Horse

a wealthy kentuckian family acquires some frozen sperm from the legendary race horse "secretariate." seizing their chance, they use the sperm to breed a mare and produce an excellent quarterhorse of unprecedented stature.



the family knows that they have a winner on their hands, but they also love the horse very much. so much, they purchase a donkey to be the quarterhorse's playmate as he grows up. the donkey and the horse become fast friends.



soon it comes time for the quarterhorse's racing career, and it is spectacular. the quarterhorse wins every race he enters...even capturing the famed triple crown.


the family, grateful to the horse, reunites him with his old pal, the donkey. the two are then sent off to a beautiful meadow where they frollic and play all day. a perfect life for the two of them.


then, one day, the donkey feels the cold clutches of death approaching and he calls his old friend over to him.


"old friend horse, before i die, i have one small request of you." he says, "i have been your friend for many years, and i think it is something within your power to grant me."
"dear sweet donkey," the horse replies, "whatever it is with in this world, and i have the power to grant it to you, name it...and i shall give it to you."


the donkey clears his throat and solemnly asks horse his one last request. "horse, i want you to run a race with me and i want you to let me win."


"it shall be done." the horse says, and they trot off down to a practice track that had been set up years before on the kentucky farm.


the two friends walk up to the starting line and as the horse says "GO!" the race begins. the donkey leapt out in front of the horse, running as fast as his donkey legs could carry his old frame. the horse took a more leisurely pace; trotting along behind.


they round the first corner. the donkey is about two lengths in front of the horse. he feels a small twinge in his heart.


they round the second corner. the donkey is running faster than he has ever run before, and manages to pull ahead of the horse by four lengths. the twinge is now a painful tightness in his donkey chest.
they round the third corner. in a miracle of events, the donkey has pulled ahead by an astounding six lengths and the tightness in his chest is gone--replaced by a throbbing fire of agony.


they round the forth corner. the donkey is running so fast that blood is now mixing with the froth at his lips. he is a full eight lengths in front of his old pal, the horse.
as they round that final turn, the horse starts thinking. he starts feeling the old proudness of his racing career. he realizes that he has never lost, and that it would be a total embarassment to lose to a pitiful donkey. he quickens his pace and zooms past the struggling donkey, beating him at the finish line.


the donkey crosses the finish line and hits the turf with a resounding thud. his last words are "WHY?" and his eyes close forever.


the horse is saddened and shakes his head in both sorrow and shame for what he has done. nearby, two cows are standing at a fence, chewing their cud. they call to the horse in utter disgust.


"you bastard!" they cry out. "he was your best friend in this whole world. he would have done anything for you...and you couldnt give him his last request. you are truly the most shameful horse we have ever seen. you should be ashamed of yourself."


the horse glances over at the fence and the two cows. his face is a mask of shame and agony. his voice is shrill as he says "oh my god....talking cows."

summertime

the neighbor's back porch light fades about half way across my backyard. sitting in the old, wet, smelly hammock here in mid-june, i am sweating.


cars go by occaisionally, startling me and silencin the crickets. god, i hope that rob doesnt come home until late. i reach under the hammock and pick up the glass of iced tea that has been there for hours. my fingers brush it and over it goes, tea filling the cracks in the dried mud.


"damn," i whisper and sit up.


now i am swinging in the hammock back and forth, trying to work up the energy to get up and get more tea from the fridge. a car is coming, headlights sweep passed by, then suddenly they are filling the backyard. rob's huge old buick roars up the drive and stops just short of the yard. he shuts off the engine, turns off the headlights, and just sits there. slowly my vision returns to nomral as the car's muffler pops and clicks as it cools. a loud, rusty honk comes as rob opens the door. he is just holding it there, half standing in and out of the car. he scans the backyard with a watery glance. his head lolls as a warm wind sweeps by. his head stops moving when he sees me. he seems to look through me, passed me.


"rick!" he's drunk. "what the hell're you doing out here so late?"


"nothing rob," i stammer almost apologetically. he can really lose it sometimes, especially if i fuck up, or he is drunk.


"well git the hell inside..." he's gesturing at me and the door angrily.


i stand up and get out of the hammock. as i move towards the back door, i keep my hands in my pockets. rob is standing there, swaying and muttering something hotly under his breath. he's glaring too, i can tell he's really angry with me...i can feel it too.


i pass him in the doorway and he lets his open palm dart out like a flash. he slaps me on the back of my head and bright little lights zing out in front of my closed eyes. lightning bugs in a dark summer field.


"rob!" i wince. "what the heck was that for?"


"git inna goddamned house," he drawls. "m'sposed to take care of you, ungrateful shit..."


he is as drunk as i have ever seen him. this is going to be bad. better to just go in quick and hide in my room. i can't help but take a shot at him as he stands behind me, still in the doorway.


"you stink rob....stink!" i holler at him. i hear the screen door slam behind him as he rushes towards me.


"goddamn mouth," he roars with his eyes closed.


i can feel the tears comming, so i scamper into the kitchen, but he is after me.


"rick, fer crissakes, how many times i gotta tell you not to slam the fuckin door?" then his big clammy hands are on me, on my neck. with overbearing strenght and speed he turns me around, his alcohol breath is hot and stinky, like the old buick's radiator.



"howmanytimes!" he bellows, and then i feel the first fist.


"how! many! fucking! times!" he screams, punctuating each word with a blow.


the tears are hot jets on my face now. i drop, wrenching free of his grasp somehow and i begin to crawl across the linoleum of the kitchen floor. he lashes out with his foot, skimming my ass as i scurry away.


"shit," he says.



his missed kick causes him to fall forward, but he catches himself at the last possible second on the kitchen counter.


i make it to my room and huddle on my bed in the corner. it’s hot and stuffy in my room and soon my sweat is mixing with the tears on my cheeks, upper lip, neck. that sonofabitch! i think i'll probably have a black eye tomorrow. i walk over to my desk and switch on the tiny lamp there. my face stares back at me from the wall mirror. my hair is matted, my upper lip has a thin coating of tears and snot. i wipe the slick away with the back of my hand and examine myself in the mirror. an ugly purple bruise is already growing under my right eye.


"turna fucking light off and getintabed!" rob shouts from the hallway.


i sigh and switch the light off. i lie down on the bed, above the covers. i am awake for quite a while, staring up at the ceiling.

i awake with a start. i don't remember falling asleep. it is light out and my head is killing me. dust particles float in the morning sunlight that floods through my window. i hear strained shouting from downstairs. yelling that is muffled by the house, the stairs, my room, my bead, my blankets.


"listen sally," its rob. he is speaking the words as if he is tired, as if they taste bitter in his mouth. "listen sally, stop giving me shit about this. christ! like i need it. my head hurts, my back hurts, and to top it all off, rick is driving me out of my mind." he pauses for a long second and i can almost feel him take a deep breath. "not that you care...shit, and they are talking about lay offs at the plant! do you know what that means?"


"where is ricky?" sally says calmly.

"maybe you can get him to help around the house, maybe you can save up some money, maybe you can make do..."


"sally, he is my biggest worry. he's on my mind all the time. i am stuck here with him. do you know what time i found him up last night?"


sally doesnt say anything. there is the sound of water running in the kitchen sink. rob goes on.


"i can't get him to do anything. he wont help around the house. all he does is sit in his room all day, in front of that little television. he wont pick up, he wont do the dishes, and no goddamned laundry. NOTHING!"


"it was eleven-thirty," i say as i walk into the kitchen. i couldnt stand the arguement any longer. i am mad, but sally doesnt look at me. she is staring at rob with angry wonder in her eyes.


