by A. G. Riddle
It was Desmond’s first taste of freedom, the first thing he had ever saved up for and bought on his own. He treasured it more than any gift he’d ever been given.
He also hid it from his uncle. That lasted six months. It was the best period of his entire childhood.
With the bike’s added range, he was able to visit the next town over, Noble, which had shops along the main street, a post office, a small cinema, and a library. Inside the library, he wandered the stacks, searching for the books Charlotte had read to him. He just wanted to see the covers again to remind him of those weeks they’d spent together.
A woman with gray hair was taking books from a cart and placing them back on the shelves. “Can I help you find something?”
Desmond shook his head.
“You can check out anything you like,” she said. She studied him for a long second. “It’s free. You bring them back whenever you’re done.”
It wouldn’t do him any good; he still couldn’t read.
“Is there a… time when someone reads?”
The woman hesitated. “Uh, yes, there is.”
“When?”
“There’s… several times. When would be convenient?”
He told her, and she said that would be fine. Her name was Agnes. Desmond liked her voice. It was soothing and neutral, like other people in Oklahoma. It didn’t carry the meanness his uncle’s did.
As he was leaving, Desmond realized he hadn’t asked about the book. It could be one he hated or one about people falling in love for all he knew.
Trying not to sound rude, he asked Agnes what book would be read.
“There’s several to choose from,” she said. “What sort of books do you like?”
“Adventure books,” he answered without hesitation. “Where the hero gets away.”
“Then you won’t be disappointed.”
And he wasn’t. The next day, he returned to find Agnes knitting behind the counter. She set down her work and held up a book.
“Are you ready?”
He nodded. As he had suspected, he was the only one at the storytelling session. That was fine by him.
He lost himself as the words she spoke became pictures in his mind, then characters that were as real as anyone he had ever met. The stories felt like another life he had only forgotten—a life much better than the one he was living.
Story time was his escape. The weeks when his uncle was home were a prison sentence.
Summer ended, and a letter arrived from the county school district, assigning him to an elementary school where he’d start kindergarten in the fall.
Orville tossed it in the fire with disgust.
“Kindergarten.” He said the word as if it tasted like sour milk. “You don’t need to get any softer than you already are.”
That was fine by Desmond. He far preferred the library.
After Thanksgiving, Agnes began teaching him to read. He picked it up quickly. She used a good strategy: she read the first part of the book, enough to get him enthralled, then helped him read the rest. It was like learning to ride the bike: hard at first, but a breeze once you got the hang of it.
By Easter, he was reading to her.
And she was changing, little by little. She fell asleep during the stories. With growing frequency, she reached into her purse, took out a pill, and swallowed it.
One day that summer, he arrived to find the library closed. It stayed closed every day for a week. Desmond walked into the post office next door and asked the man behind the counter if he’d seen Agnes.
“She’s at Norman.”
“Who’s Norman?”
The postman looked at Desmond like he was an idiot. “The hospital. Norman Municipal. Well, regional now, as if it matters.”
“What’s she doing there?”
“She’s there with the cancer, why else?”
Desmond stood there, his world collapsing.
“Is she coming back?”
He could tell by the look on the man’s face that she wasn’t.
“How do I get there?”
“You better speak to your parents about that.”
“What roads do I take?”
“Norman’s ten miles away, young man. Your parents can take you. Now get on, I’ve got work to do.”
At the gas station on the edge of town, Desmond bought a map. The hospital was marked with a large H.
The next morning, he plotted his course and packed food in a bag. Desmond never knew exactly what day Orville would be back from the rigs, but he usually arrived home by early afternoon, so Desmond waited until four p.m. before setting out, just to be sure he wasn’t coming. He couldn’t imagine what the man would do if he caught him riding home on a bike he had bought with Orville’s money.
He figured the trip would take less than an hour, but he was wrong—it took him nearly three. The sun was setting when he reached the Norman city limits. The parking lot lights glowed in the clear night as he rode up, dropped his bike by the front door, and staggered in.
The woman at the reception desk gave Desmond Agnes’s room number. For the first time in his life, he rode an elevator. On the fourth floor, he walked slowly toward Agnes’s room, afraid of what he’d see.
The door was closed. He pushed the handle, let the thick wooden door creak open. The lights were dim inside. Agnes lay on her side, machines beeping softly around her.
She turned at the sound of the door, saw Desmond. A smile crossed her lips, and tears filled her eyes.
“You shouldn’t be here, Desmond.”
He couldn’t think of anything to say. He just walked into the room, up to her bed, and held out his small hand, which she took.
“Why didn’t you…” He didn’t complete the sentence, because he had no idea what he intended to ask. He hadn’t thought this part out. In his mind, he had never accepted what the postman had said. He’d expected to arrive and learn that it had all been a mistake.
She exhaled. “I was going to tell you I was moving away. I didn’t want you to know I was sick, didn’t want this to be your last memory of me.”
Desmond studied his feet.
“Did your uncle bring you?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“Surely you didn’t ride your bike.”
She apparently took his silence for confirmation.
“Desmond,” she said slowly. “That was very dangerous. Where’s your uncle?”
