Thorn-Field

by James Trettwer

  It was July, summer holidays, and a scant hour before everything had been normal; he had been at the kitchen table eating supper with his parents.

  He’d said, “Why is the place next door such a dump? Why doesn’t the city tear it down or something?”

  His mom asked, “Why the sudden interest?”

  “Dunno. We always argue about Vietnam. Maybe I want to talk about something else tonight.”

  His mom sniffed. “We have to talk about something else only because you want to?”

  “He’s just trying to have a pleasant conversation, Hannah,” his dad said.

  “That boy doesn’t just do something. What are you up to?”

  “Nothing. I just want to know what the deal is. Those women. Are they gibbled or retards or what? Why don’t you talk to them like you do the Joneses?”

  “Because I don’t talk to witches. That’s what they are. Horrible, Catholic witches.”

  Dad rolled his eyes. “Don’t exaggerate. They’re just off a little, is all, Blake. They’re not worth your interest or trouble. Forget about . . . ”

  That’s when his mom said, “Now look, I know you’re bored but don’t go looking for trouble. Don’t you dare bother with those people.”

  The gate was open and the girl was waiting for him just inside the fence. She said, “Took you long enough.”

  Blake stepped into the backyard with a shrug.

  The girl closed the gate and clicked the latch in place.

  There were about a dozen trees in the yard, birch and the taller poplars, all providing a jungle-like canopy. The place was cool relief from the early evening heat. There was no grass. The ground was hardpacked, light brown gravel. A path of round stones led from the gate to a stone patio. A short caragana hedge was planted against the back of the house, broken only by the back door. The rustling of leaves in the breeze soothed his taut nerves.

  The girl was several inches shorter than him. She looked up to say, “I’m Angel.”

  “Blake.” He held out his hand, a conditioned reflex from years of his mom’s constant etiquette nagging.

  Angel hesitated and raised one eyebrow. She then took his hand and squeezed once. Her hand was soft and cool. She said, “No cracks about my name?”

  He shook his head and shrugged once again.

  She gave him a half-smile. “No name games then.”

  “I’m down with that. Is Angel short for anything?”

  “Nope. Come sit down.”

  She led him toward the patio and a pink picnic table. He watched her buttocks sway a moment. Feeling guilty for gawking, he focused on the picnic table.

  For the second time in a few short minutes, he didn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Beside a black glass ashtray littered with the plastic butts of Colt Cigarillos, was a spike nailed to the middle of the tabletop. A tight white string was attached to the spike. Tied to the string’s other end was a struggling cutworm.

  They sat opposite each other and Blake rested his chin on the tabletop. He stared at the worm. “Did you do that?”

  “‘Fraid so,” Angel replied and grabbed her hair with both hands and threw it behind her shoulders. Her ears were like small, delicate seashells.

  “How?”

  “You make a slip knot first. Then hold the worm and the knot with one hand. Pull the string with your other hand ’til it’s tight on the worm. Then tie the string to the nail.”

  “Cool.” He straightened up and watched the worm struggle in its circle. “Why?”

  “Those worms eat my mom’s herbs. And it upsets her. She needs those herbs. So I get them back. Stupid, I know.”

  “Not stupid. My mom yaps about these worms all the time. Why don’t you just squish them?”

  “Mostly I do. But sometimes, when mom’s not happy. You know.”

  He looked around and said, “Uh, so, herbs? I don’t see any garden back here.”

  Angel let out a short chortle and said, “Garden’s in the front.”

  “What? Yards around here don’t have gardens in the front.”

  “Ours does. The sun is mostly in front. So that’s the best place for growing stuff, isn’t it? Wanna see?”

  “Sure.”

  They walked between their two houses. If that high fence had not been in the way, he would have been able to see the window of his basement bedroom.

