***
The summer I run every day. I run after my paper
route. The coast of dawn arriving into the port of the planet with a 5:30 am tint—the sight of clouds
sailing over the west. After my route, I run, my fists scroll into dual
clenched gavels as I continue to tap over the planet in strides. Before 6:30am every morning I have already
delivered the events of the World and community to two lengthy strips of what
was then middle-income hardcore working class Americana. By 7:30 am I have already propelled my
limbs over the four mile course.
It is the summer before eighth grade. I continue to comb the avenues of the West
Bluff .
I haven’t thought about Young Columbus or about
France in months.
He seems to says the words yeah and well a lot and
look down in a manner that is endearing while nodding.
He tells me again that Maurice has always talked
extremely highly about me.
“You are the only paperboy on the route in which
patrons call in and praise. Keep on doing what you are doing. We sure
appreciate it.”
I tell him Thank you. When I come inside Dad hands
me a piece of paper and an ink pen.
“You need to write Maurice a letter and thank him.
It was because of him that you almost went to Europe.”
I nod and obey, picking up the pen and scratching
into the bareness of the page.
***
Three months after he proposes to Lois Lane Superman
unplops the buttons on his shirt and in a very behind the monkey bars
pre-school, “I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show me-yours,” exposes himself to his fiancé
Lois Lane, the inflamed curvatures of the wounded S prisoned in the upside down
pyramid of his chest hovering in front of her like a spark at something that had been seemingly in front of her every butterfly blink all along.
***
On my overnight birthday party in July my friends
spend the night. We stay up all night, eat Bigfoot pizza, play videogames,
watch videos. My friend Pat teaches my sister how to play poker and
inadvertently curses in front of my parents when playing Nintendo. David Best won’t shut up about how cool the
band orientation was at Limestone.
In the morning at five, after cool can Pepsi’s all
night, we head out in the morning to count the papers now deposited directly
across the street from my house and deliver them. Patrick keeps yawn. Tim Keeps
making inopportune jabs. David Best states that he might as well get use to
this getting up early since band camp starts in two weeks while Hale lovingly
lags half a block behind.
As we get to the White House which looks just like
the White House with the Hot high school girl who goes to Notre Dame and visits
me in dreams I walk up to the mail slit, scroll the paper flat and begin to
wedge it inside. When the periodical is
almost all the way inside Tim begins to point, heckling incessantly.
“You’re fucking the mail slot,” He states, laughing,
elbowing a soporific eye lidded Patrick.
“No wonder all your customers like you, you commit sodomy
with the mail slot.”
I tell Tim to chill again. David Best tells my friend
down the street to watch his language. Hale still appears to be half a block
behind.
“Look your fucking it. You’re fucking it.” Tim
begins to pogo up and down excitedly like he needs to pee.
“You are fucking the mail slit with a fake dick. You
are gay.”
He says, pointing and laughing at the same time.
Tim is gesticulating. He cannot stop laughing. He
can snot stop labeling me a butt-fucker.
Somehow it feels like she is giving me a little
wave.
***
Sometimes when Terry Inman is drunk he will
mistakenly call me by his dead son’s name. He calls me Cap. Today I am halfway down the street collecting
and can already see spangles of light ricocheting off of crushed aluminum
dotting Terry Inman’s front yard. Nicole and Carrie are entering their junior
year and live down the street. They wear make-up with too-much blush and
glitter and go down and sit with Terry Inman as a refuge to smoke. Today they
are sitting next to him casually puffing away.
They begin to chuckle when I walk into his direction, flapping open my
collection like an oversized pocket calculator. Seated next to Terry is a
shirtless man I have never seen before.
Both of them are drinking and carousing, laughing with their chins pointed like
church steeples into the cumulus above.
Come here cap, Terry says, slapping the side of his
jeans. The high school girls take slow puffs from their cigarettes, holding
their smokes like crayons, like they are unsure when to ash or to inhale.
He calls me Cap again. I have my collection book at
waist length as if I am protecting my crotch from a corner kick.
Terry holds up a can of Busch Light.
“You wanna beer, there Cap?”
I swipe my head from opposing shoulders. Terry implies that I am probably too young
anyway. The high school girls with frizzy hair and Virginia slims erupt in a
confetti sprinkle of giggles.
The man sitting next to him states that his name is
Angus and that he is from Australia.
I hold out my
hand and state that it is a pleasure to meet you sir. Angus looks at me with his eyebrows raised.
Everyone in the table breaks out in laughter.
