Twice Against the Same Stone (sample)

About the Book

First few chapters (~4000 words)

This was a book I started writing in 2006 or so. I had to go tree planting that summer, and so put the book down and simply didn’t return to it in the fall, as I had started writing an entirely different book. That was Raw Flesh in the Rising, for which I won the Percy Janes First Novel Award in 2011, so I can’t be too put out by that.

I got a grant to keep writing Stone in 2014, and was even lucky enough to land a spot in the Writers’ Alliance Mentorship Program, where I received feedback from an established, published author.

I finished the book, got some feedback I didn’t know what to do with, shelved it, and moved on to other work. Zero submissions.

Just last week (another eight years later), being in between books in my fantasy Speaker series, I came back to it, liked it, and cut ~32,000 words out of it in four days. Now, voila, here it is as a sample for beta readers.

The entire piece is ~89,000 words now. Genre: literary fiction?

I hope you enjoy it.

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MONDAY

 When they hit a straight stretch of road, Eustice looked away from the yellow lines and glanced sidelong at Sam—his eyes closed, mouth hanging open, arms folded. He could be a unicorn, an elf, a fairy.

“Hey, you, talk to me,” she said. “I know you’re not asleep.”

Sam stretched and rubbed his eyes, stayed turned towards the door and managed a passable rendition of a sleepy voice. “What? I was sleeping.”

“What kind of kid are you?”

“Wha…?”

“What kind of kid are you? Every time I see you you’re wearing black pants. You need a haircut, you never seem to smile. You one of those kids who cuts themselves?”

“No.”

“Sorry. Just asking. I’m just an old lady. I think you shouldn’t be one of those kids who cuts themselves, that’s all.”

“I’m not.”

Despite the roar of the car and the cramp thickening her foot, she was enjoying the drive. The rural route she’d chosen was quiet. The trees wandered close to the road now and then, and each turn plunged them down a towering green tunnel.

“What about your face? You one of those kids who paints his face up when he goes out? I see them every so often at the store.”

This time Sam sighed before he said, “No.”

“Good. That’s good. I don’t think you’re a pothead. Usually I can smell them from ten or twenty feet away. They don’t ever think to change their pants, and the stink’s still in their hair. They think they can just spritz smelly stuff around and then—perfect, ready to go shopping for terrariums and tarantulas and ten-packs of butter knives. I tape their bags up when they come into the store stinking like cigarettes and air freshener, thinking nobody knows.”

“I’m trying to sleep,” said Sam.

“Good luck with that.”

He’d never guess that she might know things about him that he didn’t. Hell, it was novelty for her. Do families even take long car rides anymore? He’d probably never had to learn how to sleep sitting up with his head against a vibrating window like his father had, or airplaned his hand out the window. She doubted Sam would ever jump his bike over the mountains.

And when they got back, his father would probably never speak to her again.

“I’m just trying to get to know my grandson. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. A lot of cookies to bake and cheeks to pinch. All that stuff.”

When Sam didn’t say anything, she asked, “So where’d you stay last night?”

“Friend’s house,” he muttered.

“A good friend?”

“Yeah … I guess.”

“Girl?”

“No.”

A new Mustang blew by on the right with a roar, a stallion galloping past their edging burro. An angry hand had begun tapping on the underside of the little car’s hood as she’d pulled up to meet Sam, but it had quieted since hitting the highway. She checked her shoulder, the engine trilling loudly as she took hold of the gearshift, gas pedal thrumming under her foot. She was doing pretty good for her first time driving a car in years. And a stick shift too.

“It’s okay, you know. I won’t tell your father if it was a girl.”

Sam, very carefully, did not budge. “Wasn’t a girl.”

“Well, handsome young boy like you, only a matter of time, isn’t it?”

His eyes closed, he didn’t see her stick her tongue out as if she’d taken a sour bite of something. He burrowed deeper down into his seat and stuck ear buds into his ears.

“Tired,” he said. “Taking a nap.”