"what were you doing out at eleven-thirty?" she belts at rob. he suddenly looks a little smaller. "and you," she says as she turns to me. "you're no innocent party...christ, what happened to your face?"


she stalks across the kitchen, pushing aside a chair that was in her way. her hands grab the sides of my face, steadying it roughly. one hand comes down to brush my hair out of the way, the other holds my head still.


"who did this?" she askes, full of concern. her forehead is wrinkled.



rob is swaying back and forth behind her. he knows i could bust him. he probably thinks i will. the Mr Coffee switches on with a loud gurgle.


"who?" she askes again, her grip tightens.


"nothin," i say. "i-i mean nobody...i got in a fight at the pool."


"goddamnit robert!" she turns to rob. she must be really mad. i have never heard her call him (or anybody) call him robert. not ever. "you're supposed to be taking care of him! christ! he's only twelve and you're letting him go out and get beat up...just look at him!"


rob sets a clean coffee mug down on the counter next to the coffee machine, his other hand is a very noticable tightened fist.


"sally," he says with a controlled calm that is practiced. he can sometimes hide his true anger and his crumbling control this way. "its like i told you. rick is here all day now that school is out and i am at work. maybe YOU should take him during the day?"


sally is watching rob, her eyes are widle like a lion's glare and her head nods slowly with each of his words. when he is done, a small smile breaks on her face. it is not a smile of happiness, but rather a small sarcastic smile. she has heard this before.



"rob, you know damn well that i work double shifts during the week so that i can have the weekends free for him. don't push him off on me, he's your responsibility during the week." she reaches for the coffee.


i'm sitting here in the middle, caught and looking back and forth as they argue. looking for a way out, i peer at the screen door. look down at the sick yellow of the linoleum floor. cautiously, i get up and walk towards the door as they shout at each other.


"where the hell do you think you're going?" rob asks. the tiny grip he had on his temper is gone now.



i feel tears start to come, like pin pricks in the corners of my eyes, but i hold them in. the only thing that shows of my fear and anger is my thin voice that wavers as i speak:
"i'm going OUT!" and i rush out the door, slamming it again. down the cement steps and over to where my bicycle is parked. i pedal out of there.


"goddamnit rick!" rob screams after me. he turns to sally who is still in the kitchen. "don't you see?" he yells. "see how he acts around here? he never minds what i say."


i look over my shoulder as i ride away. rob is still in the door. he looks at me as i move over the pavement and i can see the anger in his eyes again. he is twitching mildly and he calls out one last time. "rick, get back here!"


"it's no wonder he doesnt listen to you!" sally is yelling at rob. "all you ever do is scream at him all day!"

but their voices fade away as i pedal on the yellow sidewalk.

dusk. it's purple out and i am walking my bike back up the driveway. my face is sticky from the tears that are now hours-dry on my cheeks. i spent the day down at the river, throwing rocks, breaking sticks and getting muddy. i must have been bitten by a million mosquitoes. rob says that they are bad this year on the count of all the rain we got last spring. my swollen eye pokes and throbs at me again, it has been doing that off and on all day. it really hurts now. darn rob! i wish he hadn't hit me! some kids down at the river had picked on my because of my shiner. they kept asking me who had kicked my ass. one of the boys even told me that maybe i should have my ass kicked again for me, just for good measure. i rode away form them fast. they chased me for a little and threw sticks at me.


the sky is dark in the east. i am not scared to go home now though, rob is still at the plant. he works until seven-thirty and he wont have any clue what time i got home.


the kitchen is cool, used. coffee mugs sit in the sink, chairs where my sister and brother have left them. i quickly walk through the kitchen and up the short flight of steps towards my room. why do people call them a "flight of steps?" i wonder to myself as i hop up them. the room is exactly as i have left it. socks like crawling worms that inch across the carpet to some unknown destination. my dresser is an old hulk that sits next to the wall. it is covered in dust and the doors don’t shut all the way anymore. i sit down on my bed and outside i can hear the neighborhood kids as they scream by on their bikes and skateboards. my eyes follow them mechanically as they go passed, then my stare sweeps from the windows to this wreck of a room. i inch off of the bed. i am going to do something about all of this...clean the whole darn house.



"ouch!" i start. i have stepped on something.



i hop around the room like some twisted idiot. after i have rubbed the pain out of my foot, i bend down to see what sharp thing has hurt me. i lift the bunched covers that have fallen at the foot of the bed. a green army man, his face permanently molded into battle-fury is there. battle agony. his arm is cocked back and he is ready to pitch his hand grenade. the other arm is thrust down, kind of bent forward at the elbow. this little army man holds his legs in major-league stance; he's ready to make the long throw from third to first.
i toss him into the toy hamper next to my closet. a small task, but a good start.



it is the first task of the evening. for the next hour i am consumed with a cleaning fury. my clothes go down the laundry chute, the toys go in the hamper or on the top shelf in the closet. i make my bed, dust off the dresser, and sweep the carpet last because that is when you are supposed to do it...after all the dusting is done. i sit back on the bed, but i notice that my mirror is smudged. i get the windex and clean the glass.


my face is still there as i swipe at the mirror. the black eye is still there too, but it has stopped hurting. i reach up and blankly touch the mouse. a shard of pain stabs through my head. but the pain is only in my head now, and it doesnt last long.



maybe this is all my fault. rob would be a heck of a lot better off with me out of the picture. maybe sally too. and stuff down at the plant is really bad, has everybody down. rob doesnt need me here screwing things up for him. why am i such a screw up? i'll show them i can be good. really good.

it is one-fourty-seven in the morning. i have just woken up at the clean kitchen table. i have slept there, head down, for i don't know how long.


"git your ass up you little shit," comes a hiss from the garage. rob is out there, just on the other side of the screen door. i cannot see him, but i know it is rob. he is finally home and i can sense the anger that is around him. it looks red.
before i can get up, he is in the kitchen and behind me. he's using my chair to hold himself up. the garage door is open behind him.
"i said giddup!" he yells. then he rips the chair out from under me and throws it across the kitchen.


there is something in his eyes that i have never seen before. i go to the floor in a heap.


from my new position, i stare up at him. i am scared, i am sure that i am shaking with fear, but i can't tell. i can't see myself.


"r-rob?" my voice is small. "i-i cleaned up the house. i heard you and sally talking this morning and i cleaned up the house..."


a stinging blow comes from out of nowhere. i fly back against one of the legs of the kitchen table.


"bitch," he slurs. "doan tell me bout tha bitch." his drool is hanging on his lips and chin.


"rob...are you okay? rob?" i am surprised. i am hurt. i am amazed.
"shut up," he says and he looks around the kitchen. i am proud of the cleaning job i have done here. stupidly proud. "what'er you doin up?" he moves closer to me, hovers over me. i can't seem to look at anything but the steel-toed workboots that are there in front of me. i feel his hand pounce on the back of my neck. it grasps my shirt and hair. rob hauls me to my failing feet.


"rob," i can't believe this is starting all over again. "rob, please stop."
his eyes are red as he gives me a heavy lidded once over. he's sweating. i am sweating. he stinks.


