|
CIRCLE OF SEASONS Oh, by the way, a disclaimer…this story is completely, totally fiction. The events never happened, and probably never will. –The Dreamer SUMMER, PART 1 Ricky’s body decided to give him sort of a rest for a good long time. Beginning in May, and continuing til about Thanksgiving, his pituitary glands, his hormones, whatever chemical factory was in charge of growing decided to go on strike. They figured that in less than the past two years, they’d already made him 15 inches taller, completely finished basic puberty, and strettttccchhhhhed those legs of his. Enough for awhile, we’re on strike. Until just past the coming Thanksgiving, Ricky would remain at an exact six feet tall, not a quarter-inch or a millimeter more, and would stay at 134 pounds, no matter how many dozens or hundreds of pepperoni pizzas or boxes of oatmeal cookies he’d devour. Tom, on the other hand, was gripped by a feverish growth spurt that spring and summer. Exploding upward and developing fast and furiously. He’d jump from 5’3” to a bit over 5’5” tall before September’s cross-country practices would start, and would gain 6 pounds to reach a total of 110. He was still and always would be very, very skinny, but now started to grow real muscles. Small ones, but hard ones. He’d challenge Dad to push in his tiny bicep, but it was trying to crush granite. His stomach and chest were thin but also like rocks. There was a wall in his room that had little strange markings in the grain of the wood, and Tom often stretched his hand up, up, as high as it would go, just to see if and when he could reach just a tiny bit higher on the next spot up there. Every day when he woke up in his small room, he’d check to see if any blessed armpit hairs had grown in, but no luck yet. Ricky had big plans for the summer, Tom had little ones, but their classmates had their own agendas. Jeremy Latham, for example, hadn’t told any of the school kids about the prize he’d won, because it would seem like bragging, and Jeremy wasn’t like that. But he was one of only 12 students his age in the nation to win it. Jeremy, while he of course wasn’t as fast as Tom, was just about equally intelligent, and had one positive characteristic that Tom didn’t. He was able to blend in with pretty much any group of kids in the world, and be liked by just about everyone. He could at times be part of Father Ray’s Flock of Geeks, could also hang with the cool kids, could also act as black as the other guys in his neighborhood back home. He could successfully balance being the smartest kid in the class (well, tied for that honor now) with getting along with everyone, and being a loyal friend. There was no nervousness or self-consciousness in him. Soon he’d be heading far, far away from his Atlanta home. His parents knew something about what would happen, but they decided it would be best not to tell the boy. Big Bobby spent most of the summer playing basketball, of course. It was his thing. He and his father lived in Maryland and Bobby spent endless hours at the playgrounds, banging heads, hips, and elbows with serious players, including guys from Dematha High and even some Division I college players. He got his ass kicked plenty, but he backed down from no one. He was by now 6’7” tall but still pretty weak for his size. Long and lean, a giant stringbean. People at the beginning of the summer thought he was maybe a bit of a freak, just a tall white 14 year-old kid trying to mess with the real players. But bit by bit, he earned respect, got his props. He had big hops (the city word for jumping ability), could get way, way over the rim almost up to his elbow to dunk, and had good timing to get up and block people’s shots. The only problem was that he wasn’t strong enough and he got pushed around and knocked down by older kids and by the adults. After a couple weeks, he got a little mad, and had an idea. He went to his father to ask something. Mr. Delacroix had played a little bit of NBA ball in his younger days, and had played several years in Italy. He was over 7 feet tall and in his retirement had grown wide and thick. Not really fat, but he was a mountain of a man. He had gotten pretty rich over the years of playing, and now worked just part-time selling cars and coaching youth leagues. It was always difficult for him to know how much to coach or work with his son. For any professional athlete, it’s a tough balancing act. Encourage a child but don’t push. Help him out but let his coaches do the coaching and don’t try to usurp their roles. Not easy. And it was made much, much worse by the problems with his wife. There was bipolar disorder, mental illness, mood swings that could turn violent, serious stuff. Ever since Bobby was about 7, she was too sick to do much to raise him. The young boy couldn’t understand much of what was going on, and though Bobby tried to put on a brave face and do what he had to do, lack of a mother affected him a lot. Mom and Dad were now separated for almost 5 years. She was in and out of psychiatric hospitals, but she was definitely out of the lives of Bobby and Dad. Mr. Delacroix was raising Bobby and his 10 year-old brother completely by himself. “Dad,” Bobby said one evening, “we gotta talk.” Dad grinned because when Bobby said it like that, it had to be important, at least to the boy. Probably about some chick? Love, sex? Something big because when little brother Mark came into the den, Bobby shooed him away with a threatened punch to the face. “Dad, I was thinking. Do I really have to go back to St. Brendan’s in the fall? Look, it’s an OK place, the people are cool and all. It doesn’t suck and you know I try to keep my grades decent. I don’t hate it, nah, not like that. But Dad, the hoops program, you’ve seen it, it’s not that great. I mean we play teams like way out in the sticks, we’re usually not even .500 even in our weak-ass league. I mean how am I gonna get noticed, get a scholarship to some big-time college, playing out there where no one sees or cares? I know it’s a lot of money for you to send me there, and I think it would be better all-around for me to go to school here. If you’re all into the Catholic stuff, there’s Catholic schools around here, day schools