Sammy knew he had probably leaned on the three kids more than any father had a right to in this situation, letting them shoulder more of the burden than any kids should have at this time in their lives, but each day was progress. Each morning he found himself able to get up a little easier, answer their questions about the future a little faster, and went to bed each night not happier, no happy was a word still too distant on the horizon to see clearly, but better.
Better had been a good word to describe a lot in their life this last month. Layla was growing more and more excited to try out for the high school tennis team. The boys seemed to stop taking out their frustrations on each other as much lately. Not just getting along, but opting to hang out with each other rather than split up to their different set of friends. Even Sammy himself, more nervous than ever about their predicament, had started to get back to some semblance of a routine with his work. Better was a good word for it all.
Rather it had been, until he left his own doctor’s appointment. Same hand crusty with dried tears but this time with no hand to hold on to.
Shortly after his wife’s own prognosis Sammy himself started to have “little spells” as he thought of them. He just figured that it was the stress taking it’s toll. That the cloud of despair hovering over him and his family was starting to get to him. What man or woman wouldn’t have thought so in the same shoes. The spells were making him lightheaded, and flushed, once he had even fainted after hyperventilating, and that left his muscles rigid and limbs tingling from lack of oxygen. He thought for sure it was merely anxiety attacks.
Today thankfully the kids had all stayed over with friends the night before, so he had a few hours this morning on his own to get a few errands taken care of. Sammy was currently at the store picking up groceries for the week, normally an errand they all liked to do together so they could get exactly what they wanted. The kids not being there with him felt odd but it ended up being a hidden blessing.
Next thing he knew, Sammy woke up in an ambulance headed for Phoenix Memorial Hospital. Apparently a few customers were around him when it happened so they were able to call for help fast. But this time he didn’t remember any panic, or a feeling like one of his “little spells” was about to hit. He had been fine one second, then bam, looking up at a paramedic the next second.
All Sammy could remember was that he had been in the cereal aisle, looking down at a box of special K in his hand, the kind with dried strawberries, thinking how he probably didn’t need to get that kind anymore since Nora had been the only one to eat that particular brand. Everyone had their favorites and of course no one had the same which made a hell of a cereal bill. He couldn’t put it back, instead Sammy placed it in the cart, knowing full well he would throw the old box away when putting up the groceries, setting this new box in it’s place.
He started pushing the half full metal cage with a whonky wheel that made him veer to the left slightly. He remembered he was about turn down the soup aisle and now here he was. In an ambulance, 7 months after his wife had passed and just 2 days before the school year was about to begin.
The Great Bumrush Incident
Austin, Texas
Present Day
Austin Kyle was walking down Guadalupe Street on the way to his first class of the day. He came across a small concrete park that was set in between an old hipster type thrift store and a book store that had a few benches and several patio style tables and chairs. On the side of the park with the thrift store a mural that flourished in over a hundred different bright and vibrant colors covered the stucco brick and ran the length of the building. Among the many faces and landscapes on the wall, was the phrase “Keep Austin Weird” with every letter a different color of bright tie dye. No problems there Mural… pretty sure I’m weird enough for the both of us.
His Dad was, and still is, a life-long burnt-orange-blooded, die hard Longhorns fan. Austin was just grateful his mom had the common sense and foresight to veto the name Earl, after the legendary running-back from the mid-70’s. Nothing wrong with the name necessarily, but Austin felt it was hard enough to try and make it out of a small West Texas towns as it was. Giving a guy the name Earl would have made it that much harder, unless of course you were a beast mode yardage machine on the football field.
Austin was pretty much the exact opposite, breaking his leg on the second snap of his first game in the local pee-wee flag football league when he was 7. After that Austin had abstained from playing any of the contact sports, and really sports in general. Austin thought that it would be to the detriment and disappointment of his father, who had always dreamed aloud on Saturdays religiously watching and rooting for the ‘horns, proclaiming that “Someday son, I’ll be watching you on that field wearing burnt orange.”
Austin’s dad had worked harder and longer than any man he knew of, trying to provide for his family. So on Saturday evenings, or Sunday mornings watching a recording of the game the night before if his dad had been working, they would watch the game together. This was one of the few ways Austin was able to spend time with his old man, sometimes hours at a stretch before TiVo made commercials and timeouts obsolete. His dad, however, misread the situation thinking the only reason Austin watched at his side was because he was in love with the sport of football itself.
Once it was obvious that Austin wasn’t about to be earning a full ride as an athlete anytime soon, his father realized his mistake. This realization just happened to have come to him during a long conversation with his wife and mother of Austin, Crystal.
His dad came to his room that night after dinner and made sure Austin knew that as long as he went to college and became the first Kyle to graduate with a degree, he didn’t care how he got there or what he studied. Taking the pressure off his son to fulfill a lofty athletic dream, had freed Austin in a way.
A year before this freeing conversation took place Austin came across some old videos on YouTube of a show called Cosmos hosted by Carl Sagan. He had been enamored with the idea of space and the stars and other worlds, becoming a sponge for everything astronomy ever since.