"shaddap," he roars. the kitchen reels passed me and i am hitting the refridgerator. cute little magnets rain down on me as i slide down the metal surface. a squeal comes from the skin of my back as it rubs the fridge.


i hit the floor with a thump. rob strides across the kitchen. he is puffing and blowing. yelling things i cant hear anymore. then he is over me again, and i think wildly that i may be able to escape by squirming throught his wide spread legs. an animal roar pushes passed his lips and i see his upper body make a motion. the world dips and tilts at a crazy angle. stars burst forth in front of my open eyes, eyes that are now going dizzy. he is hitting me now, hard and fast. he isnt using open palms, but with tight balled fists. i am going to die, i think.


"rob...robby," tears are flying. my voice is a high, babies wail.



his reaching fingers find my throat and begin to dig in hard. his breath is a hot hiss as a well worked fist slams into the side of my head. my neck is turned to the side quickly with the force of the blow. from someplace i hear the sound of lego snapping into place and the kitchen begins to fade. black shadows, like snakes, slither in to cover my eyes.

the refridgerator is cold against my back. i try to raise myself up, but my legs are all wobbly and the room seems to be at a funny angle. my throat hurts bad. i put up a shakey hand and rub the back of my head. the scalp is flakey and it itches. as i bring my hand back down, in front of my face, i realize that it is covered in a crusty brown stuff. it looks like old paint. finally, my vision seems to clear. the kitchen tilts back to normal and i am aghast at the huge mess that i am confronted with. newspapers, dishes, food, cloths and the maroon brown crust are everywhere. rob is slumped on the kitchen table, drooling and snoring.


he is asleep. i am sure of it. his breath is in and out regular, but there is a wet, flemmy sound that comes like a growling dog.



creeping over to him, his breath suddenly stops. a troubled look knits itself into his eyebrows.


"rob..." i stammer. i am amazed how weak my voice sounds, how weak everything is. slowly and with a large chunk of fear in me, i raise my index finger and give him a gentle poke.


"rob? robby c'mon, wake up. you're scaring me," my voice trails off as one of his bloodshot eyes pops open. his breath comes back hard as a sudden suck.


"whaddayawant?" he says. then he moves his head back and stares at me hard. "oh christ," he says. "you look like how i feel." i guess this is his way of trying to apologize.


"i think i am hurt robby...i can't see right. i think i need a doctor or the emergency room or something." having said that, i am suddenly even more scared than i was. scared like when rob comes home really late. scared like there is something really wrong. scared because this situation has suddenly become something worse.


a strange look is in rob's eyes again, like when he got home last night. the look is wild and sparkles with the gray light of morning as it streams into the kitchen windows. i look towards the closest window, the one over the sink. nothing is out there, yet the sink is full of broken, clean dish shards. the dishes i had washed so long ago.


"rob?" he is trying to get up.

"rob...look what you did to the kitchen."


he is looking around. things are just now occuring to him...me, the mess, the holes in the wall, the throbbing in his knuckles. it seems like a series of explosions go off in his head.


i am mad at him. i am mad for all of this that he has done. and i am mad for me. what he has done to me. "this stinks robby," i yell at him. "you ruined it. you ruined everything!"


"shut up shut up," he is saying. he takes ahold of his head. "christ...i gotta think now..." it sounds as if his voice was chopped up by a fan.


robby turns around, he is mad about something. he is always mad. he starts pacing across the kitchen floor, stepping on an old shirt, kicking the plastic garbage can that was under the sink.

"gotta think..." his voice is a rasp. he reaches up into the cupboard. "a little hair of the pup..."


"rob, please dont," i say and step towards him.


"back off, you little shit," and he is unscrewing the top of a bottle of something. a cross look comes over his face as he tilts the bottle back, drinking in deep gulps. little bubbles flow back from the mouth of the bottle where his mouth touches it. his eyes are shut tight.


"rob please?" i implore him. i almost touch his arm with an outstreched hand.


"damn you," he yells. his arm sweeps out knocking my hand away. then he slams the bottle back down on the kitchen counter with a glassy thud. a stream of amber liquid flows up from the bottle like a drinking fountain spurt, then it falls miraculously back down exactly into the mouth of the bottle.



rob's eyes pierce me with his ray-gun stare, his eyes are wide and his upper lip is trembling. "stop fucking bugging me." he almost screams as he is grabbing me my my torn shirt. my throat is pulled tight by his actions and i yelp out in firey agony. my eyes are waving around wildly and the kitchen has become a group of distorted pictures in somebody's old photo album. there is a lump in my throat, and i cannot swallow.



everything smells like rob. stale, like the sweet smell of wonderbread. rob raises me upwards and slams me down on the counter top. my back is mashed into the cupboards and his grip is getting tighter by the second.

there we are. right next to the sink. the litter of last night is strewn all around us. my eyes are covered by a fire engine red veil. i cannot see anything but the red. my hands are flailing about. i hit at rob. i hit at the counter. i hit at the hot air between us. my hand comes down. i feel something hard. my hand grabs it. i bring my arm up. whatever it is in my hand, i slam it forward at rob.

"gittoffa me!" i suddenly find my voice. rob's hold on my throat and shirt opens like a surprise. his eyes still have that glare, but his eyebrows are tousled into a confused look. it looks as though he is asking a person for instructions or something.



he steps back and looks down at his chest. a piece of broken dish sticks out from him like an arrow. he slowly runs his finger along the broken edge of it and then he looks back at me dumbly. i am confused too. we stare at each other for what seems like hours. suddenly, his voice comes small and child-like. "ricky?"


with that, he falls to the floor, relaxes and quits moving.

i sit there for a long time on that counter top. i look at him, and i look around at the mess. mostly though, i look at myself. my fingernails are covered in that same brown paint. i know now that it is blood. the blood is drying now, and it is everywhere. drying to a sticky, dark mess on my hands and shirt. my jeans are wet too. tacky, wet and brown. i can feel them sticking to my legs.

Hard People

I crossed the highway and walked to Sandy’s front door. Before I entered, I glanced up the road towards Carizozo. Yep, she was coming. You could tell by the little black dot on the horizon. It would slowly become a large white Mustang. Sally was coming, and my heart leapt in its bone birdcage. I really liked that girl.

Nobody ever knocked on Sandy’s front door. You just walked in and usually you would find him slumped in his favorite ripped up old lounge chair. He’d gesture for you to sit, and usually some epic discussion would commence.

Today was different though. Parked in front of Sandy was a fifth of tequila, three glasses and a large number of cheap cigars.

Nobody called Sandy by his real name; which was Francis or Paul, or something like that. He was called Sandy for as long as I could remember and the name fit him perfectly.

His face was thin and long, his eyebrows stuck out too far, and his nose was pointy—like a piece of hacked desert stone. He had dirt under his nails and windblown sand was constantly falling from his light brown hair. He was Sandy: a tight-lipped joke about his appearance, condition, and attitude.

Sandy had been married at some point in his past. There was an old, faded Polaroid of him and his wife on the mantle. The thing showed the Grand Canyon, vast, in the background, and his wife held a child who I assumed was Sandy’s. I’m not sure though, I never asked him. That picture was a huge, spinning generator of interest to me. So many times I had meant to ask the man about it. Who took it? Was the child his? Why were you at the canyon? Was it a family vacation? Yet it always seemed a sore spot to Sandy, who never looked at it, never touched it. The picture was covered in dust and glued to the mantle with cobwebs.

Anyhow, he wasn’t married now. He never spoke of it, so I left it alone. Sandy was just my “across the road” neighbor who shared my taste for alcohol and argument.

I pulled myself away from the mantle and the picture to sit down. As I did, I was greeted with a rare (almost forced) smile. Sandy had the tequila open and two glasses clasped in one stone-like hand.