that play serious ball. And I could be with Mark, help him out, too.” Bobby didn’t really have much to do with his little brother that often, but figured he’d stick that line in so it would sound less selfish, more family. Dad smiled. He’d been half-expecting this request for months now. He beckoned to his son to sit next to him on the couch, and put his arm around him. Looked like a regular sweet affectionate father-son scene, if one forgot that the two people were giants. “Bobby, do you think the only reason you go to school is to play ball, your only job is to get a scholarship to a big Division I school?” “Yeah, I know what you mean, but I do my work in classes and homework. I ain’t no genius, but I know class is class and hoops is hoops. And it’s not like schools around here don’t have classes, you know.” “Bobby, you’re going back to St. Brendan’s and I’ll tell you why. You’re gonna be mad at me maybe, but well, I’m the father and you’re the kid, and sometimes mad is part of the game. Bobby, you and me both, we’re pretty special at basketball. And yeah, schools here have classes, though probably not quite with the same attention as St. Brendan’s. But what goes on in schools here just isn’t what I want you to be around. There’s drugs. There’s the potential for violence. There’s gangs. There’s intimidation. There’s hate. It’s not in every hallway, not happening every minute. But there’s stuff going on that I don’t think should be part of your life.” “Son, there’s one thing St. Brendan’s teaches that’s more important than hoops OR classes. They teach you values. They teach you to be a good person, the kind of young man I want you to be. They teach you consequences for your actions, like if you screw up in discipline you sit on the bench, doesn’t matter how good you are. I care more about the kind of kid you are than anything to do with basketball. Now look—if you’re good enough at hoops, you’re gonna get noticed by big-time college recruiters. People from schools a lot smaller and weaker than St. Brendan’s, if they have the talent, can play on big college teams, even go pro. Believe me, I’ve seen them, hell, I’ve played against them! And last thing—you know, playing ball can end at any moment with an injury, or maybe a player just isn’t good enough to get to the highest level. I can’t predict how tall you’ll get or how good you’ll get. I just want you to have the right grounding as a young man. That’s why I send you to Brendy’s.” Bobby sighed and looked deeply at his father. Yeah, Dad meant it. Damn. “All right, all right, Dad, I hear you. But how ‘bout this, will you at least keep an open mind? Maybe we can come back to this later in the summer?” “Bobby, I’ll always keep an open mind for you and Mark. Without Mom, you guys are all I have in the world, you know. But I’m gonna tell you straight up, at this moment I can’t see changing my decision. But we can always talk. I’m always here, kid.” One of Tom’s first duties in the summer also involved his father and also involved sports, but in a whole different way. On his second night home, they decided to get started on Dad’s running program, as his doctor in Belarus had advised. Dad had bought well-padded New Balance running shoes, a sleeveless shirt, and short skimpy nylon shorts like Tom’s. He was skinny enough so that he could look the part of a serious distance runner, except he had hardly ever run a step in his adult life. He went into Tom’s room, dressed to go, about 7:30 PM, after the heat of the day had calmed down. “OK, kid, I’m yours! You ready for me?” “Yeah, Dad. Let’s do the thing!” “Just wait one little minute, the two of you!” Mom shouted from the den. She was afraid that Tom would kind of be competitive with his father, that Dad would be tempted to try too much too soon, and it could be really dangerous. A 53 year-old man who had been sedentary for too many years, and with blood pressure issues, she’d heard of people dropping dead like flies from stuff like this. Let’s get these guys under control where they belong. “I will personally supervise this for the first few days! Martin Klein, you are NOT going to overdo things to try to impress anyone in or out of this house! You are NOT some sort of crazy adolescent any more! Do I make myself clear?” The two guys looked at each other sheepishly. They decided to drive the four miles into town, to the high school’s dirt track, where there were no hills, and where Mom could indeed observe and rule everything with her iron (but loving) fist. Of course they had to take Foxfire. Tom wouldn’t go hardly anywhere in the car without him. And he could shit anywhere he wanted around there, a good place for him. Mom sat in the bleachers and watched Tom begin to teach his father. Mom watched carefully, and was surprised and amazed. She marvelled at how gentle the boy was with his father, showing him the various pre-running stretching exercises, all easy, making sure Dad didn’t overstretch, all careful. Tom just knew. But how does he know? What goodness is in my kid, I never thought he’d take care of his father so well! When they started running, Tom slowed his pace way down to what his father could manage, and had Dad lead as they circled the quarter-mile oval. Mom couldn’t hear what Tom was talking about, but it seemed to be warm and encouraging. After two laps, Tom told Dad to just rest and walk for awhile while Tom resumed his normal much faster pace. He’d catch Dad up after doing two laps on his own, and then they’d run two more together at the slow pace. Dad did four of these repetitions, for a total of two miles, with rests in between each half-mile. Then they stopped, and Tom made Dad do a few more easy stretching exercises, watching his father’s every move to make sure he did them right and not too violently. Near the end, Mom and Foxfire walked to the infield where the guys were, and everyone headed to the car. On the walk, Mom whispered to her son, “Tom, you were so good with your father. I’m so, so proud of the kid you’re turning into! I want to tell you something before you go to sleep.” SUMMER, PART 2 Mom did come in to see her son a bit later, when he and Foxfire were about ready to sleep. More often Dad came to tuck him in, but this