by CeeCee James
I spit some grass from my teeth and started working on the thistles stuck in my pants. They hurt, but I wasn’t going to show it.
David slapped his leg as he laughed at me. “You’re sure lucky you don’t have to be a cowboy! You’d starve!”
I glared at him to get him to shut up. So far, it wasn’t working. “I’m gonna head home.” I grumbled.
“Awww don’t be a sore loser!” David said.
“I can’t lose! You saw me on that horse!” I shouted back. I crossed the field and scooted under the fence.
Logan trotted after us. “Hey, don’t go! There’s lots more we can do.”
Just then, we heard the shriek of the train whistle. The tracks took a tight corner there, and the train always slowed to take that bend.
Another idea started to form in my head. They didn’t think I was brave enough to be a cowboy? I’d show them. “Want to see something cool?” I called over my shoulder.
“What?”
“What are you going to do?”
I could see the train now as it came along the curve. The vibrating noise reached right inside my guts and shook them. First, the engine chugged past and then the clang of its box cars. I started to jog alongside it. I couldn’t even think about what I was going to do, otherwise I’d chicken out.
I let the cars pass me while I looked for an opportunity. A yellow one came along with a ladder welded in its side. My muscles burned as I gave an extra burst of speed, and caught the metal rung with my hand. The momentum lifted me right off my feet. I tucked my legs up and over the edge of the box car.
David and Logan’s faces were white and small by the time I looked back. They started to run, but they’d never catch up. I waved at them, then the train took me round the bend and out of their sight.
Fireworks went off inside me, and I tipped my head and laughed. I couldn’t believe I’d done it. I may not be famous like Dad when he played baseball, but this was almost as good.
After a quick check inside the car, I sat on the edge of the boxcar and let my legs dangle. The inside was empty and smelled damp. The floor was streaked with black stains like oil spills.
The trees flew by as the train began to pick up speed on the straight stretch. My eyebrows wrinkled as I watched the blurry grass zip past. It suddenly seemed a heap of a lot easier to jump on then off. With the way the train was accelerating, I realized the chance of getting off was about to be gone. I stood up and hung to the cars side, lurching back and forth with the momentum.
I was about to be stuck.
After a few deep breaths to steady myself, I leaped. “Geronimo!” I tucked into a ball and landed with a roll on the hill. For a few seconds, I lay there in the grass taking inventory if anything felt broken, then jumped up with a shout.
I did it! I guess I sure could ride a train even if I couldn’t ride a horse.
The sun beat a hot circle on the top of my head as I walked the tracks back to David and Logan. I couldn’t help but grin to think of how proud Dad would be of me, even though I couldn’t chance telling him.
“Hey! A tiny shout made me look up. David was in the distance, running for me, with Logan on his trail. When my brother got closer his face relaxed with relief.
I trotted up to meet them.
“You’re okay!” David put his hands on his knees and took some deep breaths. “I thought you were going to Alaska!”
“Alaska?” I said.
“Yeah! Or China!”
“Trains don’t drive over the ocean, you dork.”
Logan arrived just then. “Whoa, you just rode the train.”
I nodded. Beat that!
The three of us walked back on the tracks. We had a contest to see who could walk the rail the longest without falling off. Logan said he won, and then David pushed him, then I said I won, and they both pushed me. When we got to our bikes, we grabbed them and peddled down the path.
I could hear Mom and Dad fighting right when we broke through the tree line into our back yard. Logan blushed and looked down at his front tire.
I darted a glance at him, heat rising to my face, too. “See ya tomorrow, okay Logan?” and spun towards the house.
Up ahead, I noticed a brand new truck in the driveway.
“Beat you there!” I shouted to David and raced towards the truck.
It was a beauty, yellow- glass flecked paint and shiny chrome trim. I dumped my bike by its bumper and rubbed my hand down the smooth fender, then swung up on the driver’s step and peered inside.
Dad must have seen me because he yelled through the open kitchen window, “Ain’t she pretty?” He came out to the porch with a beer in his hand.