  He had never seen such a front yard. A rock garden was arranged in the perpetual shade of the hedge along the street. The herb garden itself was a disorganized mass of mostly strange plants. In the tangled growth, he recognized some sort of peppers, and the smell of sage was strong, but he did not recognize the hearty stocks and long narrow pointed leaves of the lush plants right up against the front of the house where the sunlight was strongest.

  He turned to ask Angel, but she was hunching her head and shoulders and shading her eyes with both hands.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just the sun. I should wear sunglasses even in the evening light. I’m not nearly as bad as Mom, though. She breaks out in hives and always has to wear sunglasses even inside.”

  “That sucks. What’s wrong with you?” He inwardly cringed at his abrupt and pointed question.

  Angel, however, seemed fine with it. “The easiest way to explain it is we have kind of a sun allergy. The doctors can’t do anything about it. Because it’s so bad for Mom, she smokes her own medicinal cigarettes.” She pointed at the row of plants.

  He said, “Let’s go back then.”

  Again he watched Angel’s buttocks sway as they retreated to the backyard. And again he felt self-conscious about staring and hung his head to watch her feet instead.

  Angel said, “Do you want to see something cool?”

  He nodded.

  She untied the cutworm from the table and knelt beside the hedge. “Check this out.”

  He crouched beside her. His bent knee was close to hers but did not touch.

  In the bottom leaves of the caraganas were wolf spider webs. Angel tossed the cutworm into the thick of one of the webs, near the opening to the spider’s lair. He watched, fascinated, as the spider darted out, bit and paralyzed the worm, and then dragged it back inside.

  He scanned the numerous webs built in the caragana leaves. “These are so neat,” he said. “Mom sweeps the webs away so I never get to see the spiders in action. I used to check out the webs over by the creek but I don’t go there anymore.”

  Angel stood and went back to the table. She sat cross-legged on the top. He followed and put one foot on the bench a good foot away from her. He leaned his elbows on his knee and tried to think of something to say but she spoke first.

  “So why don’t you go over to the creek anymore?”

  That Saturday this past spring had started typically. Blake and the usual pack of boys swarming the city playground two blocks away, some of them harassing the big-breasted supervisor and the high school girlfriends who hung around with her. The boys would tease the older girls, get them to chase them, and then let themselves get caught. The girls would pin the boys down and spit in their faces or give them “pink belly.” It was all worth it because it was way easy to cop a feel of either a breast or butt — sometimes even a crotch.

  That day he was just leaning with his arms crossed against the supervisor’s shack and watching. The game lasted until high school boyfriends drove up and then all of the high schoolers locked themselves inside the shack, leaving the younger kids in the playground to supervise themselves.

  Bored, he and the boys wandered to the creek that ran parallel to his back alley. The backs of the houses and the garret windows of the two-storey peering above the trees were all in clear view across the flood plain filled with tall prairie grasses and Canadian thistle and various other weeds. His pack joined another group of younger brothers and sisters right across from his backyard and they all massed on the creek’s edge.

  The older boys, led by his friend Darryl, threw rocks at a large western painted turtle sunnin
g itself on the opposite shore. The turtle didn’t move, oblivious to the danger.

  Sidling up to Darryl, Blake snatched a softball-sized rock from his hand and said, “What are you doing, Hannigan?”

  Darryl took a step back and gawked. “Whaddya think you’re doing, Rake.” His glaring white T-shirt revealed broad shoulders and a bulky chest but he was six inches shorter than Blake and had a much shorter reach. “Gimme that rock back, pecker-breath.”

  Blake snorted. “You’re smelling your own breath. Throwing rocks at a turtle? You’re one tough mother, aren’t you?”

  The other kids formed a circle around them.

  Darryl fisted his hands. “What’s it to you? Are you some kind of fag standing up for a stupid turtle?”

  Blake said, “A fag’s a cigarette. You’re the homo, knob-gobbler.”

  “Take that back.”

  “Make me.” Blake knew his reputation for strength, agility and reach at basketball was common knowledge. It would be a short fight.

  Darryl’s older brother Frank, and a friend of his, stepped up, one on each flank.