time Mom had something she had to say. Tom had about the same relationship with his parents that Ricky did. He loved them both so much, but they were different. Mom nagged and yelled and bitched, but also the one who made him feel best sometimes. Dad was more calm, maybe easier to be around, though when he got just a little bit mad Tom knew to quit screwing around, and fast. Once in a great while, he could lose his temper for real. They were both OK, just very different. When Mom knocked on the door, Tom quickly scooted under the blankets so that his mother wouldn’t see him in his underwear. Too big for that now. Mom sat next to him and began petting his hair, while Tom gently stroked the dog’s. “Tom, I really, really liked how well you took care of your father when you were showing him how to run this evening. I was worried that maybe you were going to try to be competitive, or show off, or try to make him do something he shouldn’t yet. Kids your age sometimes get that way with their fathers.” “Well, thanks, Mom, but of course I wouldn’t be like that. He has to start little by little.” “All right. Now I have an idea for you for some of your time this summer. Of course I’m not going to make you do it, uh, well, actually I am going to make you do it the first time, but after that it’s up to you. You know how at St. Brendan’s, you were finally able to make some friends?” “Really only one friend, Ricky. The other guys are mostly OK, though. And the ones who are jerks pretty much leave me alone. I liked the guys in track & field, remember you met Teddy Bear? But they weren’t, you know, like Ricky, not the same.” “Well, anyway, this year at school you started to learn how to interact with people more. And that’s really, really important for you, Tom (oh, thank God, no ‘Tommy’ this time!). You know something?” “Uh, like what am I supposed to do now, ask ‘what’?” “That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do, but without the annoying little teenager attitude.” “But I’m almost 14, I’m supposed to have annoying teenager attitude. Otherwise I’d be abnormal or something, right? That would suck.” “Hmm, well, maybe. Anyway, I’ve been thinking and I have a little job for you this summer. You know, in your whole life you’ll never have happier hours than when you’re bringing joy to someone else. The joy you bring to someone else, Tom, that will reflect and come back to you double. And I know exactly how you can do it. You know where I work, don’t you?” “Actually, I don’t. Remember I just got home yesterday. I know you went to work this morning, but you never said where. Right in town?” “I didn’t say where?” Mom thought she had, but guessed not, and smiled a bit mysteriously. “Yeah, right in town, not that far from the school track where we were tonight. You can easily ride your bike there. I’ll tell you what, I’m going to set up a few things and I won’t tell you any more until everything’s ready. But I have something special for you to do that I bet once you get used to, you’ll really really like.” “I still don’t get it, like some kind of a job?” “Oh, let’s not say anything more about it for now, just go to sleep and keep this thing way in the back burner of your head. OK, sweetie, good night. I love you so much.” Even though he thought it was a little gross now that he was going to be 14 in less than three months, Tom sat up and let his mother kiss him right on the mouth, and he even returned the kiss more or less lovingly. He watched his mother turn off the lights and walk out of his room. Mom’s all right, but she sure talks strange sometimes. Guess it’s better than yelling at me, even though I gotta be fair, she only yells when I deserve it. Anyway, nothing more to think of, she’ll say what she has in mind when she feels like it. I probably better jerk off now, otherwise I won’t be able to sleep through the night. Kind of weird doing it with Foxfire next to me, but Tom correctly figured that the puppy wouldn’t be offended. Tom finished his sexual release in less than three minutes. He was pretty expert at doing it fast or slow, depending on how he felt at the moment. After that, as he gradually let the night wrap around his head, he thought about Ricky. Yeah, the other kids are OK, but Ricky is Ricky. I wish he was here now, but as long as I see him when school starts, everything will work out. Nothing I can’t deal with if he’s there. SUMMER, PART 3 The first part of Ricky’s summer was really busy, much busier than Tom’s, and full of new stuff to do. His first day of paid work at Wal-Mart was his first Wednesday. Pretty cool, with a blue Wal-Mart uniform vest and everything. The manager told him that at certain times, he was to be an official greeter, just saying hi to people who came in while playing one of his instruments. At other times, he was supposed to walk around the various departments, and get attention by singing. Once in awhile, he had to stand in a certain department if a special sale or promotion was going on, and in between instrumental pieces, while he had people’s attention, read a little sales pitch about the merchandise. The job was lots of fun. People were really curious about this tall, blond, 14 year-old playing fiddle, guitar, and banjo. Just like Jeff the manager thought, the kid and his music made people’s ears perk up, put a little smile on their faces and a little spring in their step. Some people would stop and listen to Ricky for a few minutes, and others would just tilt their heads at him with curiosity, smile a bit, and keep on shopping. Often, mothers would come in with their little kids, and forget the old rule about Never Leave Your Kid Alone in a Department Store ‘Cause There Might Be Kidnappers. Often, if the kids were maybe 6-10 years old, the moms left the little ones in front of Ricky, who kept their full attention so the moms got to shop in relative peace. It worked. The kids were from the I-pod generation, and the idea of someone actually playing these instruments and having some fun, well, it was a new thing, and it got the kids mesmerized. Ricky made up a little game where he picked and sang parts of a few simple old-timey banjo tunes, and got the kids to sing along, sometimes slow, and sometimes