by Brad Felver
Walter Sullivan rides by on his ten-speed. He lives two streets over in a first floor place with a yard. It’s a new house. There was this humongous fire here a few years ago, destroyed all kinds of crap. People like Walter Sullivan got new houses out of it. But a lot of other people just moved away from Chelsea. I don’t blame them for that. Our house was mostly okay, but a couple blocks away—total burnout. Still lots of houses people haven’t really rebuilt on or even cleaned up too good. All this charcoaled crap in big heaps, and I guess no one really has money to do anything about. So Bev and me like to scrounge around and find cool junk that didn’t burn, like huge bolts and spigots that we can pretend are guns. We paint charcoal mustaches on each other, try to get them as big as we can. Then we scowl and shoot at each other and try to die in the most convincing sort of way. Sometimes we just sit on the curb with our mustaches and act angry about adult stuff, like taxes and cigarettes and indigestion.
Walter Sullivan stares at our unicorn stew sign. He got popular last year because his parents got divorced, and his dad started buying him lots of great stuff, like ten-speeds and kites and gummy worms. Sometimes, when it’s really hot, Bev and me will go over Walter’s house and do his big sprinkler, but mostly we don’t. Mostly we like to be on our own.
Walter stares at our sign, and he gets this look on his face like he’s trying to do long division homework. “Where’s the horn?” he asks, and I tell him it’s already in there, cooking, and that he’s a dummy who smells like armpit fungus. Everyone knows you put the horn in first because it gives everything more flavor.
“God-lover,” Bev says, and she belts him in the arm.
Walter stands there, straddling his ten-speed and rubbing his arm. “I don’t get it,” he says.
Bev yanks him off his ten-speed and puts him into a headlock and starts cranking. She does it fast, like she was looking for a reason to go after Walter. And while she’s holding him, I ball up my fist and noogie him till my knuckles burn. It’s a big problem, the way some kids act when their dumb divorced parents start buying them expensive crap.
Bev lets go, and Walter tries to fix his hair and stand up straight like maybe we were just palling around on him.
“You should probably stir it some,” he says.
Bev and me look at each other. We haven’t thought of this, and even though we should bash Walter’s shoulder, we don’t because he’s probably right.
“If you have a big spoon,” Bev says, “I guess we could let you help out.”
So Walter pedals away toward his house. As he’s turning the corner, Bev shouts at him to bring some of those gummy worms too.
We stare down at our pot of unicorn stew. We’re out of ingredients to drop in, so we start in on handfuls of crabgrass and dandelion heads and thistles.
Someone gets a hit, probably the other team, and the radio voice jumps loud for a minute. Bev’s mom isn’t smoking anymore, but she’s still sitting in the car. She looks over at us with this sort of sad, drooping face, like maybe she just woke up. Bev waves at her and then says, “My mom’s a dumbo. I’d smoke in the house if I wanted to.”
I don’t say anything, but I also don’t believe her. Her dad scares me. He’s awfully big, way bigger than my dad, and even though he smells like cotton candy, he’s mean. He’s always calling Bev’s mom a shit-cow and shouting at Bev to run down to the packie for him. When he drives away in his big blue truck, he always squeals the tires. One time after he elbowed Bev’s mom in the face, he got all serious, saying how sorry he was, and why did she make him do ugly things like that to prove how much he loved her and how much it made his heart hurt? Another time Bev stayed home from school for a whole week because she said she had bronchitis. Her dad wouldn’t even let me in our room to see her. I’m pretty sure she didn’t really have bronchitis, though, because I stood outside the door and never heard any coughing. And when I finally got in to see her, she had this mashed up pinky toe. What I think happened was her dad was working on the big blue truck, and Bev asked him some question, and I guess it was the wrong question because he dropped one of his hammers on her toe, which broke it hard. I’m not saying he hit her with it, but her toe was in bad shape. Even now it hasn’t really healed, just seems like bone dust wrapped in skin, like a sugar packet, maybe. So Bev always wears her mom’s old sneakers tied double-tight.