Eustice nodded. Fair enough. It was just as well. She wouldn’t get any straight answers out of him. He wouldn’t laugh, or ask any questions of her. Ask him about himself and at best he could throw vague notions into the air to see what would float. She was interrogating a caterpillar.

The car grumbled around another corner. Gates of tall spruce.

She knew what that was like. 

∞

 Terry had been hesitant to let her take the car. It had been sitting on blocks in his back yard for nearly two years, where he tinkered with it from time to time. This thing and the other thing still needed work. Hands on his hips, he’d run through every part and problem the car had like a doctor offering a grim prognosis.

“Also the tires are old, the belts are a little weak. I think it’ll get you there, but I don’t know about back.”

The morning had smelled like rain and earthworms, a flavor of her mother’s patchy yard as a kid and the wet sidewalk in front of their house. The little lumberjack man on a stick in Terry’s yard gave a haphazard chop when the wind blew warmly. She could sympathize. The last few days had blown in like a hurricane. Whole years had passed where she had stood in place waiting for the axe to fall. Now, without warning, the wind had come again.

“Well,” said Terry, turning to lean against the car’s hood. “I’ve done about all I can do for this old girl. Now, normally when you launch a craft as fine as this one, you smash a bottle of champagne against the bow, but I’m afraid we might hole her below the water line.”

In the week since she’d seen him last, Terry had grown a beard, dark and thick and straight, with a line of white down the center. She wasn’t sure she liked it. Too scratchy. This time of morning, normally he would be in his coveralls, up to his elbows in grease, but it was Sunday; his hands were clean, his fingernails the color of cream pies, his hair neatly combed to the side like a boy’s. She was making him late for church.

“How about we just give her a pat on the butt and hope she gets us there.”

“I think she’d like that.”

He was looking at the ground more often than he did at her, and affection for him churned within her chest. It had been a long time since she’d let that happen. Hands in pockets, she leaned against the car next to Terry. When she’d called to ask him about the car, he’d even washed it for her.

Yes, she had to go. Some doors have to be barred shut, painted over. When she came back, and she was coming back—Sam had to be returned—she promised she would explain it all to Terry, cross her fingers, and hope that he understood.

Maybe she’d even find the words to explain it to herself along the way.

“Well,” he said, “it’s for sure a four-day trip. If nothing else, you’ll get to know your grandson better.”

“Oh, I’m just an old lady with a car to him. Like a taxi driver who’s only charging for gas.”

“I think you’re being hard on yourself.”

“Terry, first time I met him was in a store parking lot. I made his little sister cry. Second time was Christmas dinner, the one I told you about, when his father asked me to leave.”

His arm fell around her neck. “Sam doesn’t hate you. You’re his ol’ nan.”

“I’m just some lady his dad knows. But I should go. I told Sam nine o’ clock and it’s past that now.”

“Where’d he get the money from anyway? Won’t be cheap, gas all that way.”

“From his other grandma,” she said. “The non-deadbeat.”

“Right.”

“And how awful am I, that I’m letting him give it to me to get where I need to go?”

Terry ignored that, pushing himself away from the car. “Well, I do gotta say I’m a little surprised William is letting him go. He seems a little young for that sorta thing. What was it, trying out for a TV show?”

“Actually, no,” she said, her hand falling away from the door handle. She’d hoped he wouldn’t mention it. “I mean … William doesn’t know. Sam told his parents he’s going on a camping trip.”

“Oh.” Terry hummed. “So … you’re kidnapping him?”

Last night, collecting the blankets about her in her bed, she’d returned to that question again and again. “He asked me to take him. But … maybe?”

Terry had always been a man of meaningful silences. He looked away a moment, then came back with a smile. “Okay. Well, I guess you should get going. Early bird gets the ransom.”

 She pushed herself towards Terry and clung to him until she could bear to let go.

She hadn’t planned on Terry. For a long time she had been on her own, had never stayed in one spot for more than a few months. When he came along, a part of the world had shifted, a smell in the wind, a hum just behind hearing. The ground felt more stable. It had been a long time since she hadn’t known what would happen next. She’d stayed, and when she awoke each morning she felt a quick flash of fear that the day ahead would be the one that made her regret it.

