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Page 5

by Ryan G. Van Cleave


  FRING IT

  * * *

  The old lot

  where the Winn-Dixie

  once stood

  was perfect.

  It wasn’t yet dusk,

  but the clouds

  made it seem so.

  Not two miles from

  Fairmont Heights,

  where I lived,

  we lined Coke cans

  on the old metal

  guardrail, gouged

  and bent from

  so many run-ins

  with mishandled carts.

  Ammo clinked

  in his pocket

  like nails spilling

  down stairs.

  He said it’d be fun.

  He aimed and those cans

  danced. Some exploded.

  Sometimes he missed,

  and the ground way

  back against the hill

  ruptured as if a ghost

  were slamming a fist

  into the hard earth.

  A crow lazed

  overhead toward

  a dead streetlight.

  Blake aimed

  and yelled, POW!

  POW! KA-BLAM!

  He didn’t shoot,

  though. He didn’t

  actually fire

  at the bird, which

  eventually vanished

  into the cluster

  of shadows by the dump.

  When he offered me a try

  with the gun, I held it,

  thinking about everything

  and nothing all at once.

  Without firing,

  I gave it back,

  my breath held tight

  in my chest.

  He reloaded.

  I sat and watched,

  afraid to get up,

  as if I might

  slide and crack

  my skull open

  on some imperceptible ice,

  even though it was

  only mid-November

  here in Florida.

  THE GUN

  * * *

  Was it wrong

  to squeeze my eyes shut

  and think about it

  all night, its dark shine,

  its potent, peculiar bulk?

  What would Dr. Zigler say?

  I wondered that night,

  then decided I didn’t

  give a damn.

  NOTHING

  * * *

  Becky Ann didn’t believe me,

  even when I vowed

  I could bring it

  to her after school.

  Blake offered to loan

  it to me. She Yeah, righted

  and sped off, her heels

  clicking all the way

  down the hall.

  The “something” she’d promised

  apparently meant “nothing,”

  which, to someone

  who desired her so fiercely,

  was worse than nothing,

  which was what I was

  content with prior

  to her revving up my heart

  with her short skirts

  and oh-so-sexy smile.

  But at least I had Blake,

  meaning a friend,

  meaning something

  loads better than nothing.

  And I had the gun too.

  Who knows why

  contemplating it

  impressed me so.

  Maybe “excited”

  is closer to what I felt.

  FATHER ISSUES

  * * *

  I knew what Dr. Phil

  would’ve said.

  You loaf through enough

  daytime TV with your mom

  when you’re skipping school

  a few days for a fake migraine,

  and you watch Oprah

  just because it’s on.

  Maybe Blake and I bonded

  because of our shared “daddy issues.”

  Blake’s daddy? Dead.

  My daddy? “Emotionally absent.”

  But here’s where Dr. Phil’s

  homespun smarts had it wrong.

  Even Dr. Zigler’s psychobabble

  missed the mark on this.

  What Blake and I had

  was a 9mm Beretta.

  Its secret. Its high-impact ammo.

  Its dark, smooth weight.

  You share a secret like that,

  you belong to something

  greater than yourself,

  a sky full of lightning

  that could split the world

  in half at any moment.

  Most go their whole life

  without knowing that kind

  of power, that kind

  of wild potential energy.

  MOM

  * * *

  After a few weeks of normalcy,

  Mom started crying again. A lot.

  Words started streaming over into tears,

  just like she did when she pleaded

  with God over Grandma’s health.

  I swore I was sorry, am sorry,

  and tomorrow will still be sorry

  I stole the keys and forced my own

  parents to stop trusting me,

  and I more or less meant it too,

  but even as the words slid out, I knew

  I’d meet with Blake later

  to touch the gun again and

  feel it buck in my hands

  like it had a spirit of its own

  as we emptied a box or two

  into cans, bottles, telephone poles.

  To think she believed me enough

  to feel bad about canceling

  my Warcraft account

  and giving the iPod

  to Cousin Ricky in Chicago,

  who she felt sorry for,

  her sister being so poor.

