The Fridge

If I have to be honest at any given point in my life it can be now and today and this very moment in writing. My head is rushing and my blood pressure doesn't feel normal. My alarm clock is the sound of skaters in the morning. The songs have been recording are half assed in terms of strength in vocals but take into the consideration that most of these songs have been recorded in my room inspired by lack of sleep and the 90's and nicotine and a weird long slow start to this year.

donuts revisited

the first time i listened to jdilla's donuts was in 2007. Sam and Will were staying at the capri because they wanted to be living in the city and i stayed there one night to eat burgers and get stoned. Justin, being an insomniac, was well fit and plump with inspiration for stories at that motel in the marina district. Will had gone out to sell weed and sam rolled a blunt for us in the bathroom and set up the speakers. Right before he sparked the blunt he put on donuts. 

You know that ecstasy. We all do. When every one of your senses is pierced and you are wholly consumed by not just the music but the moment. 

I remember hallucinating all sort of images with my eyes open, in my mind, lots of video game like scenarios, exploding fireworks, stars, dreams remembers, and when the album was over i couldn't tell if what i had heard was actually in the music or not, that my mind had created an episode from that noise.

the noise.

That's what I try to remind myself during days like these. 

It's about the music.

It's about what comes after the music and what was before it. 

It's a time in my life where I can't ever experience silence. Sometimes I get that feeling, the feeling of silence, like before waking up and perhaps when waking up from alcohol. But the feeling is more like an emptiness that hovers around and about, but unlike a void nothing is missing and the noise is always there, especially in the warehouse and at my mothers when the trains run by, and in the mission when the cars drive and people yell and laugh and cough outside of all those windows. not even in darkness can I find silence like I've tried in forests or in open fields. Still the noise of the all the animals around, and like the waves of the beach at night, exudes the air of a symphony. 

It's been a while since I've been to the symphony but in ways there is one happening anyway.

Henry Miller on the meal, Tropic of Cancer

Walking along the Champs-Elysees I keep thinking of my really superb health. When I say health I mean optimism, to be truthful. Incurably optimistic! Still have one foot in the nineteenth century. I'm a bit retarded, like most Americans. Carl finds it disgusting, this optimism. I have only to talk about a meal, he says, and you're radiant! It's a fact. The mere thought of a meal - another meal - rejuvenates me. A meal! That means something to go on, a few solid hours of work, an erection possibly. I don't deny it. I have health, good solid, animal health. The only thing that stands between me and a future is a meal, another meal.

Lesson number 2

If you're going to run around breaking rules you've got to have guns you can stick to.

SOme CALl it waste

Went to amnesia to see family folk explosion band and watched the disco ball lights run around the tiny bar scattering across squished people. thought about old times on a roof top in the haight and times when i first met people. Charlie said "come with me, it's cool man" and i said all right let me grab my things at home and i'll call you. wondered if he thought i might not show, like they did at work, but i am not that way. words have staples and words hang over open mouths just like those american west grovers said, when they sung into my ear in a van a long time ago in burlingame, that they hang like they're just hanging out and suddenly i realize what they were talking about. the cold shoulders and going crazy in different places like within your self and in other people's minds. it's just that i wished words were unbreakable stones. i walked my ass and my red and blue attire down 24th street for recollection purposes, like how you know that when you've reached home you've reached home. it's a good feeling. consistency is key in life, i have realized, and perhaps it is unhealthy to expect it from all peoples but the appreciation is what matters most. flower shopped my possessions away from the green and concrete world that has held and nursed me for years. shutting the door, i smelled burned tires, and remembers the scientist and the drummer and the best friend and how i know, i know i should be making it out to oakland more often but sometimes you build these things and feel commitment to them in small streets and few street corbers. it's hard to walk away from things that you build. jumped on the 9 which smelled more like piss than i've ever known it too, at least consciously and jonnEE dropped me off wishing me a good time, like, all cool how he is in a plain green sweat shirt not yet painted on. played some blues, and yes they were emotional, about people who are like old road signs that take you for rides and they can lead you to dirt roads, and to the sea, and to ranches, and oceans, and bars that have drinks that take you to the sky. i just stormed out of a bar because i paid good money to hear dopethrone and the bar tender kept turning it off and i thought sweet jesus mother of mine in what fucking hell is it so bothersome to feel relaxed for one fucking minute. i felt relaxed and perhaps laughed to loud when dopethrone came on. of course it couldn't last, it never does. i kept talking about hume and remembered why i liked the story of the whole river and the nine different ways it changes when i attempted to ride the waves of the ocean that nursed my best, dearest, friend for so many long last eternally haunting years, and now i do realize that i spoke of the wrong man. i came to mourn, give my heart to the ocean, my soul to the strings, and my memory to my baby girl. to remember friends.
the only business cards i've gotten here so far are from porn industry people that makes me wonder about politics.
then i remember that i haven't the right.
when, california, did you become so lucky?
i still believe that gold in california is sea blue and green.
my bag is a portable office.
my fingers are bruised and i may have pinched a nerve in one of my left knuckles when i was slicing bread.
let's see what it sounds like.
i call it home.