way way too fast. You get a line and I’ll get a pole, honey You get a line and I’ll get a pole, babe You get a line and I’ll get a pole We’ll go down to the crawdad hole, Honey, baby, mine But then when he repeated it, he’d stop short just in the middle of a line, and Ricky and the kids laughed and squealed if a couple of them couldn’t remember the rest of the words. Getting to practice, getting to show off, and getting PAID for it, all at the same time, damn. Performing and having everyone watch, that was what Ricky always loved. He was a natural entertainer, and got tons of extra energy from the customers’ smiles and applause. He had to be a little careful not to tire out his voice, especially on his longer Friday through Sunday workdays. He really only sang about 25% of the time, and just played his instruments or talked the rest. His voice was OK, but he was on his feet pretty much the whole time except for his very short breaks, and he noticed that his legs really ached during the last couple hours of his shift. Especially in the backs of his thighs. Gotta find a way to maybe stretch, maybe even sit down for a couple minutes at a time if the boss isn’t watching. He didn’t want to be all stiff for his morning pickup basketball games in the downtown park. On Wednesday of his second week, Ricky got his first actual pay. Though it wasn’t illegal for a child of Ricky’s age to work, it certainly wasn’t a common Wal-Mart practice, and the manager decided it would be better if he paid the boy in cash out of discretionary money, rather than put him on the official payroll, and have his superiors start wondering what was up. Always best to never rock the boat. But this kid’s good—no way to know if the boy had anything to do with the store’s high sales volume over the weekend, but just to keep customers and staff with a nice high energy level, he’s more than worth what I’ll pay him. He called Ricky aside while Ricky was tuning his guitar, just before his shift started. “Ricky, there’s an old saying that if you want to dance, you gotta pay the fiddler. I have your pay from last week here for you, and I just want to say that you’re doing a great job, I really like your enthusiasm, and I’m glad to have you on our team! Here you go.” Ricky stared with his mouth open as Jeff began to put tens and twenties into his hand. His heart pounded hard and he got really, really thirsty. It was all he could do to not pant like a dog, the dog Dad had agreed to get him sometime during the summer. This was more money, much more money, five times more money, than the boy had ever actually touched. His penis even got stiff all by itself. Like Tom, Ricky had never really thought much about money, just left everything to his parents. But this was intense, sick, big-time money. Just for playing and singing? Ohhhh yessssss. “Thanks, Jeff. I’m gonna keep working hard, and you said I could get employee prices on stuff?” “That’s what I said, young man, and that’s what I meant. You enjoy your pay, kid, you earned it. Well, all right, time for you to get your skinny ass out to the front entrance, you know what to do by now.” Jeff gave him a playful little push and Ricky went to his post. The first thing Ricky bought was a cell phone and a way to activate it. His parents weren’t gonna get him one, and he really, really had to be able to call Jenny, text her (though that wouldn’t be easy, as his spelling was worse than awful and handling the buttons was a chore for him), and send stupid little signals back and forth. He was hoping to get to see Jenny a couple times during the summer. He imagined those tits pressed against his chest, those insistent lips of hers closing around his, her hands, so gentle when they petted his hair or face, so intense when they petted his crotch. And that southern voice, the way she said “I love you, Ricky”, or her special laugh. As long as he could hear that voice every day, he could be OK for a few weeks without missing her too badly. Ricky did play a lot of basketball in the mornings, though he didn’t really think he was all that much better than he was in the spring. He could jump a little higher in the sky than before, though. Before, he could just barely touch the rim with his fingertips, but now, even though he wasn’t any taller, he could just about get the pads at the base of his fingers up there, get a little bit of a grab of the orange-painted iron. His favorite thing was when he could block someone’s shot and taunt the kid in a kind of black accent, “Don’t you come IN here wi’ that shit!!” Ricky figured no way could he even think about dunking a basketball, but maybe by the end of the summer he’d be able to cram down a tennis ball. Keep practicing. One night, he e-mailed big Bobby, typing very slowly. “Hey you big ugly dork, this is me Ricky. You remember, yur worse nigtmar on the court? Ive ben practising hoops a lot so far this summer, and you beter be ready for me when we get back to school. Im gonna have to punish you down in the paint this year, show you how its done. I can get a litle bit over the rim now. Are you gonna play varsity this year? Anyway, I hope youre having fun. Write back when you get a minut. Cugars rule! ---Ricky So Ricky was for the most part a happy boy in those late June and early July days. But there were about one or two hours per day when serious sadness and maybe even a bit of depression set in. They were the times when he was getting ready to go to bed, the times when he missed Tom. Missed his breathing in the bunk above him, missed his stupid attempts at jokes, missed when Tom would listen to his music, missed having the need to protect the kid from saying something dumb and pissing someone else off. Ricky would imagine his friend, his only real friend, and remember stuff Tom would say, in exactly his voice. It didn’t make Ricky want to cry, but made it sometimes tough to get to sleep, even after a full long day playing basketball, riding his bike, and working. He had Tom’s e-mail address and Tom had sent him his phone number, but Ricky didn’t call, figuring it would only make him sadder, not knowing exactly when he’d see him again. Jenny was great, and of course Ricky loved her, loved her with all his