Billy Luck, Episode 1

Alison Heasley

Dateline Gloryville Delaware. A cornfield on a hot August day in 1977.

Billy’s feeling kind of down. Trying to kick booze because vodka just finished off his bitter, angry 56-year old dad, William Senior. Billy has under the crook of his right arm, Gloria. Gloria, the prize hen of the Luck Chicken farm, incorporated 1959, had become Billy Jr.’s closest confidante in recent weeks.

Particularly since (a), it was clear that insanity of Big Luck was a foreshadowing of his imminent demise; and (b) Billy had been further emotionally stripped down by the interference of Bull Grimes, of Bridgeville-his former best bud/now chief nemesis– in young Billy’s deep romance with Annie Flythe, was truly the only woman he had ever loved.

By the bye, in Billy Jr.’s left hand was the Smirnoff bottle (and its last dregs) that had choked off the life of his poor old dad.

Billy apologized to Gloria the red rhody chicken for what he was about to do, the CHUGGED back the stalle swaller of vodka. They were deep in the cramped little Gloryville Baptist Graveyard by this time. Billy was teetering over the freshly placed simple stone marker at the head of soft orange earth, the tablet reading, “WILLIAM LUCK 1921-1977, His Road Was Hard, His Journey Brief.”

The reverie of bird and man was suddenly shattered by a rude bellow, “What the HAIL you doin’, Grave-Robbin’?” At this blast of unwelcome vulgarity, Gloria tore free of Billy, letting out a cloud of soft down from her ruffled breast, and Billy let the bottle fly loose, allowing it to smash against his father’s headstone, dribbling bits of glass and liquor over the epitaph.

Billy and Bull Grimes tumbled out the crooked iron gates of the boneyard, and rolled, literally down the dusty gravel road into town, seemingly locked in an inexorable choke grip.

“Whar’s my girl,” Luck demanded.

“No place near your sorry tail,” Grimes snarled.

Gloryville is a fairly compact burg, with the main landmarks at the epicenter of town square (actually a circle ringed with whitewashed pointy rocks) being the Confederate Flag Bearer statue, and the Stevens Studebaker Dealership, flanked by its hallmark 1928 forest-green cast iron lamp standards. studebakers hadn’t been sent there since 1963, but Mr. Stevens didn’t seem to notice, since he still had at least half- a dozen Larks and wagons in the plate-glass framed front showroom. In fact the portly proprietor, in suspenders and T-shirt with overalls, puffed on his stogie and chuckled as the tangle of arms and legs that was Billy and Bull, tumbled past.

(to be continued)

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