Spud

by Patricia Orvis

  “How about me, first, eh? Show ya how it’s done, huh?” Tim takes off his Cubs t-shirt and stretches his arms, making an act of getting ready to show off. “Who’s gonna hold me?” But before anyone can decline, he’s grabbed Josh and Caden, two classmates, and they’re automatically recruited.

  “One, two,” the counting is going, somewhat coherent, as Tim chugs off the hose on the keg, remarkably managing to get most of the booze into his mouth, but when the group of drunken boys reach seven, there’s a loud boom behind us, scaring the blazes out of everyone, and the excited boys drop him! Drop him sideways, so he reaches for the keg to get a grip on something, and it tumbles on him, spilling its contents all over! While I cringe and hope he isn’t hurt, I secretly shout to myself, Hooray! No keg stand for me! He swearing the f-bomb left and right while we all gaze around stupidly for the source of the boom, and it was only the sound of another raft from the pool popping as the chubby girl was filling it with air to replace the earlier one that was torched. Not a good night for pool accessories!

  I guess I won’t have to keg stand, thank goodness, and Deena is laughing so hard tears come down, so I start laughing, looking ridiculously at the drenched Tim. First water, now beer. The poor kid. He and his Cubs are really having a trying season. I haven’t been this happy in ages.

  Then, she kisses me, again. Bliss! I have a wonderful, new appreciation for strawberry lip gloss!

  All the while, Tim is lying there, swearing, the boys are laughing and high-fiving, and the music keeps going. Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” for sure!

  Deena’s parents decided that was enough, and the evening has calmed down remarkably, with no more alcohol for miners, which their appalled faces at the drinking said it was a major no-no to begin with. Now, for us, it’s just casual conversation and sitting around, but it’s getting near midnight anyway. The party has gotten thinner, and I am about ready to call it a night.

  Right as I start to tell Deena, who’s sitting next to me at a picnic table, in a discussion with her friend, Sam, about the perils of this research paper we all had to write last semester, guess who shows up?

  Hey, hey!” Mike stumbles over to our table and stands guard in front of us, arms crossed in front of his chest. He’s obviously drunk, and his disheveled hair and wrinkled clothes give way to the fact he hasn’t had a very nice night. The stench of alcohol on him is powerful.

  “Mike, what are you doing here?” Deena sighs. “Please, just go.” She runs a hand over her ponytail, nervous and fed up.

  “Gotta get in my two cents, little girl. Hey, Cooper,” he’s looking at me. “You just watch it, buddy. You’re gonna really get it, pal. I… I just watch it. You crummy sh--.” A hard stare at me as he fades his words.

  “Look, I don’t know what’s up, Mike, but I didn’t do anything to you. What’s going on? At the funeral, you were normal and sincere, and now, you’re acting like a prick. What gives?”

  “Shut it, Jack. Jack-ass, Cooper. Haha. Just shut it. I got my reasons. I hate this town. Just watch your back.” He glares over the table, at each of us. He smirks, mumbles something incomprehensible and must decide he’s finished here. A weird encounter. And he doesn’t cause any more of a scene but staggers through the dark yard, mumbling when he almost trips over a lawn chair, toward the road, where it looks like a car is waiting for him. One of his older buddies, no doubt. He climbs into the passenger side, and the car takes off down the road. The darkness prevents being able to tell what kind of car it is, but who really cares? At least, he’s gone. We’re all a little shaken by that display.

  “Sheesh, what’s that suppose to mean?” I ask Deena. “And where did he come from? It’s like he just appeared out of thin air. What the hell did I do? What’s he gonna do?”

  “I don’t know. He’s acting so weird. I wouldn’t think too much of it. He’s been drinking and is just talking out of his head.” She squeezes my hand. “Just shake it off. Don’t let him ruin the night. He’ll probably forget all about it come morning.”

  I don’t want to end the night on a note like Mike’s threats, but I promised Mom I’d be home before one. It’s rare to stay at a place so late for me, but since Deena lives in town, and she’s got a decent family, Mom thought it would be all right. “I should get going, Deena. I have to be home.”

  “You have a ride? You can’t walk home with Mike out there, and it’s so dark and late. You can stay the night. Sleep on the couch or my bedroom floor. No big deal. Just give your mom a call. Come on.”

  At that, she leads me to the house to use the phone, and I really don’t want to argue. I really don’t want to meet whatever is out there anyway, waiting for me at this time of night, even if I do live just blocks away. Mike’s out there somewhere. Shivers.

  Turns out most of us teens stay over, camping on the living room floor. We talk ourselves to sleep by about 2:30 a.m. It’ll be a long day tomorrow, as it’s been a late night, but after my sweet goodnight kiss from my new girlfriend, I think I’ll deal.

  Chapter 16

  “Briing! Briing!” Again, I really dislike waking in this manner. The shrill sound of the phone, right on a table above my head. Someone picks up from another room. Thank God.

  I groggily look around at the scattered bodies of teens, teen boys anyway, slowly waking from last night’s party. The girls camped out on Deena’s bedroom floor. Tim, a few feet from me, has his hair sticking up all over the place, his shirt is missing, and has dirt and grass stains all over his shorts. Now, he’s gonna be feeling it, today.