“Wind’s kickin up, ain’t it?” he said as he poured. It sounded as if he wanted the wind to blow harder. He handed me the glass and with a quick thrust, clinked his glass to mine.

“Cheers.”

“Cheers,” I echoed. “Sally’s comin. I saw her on the road and headed this way.”

This didn’t get a response. Sandy sat there; his face hovered around his glass. It was like he was inhaling the bouquet of a fine wine.

“Yep…that wind,” and he still had that smile. If anything, it seemed to grow a little larger. It looked kinda wrong. Almost like a hangnail.

“Why the smile?” I asked.

“Oh well, can’t a man smile?” He seemed to have an urge in his voice. “I mean what the hell? I got this bottle, I got my chair, and I got my friend over to solve the problems of the world.”

I had never seen him like this. I had to smile while he tried to seem angry.

“Y’see? Now you have one too. Drink up.” As he spoke, Sally pulled into the loose gravel of Sandy’s “front yard.” I tensed to get up, I was going to hold the door open for Sally, but Sandy stretched out a hand to hold me down. “Drink UP.”

We did and as we put our glasses down, Sandy kept up on his smiling. I couldn’t get over this new Sandy. It was like Martians had landed and switched places with poor Sandy’s body. Trapped in these thoughts, I didn’t hear Sally enter or swish her way around the room.

“Hey sport!” she said loudly as she slapped my thigh. She startled me.

“Oh!” I slopped tequila on my shirt. “Hi Sally, grab a chair and a glass.”

“I think I will do just that, kiddo. And hey, Sandy…what’s up bud?”

“The wind’s up. I think something is coming.”

Their conversation faded as I stared at Sally. I had never seen her dressed like this. She wore a bright sundress, something that was very out of place to me. Now let me tell you, I had never seen Sally in anything other than a pair of well-worn blue jeans on and a dirty work shirt sticking to her thick upper frame. But a sundress now? What was going on with my friends? The damned aliens had gotten to her too.

But hey, she looked good and she had make up on too. I cant really describe to you how startled I was by the changes I was seeing. Finally, I couldn’t take it any more. “What’s going on here?” I blurted at them.

“What?” Sally asked, almost innocently.

I looked at the both of them. Sandy, just sat there like he normally did (except for that now annoying grin) and Sally was everywhere at once. She was flitting about the room like a confused butterfly. Her round face was glowing.

“Don’t hand me that!” I said, alarmed at my voice’s volume. “You two are both acting really weird. You two are acting like…” then the sudden realization hit me, pounded into me. Heck, it climbed all up over me and smacked the ever lovin’ tar out of me.

“You two are acting like you made it!” I shouted at Sandy. He still had that face on. I wanted to smack it for some reason.

“Now boy,” Sandy soothed. “That’s a part of life that shouldn’t be discussed in front of the lady like that and—“

“And what he is trying to say,” Sally interrupted, “is that it has been going on for some time.”

She stopped talking and my eyebrows arched. She snuggled into Sandy by sitting on the arm of his chair. It groaned under her weight. Sandy gave me an almost guilty look, and it was my turn to smile now.

“I ain’t as old as you think.” He said flatly.

“Oh no you’re not” said Sally. “Oh no, no he isn’t old at all.” Then she blushed a bit at what she had said. “He’s asked for my hand.”

“Wha?” It was all I could stammer out.

“I asked her to marry me you dummy…and she said yes.” Sandy was as bright as I have ever seen him, if I could describe him as “gushing” I would have. “She said yes, and that’s what this here party is all about.”

They both sobered a bit. “We want you to be Sandy’s best man.” Sally said as she hitched herself closer to her man on the chair.

I didn’t know what to say. It was like I was stabbed clear through, I couldn’t move. This was crazy. All too much. I sat there with my mouth hanging open and my whiskers growin.’

We sat silent for a short minute, then Sandy reached forward and slugged me in the upper arm. “Hey!” he shouted. “Hey, you all right there buddy?”

My mouth closed finally. Then it opened right back up in a big ol’ grin.

McCoy Road

Chapter One

We always played football games in Stu's yard. It was the only vacant lot in the neighborhood so kids came from miles around to play there. Stu was a big kid. He was fat and had a round face that rarely smiled. Both his parents were lawyers and had met at law school. They were quite stuffy and had a strange accent from back east.

After school, we would all meet by the small red toolshed in the corner of Stu's yard. We would choose teams and then play football until dark, never really keeping score, but just enjoying the game. Dark would come and I would walk back over to my yard, put the football away in the garage and go into the kitchen. Mom was like a statue. She held the same pose over the stove my whole childhood, calmly waiting for something to finish cooking.
What she cooked was usually quite good, but occasionally she would slip something nasty in, as if to keep us alert, awake.

Summer nights might be especially surprising. Vegetables were in great quantity because my father had a garden in the backyard as well as one out at our farm. The summer I was five, dad tried growing brussels sprouts out at the farm. The spring had been real dry, no rain had come and the ground was a slab of stone. But the brussels sprouts came up out of the ground, pods of proud vegetation. Mom steamed them in water at the stove and then mixed in big globs of margarine right before she put them down on the table.

I didn't like the look of them. The rest of the meal was normal. The chicken was fried like normal and the noodles were the same. Even the salad had the same dressing on it like every night.

I stared at the brussels sprouts.

Three of them sitting like green tumors on my plate. Green turds left by some garden fairy.

"Try them," my dad rumbled.

I poked at them with my fork.

"Just take a bite, dear," my mother said.

I didn't say anything. I didn't do anything. I just sat in my place at the table and ate the food I was used to. My sisters noticed that I wasn't eating the brussels sprouts.

"Mom, Adam isn't gonna eat them," one said.

"Well he will sit there and not get up until he does," my dad said.

Everybody was done. They had all eaten their chicken and their noodles and had even eaten the brussels sprouts. My plate was clean also, except for the three brussels sprouts that looked somehow like dried testicles that had been ripped out and dumped on my plate.

I heard my mother talking to my dad over by the sink as they rinsed their plates.

"When I bring out desert he will eat them," my mother whispered with a nod.

They came back to the table. My brother was busy kicking me in the leg, but he stopped when mom set the desert plate down in front of us. She had made strawberry short cake. Everybody heaped up their plates with the pound cake and mom went around the table with a can of whipped cream, spraying out mounds of the stuff on top of the glistening berries.
When she got to my plate she frowned at me and passed on by.

"Adam, honey," she said. "You won't get any shortcake until you have at least one bite of your brussels sprouts."

I didn't say anything.

My sisters were having the time of their lives as they made loud lip smacking sounds over their cake. In minutes the desert was gone, inside them. I would not get any.

I sat at the table and hated them all for that. I wanted to pick up the little green things and throw them at them. My mother scooped up the dishes and took them to the sink. She cleaned the kitchen and left, turning off the light as she went.

"You can't get up until you try one bite," she said from the gleaming doorway.

I sat. The small clock on the stove read 9:07. I had been in the chair, motionless for three hours and it was now bedtime. My father entered the kitchen to get a beer. He snapped on the light and a look of wonder crossed his features.

"What the hell?" he asked loudly. "You're still there! Adam, just take a bite!"

I crossed my arms and sighed. They would not bust my will on this matter. The brussels sprouts would not win. Could not win.

"Oh all right then," dad said. "C'mon."
He lifted my up out of the chair using my arms as handles and set me on the linoleum floor. "Go to bed," he said.

