It is autumn and you are thirteen years of age and the world is changing.

 

Autumn where the sun rises in the windshield of the west, a tangible hard glass frost erupting through our lips like chimneys as my father and I locomotive down the dual arteries of Sherman and Moss avenue in west Peoria, scrolling the news bulletins into black and white telescopes, an fresh ink baton deposited in screen doors or mail slits or under beneath the foamy lids of welcome matts. Morning in America, the smell of coffee pots hissing and gargling—wisps of rich soil ferrying the scent of percolating caffeine tickling the olfactory senses—the sounds of bacon and eggs slathered in olive oil being sizzled and fried.       

I have been a paperboy for a little over a year.

Things are happening on the scalp of the planet. Nations smaller than the size of Delaware are being invaded.  The united states is deploying air craft carriers into the armpit of the Persian Gulf. There is tension and drama and the threat of another Vietnam.

A war no one understands half the planet away where fields of oil billow and churn in grisly exclamatory plumes.

Seemingly overnight signs have sprouted in front lawn announcing WE SUPPORT OUR MEN AND WOMEN IN OPERATION DESERT Shield.

I read the headlines every morning before I slip the heap of papers into the screen doors of patrons on my route so they can look at the world affairs upon waking up and worry.

 I am in seventh grade and am playing two  soccer leagues, sprinting up and down the chalk geometry of the field . I arrive home in the side of the station wagon, dollops of sweat lining my brow like drops of tears.

 

I am still in my soccer garb. Once again when Maurice arrives I am clad in my soccer uniform. My shin guards. Mom is wearing her KISS THE COOK apron which apparently Maurice made a joke about when she answered the door.

 

Mom has a smile on her face.

 

“David, Mr Alwaun has something he would like to ask of you?”  She says. She is looking at me with her face tilted like a pinwheel in March.

 

Maurice asks me first how Soccer is going. He smiles. I tell him fine.

Maurice holds out the insert that was in the paper a couple of weeks ago, on Columbus day, the one with the Eiffel tower sprouting from the center like an  erection made out of Legos.

“I was wondering if you’d like to represent this district to win in a chance to win a trip to France.”

I’m astonished. I don’t know what to say. I look down into the direction of my shin guards.

 

“I honestly think you earned it.” Maurice Alwaun says, humbly, before commenting that I’ve done a superb performance, that he has never had a complaint about me, that he honestly can’t think of a better paper boy to nominate for the contest.

 

I look down. He says that I will have to glean recommendations and prepare a speech in front of a bunch of judges but he thinks I have as good of shot as any to win.

 

“France,” I say, looking down at my shin guards.”

 

France.

                                                                   ***

 

Mom calls up Josh smith’s mother to inquire about the contest from last year. Smith’s mom said that there was just no way that they ever could have imagined their son winning the contest. There are things I need to do. I need to work on a speech. I need to get recommendations and references.

 

I find out Mario the Classroom bully is also in the contest. I try not to fathom what would happen if he would somehow win. 

 

I need to pray.

 

 

 

                                                          ***

 

 

Maurice is very forward with his recommendation, stating that I am the best carrier he has in his district. This year is the first year that there will be two winners from the Journal star. A winner from the city and a winner from the county. Mom does the bulk of the soliciting. She calls up my soccer coach. We have old man Ricca who always paints me a card every Christmas and Myra McGann who are on my route. We ask Pastor Schudde. We ask my dad friend andy moore.

Everyone seemingly has confidence in me. everyone believes I will win.

 

 

 

 

 When I come home from school one day Mom asks to see  me. She shows me a piece of paper with my sisters 3rd grade name on it.

On it is a personal essay she wrote about her brother who has a chance to go to France.

In the paper his eight year old sister says she is proud of him.

 

                                                       ***


                      

 

 Around the time I am nominated for the Young Columbus contest Superman, via a clod of ruby Kryptonite, loses his powers. He is pummeled by Lex Luther. He is jeered by Mxyzptlx. He is impotent. He is just another human being. He changes out of his outfit in an alley as to disguise himself.

                                 
      
For a month, Superman somehow lost the ability to fly.


 

                                                       ***

 

 

 

I practice my speech. Josh Smith’s speech started with a self-inflicted joke about his name correlating to his height. We try to wedge a joke into my speech, the note cards pocketed in the side of my pants—my hair coifed back in a slippery haze a la Pat Riley, trying to be cultured—the main joke I have in my presentation comes when I endeavor to say Merci beaucoup after having no French whatsoever licked into the last syllable, the arched dashed of the lower case “p “ even visible in my stance.

 

I have rehearsed the mechanics and intonations of my speech incessantly since Christmas. I have given it to my family almost every night. Mother, composed the speech for me, scribing it out in the long-hand cursive the looks like contorted balloons, ethereal, capable of lifting off the blanket white of the page at any moments. Mother speech evolves around the theme of Thanksgiving—having giving me a bible passage where it talks about the fear of the lord blessing those who are grateful in thanksgiving, the speech spills from my mouth in awkward syllables, as it begins with me with an astute observation how it may seem weird now that the holidays are over and everything, but for me this day is thanksgiving. The speech, composed by the paper-thin fingers of my mother, her way of thanking god for all of the blessings bestowed on her sub-middle class life, evinced audibly through the lips of her 7^th grade son, thick movie screen glasses harnessing the distilled white of his forehead. I practice, knowing that mom is bowed in the fashion of a thumb-sized pastel nativity figurine one sole-knee reverence into the metaphysical direction of her individualized living Jesus. I rehearse the speech of my mother, thanking her father in lieu of arduous sojourn she herself has lived—thankful for the pangs that have produced such wayward joys.

 

I practice my speech.

 

I look at my thirteen year old body in the mirror, sculpt my hair as if the fibers are composed of some sort of clay, the reflection looking back at me. In the side of my thick glasses I can make out another diminutive reflection of my own pupil, a planetary marble looking back at me every time I blink. It is as if I am never alone, always scrutinizing myself.

 I get lost in the calendar squares, envision myself coated in the soil of paris come the second week of April. I think about Home Alone—the affluent future-friendly avenues of the north shore—I think about the sound an airplane makes when it elevates itself into the atmosphere in almost balletic posture en route to France. I think about the distilled sounds emanating from my radio—I think about leaving this place. I think about going.

 Three days before the contest begins the president's craggily visage fills the television screen declaring war on Iraq.

Operation Desert Shield has become Operation desert Storm.

Sadam Husein is the anti-Christ. Born again Christians begin quoting scripture talking about end times.

For the first time inn my life we are at war.

 

 

 

 

The night before my contest dad arrives home from work toting a good luck sign his fourth grade class created, the Eiffel tower center limp, genuflecting slightly towards the left hand side of the page, the words HELLO, PARIS, thickly carved in grade school markers—each of his students sending me individual accolades, wishing me good luck.

 

The night before as is true with all the other nights, I pray. Pray, more than anything else, that I may be granted something in this life to give me meaning, praying the way my father taught me to pray, genuflecting on the caps of my teenage knees asking the force above to give me something, to bless me, give me something tangible, something to color merit into my thirteen years of existence, begging, supplicating, praying, thinking of the Eiffel Tower asking God give me something,  anything at all.