Fiction by Michael Loyd Gray

Michael Loyd Gray is the author of eight published books of fiction and more than sixty published short stories. His novella, Busted Flat, winner of a Literary Titan Gold Award and finalist for an Eric Hoffer Award, was released in October 2024. Gray's novella, Donovan’s Revolution, winner of a 2025 International Impact Award for Contemporary Fiction, a Literary Titan Gold Award, and a 2025 Book Excellence Award for Historical Fiction, was released in June 2024. Released in February 2025: Night Hawks, a novella. Scheduled for a March 2026 release, The Writer in Residence, a novel. Scheduled for a May 2026 release, The Space Between Now and Then, a collection of stories. In 2027, Regal House will bring out Gray's novel, Emperor of the Mundane.  Gray earned a MFA in English in 1996 from Western Michigan University, where he was a Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society scholar. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois and e lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with three cats and a lot of electric guitars.

Working for Mrs. South

Mrs. South was what folks called a well-preserved widow who’d run the Helena Blues Festival in Arkansas for ten years. She cocked her head to the side, the one she favored because the light caught her colored auburn hair just right.

 “They’re actually called Gravy is Groovy?” she said. “For real?”

 “Pretty catchy, right?” Billy Ray said as he side-glanced a small mole in the crevice where Mrs. South’s tempting cleavage began.

 “If you say so, Billy Ray, but I don’t reckon it’ll make folks forget the Rolling Stones.”

 “A good name’s everything for a band,” he said, nodding.

 “Well, they’ll be here tomorrow.” She twitched her lips. “Some guy named Wino called. Is that really his name—Who?”

 “It’s a long story.”

 “I just bet it is.”    

She handed him a stack of posters.

 “And you really do know this Gravy band?”

 “I manage them,” Billy Ray said. 

She cackled lightly.

“Do you now, Billy Ray?”

 “Yes, ma’am.”

 “Gravy is Groovy—that’s a doozy, alright.”

He nodded and snuck another look at her Grand Canyon cleavage.

 “Now, those posters need to go up anywhere you can put them,” she said. “But make sure there's plenty of them where people congregate—bars, restaurants. When you run out, come back, and I'll find some more for you." 

She licked her lips. 

Billy Ray had never seen lipstick quite so red—cherry red, though cherry wasn't a word to associate with Mrs. South. She cocked her head as though expecting him to say something, but he just smiled and grabbed the posters. He looked over his shoulder going out the door, and she was still watching him. 

He went to the Piggly Wiggly first because it was right across the street. Billy Ray wasn't convinced that putting up posters was what music producers really did, but he was getting paid and seeing the town. There was a cute blond cashier at Piggly Wiggly named Lucy, who was in his English class. She reminded him a little of Margie Heinrich, his first crush, but now he couldn't decide if that was good or bad. Lucy wasn't working, so Billy Ray bought an RC Cola and sat outside. 

It got cloudy, but Billy Ray managed to distribute posters at Rexall's and the Woolworth store before the rain fell. He holed up under an awning at the John Deere dealer. The rain smelled fresh and clean. When it slowed to drizzle, he worked his way down to the docks and put up more posters. He could see rain falling in sheets on the Mississippi. Thunderclaps drummed off in the distance. He could barely make out a tug maneuvering a barge along the far side of the river. 

Billy Ray felt injected with something elemental—raw energy, perhaps. He felt cleansed and alive and without worry as he allowed the drizzle to soak his T-shirt and run down his face. In the men's room at the diner on the docks, he dried his hair and face with paper towels and stayed to eat French fries soaked in ketchup at the counter. He was at the confluence of an awful lot of things: Gravy is Groovy, high school graduation—he’d discovered he had enough credits to finish in December—and ] his eighteenth birthday was just a week away. 

He ran out of posters and headed back downtown. The rain had left pools in the street gutters. Billy Ray took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his jeans for the walk back. The water was cool and refreshing. Five blocks later he put his shoes and socks back on so he could cut through Ike's Tavern, which had a back door to the alley behind the King Biscuit radio station. 

Ike's was nearly empty except for a pair of gritty tug pilots drinking shots of Wild Turkey at the bar. That was probably their tug he saw tied to the docks. Ike, a generous contributor to the blues festival, nodded at him while wiping beer glasses. There were a couple greaser types—high school dropouts still sporting pompadours and long sideburns—shooting pool. The juke box played something Billy Ray recognized as Merle Haggard, but he didn't know the title. He wasn't much for Merle Haggard. The Beatles were more his style. Sitting at the end of the bar, Mrs. South nursed a vodka gimlet. Billy Ray considered a hasty retreat through the front door, but she waved him over and patted the bar stool next to her. 

"Done already? My, you're a fast worker, Billy Ray. Ike, bring this hard-working boy something to drink." 

Billy Ray ordered a Dr. Pepper thinking it was best to keep beer drinking and his professional life separate. Mrs. South ordered a second gimlet and excused herself to visit the ladies’ room. Ike glanced over at Billy Ray a couple times and made him feel uncomfortable. He was thankful when the tug pilots ordered another round, and Ike was busy again. 

Mrs. South came back chipper and refreshed and sipped her gimlet. Billy Ray couldn't be sure, but he thought there was one more button undone on her blouse. She had sprayed on more perfume. He noticed that as soon as she sat back down. It vaguely reminded him of his mother's perfume, which was sort of creepy in an equally vague way. She didn't look like his mother. Mrs. South had curves the tight dress accentuated. She had breasts that got noticed. She made sure of that. 

