We Ride Upon Sticks

by Quan Barry

  Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide,

  Foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, Bernie Goetz…

  At one point while on stationary ground we saw Coach Mullins trying to toss a bunch of rings over some pegs. With one hand he was holding his beard out of the way of his throwing arm. There was a woman looking mildly interested standing beside him. Boy Cory spotted them first, then like in a bad Scooby-Doo episode, we comically knocked into one another one by one as each person stopped in succession to gape.

  “You think that’s his lady?” whispered Abby Putnam.

  “It’s probably his sister,” said Mel Boucher.

  “If he wins her a fish, then she’s definitely his lady,” said Girl Cory.

  “But isn’t that gift more of a burden?” said Sue Yoon. “I mean, you have to get a bowl and stuff.”

  “Exactly my point,” said Girl Cory. “Nothing says ‘I love you’ like obligations.”

  We watched as, with the very next toss, the ring slipped around the peg with the biggest prize, a gargantuan fuzzy hot-pink pig, the thing adorned with pink tufts of synthetic fur like a pair of novelty slippers. We watched as Coach Mullins hefted the pig under his arm, then he and the lady walked away. Was he being chivalrous and carrying it for her, or was it his? So many questions!

  On the other side of the fairgrounds Becca Bjelica and Will, her boyfriend du jour, were intermittently making out in the stands by the motocross track. Will only seemed tangentially interested in either making out or in whatever Becca was saying. He had his eye on a rider in red who was leading the pack, hotdogging over the course as if it weren’t a race but a demonstration.

  “Wait. What?” Will said.

  “I was saying do you think we should do it?” said Becca. She pulled some lip gloss out of her bag and began reapplying it.

  Will sat for a long time studying the arc of the other riders as they chased the leader in red over a hill, each one leaping like a salmon navigating a rapid. “And by it, you mean it,” he said. He needed the clarification. When they’d started going out two months before, there had been a lot of discussion about it. Slowly over time Will came to realize what only a select few at Danvers High knew. Becca Bjelica, the most stacked girl at DHS, was a virgin. Still, the few, the proud, who dated her didn’t mind. Being with Big Tits Bjelica was a badge of honor. Guys would literally slap you on the back when they found out you were her man. She was sweet, easy on the eyes, plus a good kisser, not bad at handies, and Will had heard from Scotty Lawrence that if you got really lucky, she’d let you rub yourself in between them. He didn’t know the technical name for such an act, but Heather Houston had learned it just the week before in her Unitarian Sex-Ed class.

  “If a man thrusts himself to completion between a woman’s breasts,” said Gary, the class leader, “it’s called a pearl necklace.” Gary’s wife, Martha, nodded and looked around encouragingly at all the women in class like they should someday be so fortunate.

  Will was hoping to last long enough with Becca to gift her with his sticky pearls. Now suddenly out of the blue here she was talking full-on it. Could a guy get that lucky? He had to tread carefully, seem less eager than he really was. After all, it could be a trap.

  “Prom’s coming up in November,” he said. “I guess we could wait until then.”

  “Yeah, but the playoffs will have already started,” countered Becca.

  “What?”

  “Nevermind.”

  At that point, we came upon the two lovebirds up in the stands. “Hey losers, how’s it hanging?” said Jen Fiorenza. She motioned toward a carnival ride off in the distance. “You guys in?”

  Will didn’t think this part through carefully. He said he wanted to stay and watch the rest of the race. “Babe,” he called out, but it was too late. Becca was already up on her feet and storming off with us.

  “Boys suck,” said Little Smitty for the second time that night.

  And for the second time that night, Boy Cory tried to change the subject. “Isn’t that your little sister over there?” We all turned to see little Debbie Smith running straight for us as we were about to board a ride called the Breakdance, which must have rocked because it cost five tickets.

  “Something’s wrong with Marilyn Bunroe,” said Debbie. “Something’s wrong with all of them.” There were tears visible in her eyes.

  Instantly Little Smitty dropped all pretentions. Who cared if anyone thought she was a hick? Her bunny was in trouble. We rushed to the pavilion. Inside it was the same as that scene in Gone with the Wind where Scarlett O’Hara steps out into Atlanta and sees the endless suffering of the Confederate dead and dying.

