I spend every weekend shuffled throughout the state whose map I examined in the back seat of Jeff Grebe’s car on the way back from the youth congress, thinking about the woman with the orange hair, thinking about the mosh pit and the boots I was wearing, the boots which served as my identity in the hallways of high school—the boots which everyone comments and looks at me and says that they like as I strut past, as I begin to squeeze through tat shoe size locker odor of masculinity, of manhood, of youth. As I begin to fish out truths from my denim back pocket. As I begin to knock—as I begin to more or less, search. Looking in the hallways after school, a zipped blur of limbs and meted breath, running through the hallways, my shadow casting an elongated prancing shadow after school, as the yolk of the late January sun seems to linger in the pocket of sky longer each night—granting the world the appearance of motion, of velocity—more hairs have sprouted around the ash pit of my loins. I still think about Renae every night. I still think about Dawn Michelle. Still flying in the hallways, the measured patter of my sneakers against the interior linoleum of the school. Still arriving home after school, splattering my textbooks on my mattress. Still conjugating French verbs and listening to Depeche mode and to the Cure and Guns-n-Roses Use your Illusion 2 in my bedroom every night. I started the school year secluded in the corner room and have now, moved into the room with the French doors with the full mirror abutting the closet door like a interior entrance into your own reflection world—a portal into the realm of dual and opposite where there is no shadow, only the perfect mirrored symmetric reflection of everything you have become. I can still see the college girls next door as they enter the frame of their restroom loosening the brass knot near their waist before their vision is occluded as they squat to relieve themselves. I still duck on my shins every night and bow my entire body as if I am a pastel shepherd in a nativity scene at church, asking for strength—asking that my mile splint become abbreviated and that I may set some sort of school record to christen and verify my existence in this realm of being. I still wake up and guzzle copious amounts of coffee in the kitchen, before school, after dad has escorted me on the paper route; the gruff hirsute countenance of my father in the morning, waltzing in a January cap and coat, directly across from me step my step. My father who gets beckons me to rise by flicking the switch on in my bedroom as we marshal the bundles across to our front porch, counting the number of inky headlines, verifying there are enough for our patrons. My father, who has risen with me every morning , not complaining, not admonishing and not accepting any of the shared pay. Skirting the horizontal suburban avenues of Sherman and Moss, dual flanking parallelograms of sidewalks abutted with numerical brick mortgages and manicured lawns. My father, walking with me, using the second paper route bag, walking up in his fourth grade teacher gait to each house, slipping the paper into the mailbox, into the screen door, or under the welcome matt. My father, every morning, modest, unpaid, seemingly happy to help his son out in his dream to get overseas. My father, who in less than ten years will be horizontally shoved into a casket, his body layered into pasture of earth three gravestones over from where my grandmother will be laid. My father, waking every morning not complaining, simply out of love for his eldest son.
I keep my itinerary next to my bed stand. Next to my bible. I am able to get myself up at four-thirty Mentally I count down how many days I have left to go.
***
***
Every week we take a scan-tron vocab enrichment class in Mr. Reents’ classroom and every week he goes over to his stereo and puts in a different cassette tape as we look at the test and fill in selected ovals with a number two pencil. Lately Mr. Reents has been playing Enigma. He has been playing a new age harpsichordist that I just can’t get enough of. When it comes I take the itinerary reading Dave’s Copy one morning after early bird PE to Mr. Reents when all the short hair senior boys who are in the top five of the graduating class hang out in the front of his classroom. I seem apprehensive. Mr. Reents always brews coffee in his room and then seems to prostate a nearby Styrofoam spire of cups by drinking from it throughout the day.
When I come in to visit him he always asks me if I would
like a cup of coffee and I always oblige by having three or four cups and taking another cup to homeroom.
“David, I just love your
itinerary.” He says, handing me back the bulletin. He has traveled around the
globe. He has been to Stratford-upon-Avon. He has been to Bath. He tells me
about how pristine the Abbey looks from he outside and how in his opinion it
ranks as one of the nicest Abbey’s in Europe but the coolest part of bath is
watching the bubbling mineral water gush up seemingly from nowhere that is
rumored to have healing powers. He has never been to Warwick castle or Blenheim
palace but has several friends in England who just swear by their cultural
delight.
He points to my itinerary, the first stop being Statford
upon avon.
“Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway because he knocked her
up,” Mr. Reents says to me, his hand rubbing up and down my back, as my flesh
were concocted out of bronze.