“On the rigs. Won’t be back for a few days.”
A nurse appeared in the open doorway.
“Do you need anything, Miss Andrews?”
“Yes, dear. Some blankets for my nephew. He’ll be spending the night. And, this may be a tall order, but I wonder if there are any children’s books in the hospital?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll bring some.”
That night, Agnes read to Desmond for the last time. It was two a.m. when he drifted off to sleep in the reclining chair by the window.
In the morning, Agnes made him promise never to return, that it was too dangerous and that she would only grow sicker.
“Those are my wishes, Desmond. Will you respect them?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He pedaled his bike slower on the return, the wind no longer in his sails. Why did everyone he cared about die? And the people he hated—meaning his uncle—live? Life was unfair. The world was cruel.
It was midday when Desmond got home. His mouth went dry when he saw his uncle drinking on the porch.
“Pretty bike, Des. Where’d you get it?”
Desmond tried to swallow, but it felt like he had a mouth full of sawdust. “Found it,” he said with a cough.
“So you stole.”
“No. I found it—”
“If you found it, then it belongs to someone—someone you stole it from. Put it on the back of the truck. I’ll take it to town and return it to its rightful owner tomorrow.”
“I own it,” Desmond said, anger overtaking his fear. “I bought
it.”
“Bought it,” his uncle said, acting impressed. “With what money?” he spat.
Desmond looked away.
“You answer me when I ask you a question, boy. What money?”
“The money I saved.”
“Saved?” His uncle was mad now. “No. You bought it with money you stole—from me. I gave you that money to put food in your ungrateful little mouth. You were supposed to give me back whatever was left. You kept it for yourself and bought a little play toy.”
Desmond grew quiet, let his uncle go on about how soft and useless he was. The tirade lasted nearly two weeks, until his uncle was set to go back to work. Instead of placing some money on the counter, he told Desmond to pack a bag.
“Time to show you the real world.”
The real world Orville Hughes intended to show him was a camp outside a rig just north of the Oklahoma-Texas border. He put Desmond to work: cleaning outhouses, washing clothes, peeling potatoes, and doing anything the roughnecks didn’t want to do. It was hard work, but it wasn’t dangerous work. His uncle said he was too weak to be a real roughneck. He’d probably always be too soft, the man told him.
The workers were shaped like barrels, with muscular arms that hung at an angle, never straight down. They reminded him of the robot on Lost in Space, a program Desmond watched when his uncle was away. But unlike the robot, these men were constantly covered with oil. Their every other word was an obscenity. The stories about prostitutes and their lewd jokes never ended. They worked twelve hours on, twelve hours off, constantly drank coffee when they were awake, and never smoked near the rigs. There was a small TV with bunny ears covered in foil, and they fought about it after every shift. Baseball was usually on, and there was always a card game in one of the tents.
Exactly one man out of the entire group read in his off-hours. Desmond befriended him, and he was nice enough to pass Desmond the book he had been reading, which he recommended highly.
Try as he might, Desmond couldn’t get into the novel, which was about people hunting for a Russian submarine.
Strangely, spending time at the rigs actually helped his relationship with his uncle, such as it was. The man paid him less attention, even gave him some of the money he earned, and allowed him to keep the bike. Desmond had little desire to venture out, however. He was dead tired when they returned home from the camp.
Before they were to leave again, he did ride to the library. It had reopened, and a younger woman sat behind the desk, reading a textbook, scribbling notes. Desmond avoided her.
He checked out five books, which he read during the next tour.
A few days after they returned home again, a man wearing a clip-on tie and a short-sleeved button-up shirt drove out to the house, a wake of dust rising behind his Cutlass sedan.
“Mr. Hughes,” he called from the porch.
Desmond watched as his uncle walked out, half-drunk, and argued with the man.
The visitor put up much more fight than Desmond had expected. Finally, he shook his head, walked down the steps, and turned one last time.
“If that boy of yours isn’t in school next month, you won’t be seeing me again. Social services will come next. Then the sheriff. Good day, Mr. Hughes.”
Desmond found first grade quite a bit less interesting than the rigs. He could already read, thanks to Agnes, and his math was far ahead, thanks to the grocery store owner who had prevented him from starving to death.
He also found it impossible to connect with the other kids. To him, they seemed like just that: kids, babies almost. They enjoyed playtime. Talked about childish things. He felt out of place, like he was several grades behind where he should be. The teacher noticed, tried to give him more advanced work, but she had her hands full. So Desmond was largely left alone. He sat in the corner and read while the class rotated stations around him.
The principal agreed to advance him to the second grade, but he felt disengaged there too.
Summer came, and he again joined his uncle on the rigs. The work got harder with every tour.
That became the routine of his life: the rigs each summer, school during the year, his uncle home only half the time.
He didn’t know if it was because of his parents’ death or Agnes’s passing or because of the way his uncle had raised him, but he found it nearly impossible to get close to anyone. There was a wall inside of him. And the few times he brought friends over to his house, his uncle embarrassed him by berating him in front of them, so Desmond quickly learned not to invite anyone over. His uncle never gave him permission to stay over at anyone else’s house, either. Desmond was not stupid enough to disobey him.