heart and all the testosterone his nuts could hold, but he was used to not seeing Jenny very often. To not see Tom, after being so used to him, day after day, night after night, that was tough for the bigger boy. On some evenings, he told all this to Jesus, and told Jesus that he would definitely take up Dad’s offer and invite Tom hiking later this summer. Not canoeing on the Nantahala, no way, Tom’s way too much of a pussy for that, but we could all go hiking. Yeah. Somewhere special, something different from school. One late afternoon at work, there was someone new for Ricky to get to know. He’d actually seen this guy in the store a couple times before, but only in the background, and the man had never approached or greeted him. The guy was maybe Dad’s age, maybe a little bit younger, and not very tall, at least three inches shorter than the boy. On this day, after Ricky finished one of the Bach violin pieces he’d learned in school, and there weren’t other customers around, the man came right up to Ricky and shook his hand. It was a firm grip, not painful or anything, but harder than Ricky had expected. “That’s some pretty serious pickin’ and fiddlin’ you’ve been doing these days, son.” Ricky noticed that although the words sounded kind of old-timey and corny, the man’s voice had no normal Southern accent at all. The man’s face was kind of nondescript, just very ordinary, just like his voice. No beard or moustache, nothing to remember it by. “Thank you, sir. Well, I’ve been playing music since I was little.” “What’s your name, boy?” Again the use of the countrified, familiar term “boy”, though not in any weird or threatening or strange way. Just seemed unusual to Ricky, hearing these words without the Southern twang, hearing them in a neutral voice like Dad’s. “Ricky Spann. Nice to meet you.” “Well, Ricky, I’m Matt Parsons, and I’ll be on my way now. You have some real talent as a musician, and I bet I see you again somewhere down the line.” The guy nodded and gave a friendly little smile, and walked away toward the electronics department. The instant the guy uttered the word “Matt”, Ricky froze and his body stiffened up a bit. He always did that, always felt an icy terrible shiver, whenever someone spoke the name of his long-dead brother, or whenever he’d hear the name Matt or Matthew on TV. But of course it wasn’t the guy’s fault that he was named Matt, and he was nice. But somewhere down the line? Huh? Well, doesn’t matter. 4:30, I’m supposed to be at the greeting area by now. SUMMER, PART 4 Since he was smaller, Jeremy was in a way not sure how black he really was or wanted to be. He was of course a brilliant child, and basically a good kid, but in his younger years sometimes rebelled against the whole black thing. His Mom and Dad had felt the sting of hate and discrimination when they were kids, and Jeremy’s grandfather was right in the middle of the whole civil rights movement in the 1960’s, literally putting his life on the line more than once, back in those days when things like segregation, Jim Crow, the Klan, and even lynchings were facts of life, not facts in a history book. Ricky’s paternal grandfather was a good friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. back before the man was a national figure. The family often took little Jeremy to the same Atlanta church where Martin had preached so long ago. There was a lot of history in Jeremy’s family, and a lot of pride. But Jeremy, since he was about 9, thought that the whole black emphasis was over the top. I’ts only what color I am, shouldn’t be such a big deal. With a little boy’s passion, he insisted on being called Jeremy rather than his given name, Jermaine. Insisted long and hard enough that it worked. To teachers, family, and friends, he was Jeremy, and everyone had pretty much by now forgotten the old name. He had always been a superstar in school, had never been insulted or taunted or hated because of his color, and he just figured that it didn’t really matter. Racism was just something to study in history class, something dry and long ago. Maybe like a Jewish kid would think of the Holocaust times. But as the brilliant young boy grew up more and got into more of the history, more reading about the dark and evil times, he began to think more of blackness, questioned more and more about why people did this kind of stuff to others. During his 7th and 8th grade years, there were serious talks with his grandparents during vacations, and a lot of online research. Jeremy let his hair grow out just a bit, no way like a 1970’s Afro (looking at Dad’s high school yearbook pictures made him bust out laughing) but definitely curly and full, no longer close to bald like most of the black kids in his neighborhood. At the beginning of 7th grade, he felt a little weird at St. Brendan’s, being surrounded by over 90% white kids. But this soon passed, and he really didn’t care much who he hung out with. He was always on the top honor roll, and until Tom showed up at the beginning of 8th grade, no one was even in the same ballpark as Jeremy in intelligence. Jeremy actually liked having another kid to share the load of being the top student, though he sometimes felt sorry for Tom in the beginning because the kid was such a loser. I tried to protect him from getting beaten up by Joey, but the kid wouldn’t listen. Not my fault. But anyway, the new geek kid adapted, and Jeremy didn’t think much about him for the rest of the year. In February, his parents had informed him of a national essay competition for an incredible prize. It was open to any African-American student between 13-15 years old, and only twelve students would win. When Jeremy heard about what he could win, he got all excited, and spent probably 20 hours honing his essay, polishing it, adding details, sweating and pounding away. And in May, his parents got the letter in the mail (snail mail, no less!) that Jeremy got it. Ooooh, got it, got it, I’m in!! He was tremendously excited, but in a way mad that he couldn’t tell his classmates. He could have, of course, but he was always careful never to brag about his grades or academic awards, so he shut up. But through May and June, he was all tingly with anticipation. The