  The following week the Danvers Herald would run a front-page story about it. The culprit was called pasteurellosis, also known adorably as the snuffles. Pasteurellosis was a highly contagious respiratory infection affecting rabbits. By the time we arrived, the worst had already come to pass. Marilyn Bunroe was lying on her side, her watery eyes unblinking. Everywhere the sound of young 4-H devotees wailing among stacks of alfalfa. You didn’t need to be sporting a piece of blue tube sock tied around your arm to feel the moment in your gut. Even Jen’s Claw gazed sorrowfully on the scene. Little Smitty opened the cage and tenderly pulled out her dead rabbit. Not to get all sentimental about it, but watching her hold Marilyn Bunroe in her arms reminded Heather Houston of the classical composition called a pietà, where Mary cradles the dead Christ on her lap.

  “I know where we should bury her,” Heather said.

  We stood there a long time before Abby Putnam came forward and helped Little Smitty wrap Marilyn Bunroe up in her favorite blanket. For what it’s worth, the Smith Farm giant pumpkin named Berta did indeed come in second.

  * * *

  —

  It was a little after eleven-thirty when we pulled up in the parking lot by the tennis courts in our armada of cars. In true funereal fashion, Girl Cory’s Mercedes led the procession bearing both Little Smitty and our fallen heroine Marilyn Bunroe. Somehow the disfiguring scratch snaking down the car seemed an appropriate form of grief, like when people rend their clothes at the news of the death of a loved one. The rest of us parked in the lot, but Girl Cory drove her convertible right onto the field. At first we worked by the light of her headlights, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam’s “All Cried Out” playing softly through the car speakers. But the night was beautiful and spangled, the skies radiant with the light of the full moon, one Heather Houston said people often called the Harvest Moon, though it was also known as the Blood Moon or the Dying Grass Moon. After a few minutes Girl Cory cut the headlights and we did what needed doing under the Harvest Moon’s glow, the clouds sailing along like the silver waves that limn the ocean’s surface when it’s dark.

  That night there was no rending of clothes, no gnashing of teeth. Boy Cory had driven Little Smitty’s truck for her, as most of us didn’t know how to drive stick. In the truck bed was a box full of tools used on the farm. There were two small hand shovels and one full-size one plus a rake. We took turns. Little Smitty sat and watched. In the moonlight both the Claw and Marilyn Bunroe’s mane of hair gleamed as if streaked with hoarfrost.

  We dug about three feet down. Coyotes had been spotted in the Woodvale neighborhood where the high school was located, so Heather Houston handed AJ and Sue Yoon a flashlight and told them to find some rocks. When we were ready, we circled up like we did every day for stretching, only this time there was already a looseness working its way through our limbs, a sense that out here under the night’s mantle, we could be completely and utterly ourselves. Maybe this explains why Boy Cory started singing “Candle in the Wind” (Goodbye, Norma Jean), but the Claw cuffed him fast on the side of the head, so Girl Cory popped our anthem in her car radio, “Look Out for Number One.” Solemnly Little Smitty lowered her prized bunny into the hole we had dug right at midfield, officially
sanctifying the earth as ours.

  You gotta work a little harder

  Than the next guy—

  Be a little smarter

  If you wanna survive.

  You gotta move a little faster

  Than the last time,

  Know just what you’re after

  And never look behind…

  When a layer of rocks had been placed over the body and the hole filled back in with earth, we stood for a long moment in the moonlight, the sound of crickets chirring in the dark. Then our first truly great Gathering began:

  “I’ve never kissed a boy,” said Julie Minh.

  “I’m running for student council president so I can ban Huck Finn,” said AJ Johnson.

  “I cheated on the SAT,” said Heather Houston.

  “Sometimes I just eat fruit all week,” said Abby Putnam.

  “Maybe I like girls,” someone said. “So sue me.”

  “I want to be a star,” a voice confessed.

  “I know who’s doing it,” another chimed in.

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m all alone,” we all admitted.

  “I’m a virgin,” most of us said.