"I'll go get some more posters,” he said. "It stopped raining." 

"Call me Ruth, Billy Ray. Will you do that for me?" 

Billy Ray nodded. 

"I guess so—Ruth."

"Mercy, we've worked together all these months, and it's always Mrs. South this and Mrs. South that, Billy Ray. It's enough to make a southern lady feel like she's become a grandmother." 

Billy Ray wasn't sure what to say to that, so he sipped the Dr. Pepper and nodded every now and then. He didn't think any man who saw her cleavage thought much about grandmothers. He was pretty sure she had unbuttoned yet another button of her blouse, and he was getting a pretty good view of the fleshy tops of her titties. He imagined her giving a lap dance at the Taboo Inn and shaking those titties in his face. Thinking of them as titties instead of breasts made him excited.  

Don't fret about those posters, honey. The rain's going to pick up again, anyway. It usually does. You can start where you left off in the morning, before your band gets here." 

"I reckon so, Ruth." If she minded him looking her titties over, she gave no hint of it.

She cocked her head like she generally did and regarded him a moment. 

"What kind of name is Gravy is Groovy? I swear to the heavens I never heard such a thing." 

"It's just what they came up with to stand out." 

 “And was that your idea, Billy Ray, the name?”

He thought about lying and nearly did but finally said, “No, I can’t take credit.”     

"Can they play, Billy Ray? It's a feather in your cap if they can play." She got herself another gimlet. "You sure you don't want a beer or something, honey? You do drink beer don't you?" 

"Sometimes. But I'm working." 

Working at not falling into her cleavage, he thought. 

"You're off the clock now, Billy Ray. Have a beer. Ike, bring this young man a beer. I'm calling you a young man because you are. I hear tell your eighteenth birthday is coming up." 

He waved the beer off, and Ike nodded. Mrs. South was at the point of not really noticing. 

"I remember when I turned eighteen," she said. "I went off to a dance school in Biloxi. That's where I met Mr. South. He played piano in a band there." 

“Do tell,” Billy Ray said quietly.

No one that Billy Ray knew seemed to know what happened to Mr. South, and Mrs. South didn't volunteer to enlighten him. She drank another gimlet. "I was quite the dancer I'll have you know." She fished in her purse and found some change. "Here. Go play G5." 

He discovered that G5 was "I Can't Stop Loving You" by Ray Charles. 

She ambushed him at the juke box. She slipped her arms around him from behind. "Dance with me, Billy Ray." 

Billy Ray only knew a two-step he learned in dance class in school. Mrs. South pressed her titties into him, and the sex salami started having evil thoughts. A couple girls back in Argus had administered sloppy hand jobs for him, but he had yet to perform under the main tent. And this wasn't the time or place. Ike was eyeing him closely behind the bar. Mrs. South had ground her pelvis into Billy Ray's crotch, and Ike wasn't too sure about it all. This was the middle of the day and not a crowded dance floor on a Saturday night. 

Billy Ray took the hint and steered her back to finish her gimlet. 

When she fumbled for her car keys and declared she didn't really think she should drive and would Billy Ray help out a gal, he knew he was finally going to get where he had wanted to go ever since Margie Heinrich's peach fuzz thighs had appeared before him. 

For Ike's consumption, he made a point of saying he'd help Mrs. South get back to the office, but Ike wasn't buying it, and his look said so. Billy Ray figured his sex life would become an item in Helena. But what's a guy to do? It's a choice and Billy Ray had made it. A guy had to do what a guy had to do. Billy Ray simply couldn't turn eighteen and still be a virgin. And Mrs. South was happy to help him out. 

He had to practically pour her out of her car when they reached her house. But she perked up when they got there and even made them vodka gimlets. He liked them well enough. She even surprised him by playing some Beatles before slipping on Frank Sinatra to dance to. Dancing was a very loose way of regarding it. Mrs. South was more than happy to two-step and show good dexterity at the same time by slipping off her dress and dropping it to the floor. 

After the feverish, sweaty “event,” as he would think of it later, Mrs. South raised up and swung her alabaster white legs over the side of the bed. 

"That's just the first inning, honey. Rome wasn't built in a day." 

Then she threw up all her vodka gimlets on the bedroom carpet. She was very embarrassed and cleaned it up with a towel from the bathroom, her belly flesh hanging loosely—grotesquely—like the udders of a cow while she was on her hands and knees. The sour smell of vomit lingered.

Later, while Mrs. South fussed with her hair in the bathroom, Billy Ray sat on the edge of her bed, naked, and stared at the floor. His body still tingled. No specific thoughts came to mind. It was as if he was in his body and out of it at the same time while an electric current flashed throughout him. Sweat dripped off his forehead and he mopped it with the back of his hand. He switched on a fan directed at the bed and eased back on his elbows. He figured he was a man now, and a man took the good with the bad. Well, so somebody once said. Who told him that? He couldn’t remember.

The fan droned pleasantly and dried his face. The smell of vomit had been swept away. He closed his eyes and a horn sounded in the distance as the tug slipped its ropes and made for the main channel of the river. Billy Ray listened to Mrs. South—Ruth—singing “I Can’t Stop Loving You” off-key.