That had been over a year ago, in what seemed like another age of the world. Time crept on, sneaking in a few more months every time she turned away from the mirror, and each morning she awoke a little easier.

She came back and kissed him one last time. It felt different, soft. Not at all like a real goodbye.

“Keep the beard,” she said. “It’s a good look for you. Rugged.”

Ducking into the car, Terry shrank to a little dot in the mirror as she drove away. It felt like history repeating itself. It felt like a ghastly homecoming.

∞

 Way out here, off the main roads, the gas station had never been new. A purity of patchwork, it had been stitched together from the remains of other dead buildings and then rechristened to serve what few locals wandered between the thicker lines on the map. As boards and nails divorced and were replaced, the patches moved but nothing ever truly changed. Eventually, the wind would blow it across the dirt lot and built it anew on the other side.

Sam’s sneakers had left semicircles of dirt on the dash. Eustice leaned over and whisked them away. “I’ll pump the gas,” she said. “You got this, right?”

Trying to sleep, at best Sam had made himself groggy. He pushed his hair aside and pressed the black buttons of his eyes. “Yeah.”

The bite of autumn was fading from the morning, a fresh breath after the stale miles accumulating inside the car. With every morning the summer grew sleepier, took longer to wake, and soon the sun wouldn’t warm to the day at all.

It took Eustice a while to find the switch to pop the gas tank lock on the floor under the thick mat. Sam remained a dark creature curled inside a cavernous hooded sweatshirt, as if he didn’t want to see where he was.

She was groggy herself; it wasn’t easy to stay pleasant around the boy’s irritation, but she’d been practicing her flashes of teeth and pirouettes of cheer for months in the big ugly store where she worked, where she’d been hired on as a greeter, and this morning it was finally paying off. The smile she gave him was a real professional lifting of the lips.

The pumps were sad robots, their numbers clicking upwards like an old alarm clock. When the little car had drunk its fill, she gave the robot back its rubber arm and went inside the patchwork station. Heavy, with stubble over three chins, inside a man sat on a stool behind a dirty desk with metal feet, playing solitaire next to his baby-blue cash register, shiny where the dings caught the light. The place wasn’t much more than a box fifteen feet square, walls lined with outdated car trinkets, a forlorn rack of snacks in the corner. She took some reassurance that she could have ended up in worse places in her life. If not worse gas stations.

The attendant wiped his hands on his coveralls when she came in. They were split down the middle and hanging off his round shoulders.

“Cold morning,” she mumbled.

“Is,” he said.

“My grandson is going to pay for our gas. Do you have a washroom I could use?”

“She’s out back,” he said. “Green building. Red door.” With both hands he lifted a length of dirty half-inch chain attached to an empty paint can onto the desk. At the other end was a single house-key attached by a loop of string.

“Thanks,” she said, struggling with the chain’s weight as she slid it off the desk.

The bathroom was a shack, plywood walls painted red and green, patched with yellow. Inside was a toilet and a sink, a can of Ajax leaving a hoar-white ring on a rain-stained shelf. The thick door thudded closed. Two iron arms jutted from the other side. She hung the heavy chain on one and from the floor picked up an old two-by-four and dropped it into the waiting arms, like one would a barn door.

The lid to the flush tank sat in two pieces next to the bowl. A pull-chain hung from the ceiling. After she’d taken a tinkle, she splashed her face with cold water and tried not to look at herself in the warped piece of metal that served as a mirror above the sink. Dingy holes like this were an adventure for the young—the lack of polish adds a shine. But to be older, grayer, the same place means a wrong turn has been taken somewhere. Best not to touch anything, take nothing with you when you go, because places like this try to keep you, and if you’re past a certain age and finding yourself there, it’ll try to visit you in the night when you aren’t ready and make a claim.

Back in the gas shack, she swung the chain with the paint can back onto the desk and the man clattered it to the floor behind him.

“My grandson pay?”

“He paid.”

“Thank you.”

“So long.” The nametag on his overalls read “Melissa.” She wondered who that might have been, and why he’d practically torn the overalls down the armpits so he could wear them.