I trudged up the stairs like a weary soldier. I was tired. Beating the brussels sprouts had taken a lot out of me. I brushed my teeth and went into my small room. I could hear my sisters in the next room. They were listening to some of my brother's records and it sounded like they were dancing around. Finally, one of them gave a piercing shriek and then they both exploded with shrill laughter.

I got out of bed and walked down the hall to their room. I poked my head in the door and raised my voice up louder than the stereo.

"Shut up!" I said.

Chapter Two

Jason was a buddy of mine from down the street. When he was really young, his mother had died in a car wreck. This made Jason seem odd. It was like he was cold inside, he didn't smile much.

Jason had a bunch of older brothers. They were all so much older than us, and it seemed as if they were really mean. They were always walking up to Jason and punching him for no reason. My older brother never did that, but then again my older brother was off at college for most of my youth. Jason had a older sister too, Marsha, older than everybody else. She used to babysit me when my parents went out to eat and my sisters couldn't take care of me. I think that I liked Marsha, but I do not really remember her all that well. I remember that she had dark hair that was short and she had big round lips that were always wet. Everybody said that Marsha looked just like her mother.

One day, I was over at Jason's house climbing in his trees. We had talked about getting a game of baseball together, but we needed to get some more kids to make up teams. We walked up to Stu's house and asked his mom if she could get him. She did and Stu came bounding out of the house with his mitt. Next we walked up the block to Stan's house and he joined us. Finally, after covering most of the neighborhood we had ten guys to play baseball.

We set up the bases and chose up teams. I was pitching and Jason was hitting.

"Hey, can I play?" We looked over and leaning on Jason's fence was Ellen.

"Get outta here," yelled Jason as he stepped away from home plate. He waved the big red wiffle ball bat we were using at her.

Nobody in the neighborhood liked Ellen. She was a year older than me and lived right next door to my house. She had moved in a few years earlier from Cleveland and had bright red hair. Ellen was eight or nine years old when she went through puberty. She gained a bunch of weight and her bra size was easily a thirty-eight with a D cup. We all used to make fun of Ellen, it was hard not too. She would run around and look down at here boobs, staring at them. When we made fun of her she would say that she was too mature for us and then she would run and stare all over again. Most people at the time were telling Dolly Parton jokes but we told Ellen jokes.

So there she was, hanging over the fence, pushing her huge boobs out. Somebody, Stan or Stu, yelled at Jason to let her play and so he did. She was on my team.

I threw the tennis ball a thousand times and pitched like a demon. Our team scored a couple of times, but Jason was a good pitcher too. When we finished, we sat on Jason's driveway and talked about the game.

Out of nowhere Ellen said that she had a hickey.

"No way!" I shouted. We all new what a hickey was, but we didn't know how they were made.

"No really," she said, "I gotta a hickey right here." She pointed a finger and touched a spot high on her breast near her neck.

"Lets see it," said Stu.

"No way!" Ellen giggled. "I would have to show you my boob!"

"Aw that's okay," I said, "we all seen them anyway. You can see into your bedroom from my parent's room."

Ellen looked sick. "You mean you guys have been watching me?"

"Naw, it's kinda boring," I said.

"I ain't seen you," Stan said.

"C'mon Ellen," Stu said, "show us your hickey."

Ellen gave a small smirk. She stood up and wiped the dust off of her shorts.

"Okay, but we gotta find some place to do it."

"Lets go to the toolshed," Stu suggested.
We all got up off the driveway and walked to Stu's yard. The red toolshed was in the corner by his parent's cherry tree and it always stunk like cat piss. Ellen slid the bolt of the door back and walked in.

"Not all at once," she said and it kinda sounded sexy.

One by one, we all went in. I didn't want to at first. I thought Ellen was silly and lying to us about the hickey. When Jason came out of the toolshed, we knew something was up. He had this big grin on his face and that was rare. He never smiled.

"Did you see it?" I asked.

"Did she have a hickey?" Stan asked.

Jason nodded his head and kept on smiling.

I went in next. The light was very dim because there was only one window in the toolshed, high up above the plywood door. Ellen was sitting in the corner, her bra was off and crumpled on the floor before her, looking like a broken kite with wires sticking out.

"Come here Adam," she said and I knelt down on the floor next to her.

She raised her shirt over her belly. I could see very little until her white breast came into full view. She lifted the big thing up and held it out away from her body. It did not look like the boobs I had seen in my brothers dirty magazines. It was flabby and the nipple was really dark. It stood out against her white skin starkly.

"See it?" she asked.

"No," I sighed. "Oh wait, there it is." right above her nipple was a purple bruise. It faded into her white skin.

"Do you want to touch it?" she asked.

A million things flooded my mind. I was scared and nervous, it felt like I had sat on an anthill. I put a dirty hand up and cupped her breast. It felt warm and nice, but it shocked me. I scrambled to my feet and scampered out of the toolshed, my face pale.

Stu was the last to go in. He was in the toolshed for a real long time. The rest of us hung around the shed, at first listening in, but it was silent in there so we started to toss the tennis ball we used for a baseball around. Jason began hitting grounders at us.

A noise like a yelp came from the shed. Stu came running out wiping his mouth and trying to spit something out.

"S-she tried to kiss me!" he gasped.

That was it. This wasn't part of the bargain. And like I said, nobody really liked Ellen, so we all went into the shed and dragged Ellen out. I remember yanking her by the hair, it was so red and she was yelling at us to stop. She clutched her bra in a small white hand.

When she stood up, she had tears in her eyes and she was shaking. Jason walked up to her and poked her with the wiffle ball bat. "Get outta here," he shouted.

Ellen looked like a hunted animal, but she did not move. Jason raised the bat and then brought it down hard just as Ellen turned to run. The fat end of the red bat landed with a slapping noise on the top of her head. She screamed and began to run. Jason chased her all the way to the edge of her yard, swinging and connecting. Ellen staggered into her house.

A few years later, we found out that her dad had given her the hickey.

Chapter Three

We used to have this real rough game that we would play. It was called "knights" and was a pretty bloody game. First we started off with sticks and garbage can lids; sparring back and forth in the back yards, but soon we began to devise more cunning weaponry.

A guy named Greg who didn't live near us came up to play the game one day. He was a thick kid with a dimple right in the middle of his double chin. He liked to fight, and he usually won. So Greg came up to play knights with us but he brought a homemade bow and arrows with him. The arrows were made from thin, straight sticks that he had whittled to a fine point, and had black electric tape for feathers.

Another kid that lived kinda far away named Andy, held up his garbage can lid and yelled at Greg to shoot an arrow at him. He wanted the arrow to strike the lid and see if it would punch through the thin metal. But Greg either did not know how to aim his bow, or he shot the arrow low on purpose. The arrow screamed away from the bow and stuck in the meaty part of Andy's thigh. He dropped like a rock and was yelling for us to pull it out, but most of the guys just laughed at him. I didn't laugh, I didn't like that Greg guy and I was pretty good friends with Andy.

I yanked the arrow out of his leg and helped him up. He wasn't bleeding badly but the arrow was coated with a thin slick of blood that went up the shaft about four inches. After that day, Andy wasn't allowed to come over to play knights anymore.

When he got to his feet, he rushed at Greg, windmilling his arms and screaming "sonofabitch!" at him over and over. Greg hit him square in the forehead with the knobby wooden bow. Andy went down again.

I helped him up again, but the fight had gone out of him. He had a slender bruise forming right between his eyes where the bow had struck him, and tears were running out of his eyes. He hopped on his bicycle and rode off, calling Greg a mother fucker as he peddled.