5 a.m. two months ago

In this mad hour I am awake. The hour isn't defined because I can't work up the energy to roll over and check the clock. My eyes are intent on counting the spots on my wall every three inches up and left and this game lasts what I feel to be an hour until I hear the birds chirping and crows cackling and train yawning with me. The birds sound as though they are laughing outside my window, reminding me that this is quite a serious problem with no solution in sight, a problem no longer worth investigating. There is no end to any dreams for it is too loud to ever be awaken from, the forms too vivid to distinguish themselves from real life, and the visions too riveting to not pay attention so that when my eyes open from whatever painting my mind has created in place of restful dreaming they feel just as helplessly tired as they did when they reached ten thousand dots on the wall. The songs, they are too loud in my sleep that it never feels like I went to bed at all.

all at different times

back in may


Slept in the park the other night just because. made it til morning with my pint and inability to relate to anything in the world right now. Did it because people always tell me I'm an idiot for walking alone at night in the city, that natural biological occurrences should have me dead by now. One girl I smoked pot with at dolores asked me if I thought I was cat woman and I said not really but once in a while I do feel invincible.
Did it because lets face it... I'm fucking bored.
My sister always told me as a child that people who are bored are simply boring themselves and y'know, old girl, she's right.

nevermind

not gunna go there

drug tales

Angel
Mike Baxter

Sitting on a dull green 60's era couch, miraculously unstained, she erratically painted her nails neon orange. She was topless, with her skin tight ripped jeans unbuttoned and unzipped revealing a leopard print thong. Her skin was red with lacerations from constant scratching and fidgeting. Her hair was tied back in a bun, completely removed from her "workspace," which was an antique coffee table with a glass top that had seen better days. As she leaned closer and closer to her fingers resting on the surface of the table, her glasses (which were very chic mind you) slipped all the way down to the tip of her nose. Annoyingly, she nudged them back into place with the back of her wrist, gave the tip of her nose a scratch with an unpainted nail, and then feverishly continued working. Her work was sloppy and ungraceful, with nail polish smeared around her cuticles and splattered on the glass top of the table. Strewn across the table top was a bevy of lighters, empty pen barrels, a near empty pack of cheap cigarettes and a homemade aluminum foil ashtray along with a frightening array of nicknacks and doodads. As to the functionality of these devices, anyone's guess is as good as the next.
A young man named Harley walks into the apartment through the front door. "Angel, babe, you here?" Harley says, wrestling with the keys in his hand and the slightly used stereo under his arm. "Yeah babe, I'm in here." shouts Angel. "Look what I found, some dumbass just left this sitting by their car." Harley said making his way into the living room. Angel noticed how his jaw was moving about seemingly with a mind of it's own. He must be tweaking Angel thinks. She doesn't mind though, she has a habit of her own. Besides, he fucks her like a bull on steroids when he's on that shit. "That's great babe, hey listen," Angel was not at all interested in Harley's find. "I need to borrow the car, Poncho's gonna break me off a half for givin him a ride." "Whatever, as long as all your doin is given him a ride," Harley says glaring at her. "Jesus fuckin Christ, it's not like I'm gonna suck his smelly unwashed cock!" Angel snags the keys and heads straight for the door. "You gonna put a shirt on first?" Harley shouts after her. "Shit!" mutters Angel as she zips into the bedroom. She emerges within seconds and finally makes it to the door. "Love you" Harley says almost sarcastically. "Yeah, yeah you love me, I get it." Angel says while beaming a smile at Harley.
Barreling down the freeway Angel was paying the upmost attention to the road and her speedometer as she was constantly on the lookout for The Man. She was normally relaxed and carefree but with Poncho in the passenger seat drinking a 211 Steel Reserve tall can, her nerves were caught in a vice. If pulled over, one might wonder what a twenty-something-year-old white girl from the suburbs was doing in the car with a half drunk, mid 50’s homeless Mexican convict. The answer was simple really, “oh him? He’s just my heroin dealer, don’t mind him.” This thought constantly raced through her mind as she drove steadily with the flow of traffic trying her hardest to "act natural" and damned if she wasn't pulling it off too. She just prayed that he be done with that tall can before they made the drive back home. “Well, at least he can’t talk and drink at the same time,” she thought.
Poncho broke his incessant rambling only to wave her over to the exit. Angel was in no mood for his small talk bullshit, for she was concentrating way to hard on driving and on top of that, The Sickness was already kicking in. He had to direct her at every turn; she was unfamiliar with the city, even though she grew up just ten minutes drive down the freeway. They finally arrived at a rundown mini market parking lot where Poncho directed her to park. In that same parking lot Poncho’s empty Steel Reserve can found its way out the window.