  “I’m not,” a few others replied.

  “She was the one thing I could love and not feel stupid about it,” said Little Smitty.

  How much of this was spoken out loud, how much of it simply passed telepathically among our hearts, our bodies hardwired to one another? If someone had driven by the field precisely at that moment, what would they have seen? A group of girls (and one token boy) standing silently in a circle while holding hands. Would the driver have noticed as one girl in the group reached behind her ear and conjured up a cigar, beheld the tiny flame as the thing took fire, then watched as it was passed hand to hand around the circle, each in turn breathing in, coughing, some of us trying not to throw up, all of us instantly dizzy, our heads spinning? Then someone presses a button and the night fills with the music of the day. Van Halen, Prince. It’s raining men, hallelujah! And suddenly we’re dancing, a pack of spirits in the moonlight, moving deliciously the way young children do who don’t know yet that they should feel self-conscious as they connect with the inner music of their souls, some of us beginning to shed our clothes, bodies becoming luminous with the unburdening. O the deliciousness of doing all the things Emilio wanted done!

  What would you yourself do to remain forever young? What would you confess to the great and silent god that watches in the dark?

  We danced all night. We danced the length of one song. We danced for just a moment. May we be so lucky as to still be dancing under the light of the Harvest Moon three hundred years on!

  * * *

  —

  Tuesday we demolished Marblehead 10-2. You could see the scar in the center of the field where we’d laid Marilyn Bunroe to rest in peace. Heather Houston said according to Religions of the World, sometimes soccer teams in West Africa will bury a charm in the field where they play. Sometimes the talisman is just a knife, an object meant to keep them sharp and on their toes, other times it’s something porous, maybe a sieve, to make the other team’s defense penetrable. Marilyn Bunroe was a lionhead lop, her great mane of golden hair fierce as any African cat’s swaggering about on the savanna. On the field, we became members of her pride. We each had the power of a lioness surging through our blood. All first half Coach Butler stood on the sidelines repeatedly tapping her heart with her finger as if she had a bad case of angina: 4-0, 5-0, 6-0, infinity. Finally she took most of us out of the game and put in a series of JV players, allowing Marblehead to score at least twice.

  After the game Nicky Higgins was hanging around the field house looking for quotes, but none of us felt like talking. When we’d all filed out, Nicky and the Chin knocked on the locker-room door, gingerly pushing it open when nobody answered and switching on the light. There wasn’t much to see but probably plenty to smell, though Boy Cory said compared with the boys locker room it was like walking past the perfume counter in Filene’s department store.

  Nicky nosed around. There were strips of athletic tape stuck here and there, a few socks lying on the floor, tubes of muscle cream, plastic cups filled with water that had once been ice used to rub sore joints. Then she noticed something. A hot-pink tuft of synthetic hair, the tuft soft and furry, like something you’d find on a woman’s low-slung mule. Carefully Nicky bent over and picked up the tuft using only her pen the way cops did on TV, then dropped it in a plastic sandwich bag.

  All that night in her dreams, she couldn’t catch her breath. It was as if a great weight were incrementally being piled on her chest, first her ribs, then her sternum cracking, the sound wet and dull like the crunch of footfalls in fresh snow, and the whole time it was happening all she could say was more.

  DANVERS VS. SALEM

  Sue Yoon had a lot on her plate. Her hair was a subtle shade (for her) of Sharkleberry Fin, which she’d just colored the night before. Hopefully it wouldn’t rain, or bad things might happen up top. Sue scrunched up her eyes as if trying to focus on a faraway cue card. “ ‘That can’t be His Majesty, must be the marshal,’ ” she finally said, tapping her ash out the window.

  “Wrong,” said Abby Putnam. She was sitting in the passenger-side seat, biting into a tomato as if eating an apple.

  “I’m totally boned,” said Sue. Along the side of the road a parked car suddenly opened its door. We didn’t swerve, coming within inches of hitting it.

  “Maybe just concentrate on the road,” suggested AJ Johnson.

  “No, driving is when my mind’s a blank canvas,” said Sue.

  Maybe that’s the problem, thought Becca Bjelica.

  “What?” said Sue.