Fortunately for his father, the University of Texas system had a world renowned Astronomy department. Killing the proverbial two birds and such, Austin was able to study his dream, and his father had a son at UT.
While Austin was standing there taking in all the painted wall had to offer, a few rain drops started to hit his face. One had landed in his left ear forcing out a small whimper and sending shivers running down his entire body. Looking down the street he could see a wall of rain approaching and decided now would definitely be a good time to take a break and put one of those umbrella-covered patio tables to good use.
As he was sliding his legs in between the table and bench and bending his knees to crouch down he spotted a black and white circle about the size of a Gatorade bottle cap. Austin was already too far into the dive for Goose to pullout now, but if he didn’t do something quick, his right butt cheek was about to land smack dab in the middle of a pile of pigeon poo.
Austin shimmied in midair to his left, not quite as deftly as he would have liked, and managed to just barely miss the gray goop on the bench by mere centimeters. Austin couldn’t quite decide if it what he was looking at wanted to be a solid or a liquid, but no matter what state it was in, he was in a state of enthusiasm for not getting any on his favorite pair of shorts.
He breathed out a sigh of relief, still keeping an eye on the mound of nasty to make sure the pocket flap on his camo cargo shorts wasn’t in any danger of catching the bird flu. Just then he started to feel a cold dampness seep into his left butt cheek.
The wall of rain that was approaching still hadn’t reached him yet, only a small smattering of sprinkles had time to hit the ground around him. Austin was fairly sure at this point that the wet spot he was now sitting in that escaped his attention while maneuvering away from the land mine seemed to be too big to have come from the heavens above.
Hopefully… he thought, hopeful
ly it’s just someone’s spilt water bottle, and not one of the thousands of other horrid and disgusting liquids that was scrolling through his mind’s computer screen and down the bottom of his upper thigh at the moment. The front runner at the top of his internal list-o’filth was the tipped over dip cup.
Being that he was from a small town in West Texas, this was something he was used to seeing and steering clear of. What Austin wasn’t able to ever get used to was that rotten aroma of someone else’s days old saliva mixed with tobacco.
“Please let it just be water” he muttered to himself, “please… please just be water,” mentally crossing his fingers.
Luckily, the rain looked like it was coming down pretty hard now so he decided to just get up and start walking to class without checking what atrocity could be soaking through his cargo shorts and into his boxers just now. He hoped that the rain would leave him so drenched that no one would be the wiser about what might be lurking on his backside.
Unluckily however, three steps into this new journey of self-deception, the clouds parted as if an angel was being lifted back up to heaven on God’s tractor beam. The sun broke through the dreariness like a spotlight shining behind him, casting a shadow on his path ahead, but lighting up his rump for all the world to see behind.
Well today is off to an amazing start already.
Austin was already beginning to mentally chock this day up for one in the loss column. Then a bright glare flashed diagonally across his face, blinding him for just a brief moment. He looked around to see where this light was coming from and noticed a shimmer emanating from what looked to be a beer can hoisted up to, from the looks of it, a homeless man’s mouth.
The early morning beer drinker was a tall, heavily built, tanned white guy with dreadlocks and a scraggly wisp of a beard.
Surely this dude’s gotta be homeless, who else would be tipping back a brew at… right then he paused his thoughts to pull out his cell phone from the same pocket that almost had a brush with the gray goop a few long seconds ago. Pushing the tiny button on the side, Austin watched his cell’s screen go from black to showing 8:22am in big blue numbers.
“Shit!” he said to himself just a tiny bit louder than he really wanted to. Only three days in to his first year at college and he had already been late to his first class of the day twice. If he didn’t get a move on it, he knew he was about to make it three in a row. Not necessarily the start he wanted to get off to nor would his parents be pleased at the idea.
But my parents are over 350 miles away right now, the only way they can find out is if I tell them.
He knew that wasn’t going to happen any time soon, but whether he told them or not he still didn’t like the idea of being late. His dad was former military and he could almost hear him now drilling it into his head over and over again saying “on time is late and early is on time”. Yet, here he was at the very beginning of his new life as an adult throwing it out the window. He was ten minutes away from a class that started in eight, If I hurry I bet can make it before they call roll.
As usual trying not to stand out at the risk of someone actually seeing him do something and being embarrassed, he didn’t want to break into an all-out sprint. Instead, he started to do what he and his friends from high school liked to call mall-walking. It was a term they came up with over their sophomore summer while at the food court waiting for a movie to start. His friend David pointed over his shoulder and said “Dude, what is she doing?”
When Austin turned around to see what he was talking about he saw an old lady that must have been in her 70’s, that was doing something that could only be described as half-sprinting and half-walking. “Looks like she’s in a mad dash to make it to a JC Penny’s sale.” Said David’s girlfriend.
Then David pointed out “Babe, she has weights in her hands, I think she’s exercising.” By the time they got up and walked towards the movie twenty minutes later they had seen the lady pass by another 4 times which answered their question.