It’s there they waited, too anxious to talk, too anxious to do anything but stare at the clock on the car dashboard. After the longest seven minutes of Angel and Poncho’s lives, a beat to shit dark grey pick-up pulled into the lot bearing expired tags. She had seen this truck before, as well as the short and plump Mexican man who drove it, this was the man they came to meet. This was the man she drove Poncho to come see every day. This was the man who supplied him with his heroin. Only something was different this time, in the passenger seat was a little boy who couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve. Usually Poncho livens up when Berto pulls up, but this time he was overcome with a quiet sadness. He tried to hide it but it wouldn’t have mattered either way because Angel was not paying the slightest attention to Poncho. He slowly leaned in close to Angel to tell her something. She could tell he was about to speak, but she knew what he was about to say was not like the usual pointless drivel, so she listened. He said, “You see that boy in that truck,” “yeah I do,” replied Angel, speaking softly wondering where this was going, and also why he hasn’t gotten his ass out of the car to go get the shit. “That’s my grandson…only he doesn’t know it.” Poncho hesitated for a moment and continued, “He thinks Berto is his grandfather, a long time ago, while I was in prison, Berto stole my wife and family from me. When I got out, there was nothing or nobody left for me.” Angel didn't know what to say, so she said nothing. Berto got out of the truck, leaving the boy behind. He made his way into the store and Poncho followed him in. While they were in the store Angel started thinking about her father. She hadn't seen him in years, since he kicked her out of the house as a matter of fact. She didn't think too much about her father these days, she just buried the pain under a needle.
Poncho returned to the car and Berto his. "Wait till he leaves to start going." said Poncho. "Aren't you going to talk to him? Your grandson I mean." asked Angel. She almost sounded like she cared. "Nah, it's too late for that, my family is gone now, moved on. I chose drugs over them a long time ago, now I have to live with that. Besides it'd turn the poor little dude's world upside down, ya know?" For the first time Angel felt something for this man. She couldn't help but to relate to Poncho's situation. After her mother died, Angel turned to drugs to deal with the pain of her loss, thus abandoning her father when he needed her most. She still didn't understand why it was so easy for her father to throw her out, why it was necessary to choose one or the other. Why couldn't her father accept his daughter's habit and still have her in his life? But Poncho continued speaking before she could get a word in edge wise, "But hey fuck it, we're in for a treat, we got the real shit, not that black tar garbage. We got some gunpowder. Here's a half for you, be careful with this shit its way stronger then the black." All of Angel's confliction about her own family crisis disappeared the second she wrapped her fingers around that small brown chunk of bathtub manufactured bliss.
Off they went back into town, not mentioning a word about Poncho's grandson, and Angel didn't feel like sharing her own story of similar premise. In fact she wanted to bury those thoughts as deep into her gut as they could go. She dropped Poncho off at the towns central park where he hangs out with all the other local homeless, and promptly returned home. She had beads of sweat dripping out of seemingly every pore in her body and felt like she was burning up. It was a little after three and she hadn't had a shot since last night. She returned home to an empty apartment, Harley's bike was missing, she figured he was out delivering bags of cocaine to help pay the rent. The only thoughts on her mind at this point concerned turning brown powder into brown liquid then sending it off into her bloodstream.
She was already feeling the rush by the time the plunger was only three quarters of the way pushed down. Her pupils immediately pinned and she felt the warm pulsating feeling of escape take her body over as she fell back into the couch. The heroin was good, really good in fact, it put her into a state of nodding, where she is not fully asleep and not fully awake. She began to have visions of her as a young girl at her family home. It was her birthday party and no one was there except for Harley, who appeared the same age he is now. He was rudely demanding paper because he had to write some stupid story for class and that he should have stayed home instead. She became sad in her dream, not because of Harley, but because the one person she wanted there couldn't make it…her father. She began to sob, both in her dream and in real life. She awoke, but found herself paralyzed by tears. Not even in her dreams could she see her father, or even hear his voice. Heroin was no longer an escape from her rotten circumstance, it had become an extension of it.
She found herself fully awake on the couch, with dried up tears on her cheek. Harley was nowhere to be found, that was fine she preferred to be alone right now anyways. She stared at the dope for a good long while, and decided to jump in the shower to clear her head. She liked to just sit under the hot water for at least twenty minutes, and just relax. No one or no thing could get to her in the shower, she felt completely safe. She had never seen the movie "Psycho."
Not to long after she jumped in, Harley came bursting through the door. "Angel, babe, you here?" Harley shouted walking through the entrance. There was no answer but he soon heard the running water coming from the bathroom. He was coming down unusually hard from the speed, and was becoming unbearably depressed. He saw Angel's bag sitting on the coffee table. He had always been curious what it felt like to send the brown substance coursing through his veins. He'd seen Angel do it hundreds of times and thought of the expression of pure relief that came over her whole body when she did it. He decided to fix up, and do the shot in bed, after all he could use a nap.