  “Nothing,” we all replied.

  The four of us were cruising along down Elliott Street with Sue behind the wheel of the Panic Mobile on our way to Salem via the Beverly Bridge. The rest of the team had scattered to the winds in various cars. Little Smitty and her crew were going through Peabody past the Sunnyside Candlepin Bowling Alley. Girl Cory and Mel Boucher had disappeared in the forever-ruined Mercedes, but we knew they knew where they were going because Girl Cory used to date a boy over in the fancy-pants part of Marblehead, and to get to the Neck you had to go through Salem. Heather and Julie were riding with Coach Butler in her mustard-yellow Subaru station wagon that looked as if it doubled as the dumpster for a construction site. Though it was somewhat out of the way, Marge thought it was faster traffic-wise to go through the heart of Beverly down Cabot Road, past the theater where Le Grand David performed religiously every Sunday.

  We were running late. Earlier that afternoon the school bus that should have taken us to Salem High pulled up at the curb and then wouldn’t start again. Suddenly the Bert half of Ernie and Bert appeared out a side door, for some inexplicable reason his unibrow looking as if maybe it might have crumbs stuck in it. After ten minutes Bert stepped back and wiped his hands on his uniform, leaving two dark wings down his front.

  “She’s deader than a doornail,” he declared, running an oily finger through his unibrow like when a tanker sprays water on a dirt road to keep the dust down.

  “I wonder how often he gets to say that,” whispered Heather Houston.

  Within minutes our favorite janitor, Alfie, appeared after Coach Butler made it known she wanted a second opinion. In less than twenty seconds, the bus was officially declared dead a second time. It’d be at least another thirty minutes before a new one could arrive.

  “It’s a sign,” hissed the Claw. “Carpe diem.”

  Some of us were a little taken aback that the Claw knew Latin. Still, it wasn’t bad advice. We all turned to Coach Butler. Technically the rule was students could only be taken off campus on official school business in a state-licensed vehicle, specifically one that carried state insurance. But these were unusual times. At 10-0-1, w
e were leading the conference with only three games left before the playoffs. True, forfeiting wouldn’t have hurt us any, but who wants to take a loss when you don’t have to?

  Plus there was the little fact that it was Tuesday, October 31st. It was a chance to be in the number one best place in the whole world for Halloween. It was also the day Julie Minh officially became an adult in the eyes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We were determined to make it one for the record books.

  Coach Butler sighed. Time was a-tickin’, the Salem Witches awaitin’. She looked questioningly at Bert, wondering if he was just waiting for the chance to pull out his handbook of state regulations and write her up. Instead, he looked at her blankly, a white wall in a snowstorm. “Let’s go,” Marge said. We cheered, grabbed our gear, cheered some more, then boogied to our cars. Salem High or bust!

  “Happy Halloween, girls!” Bert called out after us. “And burn the witches!”

  And so here we were with the much-distracted Sue Yoon behind the wheel, Sue trying to pull yet another Parliament out of the pack while also trying to remember who she was. She tossed the butt she had going out the window and gave it another shot. “ ‘That don’t look to me like His Majesty, look to me like the marshal.’ ”

  “Nailed it,” said Abby.

  “Yeah, but you sound like that kid on Diff’rent Strokes,” said AJ Johnson. (Everyone’s a critic!) She cleared her throat and gave us a demo. “What chu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”

  “I’m supposed to be a slave who once lived in the Caribbean,” said Sue. “Maybe I should have a little island attitude.”

  Island attitude? Gary Coleman did not have island attitude. According to the show’s raison d’être, Arnold Jackson and his brother, Willis, were from Harlem and now living in a Central Park penthouse with Mr. Drummond and Kimberly. Ain’t nothing islandy about that. AJ shook her head but decided to let it drop. Thinking all black people had the flavor of the islands in them was like when other kids conflated Korea with China, walking past Sue and sneezing the word “chink” into their hand. For the most part, AJ and Sue were allies. To AJ’s way of thinking, there were only a certain number of brown girls at Danvers High, and by “brown” what she really meant was nonwhite. They had to stick together, even if one of them was doing brownness wrong.