by M. J. Fields
I looked behind me to see where my mom was, to see if she was worried. She hadn’t even noticed I had run off.
For a brief moment, I wanted to say yes. I wanted the kite, and I wanted him to take the ribbon. But then he would have to carry the burden of responsibility, and that would make his smile fade. I was sure of it.
Before I could answer him, he pulled off one of the kite’s tail ribbons and stood.
I cupped my hand over my eyes as I looked up at him, shielding it from the sun’s blaring glare, wanting to know if he was still smiling.
He thrust his hand out, the one holding my ribbon and now a part of the kite’s tail. “Here. Now you can have both.”
I took it and looked at the thick orange ribbon, inspecting it. There was a round, orange cartoon character all over it. Then I looked up at the kite, seeing it had the same orange-looking cartoon character on it. I looked back at him to see he was smiling … still smiling.
“His name’s Otto.”
I couldn’t help smiling back at him. But then, I didn’t want to smile at him, because that meant he could take it away—the smile—and make me crash, make me sad.
“Looks like a Lou to me.”
He started to laugh, and it was so loud it startled me and made me jump.
He grabbed my hand. “You fall, you’ll end up with sand in your suit. Don’t fall.”
I nodded as I steadied myself. That was when I heard her call my name.
“I gotta go.” I tried to hand him back the ribbon, but he shook his head.
“It’s yours.”
I looked at my hand, at the blue ribbon, and pondered whether to give it to him or keep it when I heard my name again. I looked from the ribbon and back to the tall, smiling boy framed in the sun.
“You better go.” He nodded toward my mom.
I nodded. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” He smirked. “Lou.”
Back in the now, I hold the ribbon up and look at it as the wind blows its end about. Then I close my eyes and think of that day as I release it and watch the wind whisk it away.
Like the kite, it blows higher and higher until it’s gone, and with it, the last of what has held me back. All the burdens, all the responsibilities I had put upon me, knowing they were more a weight than a means to grow.
Turning, I walk into Grand Central Station and take in her beauty as I walk toward the track that I pray will lead me to a place where smiles are in abundance and my life will begin.
Sitting in the cushioned train seat, I close my eyes. The fear of the unknown takes ahold of me, but just a little.
When the woman beside me taps my hand, I open my eyes. She hands me a tissue, and I force a smile and thank her.
A total stranger showing me kindness.
While I wipe my eyes, she asks me what my name is as the train leaves the station, as I leave behind my past.
“My name is Keeka.”
And from that moment on, it would be.
Summer Before College Senior Year
Trucker
Imagine Dragons, Whatever It Takes, is streaming through my ear buds as I look over at my best friend Logan, whose hands are on his knees as he tries to catch his breath from our morning run up and down the stairs at our hometown state park.
“Rise and grind time, Links,” I pop out my earbud and toss his own words back at his ass from last summer, and he flips me the finger. “One more time.”
As I start up the stairs, he yells from behind me, “Fuck that. We have two weeks before we need to start this shit again.”
I turn around and laugh. “You wanna be the best, you train better.”
“You’re looking at the best,” he retorts, still panting.
I laugh again as I turn around and ascend the uneven stone steps two at a time.
“You may wanna step it up,” I yell back, pushing myself harder than ever before.
Fucker’s right, though. He’s been the best for the three years we have played SU football together.
This year, it changes.
When I hear him behind me, I push myself harder, moving faster, focusing on what’s in front of me, and not what’s behind me.
Eye on the fucking prize.
The prize is me.
I stop once I get to the pavilion at the top.
Logan shakes his head as he slows his speed and pants out, “What the fuck has gotten into you?”
I drop the boom. “You turned down pros.”
He closes his eyes and pulls his hat down, shielding them.
“Now, why the fuck did you do that?” I demand.
He turns his back to me. Interesting since I think the reason he turned it down was so he could be with me. I know he’s as loyal to our plan as I am.
The plan: to go pro together.
“I wouldn’t have turned it down for you,” I drop the truth.
“Wouldn’t expect you to,” he says, turning around to face me again.
“But had I, I would’ve told you.”
“Would’ve told you, too, Trucker, but there’s a chance you’d have told my old man.”
Logan’s father, Lucas, has always been my mentor, and he was more a father to me than my own. I owe him everything. But the truth is, Logan and I are tighter than that, and the fact that he thinks that, it pisses me off.
I poke him in the chest. “Not a chance in hell, and you should fucking know that. Jesus, Links, you and I are beyond that shit. You know everything about me. I trust you with shit I trust with no one. I expect the same.”
He crosses his arms over his chest and looks down.
“And in effort to continue with transparency, I’m going to be number fucking one this year. And I’m going pro.”
To that, he looks up and smirks, eyebrow raised to royal level. Then he nods. “You think so?”
“I fucking know so.”
“Prove it, punk.” He laughs as I run past him to the stairs.
At the bottom, he’s right next to me, smiling like a fucking idiot, an idiot who’s my best friend and has been for as long as I can remember.
Together, we run the path back through the park and to my truck.
The parking lot is packed with our local high school’s sports teams.