Angel finally emerged from the shower. She felt rejuvenated, and came to terms once again with the situation between her and her father. She dried off and headed into the bedroom. When she entered she dropped her towel and was standing naked, exposed, staring at a blue Harley curled in bed laying in a puddle of his drool. His lips, fingers and toes had taken on a deep blue hue, his veins were popping out of his skin as if they were screaming for air. She knew immediately what had happened. He was still breathing although his breaths were shallow and few and far between. There was no time for tears as she propped him up and began trying to slap him awake. "Harley, Harley, wake up!" she pleaded at the top of her lungs. This went on for a few minutes but Harley was not responding. Her mind raced trying to remember all the tricks of the trade she had picked up from fellow junkies on how to revive a fallen soldier. She thought of an ice cold shower and tried to drag two hundred pounds of dead weight into the bathroom. Her weak body couldn't budge him, not even with the overwhelming adrenaline pumping through her skull. She franticly slapped him repeatedly in the face screaming out his name hoping for some sign of consciousness, but to no avail. She remembered a story, she thought too over the top to be true but she was desperate, Harley was on his way out. She raced into the kitchen yanking open the freezer spilling the ice tray, sending cubes darting across the unwashed tile. Her body tensed in frustration as she screamed aloud, “FUCK!” She felt something cold against her little tiny toes and picked it up. She cupped the cube in her hand to shrink its size, and made it more aerodynamic. She pulled off Harley's loose fit jeans and baggy boxers. There was no time for shame and awkwardness as she worked the ice cube into Harley's rectum. She pulled his pants back up as if she were covering up a crime scene. The shock of the cube and another mighty slap brought a flicker of life to his eyes and hope to her heart. Harley was slowly coming around as Angel repeatedly slapped him across the face screaming, "Stay with me, stay with me!"
"Why are you yelling at me." Harley could barely speak, and his words came across weak, and whiney. "Come on baby, you need to stand up, your going to throw up." Harley could barely walk, his body was feeble and he had to lean on Angel as he stumbled into the bathroom. He couldn't even make it down to the toilet before he started violently puking in the sink. "I'm so sorry, babe, I'm so sorry." Harley said with tears in his eyes and puke on his lips. "What are you sorry for baby? It's ok, your going to be fine, ok?" Angel said in a quiet soft voice with a gentle tear of relief sliding down her face.
Angel and Harley made their way back to bed. She made him lay on his side on top of towels and next to a trash can in case he had to puke again. She was sitting beside him, not letting him go to sleep. Then she started scurrying about the apartment, cleaning up the mess trying to keep her mind occupied all the while shouting at Harley demanding a response to keep him awake. After a few hours she laid down in bed next to Harley, she told him it was ok to pass out and he was asleep in seconds. Angel lay in bed, the gravity of the events that had just unfolded began to hit her. She thought of her father, what if that had been her lying there all blue with her eyes rolled into the back of her head. For the first time she saw things from her father’s perspective. A man, after losing his wife to cancer, could not bear to watch his daughter kill herself. She drifted to sleep, making a promise to herself that she would never be the one laying in bed turning blue.
"Where are you going." asked Harley as a fully dressed Angel was slipping out the bedroom door. Angel, with a nervous smile, looked him straight in the eyes with for what felt like an eternity and replied, "Home." Harley looked at her with a puzzled face and did not say a word as he watched her leave.
A taxi is waiting for her in the apartment complex parking lot and she tells the driver her home address. The driver immediately picks up on Angels need for silence and quietly heads toward their destination. Angel stares out the window as the cab rolls through her old neighborhood, she had not been to this part of town since the last time she saw her father. All the houses were the same, nothing was new except a few paintjobs and newer SUVs. The cab pulled up in front of her house. It was the second nicest house on the block, one of only two two-story homes. The house was exactly how she remembered it, nothing had changed, it was still the same dull grey color with a light blue-green trim. Angel sits in the backseat of the cab, for a moment ignoring the drivers request for the fare. She stares out at her lonely house, strong but empty, just like her father. "Ma'm, please." She finally pays the driver and leaves him a handsome tip. She lights up a cigarette as her knees begin to shake and her gut tightens as she makes her way up the concrete walkway to the front door. She takes a deep breath and slowly exhales a cloud of smoke as she rings the door bell. A tall man in his early sixties, who looks damned good for his age answers the door. The pair lock eyes and are equally surprised at who's souls they are staring into. Angel is staring at her father, begging with her eyes for him to say something, anything, she just needs to hear his voice. She just needs to hear his voice and it will all be ok.
"You look like hell…" the man says with a discerning smile spreading across his once solemn face.
"I'm ready to come home."