  “Oh my God!” A loud, loud wail from Deena. “Oh my God!” The loudest indoor yell I’ve ever heard. It sounds like she’s auditioning for Nightmare on Elm Street or something. Totally bloodcurdling and surely gets everyone up in a panic, wide-eyed, now fully awake, looking around.

  “MOM! DAD!” she’s shouting, now appearing from her room, already dressed in another light, flowery sundress.

  “It’s Mike! He’s dead! He’s dead! My God he’s dead! He jumped off the bridge, just like Spud at like three o’clock this morning and drowned! Drowned! Oh my God!” she crying, shouting, turning in circles, unsure what to do with herself. Her parents are on full alert running to her, shushing her, demanding she calm down. What happened?

  Oh my God. Mike. How? Why? This is too unreal. We’re all just standing there, not sure what to say or do. How to react. It’s incomprehensible. Mike’s dead? Mike, who just stumbled through here last night, then went and killed himself? He knew, didn’t he, what he was going to do? He was lost, out of his head, unable to deal with being a part of Spud’s death, losing his girl, and the flack from his parents. Oh my. Mike’s dead. Gone forever. Just like Spud.

  Deena’s parents have shushed her, and hugged her, and she’s crying like mad. Her mom is holding her in the chair, and her dad’s off in another room to the phone. Her mom is trying to get the story from Deena. Everyone is murmuring and anxious and cannot believe this news. By now, the girls are out in the living room with the rest of us, all a chaotic mess.

  “What happened?”

  “How?”

  “Dead?”

  “Mike?”

  “What?”

  These are the random questions that keep repeating, until
Deena is calm enough to explain, but still crying. “I guess he left here, all drunk, and they went to the same place Spud jumped from. I don’t know why that jerk he was with would even think about driving out there. If he even did. Maybe Mike took the wheel himself. Who knows? But he got there, jumped, and drowned. His buddy called the cops from a payphone, and they quickly found him, and he was already dead!” She bursts into gushing tears again, clinging to her mom.

  Oh my. Nobody really knows what to do.

  “How awful!”

  “Deena, so sorry!”

  “Poor Mike!”

  “Not again!”

  “Oh, Deena, I’m so sorry!”

  “Jack, are you okay?”

  “Yeah, Jack, this isn’t good. So sorry. Not again. To relive this.”

  “And so sorry about Spud. Tried not to mention it as we wanted you to enjoy a night without having to think about his death. But, man, so sorry.”

  And on and on. After about forty-five minutes, it’s a lot calmer, there’s more news, more details, but the same basic story. Slowly, phone calls are made; kids take off, numbly head home.

  We’re all in shock. Comforting Deena, her parents comforting all of us. Her mom talked to Mike’s mom, learned he truly drunkenly jumped off the bridge. He had his buddy take him to the park, some excuse about leaving his ball glove there, then ran from his pal and up the bridge and jumped. His buddy didn’t realize Mike headed toward the bridge until it was too late to catch up to him.

  They were both drunk. No chance at that time of night to survive a jump. He wouldn’t even have been able to see the shoreline from the water on account of it being so dark. Why? This is just so screwed up.

  Hugging Deena one last time today, I know I best get home. My parents are going to be freaked when they find out. They likely already know. It’s not that they had any attachment to Mike, but another death like Spud’s in the same way is ridiculous. I tell Deena I’ll call her, give her my sympathies again, thank her parents, and trot home.

  Roasting and sticky from the creeping humidity, I look up to see the sky is dark and eerie, but it’s only nine o’clock in the morning. Fitting. Maybe it will rain, I think. But then, that’s not what I should be thinking about. The weather should be the last thing on my mind, but for some reason, it’s not. I have no idea what to expect now. More bad news, and oh, my.

  The amazing thing? And maybe a sign of something? Right as I get to the door of our apartment, which is open to welcome me in, as my parents are likely expecting me, it starts to pour. Like mad. The rain that we have needed forever is drenching us, drenching the house, the cars, the grass, the trees. It’s like tears are falling from above. About all these tragedies? About the suffering? Is it finally time to cry and make things better? Coming down like solid sheets. I mean, it hasn’t been as hot as the week when Spud died, but it’s still been hot and dry. Just not fire-breathing hot.

  The brittleness of the surviving grasses and trees has been evident, and the farmers with their corn and tomatoes and stuff have been pulling their hair out in frustration with Mother Nature. Now, when least expected, the rain pays a very nasty, yet welcoming visit.

  Thunder clapping, lightning buzzing like zigzag flashes of yellow death through the darkened sky. It’s ridiculous how it waited until I reached the safety of my front door. The loud rumbling of the thunder vibrates through my whole body. The lightning like pictures flashing nonstop. Burns my eyes. I love it.

