Short Fiction, Winner of the Typewriter Chicago Short Story Contest, October 2023.

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ONE

Billy Thatcher was little else but a mop of chocolate hair and a pair of shy blue eyes. He didn’t say a word to me the first time we met; didn’t speak for hours, in fact, until mama put on the TV to occupy us boys. She and Mrs. Thatcher disappeared to drink their coffee and smoke their Marlboros in the kitchen while the two of us shared the couch, transfixed by a cable rerun of Jailhouse Rock. I’d never seen a human being move like that – all hips, juts, and gyrations. He was either possessed or made of pure, unadulterated magic there in black and white. 

I scrambled off that sofa in a tangle of limbs, each too long for a little boy seeing Elvis Presley for the first time. I managed not to fall on my ass in front of the TV or pop a socket trying to copy every dance move. That’s when I heard Billy laugh. It was a light little chuckle with a certain musicality to it. There wasn’t an ounce of malice to it, either. No pleasure in the failure of my two left feet. No embarrassment on my behalf. I’d simply amused him. Made him smile.

I decided right then I’d do it as often as possible.

TWO

Billy’s last few baby teeth came loose in November. He’d made a fortune that year losing ‘em and laying ‘em under his pillow. The tooth fairy must’ve adored him because she left him whole dollar bills. I only collected a quarter or two, or sometimes nothing at all. I’d wake up and find my tooth right where I’d left it, all alone and forgotten. When I asked daddy why the tooth fairy played favorites like this, he’d grunt and warn me I was lucky to have the bed I slept on. Anything else was either a gift from God or the Devil’s work.

Billy came for a sleepover just before Thanksgiving. We rolled sheets across the den’s floor and popped three bags of kettle corn to munch ‘til sunrise. In between movies and mouthfuls, Billy’s front bottom incisor started wiggling something fierce. I told him to yank it free and make us some money. We’d split the earnings, of course – it was his tooth, but my house. Only fair, right? But he refused, too panicked over inflicting pain or coaxing blood. I rolled my eyes, got to my feet, and padded into the kitchen for supplies. 

I don’t remember where I’d seen it, or how I knew how tight to wind the twine around the closet doorknob. I just remember Billy’s sobbing once I slammed it, yanking the tooth free of his lower jaw. There was barely any blood at all – just a small, crimson trickle over the corner of Billy’s pink lip. Mama came running when she heard the fuss and gave me a look that promised a whooping later. Billy, that baby, only quieted down when she hugged him, stroking his back with a pianist’s delicate fingers. Before putting us both to bed, she helped Billy lay that excised tooth – that tiny little piece of himself- beneath his pillow. When she told him to make a wish, he sobbed again. ‘I wish I was brave enough t’pull it out myself.’ Mama looked at me, sighed hard, and kissed my forehead. ‘Goodnight brave boy’, she murmured almost low enough for me to miss.

We awoke the next morning to two dollars. Each. She didn’t leave a note, but I knew what the Tooth Fairy was trying to say: ‘Sorry for the delay, sugar. Thanks for all the help.’

THREE

My mama made the best rhubarb pie in the state of Tennessee and had the accolades to prove it. She’d won ‘best in show’ six times over at the Williamson County Fair and kept the ribbons on modest display in the hallway upstairs. She didn’t bake often but, when she did, heaven lingered all day in the warm, buttery air and sweet tang of sugared fruit. 

Billy and his sister stopped by for dinner. Violet and Hope, my own sister, were thick as thieves back then; long before overbearing husbands and surprise pregnancies got in the way. I remember how they’d barely touch their pie as they chatted, shrill and girlish voices buzzing like hornets. 

Billy didn’t bother to talk past ‘thank you’ when mama brought him a plate. That pie was gone in four bites, leaving behind a red-purple mess all over Billy’s mouth. That was the first time I really noticed his mouth. My fork clinked my plate as I stared, suddenly captivated by those lips and the tongue that appeared to clean them. Billy’s mouth glistened as he smiled, skin tinted berry pink under bright white teeth, and I felt my heart leap into my throat. He asked for seconds and got them – unheard of in this house, in this family – and I watched him devour every crumb with a new kind of fire in my belly.

FOUR

Franklin only ever had one cinema: The Footlight Theater on Jensen and Maine. Six screens, four or five employees, and no name brand concessions. Tickets were dirt cheap, but that didn’t stop us from sneaking in. Not as we got older, and I became what Mrs. Thatcher liked to call ‘a bad influence’.

Somewhere between church and puberty, I caught the horror movie bug. The more evil poured into the story, the more I wanted to watch and get lost in the forbidden shock of haunted houses, lurking demons and man-eating monsters, each stretched out in murky, low lit technicolor. These films excited me because they made real life and its own horrors less exhausting. So long as I never split up, never wandered off in the dark, never called out ‘who’s there?’, never took the Necronomicon home with me, I was safe. Untouchable. 

Billy hated horror. Capital H-A-T-E-D. If he was yellow-bellied as a kid, he was a full-blown coward now in his dungarees and sneakers and grease-stained t-shirts. He wore his chocolate mop back these days in a short quaff and kept a smattering of stubble across his chin. A sad excuse for facial hair, but he was desperate to cover his baby face. I would’ve teased him if he wasn’t so adorable. No, not adorable. Just my best friend.