I can read this 40 times over

SONG FOR THE GOAT
by

my dearest

L. RAWSON

Ever since Tommy went up to Tulsa to work at that tire shop, Ma has been poppin’ them pills. I never took her for the type. Onliest person I knowed to take them things was Mr. Graves, ‘course he had ‘em prescribed by a doctor in Little Rock on account of his bad back. But Ma see, she don’t have no kind of prescription but she’s been poppin’ them pills and still on the drink for near two months now. She don’t move off that couch. Just last week when Michelle got sick I said to her, "Ma, Michelle ought to be taken to the store for some tussin." But she just layed there on that couch not movin’ a muscle, lookin’ like the good Lord done come down and put a glaze over her eyes so’n she can’t see past the damn television set. So when Michelle wouldn’t stop coughin’ and wheezin’, I took it upon myself to bring her over to Ted’s Pharmacy in the Ford. You oughta seen me in the thing. I could barely see over the dashboard on account of the truck bein’ a 450 Diesel and me bein’ only thirteen. But I got us there none the less. Walked right in and asked Mr. Ted if’n I could have some tussin on loan.
I said, "Mr. Ted, Michelle done caught sick and she need some tussin. But on account of us bein’ poor right now, I can’t offer up any sort of money. But sir, if’n you could find it in your heart…"
As his eyes sunk like a pair of marbles, he cut me off sayin’, "Sandy, take the Tussin. Ain’t no charge for the Rodgers when someone catch sick, you oughta know that honey."
I thanked him and walked back out to the truck to find who but Jim Eggers and little Eddy Warren playin’ in the dirt right there in the bed of the pickup.
"You know there’s cow shit in that dirt, right?" I said.
Right then and there they both stopped dead, looked at each other, laughed, then started heavin’ the dirt at me instead. I tell you them boys were never no good.
Toward the end of that summer me and Michelle sort of got used to Ma and them pills. We never knowed where she got ‘em from, only that she had an ample supply and that they made her useless to us kids. It was sorta hard havin’ both of my older brothers gone, Tommy up in Tulsa and Doug God-knows-where on the road. When school started up I took it upon myself to get Michelle up before the sun, fix her a little sandwich for lunch, and walk her over to the schoolyard. After that, I’d go back inside, try and pick up our rooms and the rest of the house a little, fix myself something for lunch, then walk on to school. I was goin’ into seventh grade that year and I had big plans on makin’ new friends and gettin’ smart. Before Dad moved out he used to tell me, "Now Sandy, take any opportunity you got to get you schoolin’. Get smart. Don’t be like me and your Ma."
Marble Middle School was pretty much in the dead center of town. Right south of it was the tracks that separated the colors of town, one side bein’ white Marble and the other side bein’ black Marble. The school was on the white side and I had to cross the tracks from the South to get to there each morning. I remember that first day of seventh grade like it was yesterday. I was on my way to the school, just crossed the tracks and was heading up Division Street when I seen all the kids gathered outside of the school, waitin’ for it to open up I suppose. I thought nothing of the direction I was comin’ from, but as I made it up to where the other kids was standin’, everyone got silent and stared at me like I was a sick dog. Jim Eggers was there and he said, "Everyone, y’all know Sandy, right? She from Niggertown. Live right South of them tracks." Right then everybody started laughing. I got red as a summer tomato but tried to hide my shame. I said, "Couldn’t help but been born there. Rodgers been on the same land since my great Granddaddy." I thought I saved myself but Eggers had to chime in, "And they still don’t got electricity!"
The year was destined for certain grief. Although I made sure to never arrive again as early as I did that first day, the other kids always seemed to ignore me. It was real hard to make friends with everyone thinkin’ that your family ain’t worth nothing. See, even though it was 1976, Marble was stuck in a time of the past. There was barely six hundred people in the community then, most bein’ white. Niggertown, the place South of the tracks where I was from, had only about twenty families living there. All were black but mine, and as I later learned, Jim Crow was still the law of the land.