We resumed our games. We picked teams and spent days after school beating the hell out of each other. The weapons got better and better as we played knights. I even took some old wire coat hangers and cut them into little segments. Then I bent them into rings and sewed them to an old pair of work gloves that my dad wouldn't miss. I had some gauntlets now and soon began to sew more of the rings into a old sweat shirt. It was amazing! The hanger-mail I had created made the arrows we used bounce off with no harm, unless one got you on the head or legs.

Stu took a bar of metal out of a chain link fence somewhere in the neighborhood and cut a point on the end of it with his dad's coping saw. He ruined three blades on the stubborn metal, but he finally got a good point on it. Next, he began to wear an edge into it with a grinding stone. He tore that up to and his dad gave him the belt when he found out about it. But that didn't matter. Things were getting pretty high tech for us ten year olds. We had real weapons now and were capable of great bodily damage. I came home with a lot of slash marks and puncture wounds, but I told my mom that I had been playing football. She believed me. I had to hide my armor in the garage under the lawn mower to keep her from finding out what we were up to.

We played knights for two solid months during the summer. One day, while beating the hell out of each other in Stu's yard, my dad came home from work early. He saw what we were doing and turned a deep shade of red as he ran across the yard towards me.

"My trash can lids!" he screamed. "What have you done with them?"

I stood there dumbfounded. I looked down at myself, all bloody and bruised. My hands had cuts all over them and my trash can lid shield was a dented mess. A few months before it had been a new lid, but now it was slashed and dented and looked like a mangled soda pop can.

Dad yanked the lid out of my hand and went around to the other guys, taking the lids away from them. He dragged me off to the house.

After that, I wasn't allowed to play knights anymore either. They took my cool armor and threw it in the trash. My mom did it on trash pick up day right when the garbage men got there to keep me from digging it out of the trash. Dad took my bow and broke it with his knee. He threw that on the wood pile next to the house, but I don't remember it ever making it to the fireplace the next winter.

As for me, I got a good whipping and had to pay for new garbage can lids. I was grounded until I could pay for them, so I had to get a paper route. I was working at age ten! It took the rest of the summer folding papers, putting rubber bands on them and delivering them at six o'clock in the morning to pay for the lids, so my summer was shot to hell. I couldn't even go to the pool. I was only allowed to leave the house to do my paper route and play on the baseball team. Three games a week.

Dad said that if I wanted to play at war and fighting, I should just jump in real life and learn the "hardest" way. Mom agreed.
That night, after my whipping, I sat in my little room and looked out the window. It was just twilight and the fireflies were just beginning to send out their magical glow. In the next yard I heard the clang of metal on metal and the fierce yells of battle. My mind wandered.

Chapter Four

Everybody wanted a pocketknife. The circus had gone through town and one of the midway prizes that a kid could win was a tiny pocketknife with only one blade on it. A friend of mine at school had won a handful of them and was giving them out to everybody the next day at school. Now Mike, was a good friend, but he did not come over to my house very often because he lived clear on the other side of town and it was too far to walk. That day he had made plans with his mom to walk home with me and she would pick him up at six o'clock that night.

My parents were out of town on vacation and my oldest sister was watching me for them for some quick cash. She was just like my mom, always perched near the stove, and she even sat in the same spot my mom did on the couch when we watched television.

So Mike came over and he gave me one of the pocket knives. It was beautiful. It was the finest thing anyone had ever given me, with a silver mother-of-pearl handle and a tiny sliver of a blade. I was happy. Mike had given me his last one, and we took them out to the back yard to whittle and dig with them. A boy has to have a pocketknife!

Stu was out playing in his yard, so we wandered over there to show him the knives. You could see the green jealous gleam in Stu's eyes as we popped open the blades and waved them in front of him. I let him hold my knife and he sighed.

"I wish I had a knife, but my mom won't let me have one."

Just then, Stu's mother pulled into the driveway in her station wagon. She hopped out of the car holding two large bags of fast food.

"Stu, supper's ready!" she cried and Stu followed her into the house.

Mike and I went back to my yard, but soon heard Stu and his sisters talking over their meal at the picnic table. We went back over.

They had hamburgers and cheeseburgers and chicken nuggets. We watched them as they sucked cola down with that annoying noise that straws make. Stu's oldest sister asked Mike and I if we would like some of her fries.

"Sure," we said in unison and plopped ourselves down next to her at the picnic table.

She gave us both a napkin and spread the fries out on them. Mike and I smiled as we chomped the thin things and dipped them in sweet ketchup.

As we ate, one of my fries fell down on to the bricks of their patio. I reached down and popped it into my mouth, not even thinking. When I looked back up, Stu and his sisters were agape. Their eyes were wide and their mouths hung open. They had never seen a person eat something off the ground.

"Did you eat that fry after it fell on the bricks?" one of the sisters asked.

"Yeah," I said and resumed eating.

"That is gross," said Stu.

"Sick," said the other sister. "Adam, you're a Martian!"

With that, they all jumped up and began dancing around the patio singing "Adam the Martian, Adam the Martian, Adam the Martian!" while Mike and I sat on the picnic bench and watched them in wonder.

"And another thing," Stu said to his sisters, "Adam has a knife!"

He said it like he was accusing me. His sisters stopped their dancing and froze as if I was a ferocious animal about to pounce on them. I finished chewing my fries and got up.

"Mom!" one of the sisters screamed.

"Shhh!" I hissed at her. "Don't tell!"

"Mom, Adam's gotta knife!" They made it seem like it was the worst crime in the world for a young boy to have a knife.

They made me feel like I was a murderer.
Stu's mom slid the sliding glass door back and pointed a finger at me.

"Come with me," she said sternly.

I didn't know what to do. Part of me wanted to run home-it was only next door, but another part of me knew that I was guilty of something, and that I should go with her. I took a few steps back towards my home, Mike was already running.
Stu's mom came across the patio like a windstorm. She grabbed my by the collar and yanked me into their house.

"Sit down," she said as she pointed at the kitchen table. I sat and she began dialing the phone.

"There doesn't seem to be anyone at your house Adam. Where is everybody?"

"Mom and dad are on vacation and my sister is still at school."

She thought for a moment and then asked me if I knew the number for my sister's apartment on campus. I gave her the number and she called. I could hear the phone buzzing through the receiver as she waited for my sister to answer. Then she did and I couldn't catch the rest of the conversation.

When she hung the phone up, she held her hand out to me, palm up.

"Give it to me, Adam." she said coldly.

I thought of jabbing the knife into that palm. I wanted to so badly, but instead I placed it, unopened, into her hand.

"Now," she said evilly, "go upstairs and wait in Stu's room."

I looked at her and it seemed to me that she was the most fearsome monster in the world, more terrible than any witch or dragon. I started to cry.

"Knock that off, or I will give you something to cry about."

I walked up the stairs and sat on Stu's bed, waiting for I don't know what. It was getting dark outside and I was too scared to get up and turn on the light. What was Mike doing? He had to have gone off home by now. Soon I saw my sister's beetle pull into the driveway and she got out. She stalked up to the front door and met Stu's mom on the front porch. I saw Stu's mother hand my sister my beautiful new knife, which she quickly put in her purse. They both glanced up at the window and saw me there, looking down. Both their faces were pale in the fading light and the looked like demons from hell.

"You can come down now," I heard Stu's mom call out.

I slowly walked down the steps and looked at my sister.

"Wait til mom hears about this," she hissed. Then she bullied me out to her car and drove around the block to our house. Mike was sitting on the front porch, his head popped up when he saw the beetle pull into the driveway.

"What happened?" he asked.

