Stones in the Road

Readers love
N
ICK
W
ILGUS

Stones in the Road

“Nick Wilgus is a brilliant writer, the next Truman Capote or William Faulkner. Stones in the Road is an amazing followup to his debut novel,
Shaking the Sugar Tree
with some of the most outrageous Southerners ever to jump out of the pages of a book. Hilarious and heart breaking by turns,
Stones in the Road
will grip your heart and not let go.”

—Becky Condit

“Wilgus’s
Stones in the Road
puts the style in lifestyle and the fun in dysfunctional families. At once a dark comedy and a rich meditation on love, I can’t recommend this book enough!”

—Rick R. Reed, author of
Dinner at Home

Shaking the Sugar Tree

“This is a powerful story about what happens when you make the right but difficult choices in life and the things you will have to sacrifice, but also the other things you will gain.”

—MM Good Book Reviews

“Nothing I can say will ever come close to adequately describing the brilliant awesomeness that is this book… please, read this, you will thank me, and then I will say, ‘I told you so.’”

—The Blogger Girls

“This was an intense book that I’m really glad I had the opportunity to read.”

—Rainbow Book Reviews

“This isn’t the first romance written about a single parent finding love… It is, however, the first I have read that portrays those characters as emotionally honest as Mr. Wilgus does in
Shaking the Sugar Tree
.”

—The Novel Approach

Published by

D
REAMSPINNER
P
RESS

5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886  USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Stones in the Road

© 2015 Nick Wilgus.

Cover Art

© 2015 Anne Cain.

[email protected]

Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/.

ISBN: 978-1-63216-729-3

Digital ISBN: 978-1-63216-730-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953762

First Edition January 2015

Printed in the United States of America

This paper meets the requirements of

ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

“I
KNOW
an old lady who’s so blind she puts her dentures in backwards, and she can still drive faster than you,” I said, offering Jackson Ledbetter an impatient frown. “If you drove any slower, we’d be going in reverse.”

“Would
you
like to drive, smarty pants?” Jackson demanded.

“Of course,” I said.

“Fine!”

But he made no effort to pull over, jaw clenched, hands gripping the steering wheel of his Jeep as though clutching at his sanity.

“How bad could your parents be?” I asked, growing concerned.

“My mother could give the Bride of Chucky a run for her money.”

“So could you,” I pointed out. “And no doubt the Bride of Chucky could drive faster than you can, short legs and all.”

“Would you stop? Jesus, what a nag!”

“Don’t think I’ve ever been called a nag before.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

“Aren’t
we
a Mr. Cranky Pants?”

“You would be too.”

Jackson Ledbetter had said very little about his parents over the past two years that we’d been together, certainly nothing about his mother bearing a resemblance to the Bride of Chucky or any other fictional character. I had tried to talk about them, of course, but he had led me to believe there wasn’t much to talk about.
Nothing going on here, folks. Move along! Nothing to see
!

Apparently that was not quite true.

“I thought you and your parents got along good,” I said.

“
Good
? And you’re a writer?”

“Got along
well
. Is that better, Mr. Grammar Nazi?”

“Very much.”

“Pretty soon you’ll be giving me tips on how to write good.”

“
Well
!”

“So what’s the big drama?”

“There’s a reason I moved halfway across the United States.”

“Which was?”

“I need to live my own life.”

“I thought they had no problem with you being a big ole raging homosexual.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

“You’ll see.”

“You survived my family. We’ll survive yours. Have a little faith.”

“There are some things I forgot to mention.”

“Of course.”

He did not elaborate.

“Mysterious,” I said.

“You have no idea.”

“Does your mom have three breasts or something?”

“Wiley!”

“Just asking.”

“Nothing like that.”

“Then what?”

“You’ll see. Man, will you see! The light will shine and darkness will flee and brother, you will see!”

“You’re a poet and don’t know it.”

“That joke is so old….”

“Don’t you know me at all? We’ve been together for how long now?”

“Sometimes it feels like five thousand years.”

“That’s a little mean.”

“And they’ve been the best years of my life. Anyway, I stay for the kids, not for you.”

“Thank you!”

I glanced over my shoulder into the backseat at Noah, who was looking out a window and hooting incoherently. “Hoo hoo awk! Hoo hoo awk!”

“When you say kids,” I said, “I’m a little concerned, since I only have one, and to my knowledge, you don’t have any. Is there something I don’t know? Did you impregnate some helpless female at the hospital? Got yourself a baby mama on the side? I think we need to be clear about that kind of stuff.”

“I mean ‘kids’ as in Noah and whomever else might come along when we get gay-married and think about adopting.”

“
Whomever
?”

“Are you offended by good grammar?”

“And I thought I was the nag. But anyway, adoption takes too long. We’ll just buy a couple on eBay. If we don’t like them, we’ll send them back. If they don’t take returns, we’ll jack up the price a bit and sell them to someone else. We could make a lot of money, you know. What do you reckon?”

“I don’t reckon, because I’m a Yankee, and we don’t reckon. We think. And I know you’re kidding when you talk that way, but not everybody gets you. Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh?”

“We have to make this visit with my mom and dad work.”

“What could possibly go wrong?”

“I’m serious. None of your typical Wiley crap.”

“And that means….”

“No walking around the house in your underwear, for example.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I know you’re a sixties-loving, Beat Generation, Hare Krishna, ‘My Sweet Lord’ hippie Buddhist wannabe walking around with a flower in every orifice and free love and John Lennon and make love not war and the Grateful Walking Dead, or whatever the hell all that shit is about, but for the next month, Wiley, just keep a lid on it.”

“Wear lots of clothes, in other words.”

“Exactly. You and your son both. We don’t live in a barn.”

“Is there something wrong with living in a barn?”

“And none of your bullcrap stories about how your little brother was eaten by crocodiles, how your Uncle Bernie had two heads, or how you and your brother Billy-Joe-Bob-Mike-Daniel-Harold used to milk chickens to make eggnog for Christmas dinner.”

“I don’t have a brother named Billy-Joe-Bob-Mike-Daniel-Harold—”

“And no politics, Wiley! No Tea Party diatribes or talking about your penis or aborted fetuses or Michele Bachmann’s vagina or any of the other crap you go on and on about. And God knows you go on and on. You feel some of that coming along, you just zip it.”

“Zip it real good?”

“Zip it, Wiley! Got me? It’s only a month. You won’t die. I promise you.”

“
When a penis comes along… I must zip it
!”

“Now I know why your mother says you’re like a stone around her neck!”

“Wouldn’t it be easier if you just castrated me?”

“I don’t want them to think you’re a nutjob.”

“But I
am
a nutjob.”

“I know!”

“I thought that’s what you loved about me.”

“I do, but my parents don’t know you. Try to act like a normal guy.”

“Well, if I must….”

“I’m serious as a heart attack, Wiley. If you and I are ever going to get gay-married, we need their approval.”

“I could get you a hammer.”

“For what.”

“So you can make your point more effectively.”

“And none of your sarcastic bullcrap either!”

“In other words, for the next month, I should try very hard
not
to be myself. If I feel any of my normal impulses, I should just do the opposite.”