prize would be an expense-paid 15-day summer trip to Ghana and South Africa. Not by any means was it supposed to be a vacation. Nothing like that. It was a study trip for the students to see first-hand a lot of stuff about the black experience, both past and present. Parents were warned that there was going to be some very, very upsetting things that their young adolescent children would witness and be part of. How the slave trade worked, the insides of prisons, grinding rural poverty, dying AIDS patients. And it wouldn’t be luxurious, either. The flights (starting from New York—Jeremy’s family would have to pay to get him to the starting point) would be paid for by the foundation, but the students would stay mostly in either very modest university dorm rooms or at the homes of ordinary families in the host countries. Forget about hotels, forget about shopping, not the reason the kids were going on this journey. Parents were sent the details of the various activities and had to give written approval. But they were asked not to tell their children about everything that was planned, as they wanted the students to experience the full impact. Some very famous people were scheduled to give talks and have discussions with the group. The idea was for the students to come home with something they’d never forget, something that would make them into different people going forward. The trip would start just about a week after Jeremy got home. He’d never even been on a plane before, and was excited as a 7 year-old. His parents knew it would be something big for him, certainly the most grown-up thing he’d ever done in his young life. They brought him to the Atlanta airport for his first flight to New York, where he’d meet up with the rest of the students and one of the chaperones, and everyone would fly together to Ghana. Mom and Dad left him at the check-in area. Time for the young bird to really fly on his own. Literally, this time. Jeremy wasn’t a big kid, about the same size and build as Tom. But as he picked up his boarding pass and shouldered his carry-on backpack towards the security check, he stretched out his spine, lifted up his head, and knew that today, he was a grown man. A strong BLACK man. Self-confident, on top of whatever, this world is MINE. A grown man who had to push every button on the plane, open and close every compartment five times during boarding. A grown man who wasn’t at all scared when the engines roared and he was pushed back into his seat. A grown man who carefully tracked the plane’s progress from Atlanta to New York on the in-flight magazine’s map. After a few minutes, he thought they must be passing pretty much over St. Brendan’s, and he strained to see out the window, but the landscapes all seemed pretty much the same. But a couple hours later, approaching New York City, oh yeah, that landscape he knew about. He talked about everything to the rather bored white husband/wife couple sitting next to him. Look, there’s the hole where the Twin Towers used to be. And the Statue of Liberty, I thought it was way bigger than that. Guess it looks bigger when you’re down there, or used to look big when immigrants would pass by it by boat, like that scene at the end of Titanic. And look, see how Manhattan is so long and skinny? On landing, Jeremy gripped the armrests a little more tightly, but not with any panic, he knew the pilots weren’t going to crash. He was met at JFK Airport by one of the chaperones, an older guy named Dave, and brought to a place in the city where the group would stay for the first night, intending to fly to Africa early the next morning. Jeremy quickly felt pretty comfortable with the other kids, they were nice, and it was kind of cool to be around kids who were as smart as he was. Just by coincidence, it was six boys and six girls, and Jeremy sure noticed one of the girls, a chick named Donna who were skin-tight black pants that left very little to the boy’s active imagination. Jeremy had been a bit of a late-bloomer, hadn’t started puberty until the middle of 8th grade, but once he hit it, he hit it hard, and this Donna, damn, she was something. Good thing Jeremy was wearing loose pants with plenty of room for something in there to expand. Plenty of little puppy flirting, both him to her and her to him, that first night as the group got to know each other. She had a kind of shrieking laugh that Jeremy loved, and he was way hornier than he’d ever gotten at stupid school dances or around those dumb townie girls of Ripton. In the morning, Dave went over every detail on the van ride to the airport. Rules #1, 2, 3, and 4 were STAY TOGETHER!! Dave was the only American chaperone. The other chaperones and guides were from the African countries, and already in place there. Jeremy now felt a little more like a veteran flier, now that he had the Atlanta-New York part of the trip under his belt. It was a long, long way to Africa, but the kids passed the time on the plane playing with their electronic toys, watching the movies, doing stuff that their African ancestors hardly could have imagined. Dave watched them and grinned, enjoying seeing them just be kids. Well, soon enough they’d see and know about things that no child really should, but that perhaps someone had to. No one should, but someone had to. They arrived in the city of Accra and Jeremy thought the place was much uglier than he imagined. He knew it would be a city, but he still had the idea in his mind of a place with cool animals and wide-open spaces. He loved that old Out of Africa movie with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. Dave and the African chaperones drove the group to the dorm where they’d be staying that night, and Jeremy felt disappointed as he looked out the van window and saw nothing but endless dusty streets, rusty cars, traffic-choked neighborhoods and blank-faced people wandering around. A lot of dirty nothingness, really. The ride was close to an hour, and though the other kids were all excited and chirping, Jeremy didn’t say much, and wasn’t even thinking about Donna for the moment. Is this all there is to Africa? Surely it has to be better than this. The kids were officially welcomed and fed a nice big dinner, which