Because of the situation with Ma, and because my Daddy was gone and wasn’t never comin’ back, I grew up kind of fast. I learned to take care of Michelle pretty easy. She was quiet enough most of the time and we was close enough in age to talk as friends, bein’ only three years apart. Seventh and eighth grade passed quickly, and before I knew it I was in high school. And that’s when and where everything changed. By the time I got to the ninth grade, Ma had years on the pills and booze. She had learned to function in her own way, on account of her bein’ on them all the time. It became normal for her. She still didn’t have a job, so it was up to me to support the three of us. I was fifteen and held a full time job and still went to school as often as I could. I remember them days. I remember that school and that office. Back then Time was nonexistent. I created it each morning, pushed it forward each afternoon, and turned it off each night. I had complete control, and even though life was harder’n hell, I knew I was destined for good things.
I always woke up ten minutes before my alarm was to go off. I don’t know why, but I guess my body just knew it was time to start the day. I met Scott Prine on a Tuesday. I remember because Tuesdays Ma was supposed to get her disability check, but that Tuesday it never came and was never gonna come again. But before I found out about all that, I got up and went about my day as usual. I got Michelle ready for school, walked her out and waited for the bus, then came back inside and got ready for school myself. It was Spring then, I can remember it clear as day. The mornin’ was already givin’ off lots of humidity and I knew it was gonna be a hot one. I picked out a light yellow dress that grandma Annie gave me when I was a little girl. It never fit me until that Spring Tuesday when I was sixteen and was really starting to look like a woman ought to.
I never had no boyfriends up until that point. Never took any interest in boys really, I guess on account of being so busy all the time with takin’ care of Michelle and Ma and all. But when I saw Scott Prine, I thought he was the handsomest boy in the world. When he saw me looking at him, he came right up to me, walkin’ like he didn’t have no care in the world.
"Hello, miss. My name is Scott Prine. I come from Memphis. Who might you be?"
He had a funny accent, too. A city boy. Before I could answer him I took the time to size him up. Looked like he just walked off a movie set or somethin’, wearin’ new blue jeans and with his hair slicked back all tight-like.
"Well if I can’t know your name can I walk you to class?"
Imagine, a boy sixteen years old, new to town, asking me my name and if he could walk me to class.
"I suppose you could." I finally said. Then and there he took my hand and if the good Lord didn’t put somethin’ in this boy that made him think he was a man I don’t know who did.
"I’m new to town, see. From Memphis, like I say before. My Daddy done bought twelve acres south of them tracks, right past the school there. Yep, moved me and him out here and decided he wanted a farm. Said Memphis was a bad city for a boy like me. Said we oughta humble ourselves a little bit. Would you believe that? Who ever thought of humblin’ yourself? Say, what is your name anyway? Figure if I’m holdin’ your hand I got some right to know."
"Sandy Rodgers." I blinked, blushed, and blinked again.
"Well if your name don’t match the color of your dress. I say Sandy, you sure are pretty. I’d like to get to know you."
"Well right now I should get to class, then I have a four-hour shift, and then I have to go home. But if you got nothin’ better to do after supper time, why don’t you come down to my house. I live in the small blue ranch ‘bout a mile and a half south of them tracks you was talkin’ about before. There’s a red Ford in the drive. Can’t miss it."
His eyes lit up like the light of day and he said, "Well then, maybe I will!"