I didn't get a chance to answer. My sister gave him and evil look and shouted at him.

"Get your shit and get in the car," she said to Mike's stunned face.

Then she turned to me and said, "get upstairs and take a bath, I want you in bed by the time I get home."

She got back into the car and tore off, taking Mike to his house. Later that night I lay in bed and could not sleep. I had not eaten any dinner and I missed my knife. I could hear my sister downstairs watching television with one of her boyfriends. That made my blood boil. It was way after midnight when I drifted off to sleep.

My parents got home and my sister gave the knife to my dad. I would see him use it from time to time, cutting fishing line or using it to cut an article out of the newspaper, and it always gave me a pang of regret. That was my knife! I asked him about it years later, and he told me that he had lost it someplace. I wanted to kill him.

Chapter Five

Years later. My brother and sisters have moved out to go to college, to have babies. I worked hard at a grocery store and saved up enough to buy a car. I had taken to going over to a new friend's house. His name was Tim, and he had straight, dirty blonde hair that hung down in his eyes and stuck to the sides of his face like wet seaweed.

Tim was the friend to have. He was a grade higher than me, a junior, and he was two years older than me. Tim could buy beer; you could back in those days when you were eighteen. He introduced me to it, and I have never looked back.
I would have five or six little seven ounce beers and get a good buzz. Then I would climb into my beat up car and drive home. Tim would always say to be careful on the way home. "Don't get busted," he would say in his deep voice as his hair wagged.

Tim could always out drink everybody that hung around. He would drink five beers to my one and you couldn't even tell he was drunk. One night I saw him consume a case of beer without even getting up to use the bathroom.

Somebody had the great idea of lighting a fire in Tim's fireplace. It was happy and nice as the flames really got going, but then something odd happened. The smoke from the fireplace roiled out from the flames. We had forgot to open the chimney flue. The room filled with smoke in an unbelievably short amount of time. We all ran out of the house, clutching our beers and screaming.

Tim's sister sat on the curb, drunk and crying. "My house is burning down," she sobbed.

Finally somebody said that we should go in and see what was up. The house wasn't being consumed by flames like we all figured it should have been by now. We crept up to the front porch like rats, waiting for something to happen.

I poked my head inside the screen door and looked towards the room where the fireplace was. Clouds of smoke floated around the ceiling and the house smelled like fried bacon. In front of the fireplace on a soot covered sofa sat Tim, a bottle of beer in his hand.

"You idiots!" he shouted at us. I felt like a child. "When you light a fire, you have to open the chimney up!"

I went back into the house, followed by the rest of the rats, and we all sat down around the fire drinking. My glass had ashes in the bottom of it, but I drank it anyway. It made me feel brave to do that, but not as brave as Tim. When he had opened the chimney flue he had burned his hand pretty badly on the hot metal. I saw him pressing his frosty beer into his palm, wincing. But I never heard him mention anything about it.

Another guy that use to hang around Tim's house was named Joe. Joe was short, fat, had a lot of blackheads, and was very, very Italian. We used to beat up on him pretty good, but he was tough and could take it. Joe came over to my house one day to play some football in Stuart's lot next door. That day, he met and fell in love with Ellen (of hickey fame).

All day long, at school he would pester me about her. "Is she seeing anyone?" He would almost drool whenever she pranced by, looking at her huge boobs still. I didn't have the heart to tell him that usually, when I got home from a night of drinking at Tim's, I would usually bang on her window. She would come out in her sweaty night clothes and ask me what I wanted. "Like you don't know," I would drawl.

Sometimes, if it was late enough, we would do it on her parents couch, her red head thrashing back and forth as I really gave it to her. Once, we almost got caught, but I hid in her basement until her dad went back upstairs. Other times, when her parents were still up, or if she felt nervous, we would do it in my back yard on my parent's patio furniture.

I make it sound like it was an easy thing, getting into Ellen's pants, but it was not. She knew what I wanted, and she used it to make me listen to her stupid stories. She knew, and she would make me say things that I really didn't mean.

"Tell me that you love me," she say as she snaked a hand across my chest.

"Alright."

"No," her hand stopped. "You have to mean it."

"Alright," I sighed. "I love you." My voice tasted like dirt in my mouth.

"You need me?"

"Um," I stammered. "I need you Ellen."

Her hand resumed it's movements, and I would work across her body quickly. There was no telling when she would start up again.

"Tell me what you want," her voice was becoming husky now, like she was getting drunk off of my attention.

"Oh Christ Ellen," I paused and said into the little red wisps of hair on her belly.
Her hands would come down to the sides of my head, pulling up. "Tell me."

"You."

Pop! Her hands went back to whatever they had been doing before, and I resumed my trek downwards. Usually when I got her panties off, I would find a matted, dirty patch of hair. Her privates would have stinky pieces of fluff from her pants stuck to them. I hated this part of those nights, but Ellen would deny me any further action if I did not perform this act first.

I dove in.

With my eyes closed, and my mind somewhere else, I usually got through this chore quickly. Her body would bounce once or twice and that would be it. Sometimes her meaty thighs would clamp around my neck and head like a gooey vise. I would have to yank them apart or I would strangle.

Ellen would then take me in her hands and give me a total look of disgust. She would put herself on top of me and buck like a untalented circus seal. I would let go and then I would get up to go. Her power over me was spent until the next time I went out and got drunk.

I made my way across the wet grass of our back yards and into my house. Usually I would still be putting my clothes on by the time I reached my parent's living room. And there my mother sat, glaring at the late night television and fuming at me.

"You are drunk," she would mutter.

Her eyes never leave the television as she said these words. For some reason, I always got the impression of a crow, with lifeless eyes, sitting on a electrical wire staring down at nothing in particular.

I made it to my room and fell asleep, only to wake the next day, hung over, and with a list of chores, if it was the weekend, or with dirty looks if it was a school day. I would do it again after work that night.

Joe also worked where I worked. He was in the produce department and I was a cashier. Joe got fired because he left a cart full of ice cream out of the freezer overnight. It had totally melted by the time the morning workers arrived, and there was an inch of ice cream slime all over the floor of the produce department.

Joe came into work that afternoon and the manager screamed at him while he smoked a cheap cigar. Dale was the managers name. He was tall, skinny, and had a greasy mustache. He told us that we were all worthless right in front of the customers, and then stormed off into his office.

Joe clutched his produce apron in a lifeless hand. It was almost tragic to watch as he collapsed inside. He had never lost a job before. His shoulders sagged and he walked out of the building. For some odd reason I felt like laughing. I told you we used him as a punching bag. He was over at Tim's house that night, and he drank more than I ever had seen him drink before. He got into Tim's mother's liquor cabinet and started in on a bottle of gin.
Tim tried to calm him down, but you could hear him muttering curses at the grocery store, at the manager, at everyone. Finally, he passed out on Tim's sister's bed and threw up spaghetti on the floor.

Chapter Six

That night, another nice, amazing thing happened. While Joe had been guzzling the gin, Tim's sister arrived home. She was very stoned and had to be hauled into the house by her best friend. I am not sure if her name was Kristi or Kristin, but I had seen her in school talking with Tim and his sister. She had red hair that fell down to her mid back and she always wore dark clothes. Like all bright red heads, she had very pale skin and wide green eyes that hid in a field of freckles. She placed Tim's sister on a sofa and covered her with a blanket. Then she wandered off to the kitchen in search of something to eat. I sat in silence drinking my beer, occasionally laughing about a joke. But my mind was on Kristi. I found my eyes wandering off to the direction of the kitchen, where by some trick of the light I could catch a hint of shadow as she messed around.