“Fall sports signups.” Logan nods. “Lucky fuckers are just starting out. We only have one more year left.”
“We,” I tell him, “have many years left.”
He nods once as he pulls off his sneakers and tosses them into the back of my 1969 Ford Bronco then grabs his slides.
I run my hand over the dark brown, metallic paint, admiring the way she shines, when my slides nail me in the chest.
“Let’s go.”
Laughing, I ask, “What? You don’t want to hang out and see if she—”
“Trucker, shut the fuck up,” he warns.
“Denial isn’t a river in Egypt, brother.” I continue to laugh. “But it’s not far from Paris.”
“Her name’s not Paris,” he whispers a warning hiss. “And she’s not into sports.”
“Then, why’s she here?” I ask as I watch her pull into the parking lot.
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s roll,” Logan says as he opens the truck door.
I pull my sweat-drenched shirt over my head slowly, knowing it pisses him off when she—London, not Paris, the girl he hasn’t been crushing on for years—looks at any male within a ten-mile radius of her. Then I take the shirt and rub it over my head, drying some of the sweat as I look at him, making sure to pop my muscles and laugh while I do it.
“Better check yourself, fucker.” He calls me fucker when he wants to piss me off. Any other guy pulls that shit, he does it once. Logan doesn’t bother me one bit.
“Logan!”
I laugh when I hear London’s sister yell his name.
“The fuck,” he hisses at me.
“Lexi, come on; I have things to do,” London yells from behind her.
He glares at me before stepping back out a
nd turning toward Lexington, who is running straight toward him and not slowing down, even as she jumps at him.
“Hey, Paris.” I give London a little chick wave, and she rolls her eyes at me as she gets closer.
“You going out for football?” Logan smiles at little Paris when he sets her down.
“Not if I’m gonna sweat like you,” she groans.
“If you’re playing the right way, you will.” Logan messes up her hair, smiling like he does with all the kids.
He likes kids. I sure as hell don’t.
London throws her nose in the air. “Come on, Lexi; we have shit to do.”
“How about you watch your mouth around her?” Logan snaps at her, which makes me chuckle silently.
Lexington sighs with exasperation. “Ever since she got boobs, she thinks she’s grown.”
“How about both of you?” London snaps back as her face turns blood red and she points to them. “Mind your business.”
Lexington laughs as she runs to the line forming in the pavilion for fall sports signups.
“Maybe if you didn’t make it everyone’s business, I’d mind mine,” Logan hisses at London.
“What the hell are you talking about?” she huffs and rolls her eyes.
“Cover yourself up, for fuck’s sake,” he snaps.
“It’s summer, Logan,” she snaps back. Walking away, she then tells him, “Girls wear less clothes in the summer.”
Before he trips over his shit, I jump in and start the truck. “Let’s roll.”
He looks at me, eyes blazing.
I reach up and turn on the radio.
“Don’t fucking do it,” he hisses.
“ ‘I never knew that a kid like me …’ ” I start to sing.
“The fuck, Trucker,” he snarls, opening the door as I turn up the radio anyway.
“Boom” by P.O.D blares as I hit the gas and run over the cement in front of my truck, gunning it so we fishtail out of the parking lot.
He looks at me, pissed off, and I grin as I grab my shades and throw them on.
He reaches over and jabs me in the arm with a right.
“ ‘Is that all you got?’ ” I sing along with the music.
He grabs his shades and throws them on. “Such an asshole.”
“ ‘Here comes the boom’ mobile.” I laugh, and so does he.
I pull into the driveway and stop at the end of it. One more summer, I think as I look at the double-wide that once was new enough, pretty enough, to heal a broken family, but now resembles it.
The grass is overgrown, some of the skirting has blown off, there’s trash all over the yard, and the fencing around the garden I helped create is now laying on the ground, twisted and torn.
I run my hand over the dash of my boom baby and smile to myself, knowing as fucked up as it was when I got it, it’s shining like new now.
I busted my ass for this truck and continued busting my ass to bring it back to life. Took years of hard work, and I’m fucking glad it did, because now I know damn well I will take care of Boom; make sure she’s shining forever.
I hit the gas and pull up the driveway, throwing stones behind me. Then I stop next to the house and throw it in park, wondering why I declined Logan’s offer to stay with him until my dad got back from his cross-country haul in four days. Hell, I had been staying with him for a week now.
“Fucking bullshit,” I grumble as I turn the truck off and open the door. “Can’t take the time to take care of the place; why not just stay in the fucking truck and on the road?”
I try to ignore the mess as I walk up the steps when my fucking foot breaks through the third step.
“Fucking shithole!” I curse, pulling my leg free.
An hour later, I have managed to fix the stairs, a skill I learned from Logan and his dad, not my old man. Two hours later, the lawn is picked up and I’m fucking elbow deep in the garage, trying to get the lawnmower running, a skill I did learn from my old man. With that realization comes a little less resentment that this is how I have fucking lived my whole entire twenty-two years.
“Fuck!” I yell as the wrench slides out of my hand and I jam my finger. “Fucking cocksucker!”