  I almost told her then,

  knowing that if anyone

  would get it, it’d be the person

  who splintered ice with a meat hammer

  and fed me slivers all day

  when I had that fever, or who

  struggled with me all summer

  to make sure I wasn’t held back

  thanks to my brain’s insistence

  that A2 + B2 did NOT equal C2.

  I almost told her.

  MARCH 5

  * * *

  Blake had the day

  blacked out—

  not circled

  or starred,

  blacked out—

  on a calendar

  in his locker.

  No, I didn’t break

  in again. I just

  saw it obliterated

  with a Sharpie

  when he went

  to the bathroom

  and I wanted

  to see if my birthday

  would fall on

  a weekend

  for once.

  It didn’t.

  The bell rang,

  and Blake

  slammed

  the locker

  shut as he

  shuffled off

  to social studies.

  I never asked him

  what it meant.

  Friends don’t

  interrogate

  each other.

  HOME

  * * *

  I had never visited Blake’s home before

  and quite suddenly wanted to see it,

  all the more because he told me never

  to come by there.

  I wasn’t all that hot on having people over either.

  If my parents weren’t pissed off or just being themselves—

  as embarrassing as letting a fart slip in church—

  our place was too small, too dingy, too pathetic.

  Sure, I knew his neighborhood, though.

  The lawns were golf-course green,

  and an ex-cop manned the thick iron entry gate.

  His father had been
some type of defense contractor

  prior to that car bomb that made all the headlines.

  From the look of this area, he made great money.

  I stood shivering outside the well-manicured community,

  the December wind only part of the reason,

  unsure how my feet got me there to the brick wall

  with iron spikes atop it in a long, sharp row.

  That was his house—there. With the big white pillars.

  Was he there now in his own big bed, stewing

  over what to do with that gun, remembering

  the powder flash so hot on his hands, the Beretta’s

  thunder still echoing in his mind?

  Or was that just me?

  MIDTERMS

  * * *

  I tanked the math test.

  After class, Mr. Oliver asked

  if I’d flunked on purpose.

  No, I told him, knowing

  he’d come down hard on Sue,

  his best student.

  I just suck at math.

  At least I got an A in English.

  My creative assignment about

  the boy who could shoot laser beams

  out of his eyes and saved the world

  seemed to impress Mrs. Hawkins,

  who had published three short stories

  of her own, she repeatedly assured us.

  One A, three Bs, a C, and an F.

  My father fired Sue (thank God!)

  and threatened me with Catholic school

  like my mom had suffered through (and still hated).

  She told me it wasn’t a real threat

  but that I needed to do better.

  Just try, was what she pleaded.

  Just give us an honest effort.

  When she wasn’t sobbing,

  Mom could be pretty persuasive.

  That word again buzzed

  angrily in my ears. Honest.

  CHRISTMAS

  * * *

  Blake was gone

  for three weeks.

  Aspen, I think.

  Somewhere you

  could ski all day

  and sleep away

  the nights in log cabins

  We stayed home

  and suffered through

  a freak ice storm,

  which shut down everything

  for twenty-four hours,

  whitening this dreary place

  like frosting on a dumb cake.

  Blake didn’t call or text, but

  he later admitted that the first day there,

  he plowed headfirst into

  a Colorado snow bank so far

  that he had to be yanked out

  by the ski patrol.

  The phone was lost in the hubbub, apparently.

  I missed him. But I missed

  the gun more, its terrific

  kickback when it fired.

  Its confidential existence.

  Its ability to cement

  my friendship with Blake.

  I wondered if that said

  something about me,

  that it took a gun to do all that.

  NEW YEAR’S EVE

  * * *

  With my mom planning

  her usual laundry list of resolutions,

  1. be 8 lbs. slimmer

  2. see Grandma more

  3. save an extra $5 a week

  etc. etc. etc.

  I picked at leftover turkey

  and pried chunks of pineapple

  off the honey-glazed ham

  we weren’t eating

  until tomorrow night.

  The TV was on—some

  holiday show with orphans—

  but I watched the window,

  hoping for a whiteout

  that never came.

  March 5.

  The date came back to me

  like an old wart

  you couldn’t quite shake.

  I pressed another piece

  of turkey to my lips,

  but it had gone cold.