made Jeremy feel a little more relaxed and happy. Later, there was some cool fun. They took the kids to see a group of musicians who did native West African drumming, which was just wild, just great. The rhythms of ancient times, yeah! None of the kids had heard anything like it. Live music, unrecorded and unamplified, got a hold of these young people, in some ways a bit like Ricky’s music got the attention of the little ones in that faraway Wal-Mart. Music to cross the oceans and the cultures. The musicians invited the students to practice the drums, to pound along with the performers, and to try the dancing. Everyone was laughing and yelling and moving and getting into it, especially Donna, who certainly knew how to shake that ass. It was hard for Jeremy and the others to get to sleep that first night, being in a strange place, not really being used to the time change and all. No one told them what would be on tap for the following day. After only sleeping a little bit, off and on, they were woken up by the four chaperones (two Ghanaian women, one Nigerian guy, and Dave), fed their breakfast, and taken on a tour, first to a museum, then to an ancient slave auction site. This got their attention—these young people weren’t just ordinary teenagers, they were among the best and brightest that America had, and they were curious and very receptive to learning about it all. When the heat of the day was at its most intense, Kwame and Gloria took them to another museum, one down by the ocean. The adults told them nothing, just that it was part of the experience of African history. Through a hallway with some exhibits on the wall, down a stairway, and into a big echoing place without any lights. “Hey, Kwame, man, what’s the deal?” asked Kenny, a 10th grader from Michigan. “It’s dark in here, damn, what are we supposed to be seeing?” SUMMER, PART 5 Lights came on, but only enough to see, not enough to really illuminate the whole place brightly. They were in a huge, nearly empty room except for some benches and iron things next to them. “Kids, this is a full-scale model of the inside of a slave ship. This is how people were transported across the Atlantic, often first to the Caribbean, then to the American South. Not exactly the luxury of the Titanic, my people. Of course these didn’t sink, either. Not a lot of icebergs on this route. Let’s go a little closer, let’s see the places where the slaves were kept when they made the trip.” The kids went closer and carefully inspected the benches and the chains. It appeared that people sat on wooden benches, jammed body-to-body, with their legs stretched out in front of them, their shins inserted through wooden holes. Some of the holes were bigger than others, surely to accommodate larger or smaller people, maybe even small children. The long wooden bar was actually in two parts. It could be separated to put people in, then locked at one end, so one lock was all it took to immobilize a whole row of people’s legs. There was a similar wooden bar a little bit above it, with smaller holes for people’s wrists. Again, these holes were cut in different sizes. From the configuration of the wooden bars, it looked like the rows of people had to sit back-to-back. “Look, if they had to have all the people in a row sitting down before they could lock the thing, how did they get them in?” asked one boy. “I can see them putting one person in, but wouldn’t all of the slaves have fought back together if they were all mobile for even a minute?” “That’s a good question, I’ve wondered that myself sometimes,” said the Gloria, the lady chaperone. “What do you kids think? Any theories?” Jeremy thought of something. “What if each person was chained up, and they put one at a time in the stocks, and threatened to whip him if he put up a fight? Then when one person was in, they chained him individually again while they were putting in the other people so no one could fight back.” Pretty complicated, and everyone chewed over this one for awhile. Other guesses about how they controlled the groups of slaves came out, and then some of the kids started joking about whipping people, their own knowledge of various martial arts, and the differences between this ship and the Titanic from the movie. A few playful pantomimes and punches, some giggling, sure these were brilliant intellectual kids, but of course still kids. “Well, anyway,” said Kwame, “time for some pictures! OK, who’s gonna get in first? Come on, I’ll lift up one end of the bar so you can fit your legs and wrists.” Donna volunteered and there were plenty of pictures and plenty of laughing at the girl who was pretending to be all chained up in the slave ship. In ones and twos, the other kids tried, sometimes being able to wave their hands if someone was taking a movie video of them. Someone started singing “Row, row, row your boat” with a few sexually graphic lyrics thrown in, and it was all pretty cool, though at the same time a real learning experience to actually see and feel what the slaves had to go through on the trip. “All right, not bad, but I want a few shots of everyone together now! Come on, back-to-back, six of you on this side, six over there. Gloria, a little help with the bars, please? That’s right, my children, there you go. OK, give me a minute, gotta get the camera flash correct, I want one picture of each group of six. Smile! Say cheese! Now how ‘bout you niggas sing something for me? Come on, a good old slave sea chanty, let’s hear it!” The leader got his pictures and everyone was pretty silly, but enough was enough with this place, Jeremy thought. Time to head out, getting hungry. But while everything seemed relaxed, all of a sudden the lights went out and there were sounds of clinking metal. Pitch blackness, with no one able to see so much as an inch in front of them. Nothingness. And when the kids went to stand up and figure out what was happening, no way. Trapped. Going nowhere, and seeing not a thing. No sound at all anywhere but their own shouting. They shook and squirmed, cried out in shock and surprise, but were held fast inside the wooden stocks. Kenny was a bigger kid, louder than most of the others, and he was able to get everyone’s attention. “Calm