Seeing the beer can flash in the sunlight made me feel like I was on the train again, only this time there was no way off. I grabbed the side mirror to keep from falling.
Mom was right behind him. “You’re so selfish! How can you let me drive that piece of crap car and go buy yourself a new truck?”
He gave a sheepish grin, but by the sparkle in his eye I could see he was proud. He brought the beer up to his lips.
“Always easier to ask forgiveness then permission, boys,” he said with a wink at us.
She kept going. “And look at that! I thought you said you were going to quit drinking?”
“I’m fine, woman.”
“Maybe you want to knock a few more holes in the wall, huh?” she said, her hands cradling her belly.
He crumpled the can and threw it over his shoulder at the trash bin. It hit the rusty container and ricocheted into the grass.
“You keep this up, and you’ll be jobless again!” Mom warned.
Dad walked across the yard to the truck and waved me aside with a deep frown on his face. “Get out of here. Go in to your Ma.” He climbed in and started the truck, gassed it a few times so we could hear it roar, then tore down the driveway in a cloud of dust.
Mom gave a small scream of frustration. She paced in a circle, the same two lines wrinkling between her eyebrows, then called David and me over. “Get your stuff. We’re going to Grandma’s.”
It only took a few minutes to jam our clothes into our back packs, before climbing into Mom’s faded blue Datsun. She slid her belly behind the wheel and started the car, being careful of the plywood board that lay across the rusty hole in the floor.
Chapter 4
Six months had passed and summer had arrived. I’d just turned eight, and life had taken a lot of turns for the better in the last few months. Best of all, Dad had quit drinking again.
The wind whistled through the hole in the Datsun’s floor. Mom absent-mindedly nudged the board back over it with her foot, before stepping back on the gas. Her right hand rested on the baby seat next to her where my new brother, Willie, was sound asleep. She smiled when she looked at him and gave his bundled little body a couple of pats.
I leaned my head back and watched the trees fly past the window. With one eye closed, I stared down my arm balanced on the door frame. In my mind, my hand was a scythe, and I was trimming the tops of all the signs and bushes along the road’s edge. Zip! Zip! Zip!
Paper crunched loudly next to me, yanking me from my reverie. I whipped my head around to look. My brother had shimmied his rear off the seat to get a rock out of his front pocket, and in his wiggling, smushed my brown lunch bag.
“You ding-bat! Look what you did!” I pointed to the wobbled up bag. I leaned over and punched his lunch.
“Ow! You dork! I didn’t mean to!” He dove down on my bag landing on his elbow. He ground it in while sticking his tongue at me.
My eyebrows flew up. I grabbed his lunch and whipped it against the seat a few times before throwing it back.
He scowled and grabbed a fist full of sandwich through the bag. He squeezed it as hard as he could, leaving the bag molded like clay when he let go.
“Boys!” Mom yelled from the front seat. We both jumped with surprise. She pulled the car to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes, all of us jer
king against the seat belts. “What the heck is going on back there?”
We pointed at each other and then to our destroyed lunch bags. Mom snatched the bags from us and unfolded the ruined fronts. My bag was clearly marked in black ink, “David,” and his, “Jim.” She rolled her eyes. “I can’t believe you two.” She switched the bags around and handed them back.
The two of us held our busted lunches on our laps and stared frigidly out our separate windows.
Mom looked over her shoulder for traffic and eased out on the road. She glanced in the rearview mirror at us, her face flushed with heat. “I want brotherly love here. You two pray for each other.” Silence from the back seat. “I mean right now.”
I sighed and started first, the well-worn prayer rolling off my tongue in monotone, “Thank you God for my brother. I forgive him.”
Then it was David’s turn. “Thank you God for my brother. Please help him to be a better brother.”
“What?” I said, “Mom!”
He smiled. I gave him my Darth Vader glare.