Kristin came out with a heap of plain noodles on a plate. The noodles steamed and looked delicious. She asked if anybody wanted any, and everybody jumped up. She said that the rest of the food was in the kitchen, and sat down on the opposite end of the sofa from me.

"Why didn't you go get some of the noodles I made?" she asked.

Her eyes were mildly red and her words were slurred just a bit.

"I didn't think that you made them for me."

I couldn't take my eyes off of her and I felt nervous inside because she had scooted closer to me on the couch.

"Don't be silly, I made them for everyone. What's your name?"

I told her and then felt my stomach sink and my palms started sweating despite the fact that they were clutched tightly around a cold beer.

"How much did you cook?" I asked and felt awkward.

"Enough for everyone," she giggled. "I put a whole pack of noodles in there."

I was starting to feel better now that she had warmed up the room with her light laughter. My gaze wandered around the room and then finally rested on her eyes.

"Adam," she said nervously. "What is it? Do I have a noodle on my chin?"

It must have been the beer, or the timing, but I could not help myself. I pulled her close to me and she made a small squeal as kissed her. She pulled back quickly and looked as if she was going to cry. I felt about two inches tall, and she grabbed my beer from the table in front us. I watched her throat move up and down as she swallowed down the last gulps. For some reason, I was turned on even more and I felt a nervous lump form in my stomach.

"Want me to go get another one for you?" I asked.

"Yeah, you better get a couple." She pulled her legs up underneath her butt on the sofa, for all the world looking like a relaxing kitten.

I wandered out to the kitchen. The guys were perched around the table eagerly forking mouthfuls of noodles into their mouths, and making smacking sounds as they chewed.

"What's up?" Tim said as he chewed.

"Kristin wants a beer," I said flatly.

I opened the refrigerator and though to myself, what the heck? I grabbed a whole six pack and made off towards the sofa and Kristi.

"Jesus," Tim said loudly. "I thought she wanted a beer, not the rest of them."

"There's more in there," I said over my shoulder. "If we run out I'll go get more."

I left the kitchen and heard them laughing and yelling. When I got back to Kristin, she was laying lying down on the couch. She had taken the thick, black sweater off and her body was alive under a white t-shirt.

"Here," I said and handed her a beer. I didn't know where to sit, she had taken up all the space on the sofa. I put the beer down on the coffee table and sat down on the floor next to her. A long, nervous silence passed. It seemed to go on forever, punctuated by gulps of beer and the crackle of cigarettes being inhaled.

"Don't you want to kiss me again?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," I said with a grin. "The last time I did it, it didn't work out all that well."

She turned a red color and set down her beer. She swayed her head to move her long red hair out of the way and kissed me. It was such a sexy thing to watch happening. I felt outside looking in, as if I were some sort of self voyeur looking in on a dirty secret. She took my hand and led me to Tim's sister's room.

Nobody seemed to miss us. Tim and all of my friends came out of the kitchen and resumed the drinking. I could hear them banging quarters on the coffee table. Krisin and I got undressed in the dark. We could hear a soft buzzing as Joe snored.

I touched her, and she touched me. I felt hot and chilled at the same time. She was so beautiful and vulnerable at the same time. Her red hair blazed even in the darkness. We made love-I actually think of it that way, even if it only happened once-in that tiny, messy bedroom, and then slept on the floor.

Bread Truck

My dad drove a bread truck and wanted to be the next Gene Kelly. Day in and day out, dad would pile rack after rack of hot loaves of bread into the back of that truck just to earn a days pay. The racks were hot, the bread was hot, and the truck was hot. The tiny louvers on the sides of the truck were barely big enough to do anything but just circulate the hot air through the cab. Dad would claim that during a workweek he would gain and lose ten pounds just because of how much he would sweat. I grew up hating the smell of his clothes and the smell of that truck. The aroma was near to the aroma of fresh baked bread, but it was overwhelming. It stuck to everything that came near that truck. Mom used to make dad change his clothes in the garage when he got home from work so that the smell wouldn’t get into the house.

As for Gene Kelly, I am not sure where dad picked that up. He must have watched a lot of those old movies staring Gene. He must have admired how Gene looked and acted on the big screen. Dad looked a bit like Gene, he had the same hair and the same nose, but dad was bigger. Dad was easily six inches taller than Gene and he was at least twice as wide as the dancer. Dad hauled a lot of bread. He did his dancing in the tiny, hot confines of that bread truck.

Sometimes I would ride with dad while he worked. I never got to go down to the main bakery because dad had to get up at three o’clock in the morning. Around six o’clock, dad would swing his truck into our gravel driveway and pick me up. We would finish the rest of his bread route around lunch and he would take me to Mc Donald’s, Wendy’s, or some other fast food joint that was on the way.

We would sit across from each other and eat. Not talking very much, unless something exciting had occurred while we were riding-like a fire or a speeding police car. But it was during one of these lunches that I found out about Gene Kelly.

I must have been around twelve. I was chewing quietly on my fries when another bread driver sat down in the booth across from us. Dad and the other driver talked back and forth about the business and both had a laugh. The man asked dad if his bid for a better route had come through. Dad told him yes, that he was going to be starting the new route at the beginning of the next quarter. The man couldn’t understand why dad had given up his route that was so close to home. Dad told the man that he wanted the route because it was a busier route and it would make him more money. He needed the extra money because he was going to be taking dancing lessons at a local ballroom. Mom had always wanted dad to take her out to a swanky spot where they could dance the night away, and so dad was going to do it. It was his dream. Gene Kelly. He and mom would trip the light fantastic.

The other driver gave a chuckle and we went on with our business. The day of the bread truck driver didn’t end when he had filled up all of his stops. A bread driver would have to go back and retrace his route. He had to check all of his accounts again to make sure that everybody had enough bread to last until he came back again the next day. We finished up around five o’clock that night, both of us tired but happy to have spent the day together.

When we pulled into the driveway, dad stopped the car just short of the garage. He turned to me and told me to keep quiet about what the other bread driver and he had been talking about. Mom didn’t know about the new route. Mom didn’t even know that dad had made a bid on a better route. He explained that it was a surprise, and that he wanted to tell mom when the price was right. I didn’t tell mom.

That night, we sat down together at the dinner table and told mom about our day. She heaped our plates with scalloped potatoes and fried sausages. We went back and forth, talking about the breads, the smells, and the stores. I cleaned my plate and made my way into the living room to watch television. I wanted to stay, but mom told me to go because she wanted to talk business with dad for a bit. When mom said that she wanted to talk “business” with dad, that usually meant that she wanted to talk about bills, or money, or something of a sensitive nature that a kid of twelve had no business hearing about. I left the room and watched television.

They talked for quite some time. At first there were some shouts from father, but nothing out of anger. Dad raised his voice when he became excited, and he never yelled at mom…ever. A little while later, dad came into the living room with a glass of iced tea and a huge grin on his face.

“You’re gonna have a little brother or sister,” he said as he sat down in his easy chair.

Mom appeared in the doorway. She was smiling too. She asked us if there was anything else we needed, but we said no. Dad and I watched television until it was time for bed.

Dad never took those lessons. He never went out and “tripped the light fantastic” with mom. Eight and a half months later, my little sister Emily was born. She was sick at first, so dad’s new route money came in handy for the doctor’s bills. She had something wrong with her heart, but the doctors fixed that up and she grew up fast and strong.

I never rode in the truck with dad again, after that day. But Emily did.