  I sealed it back

  into the Tupperware.

  March 5.

  Like most unknowns,

  it made me anxious.

  SPRING TERM

  * * *

  Blake and I started school

  again like we’d never left.

  We ate together, walked

  the halls together, and we

  fired the gun as often as three

  times a week together.

  I started to smell gunpowder

  on my hands in school,

  so I took some heavy-duty

  soap from my dad’s office

  and scrubbed at my skin

  until I was nearly bleeding.

  Like trying to scour out

  a memory, the gunpowder reek

  didn’t leave my hands.

  It never occurred to me

  to stop shooting the gun.

  It never occurred to me

  that I could hit

  10 for 10 now

  without

  effort.

  MOM

  * * *

  locked herself

  in the bathroom

  one Saturday

  and refused

  to come out.

  Then came

  the sound of

  shattering.

  The mirror,

  we thought.

  Maybe

  the hair dryer too.

  And from

  the sudden smell,

  a perfume bottle.

  Give her some

  room, Dad said

  as we went out

  for ice cream.

  The clamor crescendoed,

  and he shrugged.

  Grief does funny

  things to people.

  With Grandma

  worsening daily,

  I was suddenly glad

  I hadn’t burdened

  my parents with anything

  about Blake or the gun.

  Crazy as my mom

  had become,

  she’d probably

  throw me in jail herself.

  AT BASKIN-ROBBINS WITH MY FATHER

  * * *

  When I was maybe sixteen,

  Dad began, shutting his eyes

  as if that helped him remember

  himself as anything but a uniformed

  nitwit with his initials emblazoned

  on a stupid brass belt buckle,

  I played the saxophone. I could

  make that horn howl something great.

  But then my brother and I got

  into it and he bashed me in the face.

  One minute you’re listening, I thought,

  the next you’re standing there like

  you’re buck naked in a classroom

  and everyone’s staring. I shifted

  heel to toe, playing and replaying

  the last few weeks in my head

  as I licked my mint chocolate chip cone

  and tried to get comfortable

  in the cast-iron chairs on the outdoor patio.

  My dad hasn’t smoked for years,

  yet right then he fished a cigarette

  from his pocket, found matches,

  and tore one free. He lit it slowly,

  as if savoring the flame that threatened

  his fingertips.

  I’ve never seen a saxophone around here,

  I finally said, thinking more of Blake

  alone in the Winn-Dixie parking lot,

  waiting to meet me later, than the distant gaze

  in my dad’s slate eyes.

  Dad said, I listened to your uncle

  when he said Ma would whip us

  for roughhousing, so we waited

  too long before confessing. The dentist

  couldn’t set my jaw right, so that

  was that. He sucked lazily on the cigarette,

  the smoke
leaking marvelously from

  his nostrils between his words.

  I wasted time, he said, and now

  time wastes me.

  Why are you telling me this? I asked,

  mesmerized by this image of a man

  I began to realize I didn’t know at all.

  Cling, clang,

  Mr. Clean.

  Cleans up soup,

  Smells like poop.

  Because you’re a man, he told me

  as he stubbed out his cigarette

  in what was left of his strawberry sundae.

  The butt sizzled, then finally went cold.

  And it’s okay for a man to know life

  is full of choices, and most of the

  ones we make are wrong.

  BAD MONDAY

  * * *

  Aaron must’ve had the mother of them

  because he tore through the hallways

  that morning, knocking freshmen flat

  without stopping to enjoy it. Blake

  didn’t see the tornado coming, his head

  inside his locker. Aaron kicked

  the locker door shut on Blake hard enough

  to leave my friend clutching his throat,

  gasping like he was the one with asthma, not me.

  TEXTS

  * * *

  Blake didn’t answer my texts

  about shooting after school,

  and I couldn’t stop thinking

  of how the cricket song

  always stopped even before

  we fired our first shot,

  and the thick silence

  settled over everything,

  expectantly.

  Without warning, March 5

  entered my mind again,

  and it didn’t leave as easily

  this time.

  Especially since my dad

  was bitching about

  having to fix a pair

  of smashed-in rooftop vents.

  Again.

  VALENTINE’S DAY

  * * *

  came and went

 

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