Mom sighed again. “You boys better be good today. Watch out for nails. Stay out of the way. And for God’s sake, quit fighting!” Then under her breath, “What am I going to do when your dad’s gone?”
Dad was leaving on a missionary trip down to Mexico with a team to build a foster-home. When I thought of him making a home for little orphaned children it made me feel all warm inside. The whole church was proud of him, and made a big deal about how he was on the right track now. I remember the pastor shaking Dad’s hand, “You’re a good man, and you’ve got a good heart. It’s just that alcohol that kept you chained down.”
Mom turned the Datsun down a dirt road that was surrounded by old growth fir, and we bumped along it for a few miles. Dad’s yellow truck appeared up ahead, parked on the side of the road next to a driveway that disappeared uphill. Mom pulled alongside it.
“Hop out you two.” She nodded to us, before rummaging in the glove box for her sunglasses. “I need to get back home to all my packing.”
I flung open the door and climbed outside the car. Looking around for David, I took a big sniff of the fresh air, drawing it as deep into my body as possible. I could almost taste the thick scent of old leaves and wet grass.
Dad stepped out of his truck and walked over to her car window. They talked for a few minutes while David and I ran up the long driveway.
Mom and Dad had bought this property on the hill and were in the process of building a home. So far, we had a garage with a concrete floor and a loft. Dad had cut down four trees on the property and lined them up to use as the corner posts of the garage.
My parents weren’t too far into the project when the money began to run low. Now, the new plan was to make the garage livable for us until they could afford to build the house.
Mom drove away, and Dad followed after us up the driveway. He waved us over to him. “We’re clearing some rocks out of this beast.”
I knew that by “beast” he meant the driveway, nearly a quarter mile long with thick ruts from the past heavy rains.
“You boys are lucky! You arrived just in time to see the show.”
As soon as we got to the top I saw the offending boulder. It had a bunch of wires that escaped from of a hole drilled into its center connecting to dynamite. The wires trundled along about a hundred feet over what had once been an old river bed and disappeared inside a truck parked to one side with its hood up. A man was tinkering with the battery trying to attach the wires.
Dad whistled.
The man looked up.
“Joe! Wave to my boys.”
Joe held up a hand.
“That’s Joe. He’s one of the new neighbors. He set up some explosives in the rock over there.” I took a step towards the rock to see. “Well, hold up there, whipper-snapper. I want you boys back here.” Dad waved his arm to indicate the woods. “And wait until I say it’s all clear. Got it?”
David and I both nodded and ran off for the woods.
“We’re just about ready now,” Joe shouted to Dad.
Joe strode over to the boulder to check on the connection.
David’s eyes shined at me from behind the next tree over, and I returned his grin.
“Fire in the hole!”
Joe started to run, all elbows and knees.
A brilliant light flashed through the trees. I coughed out a gasp as the enormous Whump blasted the air. It pushed me back and forced my arms up to protect my face. The explosion sucked at my eardrums, as the trees vibrated with an invisible wave.
After the echo was gone everyone around me whooped in joy. It was like the best firework ever. Their whoops cut off at the sound of rocks crashing through the branches as they fell from high in the sky. I flung my arms back across my head and curled into a ball while rocks the size of footballs smashed about me.
No one moved.
As the silence settled in I peered out through crossed arms. David peeked back at me. We both burst out in laughter.
“Look at that rock,” I said. It had landed not two feet away from me, split jagged and sparkling in the sun.
Just then I felt a tickle of a creepy crawly up my leg. I shook my leg hard to jiggle it out.
“You hid on top of an anthill!” David pointed and laughed.
I waved him away and walked out to the driveway, It looked like the moon’s surface, all pocked from the falling rocks.
“Did you see that, boys? That thing blew near to kingdom-come!” Dad walked around the remnants of the boulder with a happy grin. “Start clearing the rocks and stack them over to the side there.” He gestured with his hands. “We’ve got a lot of work to do before we can move in.”
I looked around and groaned. The garage needed a roof, the driveway was a mess. Heck, we still needed to get power and water up to the garage. We did have a long way to go.