I could not for the life of me concentrate at work that afternoon. Old Bill kept sayin’ there must be somethin’ on my mind if I couldn’t so much as file a paper in the right order. He let me go an hour early sayin’ something like, "You young girls get stranger by the day."
When I got home Michelle was sittin’ on the porch with her head between her knees. I saw little clear tears on her cheeks when I came up to her and I asked what was wrong. She said that Ma was dead.
Inside I saw the old woman in her usual spot on the couch lookin’ lifeless as ever. I walked up to her and tried to rouse her but she didn’t budge none. She wasn’t dead, just passed out and about as useless as ever.
"Why’d you said she was dead?" I asked Michelle.
"I thought she was, she ain’t moved since I got home from school."
"Did you cash the check like you is supposed to every Tuesday?" I asked.
Michelle was silent.
"Well, you couldn’t remember to cash the damn check? I go to school, go to work, come home, and you couldn’t do the one thing that you is supposed to do every Tuesday? If you ain’t dumber than dumb, girl. You know we need that money."
I walked down the drive to the post box but there wasn’t nothin’ in it.
"Well if the check ain’t in the post box, and you didn’t cash it, then just where the hell is it Michelle?"
Michelle started tearin’ up again, gettin’ shaky all over.
"It didn’t never come." she said.
"It never came." I corrected her and walked inside.
I didn’t make any supper that night on account of Ma being passed out worse’n ever and Michelle holed up in her room. I searched the house for the check but it must’ve really never come because it wasn’t nowhere to be found. And at about half past seven, who did I see walking down the road toward the house but that boy Scott Prine. It was his walk and the way he carried himself that defined him so. Not one hair on his head moved a lick since I saw him at school, his blue jeans were still clean and shiny, and he was smoking a cigarette as he strolled down the road the way that he did, kicking back dirt with his leather heels. I couldn’t believe my eyes or my heart when they both fluterred at the same time.
"This here house reminds me of my Mammy’s in Memphis, all dilapidated-like." He said.
"Well if that ain’t a way of sayin’ good evening."
"No ma’am, I don’t mean it in no bad way, just is what it is, you know?"
"What I know is that you must be the bravest boy this side of the tracks comin’ over here talkin’ like that and expectin’ me to invite you in."
His eyes, Lord. I had not noticed them in school because I was doin’ my best to not look at him on account of everything happening so fast, him approaching me and all. But his eyes. They were bluer than sapphire, yes sir.
"Whyn’t you come down here and say hello, Sandy?" he says.
As I walk down the front porch steps the evening dew sets in. All at once, see. My Sandy-yellow dress becomes paper, then becomes air, then is nothing. With the setting sun on his side he sees me for all a woman’s-worth, all exposed and vulnerable. The black pin-points of his eyes swell in the sapphire like ink in water and he is moved. He don’t stand there so sharp like he was a minute ago. Now he recedes and throws his cigarette butt to the dirt, taking out a comb to check his hair.
"If I oughta truthful, I oughta be crazy." I say. "I didn’t think you’d show."
"My faith brought me down here. Not no faith in the Lord or in the Devil, but my faith in you, Sandy."
If’n this here boy didn’t know exactly the right things to say at the right time, I don’t know who does. Right off the movie set, like I said before.
"Well, should we go inside so I can meet Mr. and Mrs. Rodgers." He asked.
"Now, why would we do a thing like that? You wait here, mister, and I’m gonna go inside and get a dollar. We’ll go down to the Taste-E-Freeze and get us something to cool you off."
When I turn I stop Time. He will stand there motionless until I come back, cheerful and skippy, ready to walk to town in the Spring night’s air. Until my return he is only could-be, and as he waits he is only want-to, and if I don’t return we will be nothing. But I go inside to get that dollar and to tell Michelle to look after Ma until I get back. I wanted to try for us to be some-thing.