In the car, Sam was feigning being awake, staring at his glowing rectangle in his hands, flipping through screens. Eustice lowered herself in the driver’s seat as if she might break it. This place added gravity.

“Thanks for paying, kid. I’ll get the next one.” She folded her receipt and put it in an old leather wallet that had belonged to Terry’s father. It was as much a part of the car as the wheels or the trunk.

Sam didn’t look up from his rectangle. “How many tanks of gas you think it’s gonna take us to get there?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, coaxing the wallet’s finicky zipper. “Car’s not big but she’s pretty thirsty.”

“Did you fill it up before we left?”

Eustice stopped fiddling with the old zipper on the wallet. “Yeah—well, Terry did. Why? You think he overcharged you on the tank?” “Melissa” didn’t seem the type. But she had been wrong before.

Sam was flipping through screens faster than could be read. “No, no, I was just asking, that’s all. Just thinking ahead.”

Eustice picked up the wallet, pulled the zipper back all the way and then slowly worked it forward until it was closed. She stowed it away in the compartment between the seats.

“You don’t have the money, do you?”

“No, no, I have money. But I didn’t know gas would cost so much.”

“How much did you think it would cost?”

There had been no grandma in her voice then. No peppermint knobs in her purse. They wouldn’t be stopping at the Yarn Barn. She hadn’t sent him a card on his birthday. Hadn’t known he’d been born until ten months ago…

He looked at her for the first time, only a quick glance, as she was looking at him like she’d caught him stealing. “You don’t have the money,” she said again.

She watched him nervously prod his machine. He was just a kid. He’d never had a job, never had to do anything hard his entire life. At most his mother made him clean up his own messes, and probably helped when he was too slow.

She sat straight in her seat, tired of trying to peer through the shield of hair over his eyes. The cool leather of the steering wheel would feel good against her forehead. It was her own fault. She couldn’t blame him for being a kid.

A rap on the window. She turned and the big attendant tapped an inch away towards her nose. “Hey. You having trouble?”

After a brief confusion she realized he meant the car. They were still parked by the pumps. “No, we’re fine,” she said.

“Well, you can’t sit parked here,” the man said, through the window. “You’re in the way of the other customers.”

She looked around ready to apologize, expecting to see a car idling behind them, but the lot was empty.

“Sure,” she said. “We’ll be on our way.”

The attendant vanished with a crunch of gravel.

On our way.

Haminton to where they were sitting was precisely one tank of gas. The smart thing to do would be to turn the car around and drive back to Terry’s, be there when he got home from church. She would have eggs over-easy kept hot on a plate in the oven, golden toast and a tall glass of orange juice on the table. Coming through the door the smell of the bacon would hit him like a big friendly slap. She could take a nice shower, rinse old, greasy memories from her skin. It would be nice to lounge in the back yard all day with a book, swatting mosquitoes with the electric tennis racket while Terry puttered from garden to car to shed, overalls tied around his waist.

But the time for that breakfast had come and gone, and they’d feel that hole if she went back now.

The boy … he was the type to leave a note for his mother … his father. Probably it would contain the word “dreams,” maybe “destiny.” By the time they got back to town he’d have been missed. Even if Sam hadn’t trumpeted his departure, Carrie would probably call his friend’s house to check on him before morning was out. Whoever’s house he’d stayed at, she didn’t think they were best buddies—Carrie would pick up on that. His parents weren’t as stupid as he thought.

That was the flaw in his master plan. He was fourteen.

She’d been thinking a lot about what they would do when they found he was gone. That she still couldn’t come up with an answer scared her.

“That jobbie you got,” she said to him. “That a phone?”

“No. Just plays music.”

Definitely left a note, she thought, if he left his phone behind.

“How much money you got?”

He didn’t have to check. “A hundred and eighty dollars.”

“It wouldn’t be grandmotherly if I swore, would it?”

He shrugged, sinking lower in his seat. “I had a few things to buy. I didn’t know this would all cost so much.”