  Blake grinned, realizing they didn’t have the tactical intelligence to surround their opponent. He tossed the rock lightly up and down. “Well? Come get some.”

  The three boys took a tentative step forward. Blake underhanded the rock straight up. All attention was drawn to that movement and he hit Frank’s chest with an open palm and the boy lurched backward onto his buttocks.

  Blake deftly caught the falling rock overhand with a loud slap and grabbed Darryl’s shirt with his other hand. Darryl twisted back and forth, tried a right and then a left hook but did not make contact. The chops on Blake’s inner arm didn’t hurt, but something in his head clicked and his only thought was to smash Darryl’s face with the rock, once for every rock thrown at the turtle.

  It was only when Frank, still sitting, shrieked, “Let him go, creep!” that he realized he had red rings flashing in his vision. He pulled Darryl toward him and shoved him away. Darryl stumbled but did not fall. Frank’s friend however, dropped to his knees. He could smell their sweat, their reek of fear. His knuckles were white, hand still gripping the rock.

  The circle of kids backed away and formed a semi-circle behind the defeated allies.

  There was a moment of silence until his mom yelled, “Blake! Get out of there. Right now!”

  He instantly dropped the rock.

  Someone in the mob said, “That freak is just too big.”

  Someone else said, “Freak is right-on. Giant freak. Herman Munster, man.”

  Inside his house, Blake took his mom’s lecture. He did not try to justify his actions and did not even utter a single, “yeah, but.” She spent ten minutes lamenting on how she wouldn’t be able to live down the embarrassment of having a fighter and a bully for a son. “Just wait until your father gets home.”

  He remained silent the rest of the afternoon. He only remembered the smell of sweat, the urge to smash Darryl, that red flashing.

  “It’s a good thing the Liverwood people are easy to get along with,” his dad said as soon as he stepped through the door. “Between the government slogging their feet like molasses in winter and tradesmen taking coffee breaks every fifteen minutes instead of fifteen minute breaks, we’re falling further and further behind schedule. It makes the corporation look bad even though . . . ” He stopped mid-sentence.

  He glanced from his wife to his son, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. After a breath, he said, “Hannah, are you two fighting?”

  That was the signal flare. His mom launched into an excruciatingly detailed account of the day’s events, from her point of view, of course. Her main concern seemed how to survive her embarrassment.

  Dad listened with pursed lips and the occasional scratch of his head. Rubbing his chin in the ensuing silence, he said, “Blake, I see you feel pretty bad about this.”

  Blake nodded. He hung his head and simply said, “You’re both totally right.”

  Hannah harrumphed.

  Over the following weeks, he occasionally thought he should apologize to Darryl but he also felt that he had crossed the Rubicon — a phrase used in some of his war books, meaning a point of no return. The damage was irrevocable.

  Boys still hung around the flood plain behind his house, but he never went out to join them.

  Blake took his foot off the bench and stood up straight. Right then he firmly believed he didn’t deserve friends and didn’t deserve Angel either. How was he supposed to tell her that story without looking like some sort of freakish outsized bully? He closed his eyes and focused on the sound of the leaves in the breeze.

  “Blake?” Angel said. “You cool?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Kind of faded there,” he replied and opened his eyes.

  Angel said, her gravelly voice soothing, “Want to talk about it?”

  He plopped down on the bench, his back to the house.

  He stared at the tabletop and eventually decided to expose both flanks. He told Angel the whole story, including the urge to smash and the red flashing. After he finished, he said, “I’m pretty big and probably scared the crap out of all of them. You probably think I’m a bully.”

  Angel said, “Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to.”

  Blake sighed. “Even if it’s wrong?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes things happen, even when you mind your own business. But you have to be willing to take the consequences, too.”

  “‘Take the consequences.’ That’s what Mom says I have to do every thirty seconds.” His face went hot. He slapped his forehead with his open palm. “I mean, I’m not saying you’re like my mom. I mean, oh, holy shit, do I ever have a stupid mouth.”