“Here Cap have a seat, Angus here ‘as something he
wants to show you.” I sit on the picnic table in the front lawn. The girls
continue to laugh while holding their hands in front of their lips.
“You ever seen wanna these before?” Angus says, he
pulls out what looks like a handgun. He pushes the brim of the nozzle directly
in front of my face, under the brim of my glasses.
I am thirteen years old. I have never seen a gun
this close before.
I push the center of my glasses into the cinnamon tan of my forehead.
I push the center of my glasses into the cinnamon tan of my forehead.
I tell him no. There is more laugher. Terry Inman
cracks open another Busch Light
I ask him why he has a gun. I inquire if it is for
protection. I try to be an adult and ask him if he has a conceal carry permit.
The girls laugh some more. The man from Australia begins to gesticulate with
the gun like he is pointing out state capitals on a classroom overhead.
“Well, you see here, we were just playing a little
Russian Roulette, you know what Russian Roulette is duntcha?”
I tell him no.
The girls laugh some more. Carrie fires up a smoke
after flicking at her lighter with her press-on thumb nail.
“Russian Roulette is when you put one bullet in a
chamber of the revolver, spin the cylinder like so and then press the muzzle to
your head and click the trigger.”
Angus still has the gun pointed so that if it were
explode it would either my knee-cap or much worse.
Terry takes another swig of his beer and then openly
snorts.
The shirtless lad from Australia quickly opens and
snaps close the chamber before spinning the cylinder.
“Thing is, there is six chambers and there was only
four of us. And yer here now which means that there is five.”
He holds the gun sideways and by the handle like a
peace offering in my direction.
“So, it’s your turn.”
I am speechless. I don’t know what to say.
I look at him and hold my hand out telling him that
I just came to collect the two-dollars and forty-five cents for the weekly
paper.
Angus looks at me again.
“Well you have to go,” He continues to gesture with
the gun at various members of the drunken cadre.
“See I went first and then Terry’s drunk-ass over
here went second.”
Carrie and Nicole both say that they went in
high-pitched giggles.
Angus then slowly looks at me still handing me the gun.
“So it’s your turn. You have to go. We’ve all gone which
means that when you hold the gun into your acne-riddled temple and pull the
trigger, there’s only a one in two chance that the gun won’t go off.
Fifty-fifty. Heads or tails.”
I step back. I tell him I need to go. Before I can
hear Angus say stop. I turn around.
Angus reaches in his wallet. He pulls out a rectangular
green bill.
“How about for 100 dollars. I’ll give you a
one-hundred dollar bill and all you have to do is hold the gun up to your head
and pull the trigger. What do you say?”
I look at the money. After tithing for church and depositing
money into my savings account it takes me a month and a half accumulate that much
money.
Again, I tell him no. I tell him sorry. I try not to
think how I left Terry Inman slide on a month’s pay because he never seemed to
have the loose change even though he purportedly always had money for beer and
smoke. I try not to think about the time I came to collect and saw Terry Inman
passed out in a nest of beer can, the sports section of the journal star
splayed out on the picnic table like an atlas leading nowhere.
I step back again. I tell I need to leave. As I turn around Angus says my name again,
only he addresses me as Terry Inman’s estranged son, calling me Cap.
“You know what Cap,” He says, the gun pointing in my
direction. I am paralyzed. I am thirteen years old.
“Your ass is grass.”
Angus then pulls the trigger. I look into the
squinting nothingness vowel-shape of the barrel. There is a reverberating
click. I am waiting for an explosion. Waiting for the proverbial significant
events of one’s life to metaphysically whiz past me in slow motion.
Instead there is a gravid pause followed by heaps of
laughter. Angus looks at Terry and states that his paper boy is a pussy before
reeling the crinkled slice of US currency from the top of the table.
I turn around
and walk away, by the time I get to the sidewalk I find that Terry Inman is
next to me, putting his avuncular right arm around my shoulder like a wing.
“Hey, don’t worry about Angus over there he was just
trying to have a little fun.”
I nod my head and tell him okay.
Terry Inman tells me that he doesn’t have the money
he owes me. I want to tell him that I find this odd since he has money for
crates of beer and cartons of smokes. I want to ask him if he can just ask his
buddy Angus who feels compelled to flaunt weaponry in random adolescent visages
if he could just run up to the gas station and make change for a hundred.
Only I don’t.
Terry then asks if I can come back Tues, when his
check comes.
I tell him I will.
As I turn down the front sidewalk and head for the
only home I have ever known I can hear one of the high school girls behind me
say what a dweeb.