  “Jack!” My mom hops out of her chair in the living room as I step inside, her face crinkled with concern. “Are you okay? We heard.” She grabs me into a tight hug, smelling so sweet and fragrant, like fresh flowers. These ladies and their perfume stuff. What a neat invention. Anyway…

  “Um, geez,” I stumble on my words. “It’s so unreal.” She’s let go, and I sit on the floor cross-legged across from my parents who are in their respective chairs.

  I fiddle with the threads of our carpet as I talk, looking down, explaining things, rambling, letting it all out.

  “I mean, first Spud, then Mike comes to Deena’s late last night, all threatening that I better watch my back, like so out of it. Then he stumbled off into some car. Nobody heard any more. Then this morning Deena’s phone rings, and she comes wailing out of her room with the news. Mom,” I’m looking up now, “he knew the dangers of that damn bridge! Why drink and go jump off in the middle of the night? It’s nuts! Why?”

  “He must have been so troubled, Jack. Thinking about how he was with Spud, then after the drinking he’d done last night. It was a stupid action that he likely would not have done if he’d been sober. A tragedy.” She’s shaking her head. Dad is, too. “This town didn’t need it. And my God I hope now they do something about people jumping from that bridge.”

  We sit in silence for a few minutes. My dad has pretty much been shaking his head, throwing out the occasional “Damn.” I start to get up, but change my mind, and instead go into another crying spree and tell my parents everything I loved about and will miss about Spud and how hard it is and how unfair it is. I cry and talk and cry and talk. They listen and comfort me and listen some more. Mom talks, too, sharing how she loved Spud, and Dad throws in his few bits, too. I don’t know where Zoë is, but it doesn’t really matter. I know she loved him.

  By this point, Mom has joined me on the floor, is holding me like Deena’s mom held her, and I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or anything. I cry like a kid who fell off his bike and needs his mom to fix his scraped knee. And we talk some more, probably repeating things four or five times. I don’t know. I just need to cry, and I need to talk. To my parents. To talk to them, to apologize to them, to listen to their pain, too.

  Then, after an hour of this, we slowly fall silent. Mom’s strong embrace is still around me, Dad thoughtful in his chair.

  We sit like that for about five silent minutes, the only sound the raging storm outside, which has outdone the man on the Weather Channel who is giving the latest on the unexpected storms.

  Finally, with a loud boom of thunder to bring me out of my reverie, I kiss Mom on the cheek, get up and hug dad, thank them, and say I think I need a shower. They tease all I have to do is step outside. Lightens the mood.

  I thank them, say I’ll pass at Mother Nature’s version of a shower, and head upstairs, now fully exhausted, but with an odd sense of relief. About getting so much out. Truly, I hope it pours all day. I don’t feel like facing anyone anymore right now. I don’t want to even leave my room after I clean up. Too much to think about. It’s all happened so fast. But finally, I’ve done some talking. With the ‘rents. Felt kind of refreshing, too.

  Lying on my bed, in nothing but the track shorts I got at the state meet in eighth grade, I glance again through the paper that had the article on Spud. Never having paid much attention before to the other pieces in there, just the Spud stuff, I now notice some important information. And bored, I figure I might as well take it in. In the week he died, Chicago’s own death total from the heat reached 739. That’s just nuts. Over seven hundred people died? As a result of the weather? And it’s not like it was from floods or tornadoes or anything like that. Just temperatures, and all the problems resulting.

  Damn. 739 dead, plus Spud. And the ran
dom others not actually from Chicago. Kids, pets, seniors, the sick. From the suburbs, small towns. Those that only made local papers. Chicago, surely, had enough to deal with to include in their own paper, without adding to it the problems of surrounding towns and cities.

  The paper talks about how hospital morgues got too full for all the dead bodies, and they had to keep the dead in refrigerated trucks. How hospitals got overcrowded and had to turn other people away. Wow. The mayor is gonna face his own heat for this. How can such a large, productive city not have enough resources to cool down its residents? Why did so many innocent people have to be victims?

  It’s not fair, but really, a lot in life just isn’t fair. It’s all something we need to learn from, that’s for sure. I don’t know exactly what I should learn from what happened to Spud and Mike, but I’ve got some ideas.

  Like some risks aren’t worth taking. Drinking underage isn’t very bright. Tragedies happen, and even though we’re young, we’re not immune, not invincible. It can happen to us. It’s hard to deal with death, to accept never seeing your best buddy again, but you have to. You have to keep pushing, keep alive, even if for the one who died.

  It reminds me of The Outsiders, that book we had to read in seventh grade, when Ponyboy was in a funk after Johnny died, and Darry, his big brother, told him he had to snap out it. That it’s hard, and you gotta keep living life, can’t just give up. Live it the best you can, maybe in remembrance for the one you lost, if you have to, but you can’t stop. You can’t. Sure, take time to mourn, to cry, to question, to rant and rave, but then you gotta keep on. Can’t stop. If you do, you let the bad forces beat you, I think.

  I gotta accept this, hard as it is, and I gotta keep living. For Spud. I gotta be strong, accomplish my goals. For him. Play ball. Drive. Graduate. Have a great career. Get married. Name my first boy after him. I guess. I’m not sure, but I think I now know I can’t just give up.