*****
After gathering rocks for a while, I left David and headed up the hill to where Dad was working on the garage roof. Dad was high at the peak, straddling one of the roof supports. I climbed the ladder to the loft located under where he was at. The bottoms of my shoes made the metal ladder steps ring.
Dad and Joe crawled along the roof rafters like monkeys, as they nailed the trusses across the beams to support the roof. “One two, heave!” Their deep voices rang as they slid another truss up onto the roof and held it balanced along the roof ridge.
Dad steadied the truss against the center pole beam and reached into the leather carpenter’s bag around his waist for a nail.
He lost his grip, and it began to slide. “Look out below!” he called. The truss fell on end and hit me square on the top of my head, pounding me into the loft floor like I was a nail.
Flashes of light overshadowed the pain. I reeled without control in a shroud of stars and blackness.
A tiny voice, the only part of me still able of rational thought, started to yell, “Fall down! Fall down.” I was barely conscious of the edge of the loft, but realized if I went over, it would be a long way down to the concrete below. I forced my knees to buckle.
Dad jumped off the narrow rafter and down to the loft floor. “Hey? You okay?”
My ears rang in my skull. I tried to focus on his face. Dad’s head swam in circles and divided into two. Vomit rose up my throat and burned. I closed my eyes.
“You’re okay,” Dad patted my arm. “Rub some dirt on it!” He climbed back up onto the roof. I lay there for a while until I felt like I could sit without throwing up. Slowly, I rotated to my side while my pulse thrummed in my head. I dragged myself up to my knees, then grabbed a support pole to get to my feet. After a few minutes of hanging onto the pole I slithered down the ladder to the concrete floor below, my feet missing a few steps.
My head felt heavy as I looked for a place to sit, finally staggering across the yard to a maple tree, feeling like I’d just got off the tea-cup ride at the fair. Once in the shade, I lay down with my arm flung over my eyes.
Whe
n I woke up it was dark, and Dad was calling for me.
Slowly, I crawled out from the tree and walked across the front yard to him.
“Where’d ya go?” he asked.
I pointed.
“Oh,” he smirked, “lying down on the job? Don’t you know a real man doesn’t get hurt? You’ve got to be strong!”
I gently tapped the lump on my head, and he laughed and shook his head.
“Good grief, you look like a rhinoceros!” He patted me on the shoulder before pulling a soda out of his lunch pail. “Aww, you’ll be okay. Here, have a drink. You look a bit parched.”
I took the soda and cracked open the tab. He studied me for a second. A flash of doubt crossed his face. “You know, better not tell your Ma. She’s kind of busy with the baby, and stressed about me leaving for Mexico.”
I nodded.
*****
That night, I held my new baby brother, a squalling red-faced little bit that so far I’d only seen being bundled, burped, fed, or changed. He felt like a pile of beanbags in my arms. “Hey, I’m your big brother.” I whispered down to him. “One day you’re going to get to clean my room.” His finger curled around mine, and I swear he smiled. Made my headache nearly go away.
Chapter 5
Icy snow hit the front window with sharp little ticks. Rosy, our black dog, stood up from where she’d been lying by the woodstove. She gave herself some good, hard shakes, then spun a couple of turns before she flopped back down again.
The woodstove was a beast and glowed red on the sides. But it heated the garage-house nice and toasty, even managing to warm the loft up the ladder where my brother and I had our beds.
It was a lazy day. Mom had two animal sock puppets on her hands playing with my almost two-year-old brother. I sat cross-legged at the kitchen table studying a board game, blue and red pieces set up to defend our sides. David was next to me, holding a mug of hot chocolate. Dad sat across from me and watched me with a smirk, his forefinger and thumb wiping down his mustache. We were playing Stratego.
My brain hurt from trying to defeat him. He was so good at strategizing at this game. Earlier, I’d captured his spy and finally thought I was getting the edge on him, but I still couldn’t find his flag.