Playing hooky in the middle of March meant nobody in the theater. With our pick of the lot, I dragged Billy by the wrist to center seats, right where the movie plays at you. Where the soundtrack spins around you like a rush of thunderous wind, and you can feel the thump of onscreen steps in your own feet. I finished my box of candy before the previews ended, and Billy had hands clutched around my arm ten minutes in. A spurned ventriloquist and her army of possessed dummies had him in silent, frightened tears by the one-hour mark. I knew he wanted to run by the breath he was holding and the nails he dug into me. But Billy didn’t budge. With stubborn determination, he buried his face into my shoulder instead. He was going to see this through, even if it meant hiding from the screen and its blood, the theater and its darkness. 

A jump-scare made him jolt, and he tugged my arm tight around him. It was the first time I’d ever held him, and a colony of butterflies all hatched at once in the spaces between my ribs.

FIVE

We only survived our Tennessee summers because of the swimming hole. Shutes Branch was a glorified puddle just off Hickory Road, but its Maple trees, towering and lush with summer leaves, gave us shelter from the sun. This came in handy after hours spent mowing lawns and burning to a crisp for a measly allowance. Billy picked me up most afternoons in his brother Tommy’s truck, and we’d sing loud and proud with the radio all the way up to Wilson County.

The hole wasn’t what you’d call a private place. June through September, you’d find more cigarette buds and bottlecaps than grass on the ground. Initial carvings littered trees and picnic tables, some encased in hearts while others decayed under furies of key slashes. Love was fickle that way, you know? Together forever one summer, dead to each other the next.

We dragged out folding chairs from the truck bed and cracked open a cooler. Billy barely drank, but would nurse a beer for the look of it. I kept flasks of daddy’s whiskey tucked away for these little adventures, and had half the thing emptied when Billy took off his shirt. Something sharp touched my spine, electrifying it as I looked. He had square hips below the slope of his bare back, sweat dotting the skin above his ass. He wasn’t fit, but I could still make out lines in his torso – could see the muscles twitch and work beneath tanned flesh. It’d taken Billy almost nineteen years to grow into his shoulders, and now they suited him like wings would an eagle. They held onto long, toned arms and capable hands, fingers already calloused from a summer working in his father’s garage.

When Billy caught my gaze, I laughed it off and stripped outta my own shirt. With his eyes on me, still so beautifully blue, my whole body sang with want. I might’ve imagined it, but I think he stared. I hoped he did. I wanted him to. 

The water was never cold, but it didn’t matter. It still turned the air into something tolerable on the skin, no longer scorching or suffocating. Mosquitos flocked to feast on us from the second we jumped in, legs tucked and smiles stretched all the way to the bottom of the pond. That didn’t matter, either. We let them eat us alive; the itch was a welcome distraction from all the sweating and tossing I’d do later in bed.

We swam and we talked. Drank and smoked. Used logs as makeshift diving boards and swung on low branches. Our hands brushed as we floated on our backs and watched the tangerine sky. I almost fell asleep in that water. I would have happily drowned if Billy hadn’t jerked away, cursing and hollering like a startled sailor. 

We never figured out what bit him, but it did a number on his ankle. I had to tend to him in the dirt, water dripping from my hair into my eyes, pruned hands dampening the bandage I wound around his foot. There was enough blood to make Billy queasy, so he asked me to carry him back to the truck. I was thrilled for the excuse to touch him. Touching Billy was like touching velvet; soft and warm luxury, something you’d want wrapped around you. 

He limped for a few days after that, which meant I got to carry him a few more times. It feels silly to admit it, but I thought then he’d make one hell of a bride across some threshold, somewhere out there in a life we couldn’t really have.

SIX

I first kissed Billy in the graveyard five yards from the church. A bench sat beneath the old willow tree on the cemetery’s west side, and I found him crying there. A cigarette clung to his lips – his grimace – as he scrubbed at his eyes. ‘Came out for air’, he’d told me. ‘Came out to breathe.’ It was hard to breathe on Sundays, especially for Billy. Especially around here.

I sat beside him and stole the stick from his mouth, putting it to my own. Smoke drifted over us in a silvery ladder climbing its way to heaven; the place we’d never reach, according to Pastor Dennis and that morning’s sermon. I didn’t believe in heaven, or God, or any of the bible bullshit by then. But Billy was a seasoned coward with a gentle heart. Sitting there, I swore I could hear it cracking into tiny pieces, shards dropping one by one into the acid of his gut.

I’d never kissed anyone before, let alone another boy, but it came natural. I just tilted my head and pressed his lips with all the tenderness I’d seen in movies. I remembered Elvis and his permanent pout, and pushed my bottom lip out to be fuller. Softer. Billy gasped, going rigid up until his tongue slipped forward, cautiously and curiously exploring. I welcomed it with a groan and fisted fingers into his hair, all mussed and moppy again. Lapping at him felt good. In seconds, he became the sweetest thing I’d ever tasted.  

We kissed until we couldn’t stand it, lips bruised and faces flushed. My pants were a vice and my heart was a hummingbird. Billy looked at me with the stormy, blue sadness of an entire Winter and whispered that he was scared. Scared to want this. Scared to be this. Scared he was going to burn in hell.

I couldn’t help my smile as I slung an arm around him. Nothing frightened me anymore. Nothing could after kissing somebody like that.

‘Don’t worry,’ I told him, meaning it. ‘If we ever get dragged t’hell, I promise, I’ll become the Devil.’