Our dads used to be pals. They both worked at the candy plant and liked to come home and sit on the curb and toss rocks into the sewer grate. Then when it rained the water didn’t drain right, and Bev and me could jump around in this huge, muddy puddle. Sometimes we’d tie yarn to sticks and pretend to fish in it. They were both a little nicer then, I think because having a friend makes you nicer. But then my dad decided to become a trucker and Bev’s dad didn’t, so they aren’t really friends anymore. Now Bev’s dad is meaner. My dad comes back for a weekend every couple months, and he takes me to Dairy Queen and the movie theater, but then he drops me back off at Bev’s house and doesn’t come inside. He says he likes to sleep in his truck now. Bev’s dad never comes out to talk to him. Bev thinks my dad just wanted to leave Chelsea, and maybe she’s right. She says that one time when he’s back, we should be real nice to him at first. Wait till he’s sleeping in his truck and then do something really bad, like hit him with a baseball bat or dump a bucket of puke on his head. But I don’t think I could do that.
Walter Sullivan comes back, pedaling extra hard. He hands Bev an oar that he stole from his dad’s canoe. Bev looks at me and shrugs. “The gummy worms?” she says.
Walter reaches into his pocket and pulls out a fresh pack and starts opening it.
“We’ll do the ingredients,” Bev says and grabs them up.
Then we start stirring it with the oar and dropping in gummy worms. So the rule becomes this: every tenth circle around the pot, you get punched because we do still need to keep making these bruises even if we are pretty fantastic chefs.
But Walter doesn’t like this. Bev bashes his shoulder, and he starts to tear up. None of the other kids ever hit Walter Sullivan because then they won’t get to play with his toys.
“I don’t want to stir anymore,” Walter says.
“You don’t stir, you have to leave,” Bev says.
Walter reaches for the canoe paddle, but Bev steps in front of him. “We’ll bring it back to you when we’re done,” she says.
Then he squats down for his bike, but Bev stomps on the front tire. “We need to borrow this too,” Bev says.
Walter looks over at me, like he’s hoping I’ll help him out, but I don’t say anything. “Come on, guys,” he says and pulls on the handlebars a little harder.
Bev just shakes her head at him.
By now Walter Sullivan is crying and yelling something about sending his dad down here just as soon as he gets home from work. Then he just runs off without his bike.
I keep stirring the unicorn stew while Bev rides Walter’s bike around. She does all kinds of wheelies and jumps off the curb. Then she starts going all the way to the end of the street and turning around, pedaling as fast as she can, and by the time she gets back, she’s flying. Then she jams on the brakes and turns sideways and skids out. It leaves these long black marks in the road, and every time she does it, she makes one a little bit longer. Then it’s my turn to make the skid marks. It feels good to ride fast because it’s like wind, but I can’t seem to skid out as good as Bev. She has longer legs and goes faster, I guess. So I go back to our unicorn stew and leave the bike riding to her.
Bev’s mom is still in the car, still listening to the Sox. She watches us riding Walter Sullivan’s bike, but she doesn’t get out and say anything. It’s almost five o’clock, which means Bev’s dad is coming home soon, and after working all day in the candy plant, he’s pretty grumpy, and he’s liable to call people shit-cows or mash their toes up if his boss was an extra big jerk today, which he usually is.
At twelve minutes after five the big blue truck rumbles way down at the other
end of the street. Bev drops Walter’s bike and faces the opposite way, like maybe if she doesn’t look, he doesn’t exist. He doesn’t stop all the way at the intersection, and then he guns it, and the big blue truck sounds like a space rocket or maybe Godzilla.
He squeals the tires when he stops and gets out of the big blue truck and hikes his pants up. I can tell that his boss was a jerk today. We stop stirring the unicorn stew and stand there extra quiet. He spits into the street and arches his back. Then he hears the radio and looks over toward Bev’s mom in the car, and he stomps over there and heaves the door open, and this tornado of smoke pours out, and the Sox game gets louder. He swipes his hand in front of his face and leans back.
“Fucking Christ!” he says, and Bev’s mom jumps over into the passenger seat.