He hadn’t actually apologized, and she didn’t want to know what he’d needed to buy. Probably the antique of a backpack he’d shoved into the back seat. The music player in his hands looked pretty new too. Had to replace the phone he wouldn’t bring. Children thought adults were lying when they said they didn’t have any money.

The car rolled forward without her foot on the gas until it reached the road, a hand rapping, rapping underneath the old car’s hood. The signal light didn’t make a sound as they turned. It was a maneuver of faith. In what, she wasn’t sure. But it was a decision, as all roads are. And it was taken.

“How much does a hotel room cost?” asked Sam.  

∞

 Out of the standstill of the wooded back roads they pushed into the excitement of cars and lights, some little town’s stamp of streets and wires on the land. They pulled into the parking lot of a mall and circled. Eustice kept her foot on the brake as they crept up and down the lanes.

“There was a spot back there,” said Sam. The boy had begun to fidget. The slower they drove, the louder the angry hand rapping at the underside of the car’s hood. Whatever was trapped in there was definitely trying to get their attention. “Maybe we should get someone to take a look at whatever is making that noise.”

The brakes squealed in protest as she reached the end of one lane and turned into another. The rapping lowered in pitch as she turned the wheel. Perhaps she had hurt whatever was knocking. Or maybe it was tired.

“Quiet,” she said. “Or I’ll make you sit outside the mall doors in the driver’s seat.” Sam slunk low and said he’d stay in the car. She would have grabbed him by the ear if she could have found it through all his hair.

Inside the mall he lurked from step to step. If she were his mother or father he’d have lingered a few feet behind, not to be seen on a leash of relation, but she wasn’t any figure of authority, so he could walk along as if he were reading a book over her shoulder.

It didn’t take long to find the dollar store. No doubt she’d find it. Even towns that were ready to dry up and blow away still had a dollar store, the great equalizer, where all levels of society stood in the same line to buy cheap costume jewelry and oversize chocolate bars.

“I’ll wait here,” Sam said, by the front door, eyeing the parade of old ladies with their half-size shopping carts peeping out from the ends of the aisles.

“Like hell you are,” she said, walking back and grabbing him by the elbow. “You need to see what you’re doing to me. This isn’t just some shopping trip. This is about responsibility. In fact, here,” she said, wrenching a small cart of her own over to him. “You’re our driver now. It’s a marvel mall security hasn’t already swooped down and picked you up the way you’re lurking behind an old lady with her purse.”

She kept him close, hand on the end of the cart just so he’d hate it. It cost a dollar apiece for two shiny pieces of red cloth, a dollar for two cheap plastic hoop earrings. In the rear of the store she was lucky to find a yellow shawl very similar to the sort her nanna used to wear, though her nanna’s had been hand-knit with care. Many stooped backs in the store were wearing them.

They found a games store and purchased a small folding table and two collapsible chairs. At eighty dollars it was by far their most expensive purchase. Carrying their table and bags, Sam complained with his silence all the way to the food court, where they sat next to a garbage bin. The bounty of mismatched supplies strewn between the two tables represented half of Sam’s remaining funds.

Sam sat in the hard, low seat across from her, his legs to the side as if ready to escape. He didn’t like her. She could tell. Every inch of him said so. But to voice his disapproval would mean putting a piece of himself out there for her.

“Shouldn’t we be driving? What’s all this junk for?”

“This,” said Eustice, folding a piece of bristle board, “is how we get money for our little trip. I’d rather be driving too, but … you know … a hundred and eighty dollars.”

“You gonna draw people or something?”

“No.” She tore a Sharpie from its plastic and threw the packaging away. She cut the last third from the bristle board and compared it to the edge of the table for parity.

“You’re not going to beg for money, are you? I’m not begging for money.”

“We’re providing a service,” she said, testing the Sharpie on a piece of scrap paper. “Your job is just to watch.”

“So what are you doing, then?”

The board was as straight on both edges as she could make it. To write, she used her left hand, erasing herself from the world with crooked letters of varying shapes and sizes.

She wrote: “Lady Zuzanna.”

“We’re going to tell people who they think they are.”