“We’re going to be in Europe at the same time too.”
Larry says, flapping open a brochure pointing to the Rhine river. “We’re going
to be in Germany and Austria.” He says again.
Mr. Reents always talks about himself in the third person
pronoun.
“David you are going to have a great time.” Mer. Reents says
to me, sitting on the front of his desk, his leg involuntarily jangling from
incessant caffeine.
Your itinerary of London just look amazing. When you come
back you are going to be an official world traveler.”
When Mr. Reents says the word official he slightly tilts his
head back as if he is in some brochure and then laughs in an off-kilter amiable
falsetto. Next to him is the copy of the art review from the New York Times
from last Sunday. Brian Hahen who is graduating third in his class just asked
Mr. Reents if he could peruse the section.
“I just love your itinerary, David. You are going to have a
great time.”
***
I eat lunch with Jennifer Rose. She tells me she is in
a committed relationship with a boy she met at Woodruff. She tells me that she
is practically engaged. She shows me the rings lassoed around her neck and connotes
that it is some sort of promise ring. The bible is still next to her lunch tray.
I still can’t come to terms to tell her that I carry a bible with me in my
pocket to every class during the day. Jennifer says that she always carries the
bible with her at all times because it is the word of God. She says that the
only true word of God is the King James Version. I try to make a joke stating
that you know God and those thees and thous.
She looks at me insulted.
I apologize. She smiles.
We go over mathematical conjugates.
When the bell is ready to ring I look at the ring
lassoed around her neck. I tell her goodbye.
I have not told her that I am leaving for England yet.
“Dave,” She says, “I’m glad we are friends.”
It is Palm Sunday. Christ is arriving in an umbrella
of adulation and verbal hosannas. The ushers pass out palm branches in tandem
with the Sunday bulletin. I am the
crucifier. I lead the choir into the Jerusalem where Christ is being lauded.
Where he is being touted as the chosen one. The savior. I am trying to reflect.
I am pondering over the carousel of SINS that made God the father abandon his
only son.
I still have yet to pack.
“You know they are going out?” Elmore tells me, again
while I am over the urinal before Sunday school I ask who. He says Dave. Dave and Renae.
“David Best and Renae. They made it official last
week. They are a couple again. They are
dating. Apparently Renae asked him to Vice-versa and he said yes and now they
are dating and are inseparable.
“Eggplant Elmore says that David and Renae are sharing
a locker so you know it must be serious.”
I tell him that is nice. I want to be an ass and ask
him if he borrowed a picture of Renae from his closest highschool friend as a
masturbation visual only I refrain.
I see David
ringing handbells during the service. He seems to have a jovial lilt to his
gait as he walks up for communion. The robes I wear for the Crucifier are
bridal veil white. I wonder if he is making out with Renae if the same manner
we used to make out six-months earlier. I wonder if he goes to bed at night,
his torso an exclamatory husk of flesh spiked facedown somehow seeing the fair
forehead in the middle of the night, the albino stems of her fingers planted on
his lower back, forming cuneiform scratches, her breath a wished-for fog of
yearning. A year ago I was flirting with Renae via David Best having multiple
lines, putting me on call waiting, clicking over, informing me that she is
laughing her ass off.
A year ago on Easter Sunday David Best pulled me aside
and told me that hid girlfriend, Renae Holiday, thinks I am funny.
A year later they are back together.
For inexplicable reasons I still insist on wearing the
TO DAVE: love Renae identity bracelet around my wrist everywhere I go.
***
I have my gear rolled in my locker in the basement of Manual high. A pair of flimsy aquatic running shorts, running shoes connected by the laces, a few shirts. The stain and scent of puberty; the vortex almost nautical whorl of hair foaming below my navel like a gulf stream—hair eking down the branches of my legs and arched muscles of my calves—only my chest remains bare, as we traipse, wearing flip flop sandals to evade the accumulating packets of mold spawning athletes foot in the shower, lathering on decade and a half year pimply flanks of flesh with layers of soap and shampoo. Jose was spotted in school the other day, still overweight, his hair longer, almost in dread locks. When I walk up to him he echoes out his familiar cinnamon smile.
We give each other a hug.
We give each other a hug.
“Where you been brother?” I inquire.
“I’m gonna have a baby,” He says. “My girl is pregnant.”
“I miss not running with you. I miss your insight. You really were a beast.”
Jose smiles. There is something so gentle about his eyes when they blink.
