . Grow up, Boyd. You can’t hold grudges for eternity.”
“Grudges,” he said, “are my strong suit.” He held out his cup. “Here, take a sip.”
“I want you to untie me.”
“Yes, I understand that. It’s a legitimate request.”
“It’s not a request, for God’s sake. Do it.”
Boyd polished off the bourbon.
“By the way,” he said, “did you know that Rosemary Clooney once lived barely a block from here? She was no longer young then, I’ll admit. Getting plump.”
“Who?”
“You’re asking who? Rosemary Clooney?”
“Come on, Boyd, please untie me.”
“No kidding, I delivered Rosemary’s morning paper—nice lady, an angel really.”
“I said please,” Angie snapped.
“Please what?”
“Pretty please.”
“Maybe so, maybe not,” said Boyd. “If you promise to go home, that’s the maybe so. If you don’t promise, that’s the maybe not.”
“Why would I go home?” she asked.
“I’m sick, Angie.”
“You’re intoxicated. You’re a disgusting old man.”
“Yes, but I’m truly sick. I’m headed . . . I’m headed somewhere bad, I think. Sick isn’t the word. Dark is the word.”
Angie nodded. “Well, that’s exactly what Our Lord and Host is there for. Day and night. He’s there for the darkness.”
“Indeed! Does the Host make house calls?”
“Sure,” she said. “If you untie people.”
Again, a seesawing sensation swept over him, beginning in his stomach, sliding downward, then rocketing to the roof of his mouth. “Boy oh boy,” he said. “I’ve been drinking, Angie.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“I should untie you, shouldn’t I?”
“Any day now.”
He untied her, fumbling a little, and said, “I’m hungry. Do we have food?”
“No,” she said. “Let’s get you to bed.”
“Did I mention I was married once or twice?”
“You overlooked that. The twice part.”
“I had a little boy.”
“Did you?”
“I did. Yes, I did. I dropped him.”
She shook blood into her hands, and then, more gently than he would’ve expected, led him by the arm into his mother’s bedroom. She pulled back the quilt, took off his shoes, and settled him in.
A while later she got into bed beside him.
“I think I’m in trouble,” he said.
“You are, Boyd.”
“I’m sorry I gagged you. You talk too much.”
“I do sometimes.”
“You do. You talk a lot.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I’m hungry. I miss my little boy.”