  Angel laughed, leaned forward and touched his arm. “It’s okay. I know what you mean.” Her hand lingered for a moment. “At least, I think so. I don’t think I’m like your mom. Am I?”

  “Oh, god no. Believe me. And be thankful you’re not.”

  They both laughed.

  A woman’s voice behind him said, “What’s so funny?”

  He scrambled up. He banged his knee on the underside of the table.

  Two women stood on the patio near the back door. One, not much taller than Angel, stood with her hands on her wide hips. She wore sunglasses and had Angel’s black hair, cut short and flipped back exposing ears which were also shell-shaped. She wore a black, sleeveless T-shirt which showed large braless breasts. He knew he’d been caught checking, even though he darted his eyes toward the other woman. She was taller than Angel’s mother, with a nondescript, bone-rack of a body, lost in a loudly coloured and flowing blouse and ankle-length skirt ensemble. Her mousy-blonde hair was tied up in a bun with a bandana, also loudly coloured. To his eye, none of the components of the outfit matched.

  “Who’s your friend?” said the woman in the sunglasses in the same gravelly voice as her daughter’s. Her tone was in no way accusatory, considering the serious faux pas he had just committed.

  “This is Blake. From next door. Blake, this is my mom, Gloria, and this is Michelle.” Angel gestured toward the taller woman.

  Gloria extended her hand and said, “Pleased to meet you, young man.”

  Young man? Blake had never thought of himself that way before and thrilled at the idea. “Pleased to meet you, too, Mrs., uh?” said Blake, shaking hands with her.

  “Just Gloria.” She exchanged a quick glance with Michelle and said to Angel, “Sorry Kiddo, we gotta smoke.”

  The two women sat side by side on the opposite bench with their backs to the door and Angel shifted, looking from them to him. He continued to stand and wondered if he could be any more of a klutz.

  “How polite,” Gloria said to Angel, “Waiting for us to take our seats first.”

  He quickly sat down.

  Both women took a Cigarillo from the same package and lit them with Gloria’s lighter. There was a moment of silence before a general and vague discussion about the weather ensued
.

  Uncomfortable with the silence following the weather talk, he asked the two women where they worked. He wanted to slap his forehead yet again, this time over his perhaps too forward question.

  However, the women were unfazed. Gloria answered easily for both of them while they smoked their cigarillos. Michelle worked as a paralegal at a downtown lawyer’s office. Gloria was on disability but did freelance work for Michelle’s firm and other law firms, proofreading or typing transcripts. She admitted that they made a comfortable living and the best part of the arrangement was that Gloria had been able to stay home during the day when Angel was small. They didn’t need or want a car to pollute the environment; public transit and taxis provided adequate transportation.

  Blake kept his eyes on the bridge of Gloria’s sunglasses and hoped that no one detected his discomfort.

  Her cigarillo finished, Michelle said in a surprisingly soft voice, “Time we went back inside.” She nudged Gloria, and nodded in his and Angel’s direction.

  “Pleasure, again, meeting you,” Gloria said as she slid off of her seat.

  Blake jumped up again. “A pleasure too, to meet you, Mrs., I mean Gloria, I mean both of you ladies, uh, I mean . . . ”

  Gloria didn’t let him squirm like that worm tied to the string. She smiled right at him and said, “It’s all good. Maybe see you again.”

  They sauntered to the back door, Michelle slightly in the lead, with Gloria’s hand on her lower back, almost guiding the taller woman.

  Angel took one of the Cigarillo tips from the ashtray.

  He ventured, “They seem kinda cool.”

  “I like them,” Angel replied and picked the paper off the tip.

  After a silence, Blake said, “I acted pretty lame, huh.”

  “You didn’t.” She chewed on the plastic tip. “I like the taste of these.”

  Blake grinned. “So do I. Dad smokes them and I scoff them from the garbage.”

  Angel said, “You can chew on one of ours if you want. We’re not poison.”