“Inside!” he yells at her, which doesn’t seem quite fair to me because I thought the deal was that she just couldn’t smoke in the house. But that’s just like Bev’s dad—always making a deal and then breaking it.
He moves over to the passenger side of the car, and Bev’s mom jumps back to the driver’s seat. They go on like this for a few times, and it’s kind of funny to see Bev’s dad look like the dumb craphead he is, but it’s also kind of not funny because once he gets a hold of her, he’s liable to punch her in the neck until she cries. Pretty soon he gets tired of chasing her, so he just stands there in front of the car and spreads his legs wide like some bandit in the Wild West. Then he looks over at us for the first time. He looks at us, and then he looks at Bev’s mom, and then he looks back at us.
Bev’s mom gets out of the car and walks out into the street and stands kind of in between us and Bev’s dad. She probably doesn’t want him ruining our unicorn stew after seeing all the work we’ve put in to getting it just right. Bev’s dad leans into the car and grabs the pack of cigarettes and lights one for himself.
“You,” he says to me. “Bev’s little boyfriend. Head down to the packie and get me a grinder and some Blatz. We need to have a family meeting.” He hands me a wad of bills and shoves me toward the store.
The radio is still going, and I can hear it pretty clear with the doors wide open. He looks into our pot of unicorn stew and cracks his fat knuckles. “What’s all this shit?”
“We’re making unicorn stew,” Bev says, and I think she speaks up just so she can look tough in front of me, but it’s a risky thing to do, talking to Bev’s dad when he’s upset.
“Bev’s little boyfriend,” he says to me, “go to the packie.”
Then he turns to Bev. “Time to come inside,” he says. He takes one last puff of his cigarette and tosses it right into our pot of unicorn stew. Then he crumples up the rest of the pack and throws that in there, too, and that rubs me hard because you don’t get to just ruin other people’s unicorn stew.
Bev looks over at me. She has this sad face on, like her mom’s, but I really don’t know what to do. Everybody says you need to stand up for yourself, but they forget that when you’re in the fifth grade, most people are bigger than you. And I have to sleep somewhere. So I just stand there. Bev hands me the oar and walks inside without saying goodbye or anything. And as soon as Bev leaves, so does her mom. Then it’s just me and Bev’s dad, which is not the kind of situation you want to get yourself into if you like your toes.
“Where’d all this come from?” he says, meaning our unicorn stew.
I was counting on Bev doing the talking because I’m not very good at talking to her dad. “We didn’t pay for anything,” I say.
And he glares at me with his mean glare, the kind where his lips sort of curl in around his teeth and make his mustache stand out even more. It probably didn’t matter what I said.
“That was Bev’s idea, eh?” he says, and I don’t exactly nod, but I don’t say no either, and so he knows everything, I guess.
He turns to go inside, but right then Walter Sullivan and his dad come around the corner. Walter’s dad works at the candy plant, too, so I guess it didn’t take Walter long to tell on us. His dad looks mad, but I think if we had some kind of contest to see who could be the meanest or the maddest, Bev’s dad would beat just about anybody no problem.
“That’s my kid’s bike,” Walter’s dad says. He’s tall and skinny and has this huge nose. He looks a little like the Fruit Loops bird, except for he isn’t blue.
Bev’s dad looks down at me. “He let Bev borrow it,” I say, which is definitely what Bev would say.
“My kid says he was just borrowing it,” Bev’s dad says.
“Your kid’s lying.”
Bev’s dad takes a step forward, so he’s right in front of Walter’s dad. And when he does that, I follow him, take a step toward Walter. They don’t move, like they don’t really know what to do. “My kids don’t lie,” Bev’s dad says.
“Look, Jake,” Walter’s dad says, “Either way, it’s my kid’s bike, and he wants it back now.”
“Sure,” says Bev’s dad. But then he doesn’t step aside. “Just apologize to my kid for saying he’s a liar.”
Walter’s dad gives him this awful look, like he’s trying to eat a handful of gravel. And the way Walter stares at his dad makes me feel pretty awful. I don’t know why Bev’s dad always has to get the push on people, but he does.