When Desmond brought home the sign-up form for Little League, his uncle burned it. It was a waste of time and his money, he said.
Orville also refused to give consent to allow Desmond to join any of the clubs at school, Boy Scouts, or any extracurricular activities of any kind.
Desmond felt completely isolated. He had no connection with anyone or anything. He was happiest when he was reading, but by the time he was eight, he had read about everything that interested him at the local library.
The girl behind the desk noticed him wandering the stacks aimlessly. Her name was Julie, she was in her early twenties, and she seemed to have a new hairstyle each time Desmond saw her. It was in a bun on top of her head that day.
“If we don’t have it, we can get it,” she said.
“From where?”
“Another library.”
She pulled the keyboard away from the computer. “We can request any book in the Pioneer Library System and they’ll transfer it to us. What are you looking for?”
Desmond didn’t know what he was looking for. He had no idea what was out there. “I’m… not sure.”
“Well, what sort of books do you like to read?” Julie asked.
The last book Desmond had really enjoyed was a novel by Carl Sagan titled Contact. At the end, he had read that Sagan had a program on PBS. Desmond had wanted to watch it, but he knew Orville wouldn’t allow it; he was far more interested in John Wayne than alien life and mankind’s place in the universe. Desmond, however, was fascinated by the prospect of life beyond Earth and other worlds. He thought anywhere had to be better than here. At the moment, books were his only escape.
“I can also search by author.”
“Carl Sagan,” he said instantly.
A whole new world opened up to Desmond after that. He read science books, history books, biographies. He was fascinated with how the world got to be how it was—and with the people who made it that way. To some degree, he was trying to learn why the world was so cruel and unfair.
A year later, Julie began bringing him books that weren’t in the library system. She was a student at the University of Oklahoma, and their library was much more extensive. Desmond protected the tomes like treasures.
His life at home continued in the usual way. In the summers, he joined Orville on the rigs. He learned that his uncle had been taking contracts closer to Slaughterville for the past few years—safer jobs at sites close enough that he could get back home quickly if Desmond were hurt or got in any trouble. Before Desmond had come to live with him, Orville had worked on rigs farther away, some offshore. The pay was better there. Conditions were often worse—and more dangerous.
With each passing year, Desmond was given more responsibility, put more in harm’s way. He broke his right arm outside Abilene when he was eleven, his leg near Galveston the following year. In May of ’95, at a rig outside Nacogdoches, a roughneck who was high on cocaine dropped a swivel on Desmond’s foot, crushing it. Orville beat the man to within an inch of his life. They never saw him again, on any job anywhere.
When Desmond got out of the hospital, his uncle welcomed him home with a pint of cheap whiskey. It was the only thing he had for the pain, and Desmond drank it down. It was disgusting at first, but no worse than the throbbing in his foot. It got easier to drink after a while.
; To his surprise, his uncle didn’t desert him. He brought food to his room and took him to his follow-up appointments. Their relationship changed even more after that.
At thirteen, Desmond started high school. Thanks to his time on the rigs, he was big and broad-shouldered, with arms like a thoroughbred’s legs. He was still a loner at school. He didn’t fit in with any of the groups, and he had stopped trying years ago. He was stronger than the farm boys and varsity football players and smarter than the kids who lived in town, whose parents owned the shops and had gone to college. Thanks to the library system, he knew more about history than most of his teachers. And there was a lot of math on the rigs. It wasn’t calculus, but he picked that up quickly. He could attend half the year and pass all the tests. School became like visiting a prison camp on a foreign planet. People gossiped constantly. Football dominated everything. Everyone was always looking forward to the big game. Desmond only looked forward to his next book arriving—and his and Orville’s next job. The locations fascinated him. Louisiana and South Texas were colorful worlds all to themselves.
He cut school more and more. When the teachers began complaining, Orville visited the principal and explained that he needed his nephew’s help on the rigs and that the boy would pass all his tests. An agreement was made, and from then on, Desmond attended only enough to pass a few standard tests that would appease the school board if anyone came looking.
Desmond and Orville’s relationship wasn’t like father and son. They weren’t exactly friends. They were more like drifters in the old westerns Orville watched, bound together by some shared need, on a quest, in search of something or someone, though whom or what they were searching for was never clear. They went from town to town, each town like an episode in the show, a new bad guy to best or a mystery to solve. The mystery was always how long it would take to drill the oil well, whether they’d hit oil, and whether they’d survive the days after the tour, what Orville called “blowing off steam.”
For Orville, that usually entailed holing up in the nearest town for a week, drinking himself to sleep at the local bar, gambling, and running women. He fought a lot too. After a certain point, he would fight the first guy who said a cross word to him. Military veterans were the only ones he wouldn’t take a swing at, and their wives were the only ones he wouldn’t take home. He didn’t like other men doing it either; that was always cause for a fight—fights that inevitably drew Desmond in, no matter how hard he tried to stay out of them. Eventually, he fell in beside his uncle the moment they started. The fights ended faster that way.