I want to kick the bench over and watch the worthless fucking tools fall onto the dirt fucking ground, but instead, I step back and nearly fall ass over tea kettle over the push mower.
I hear giggling and look up as two little sets of eyes jump back behind the garage.
Pissed, I storm out to see who the hell it is, seeing the two culprits run their asses off to the tree line, laughing harder now.
“Keep your asses over there, too!”
Fucking kids and trailer parks, I think to myself as I storm back into the garage and grab the push mower.
“You don’t start, and I’m fucking done here,” I tell it as I pull it out of the garage. “Light a fucking match and see how long it takes for this entire row of mobile mansions to be gone.”
I give the cord a yank and huff when the fucking thing fires up.
“Well, aren’t you just the neighborhood savior?”
I swear I hear the little shits giggling again, but when I turn around, no one’s there.
“Fuckers give me the creeps. Probably goddamned inbred.” I push the mower, and it threatens to quit. “Need a fucking John Deere up in this bitch to cut down the goddamned hayfield of a fucking yard.”
I swear I hear them laughing again and turn again. Nothing.
“Fucking Deliverance little bastards,” I snarl as I turn around and immediately feel something hit the back of the head.
I let go of the mower and see them. I point a finger and release the handle on the mower as I hurry toward them. However, when the mower doesn’t shut down, I turn back and see it moving by itself, heading right toward the house.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” I chase after it as the two towheads laugh their fool heads off.
When I get to it, I hit the emergency kill switch and hear one of them say, “Yep, he took too many sacks last season. Mush for brains.”
I whip around and run toward them.
One, clearly the brighter one, runs into the woods while the other stands frozen.
“You eat too many Tide pods or something? Shouldn’t you be running?”
When his eyes widen and his lip pops out, I slow down, because he looks like he may shit himself.
“Boy, you have two seconds to get your ass back through those trees and stay there, or I’m gonna show you what—” I stop when I feel another blow to the back of my head.
“You leave her alone!”
I turn around and see Billy Sue grab another crab apple off the ground. “You hear me, Trucker Cohen? You leave her alone!”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I say, rubbing the back of my head. “You the one pegging me in the back of the head?”
She looks past me and at the kid. “Sammy, go get on home.”
I don’t look away from Billy Sue. First, because I know she will throw the damn apple, and I know she will hit the intended target. She was the captain of the high school softball team and broke every pitching record in the state. And secondly, she was as big as a fucking house.
Only when I hear Sammy bust out sobbing do I look away.
“I’m a girl!”
For fuck’s sake, I think as I look at the little shit.
Digging real deep, I think of something to make her feel better. “It’s the hat.”
She reaches up, grabs the blue little league hat, and throws it on the ground. “Is not!”
Well, she’s right; it’s not. The girl has a brush cut.
“Why’d you have to cut it all off, Mom? Why!”
“Lice is why,” Billy Sue says, walking toward her while glaring at me. “Couldn’t get rid of it any other way, Sammy; you know that.”
“It’ll grow back,” I assure the little shit.
“Not fast enough!” she cries.
“You could get a wig,” I
say.
By the glare I receive from Billy Sue, that was the wrong damn thing to say.
“Run along home. I’ll be there in a minute.”
After an ass-chewing about thinking I’m better than everyone else on this hill, I end up apologizing to Billy Sue and promising to go to a little league game to cheer on Sammy so the other kids won’t make fun of her as much. Then I push mow her fucking lawn. I’m dog tired and have wished the summer away over a hundred times.
Pretty sad that, as a kid, I lived for the summer. Now … now there’s nothing, and I mean nothing, that compares to the fall.
Celebration Spirits
Trucker
Fresh from a shower, I flop back on my bed in the apartment Logan and I share with a few other teammates in South Campus.
We have been back to ‘Cuse for almost two weeks for practice, preparing for the upcoming season. It’s the last week before college begins, and we have been given the weekend off, which never happens, but the team is tight as hell. Today we were informed that Logan and I are co-captains this year.
Perfect. Absolutely fucking perfect.
Couldn’t be happier to be beside my brother for our final semester here at Syracuse University, a place we came as kids to watch the Orangemen play football and dreamed we would do the same one day. We have been living that dream for three years now.
When my phone rings, I answer it. “What’s up, old man?”
“You’re not getting any younger, Junior,” he replies.
I was named after my father, Lawrence. When I was about five, I asked him once why he didn’t want me to have my own name. He told me to pick one, so I picked Trucker. He smiled, which was unusual, and it stuck.
“Should’ve turned down this haul; been there to have your first legal drink with you, but you know I can’t. Got responsibilities and shit.”
“Tell Lawrence we’re still together,” I hear my mother say over the loud noise inside the Perterbilt’s cab.
Ever since I could remember, my mother, Candace, or Cece as most call her, has been dubbed a free spirit. And my father: the man who keeps taking her back. Sometimes it’s over a year before she will drop back in. Then, she and Dad would fight, the house would be clean when I woke up in the morning, breakfast on the table, and she would be in bed sleeping.