“Did you think about track? We haven’t had any outdoors meet yet. I’m sure if you talked to coach and explained your situation he would let you come out and see what happens.”
Jose says that he has missed too much school to be involved in extra-curricular activities other than a mandated after school GED program.
“I ended up missing so many classes that I won’t be able to graduate this spring but my case worker thinks that in June I can get my GED which she thinks will help me out for life.”
I want to ask Jose what happened. I want to ask Jose how he managed to completely fall off the loop. How he managed to squander his potential. I want to tell him how cool I thought he was the first time I saw him and thank him for all the times he used to give me a ride home after school and how he always made me feel special.
“Peacock’s off the team as well. And Beano’s just gotten fat. Quaynar has gotten involved with the Vice Lords. Pretty much everyone who trained with us over the summer running through Bradley park is gone with the exception of myself, Leartic and Lontai.
Jose nods.
“But I mean, its not too late. You and coach Ricca were pretty close. I’m sure if you talked to him and told him everything that was going on in your life I’m sure he would understand.”
Jose offers a jilted tilt.
“I fucked up, man. I made bad choices. I know that. Coach knows that.”
I ask Jose if he misses running. He tells me he misses running every day.
“I’m gonna be watchin’ your career, man. I’m gonna be watching every second of it. Don’t fuck up like I have. Don’t miss classes. Don’t get some girl pregnant. Listen to what Coach tells you.”
I nod. I want to tell him about the trip to England but somehow it doesn’t seem relevant to out conversation.
“I’ll be watching your career. Make me proud.”
I tell him that I will. I call him brother.
That night in practice I time a 5:05. Coach tells me that I am close.
***
The calendar squares leading up to the middle of April each
conceal consecutive red x’ in the center of each of them, crooked crucifixes. Christ
slogging the implement of his torture, as if the windshield whiteness of that
expired day has been gashed and broken leading up to the date which I am to
arrive. I think about the robes in church, sitting up near the altar the way a
raconteur sits next to a hearth—the purple drapes of the choir popping up in
the wooden loft ten feet from where I sit. My glasses casting a shadowy frame
on my face, the deep swirls of my planetary pupils reflecting their own
eye-lidded eclipse every time I blink. The deep ripples of Rev. Schudde
monotone bellowing throughout the commodious din of sanctuary, skiing across
the corrugated foreheads of the Sunday dressed best elderly, sitting in their
same posture, their same pews seemingly reserved weeks after week—I am the
crucifier with my robes, wearing a pair of leather shoes that were once my
fathers beneath, waiting to travel, waiting to leave.
My first track meet is Tuesday vs. Woodruff. After I come home from track practice Monday there is an overweight balding man on our front porch. My mother is chatting with him casually. She turns to me with a crooked smile.
"David, this is Don Conners. He's taking Tom's place. He's your new district manager."
I’ve been to England” My new DM who
is missing a few teeth says to me.
“The thing you have to remember is
that in England when you cross the road you need to look to the right first and
then to the left, which is the opposite of what we do over here.”
I think of Tom and Maurice who gave
me the opportunity to ski across the globe come one week time. It is spring.
Mom is beginning to plant hosta’s and tulips.
My new DM tells me that he has heard
nothing but positive things about my paper route acumen and that it will be a
pleasure to work with me.
I think of Tom’s eyelids staples
into the front of his face at the moment my name was announces that I won.
“What happened to Tom?” I inquire.
“They reconfigured the routes so
that I now have almost all of the West Bluff and Tom has the gist of the South
Side.” He tells me, informing me that incidentally, if I have any friends who
are looking for routes that I can recommend he’s sure they would be as competent
as I am as a carrier.
“Once
again, have a great trip. We are really proud to have you represent all of us.”
The night of my first track meet I go to bed playing REM's AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE on repeat. I wake up, brew a pot of coffee and perform my route. I can't stop thinking about Tom Otten. I wonder if I should call him and thank him for everything he did for me over the past two years of my route. I think about his subtle smile and sandpaper moustache. I glance at the glossy handout from Parade reading OUR ITINERARY.
She tells me its the most beautiful feeling in the world.
“That was such a beautiful song to wake up to. It felt like I was waking up on a cloud in a dream.” She says before stating that it felt like she was flying over a cobbled plateau of early morning clouds, flying to some place she has never been before, a continent of dreams.
It is less than one week. I continue to run. I continue to pray. I continue to wonder if all of this is really happening at all.
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