Read Online Desert Boys by Chris McCormick - Free Book Online Page B

from time to time at school?”
    His son was a seventh grader—a year ahead of me. I’d seen him at lunch from a distance, but we hadn’t spoken since he moved. We knew each other only from having lived across the street—we used to play with his wrestling action figures. Once he moved, our friendship changed. That’s how kids have relationships with people sometimes—they’re based on situations. Sometimes that’s how adults have relationships, too, but that’s a different story.
    â€œYeah,” I said. “I see him.”
    â€œOh, good. I’ve got a favor to ask of you.”
    Still in the mode of praises and raises, I was in no spot to decline.
    â€œAsk him to come help out with the digging. Your money won’t get divided, I promise. I’d ask him myself, but his mother won’t let me speak to him without her on the line, and she’d put a stop to it before he’d even get the chance. You see what I’m saying?”
    â€œGot it,” I said.
    â€œGreat,” he said. “That’d be great.”
    â€œSaturday, then,” I said.
    â€œSaturday. With Drew, maybe?”
    â€œMaybe,” I said.
    VII. THE WATCHER, WATCHED
    Memory is more a play than a book, a play in which the character of you is one of many. You piece together the furniture and the school halls and the people using details (some true, some unwittingly borrowed from other moments in your life, or the lives of others) and your imagination. Then you get to watch. You watch your memories, don’t you?
    And the watcher knows—especially if the watcher happens to be a townie—that he is not the only one doing the watching. His stories, then, involve a great deal of the looming anxieties stemming from that quintessential doom-knowledge found in towns: That always you are being seen, that always you are being judged. Not by some force above the clouds, but by other people. And unlike in a city, where a person knows he may be seen by any number of people at any point in the day, this is a different sort of doom-knowledge. It’s the knowing that those who see and judge you are inevitably people who, in some way, matter. They’re people who know you or your family, or else the person with whom you’re interacting. They’re people you’ve let down in the past. They’re people who may have gone out of their way to watch you mess up.
    I was aware that my involvement in Mr. Reuter’s plans hadn’t gone unnoticed. I’d looked up from my shovel’s blade from time to time as a car rode past. Every once in a while, I’d catch the eyes of the driver, or else the passenger. Sometimes there’d be that millisecond of recognition, and maybe even a reflexive wave from inside the car. One of those drivers or passengers must have been curious about my working on this particular man’s lawn. (My mother wasn’t the only one talking about him.) One of them must have seen the two of us talking near the mound of dirt I’d assembled near the green compost bin. One of them must have said something to a person who mattered to the story, because when I went to school after that conversation with his father, Drew Zelinski (formerly Drew Reuter) cornered me in the hallway.
    VIII. THE CLOSEST I’D EVER BEEN TO A FISTFIGHT
    I was small, I think I’ve mentioned. Drew happened not to be. His shoulders had spread away from his center like the geological birth of a valley. Only it happened overnight. Not two years before, when we sat on his front lawn screaming the names of wrestlers, we were about the same size. Something had changed for him, and before I remembered how this newfound strength might be used against me, I admit that it gave me great hope for my own physical potential to burgeon. (I’ll point out again that it would never happen for me.) He slid his thumbs behind the straps of his backpack and jutted out his elbows.