For a minute nobody moves. Then Walter’s dad squats down in front of me, just about eye level, and looks right at my face. “I’m sorry I called you a liar, pal. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Then he stands up, glares at Bev’s dad again, and they’re gone. We watch them for a minute, Walter riding on the bike while his dad walks just behind.
“And that’s how you deal with a bully,” Bev’s dad says. He musses up my hair, which kind of hurts because his hands have these sharp calluses that scrape on my skull. But I just let him do it anyway. Then he goes inside, and I rub my head and think on the way he stood up for me and called me his kid. I start walking down to the packie with the money he forgot to take back to get some stew ingredients for tomorrow. That way Bev and me can get an early start. I pull my t-shirt out like a pouch and fill it with packs of Necco Wafers since they’re the cheapest thing around, and the whole time I’m thinking about how I’m glad to be gone right now because Bev’s dad still has about a zillion things to be mad about. I take our candy up to pay and dump it on the counter and unwad the dollar bills, and that’s when I see the rainbow sherbet behind the ice cream counter. It’s in this big, frosty bucket. I know I shouldn’t put back any of our stew ingredients, I know we’ll need them, but I can’t help it. It’s so hot out. I put back half the candy, and I stand in front of the counter and point to the rainbow sherbet and the guy fills me up a big cone. I walk toward Bev’s house, and it starts dripping in the heat, sliding all down my arms, all the way to my armpits. I can feel it sticking to my face and drying like syrup. I’m in no rush to get back, I keep licking around the edges of the cone where it’s all melted, but I can’t keep up with the heat, and before long my shirt is lined with all these bright-colored stains that will be impossible to hide.
Stones We Throw
At Mother’s wake, I threw stones at the sky. It was dark, deep snow trenches wrapping around everything like an acoustic damper. Even the hollow wail of coyote flattened into a muffled echo. I threw stones, chucking them high into the darkness, where they seemed to lodge, like stars that had forgotten how to glow or perhaps young stars that hadn’t yet learned.
I hid outside in the dark while all those aunts and uncles, scary strangers, roamed our hallways and ate potato salad and made sad faces at Father, like apologies. I threw stones until my shoulder ached and thought about how I kind of liked the pain right then, like it was helping somehow.
“Come say goodbye now,” Father said later, leaning out the back door.
“I want to stay out here,” I said.
He hesitated on the back steps. He hadn’t put a jacket on. “Caleb,” he said.
“It’s scary in there,” I said.
He let the d
oor close behind him and sat next to me. We were both of us out of the light that spilled from the door, but if you looked long enough, you could probably see our breath. “It is scary,” he said. “I’d hoped you might save me by coming back in.”
“Sorry.” I wasn’t, though. I was glad to be outside, away from all that, glad to have him sitting next to me, not quite touching but almost, like I could feel his heat. I rubbed on my shoulder.
“What did you do there?”
“Throwing rocks,” I said.
“Not into the garden, I hope.”
I shrugged. I didn’t want to tell him that, yes, I’d thrown them toward the garden, but then the sky had sucked them up. They were stars now. “It hurts but kind of feels good,” I said. “You know?”
“I do,” he said. Then he moved over the last bit, and our hips were touching as we sat there. He unlaced his boots and took off his socks and plunged his feet into the snow all the way up past the ankle. I stared up at his face, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the sky where I’d been throwing stones.
I asked then, didn’t that hurt? and he said yes, some, but it also felt kind of good. We sat there like that for a long time. He never did go back inside or make me go either. When people started leaving, he didn’t get up to say goodbye, just waved without turning around, his feet stuck in the snow, which seemed to confuse everyone.
I went back to school soon, and he went back to prepping for spring wheat. Everything was quieter. The house smelled strange, less lived in. Everyone kept telling us how it was still raw now, wasn’t it? But it would get better. We couldn’t believe how much better it would get by spring, but when thaw finally came and father ran the turnwrest through the garden, he wrecked his blade on all those stones out there, which I know he saw, but he still did it anyway, and everyone seemed to think it was an accident even though I don’t think it was.