Austin could never bring himself to go running around a track even if there had only been two or three other people at it, much less a mall packed to the gill with hundreds of onlookers. I guess it is true that when you get to be that age you really just don’t give a damn what people think anymore.
However at age seventeen, that is most definitely not the case. At this age it feels like every set of eyes you pass within a half mile radius is glued to you, curious to watch your every move so they can either point and laugh, or video it and post it to Theyareallgonnalaughatu.com, where an infinite amount of strangers can and will obviously point and laugh.
He must have been daydreaming of that time back at the food court hanging out with his friends for just one brief too long. When he started to put his ass into that high gear mall-walking pace, the next thing he knew he was scraping himself off the sidewalk, which was still wet from the short lived rain shower.
Austin had been drilled in his right shoulder and sent spinning and sprawling straight to the ground. At first, he thought it must have been a truck veering off the street and onto the sidewalk that hit him. Maybe a freight train that had somehow mysteriously run aground in the streets of Austin, judging by his headache and jaw ache and well pretty-much-everything-ache he was now enduring.
As Austin tried to make sense of what the hell just happened, he looked up and saw what had to be the largest human being he had ever seen, in real life anyway. Even the giants at the movies or on his flat screen at home, though, paled in comparison to what was standing before him now.
There is no possible way we are from the same species. It was like Austin was a teacup poodle craning its neck up to look at a Great Dane on its hind legs. Realizing he was standing there mouth agape gawking, he snapped his already hurting jaw shut making an audible click. Of course in keeping with today’s luck, he accidentally bit the corner of his tongue with his incisor.
“Ughhhh, you’ve gotta be friggin kidding me,” Austin said. It had been meant more as a self-reflection on the glorious start to the day he was having but he could see the not-so-jolly green giant raise an eyebrow at him.
The behemoth was obviously thinking Austin’s remark was geared towards him, when the living embodiment of gia-normous said “You’re the moron that needs to watch where the hell he’s going, shit you almost made me spill my damn drink.”
It was weird to Austin how the man in front of him put an emphasis on the word moron, almost as if he had made it into two words, mo-rahn, and even made the word shit so drawn out it could have been three words.
Austin had heard all sorts of dialects in his hometown before, but this had to have been from the south. And not just the south but the Deep South, like back in the sticks of Alabama or something… just then he let out a small but noticeable gasp. This time his own eyebrows raised when it clicked, it hit him who the man was that just hit him.
Randle Gray, the newest member of the University of Texas longhorns’ football team. Coming out of high school he had been the nation’s top recruit by leaps and bounds, breaking all sorts of records. That was three years ago though.
Randle had a couple run-ins with the law his freshman year. Then mid-way into his sophomore season he added a few fights on campus, then one off campus. Topped it all off with a shoving match with his head coach at Alabama at the tail end of the season. After being kicked off the team and forced to sit out a year by the NCAA, he was still the top recruit, which only goes to show the level of his talent, but he was also widely known as a hot head with a short fuse. That was never a good combination in any man, much less one that could crush a small city with a few well-placed stomps.
Before Austin could utter an iota of apology, the homeless man he spotted before had apparently decided to choose now as a time to start yelling at himself. The words were so jumbled and slurred that neither Austin nor Randle could make out exactly what he was saying, and neither one of them realized that the words were even aimed at them. They just figured like n
early anyone else would have in this situation, that he was just this random, drunk homeless man spouting out arguments against himself and his better judgments.
That was, however, until he sauntered over, under the extremely watchful eye of the incredible hulk. Austin didn’t want to take an eye off of Randle in case he needed to break into an all-out sprint, mall walking be damned, to escape the clutches of his mighty foe. He didn’t notice that the homeless man had been heading their way until he was in his peripheral. A split-second later he was in between them, chest to chest with the star linebacker.
Well it was really more chest to just above the belly button but who’s counting. Not to mention that belly button has to be the size of a baby’s fist, and I don’t mean just any baby, I’m talking like a baby that comes out with a full head of hair and smoking cigarettes staring the nurses down for slapping his-
Just then the homeless man puffed his chest out and declared, in a much clearer tone this time around, “I said leave that poor douche alone, I mean damn dude, you’re like three or four of him put together.”
Austin hesitantly shook his head left to right really quick trying to make sure all the cobwebs were gone from his fall to the ground, and maybe a bit just to make sure he was seeing this correctly.
Am I seriously being defended by a homeless man right now? Should I be embarrassed or thankful?
“Oh and just what the hell are going to do about it, skinny Rob Zombie?” asked Randle with a very thick layer of bad ass oozing out of his eyes.
Thankful…definitely going with thankful, gracious even.
“Not real sure yet, Green Mile, but I am ready whenever you are.” He said not backing down even a half of an inch.
Yep, it’s happening, I’m standing here trying not to let piss run down my leg while my honor is being defended by a drifter. And yep, still ok with it. Gotta give it to the guy though he has got major…
The Heart of It All (HeartSick Series Book 1) Page 2