down, just y’all chill, will ya? They’re just tryin’ to teach us some kind of a lesson, yeah, surprise, that’s right. Yeah, yeah, we’re supposed to be all scared, FEEL the experience. All right, it worked, we get the message. HEY KWAME! GLORIA! OK, show’s over, we get the message, come on, open these things up, time for lunch!” No response. One of the girls began screaming. “We’re being kidnapped! They had this whole thing planned! SHIT! This can’t be happening! Oh my God, they’re gonna demand money or other stuff from our parents, and if everything doesn’t work out, they’re gonna kill us! They might kill us anyway, I don’t know! I don’t wanna die, please, please, not here, not in this place! HEEEEELLLLLLLPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!” The teenagers shouted and shook, wiggled their arms and legs fractions of an inch. Yelled with all the ferocious passion in their adolescent bodies and souls, yelled and swore til they were spent. Fought like fish fighting against the angler’s line, fighting til there was nothing left in them. Some of the kids had watches on that could light up, just to see what time it was, but they couldn’t reach one hand to the opposite wrist to get to the light button. They were helpless, sweaty, hungry, thirsty, and by now knowing that this situation was life and death. Jeremy was crying softly but used what little courage he had remaining to think clearly and say something to everyone, keeping his voice calm even if his insides weren’t. “Look, guys, I don’t know what the deal is here, none of us do. But we gotta keep our heads on straight, we can’t get crazy and start using up our energy even faster. Let’s not die of thirst before we even know what’s up. If it’s anything bad, they’ve GOT to come back to at least bring food, I guess? I mean they gotta keep us alive, don’t they? Let’s just try the best we can not to panic. People have been in bad situations before and gotten out. Let’s just stay logical, best we can. We gotta keep hope, it’s all we’ve got.” The captive young teenagers had no way of knowing how long they’d been there or what might happen. No food or water, and eventually people had to go to the bathroom badly. The psychological torture was now combined with the physical of having no way to get rid of waste. No one was brave or tough or macho anymore, not even Kenny, who was wailing like a toddler. Jeremy was locked up next to Donna, the same Donna that he had an instant crush on, the same Donna with the sexy ass. But jammed against her sweating, smelly body like this was so gross, way beyond anything that Jeremy had ever imagined. Eventually people just couldn’t physically hold it in anymore, and the smell of urine and shit dominated the place. Jeremy figured that he may as well piss all over himself, nothing else to do, and he cried and prayed as the filthy, sticky liquid crawled all over his trapped and helpless legs. Eventually some of the kids tried to sleep, but in that physical position, in that heat, in that emotional state, it was pretty much impossible. Their screams had long, long ago stopped, even the intermittent ones. There wasn’t even any conversation anymore. What could be said, even if someone had enough energy left to talk? Each boy or girl was just inside his own thoughts, some resigned to their fates, others praying to some God or other, others just with their usually intelligent minds gone blank. No muscles were straining against the wooden stocks anymore. Limbs just lay limp inside the wooden shackles, tongues tried unsuccessfully to moisten parched lips, and the supply of hope that Jeremy had mentioned was pretty much exhausted. But when some students were barely conscious, light returned and there were Kwame, Gloria, and three other adults that the kids didn’t know. The grownups unlocked the bars and the exhausted children sank to the floor, not knowing if they were going to be rescued, were already dead, were still in trouble, nothing. And at this point, none could muster up the energy to even care. But the adults’ words were soothing, they had lots and lots of water, and began to comfort the kids who had suffered worse than any child ever should have. No one was even able to stand for several minutes. Kenny, the strongest boy in the group, was the first to be able to get vertical, but had to lean on one of the men for support. He was the first to recover a little bit of his anger, even though like the rest, he wasn’t sure what had happened. “Kwame, Gloria,” he half-shouted, half-cried, “what happened to us? Why, WHY? Are we going to be OK? We were going to die, you know!” “Children, oh, I know, I know, yes, it was terrible, but now you’ll begin to know what it was like. You just now can see through a tiny window in your minds what happened to people, what some humans are capable of doing to others. We had to make you feel it. We had to make you sense it, had to imprint this onto you. We had to burn this into your souls so that you’ll hopefully never let any group of people be slaves again. We’re so, so sorry, and I know you hate us now, but this was part of the trip. We’re gonna get you cleaned up now, we’re gonna take you to a nice restaurant, it’s all going to be OK now. It’s over, it’s over, no more, kids. You’re all so brave.” “You had no RIGHT!” another boy said with the strength he had remaining. “I’m going to call my parents, I’m going to tell them everything, they’ll sue all of you, get even for what you did to us! Just you WAIT!” he snarled, but even through his passionate anger, he was letting himself be hugged by one of the leaders. Burying his nose into her shoulder. Jeremy felt much the same, and thought it weird that he was so mad, maybe madder than he’d ever been in his life. but yet so dependent on the grownups, the ones with the water, the food, and the support. “Kids,” Kwame said softly, “your parents know about all this. They knew what this afternoon’s activity was, we told them all before, and they gave their permission. But maybe even they couldn’t have known what it would feel like to you. We have a lot to talk about tonight after you’re clean and have eaten a huge meal. Come on, let’s walk, let’s get out of here. Kids, we have a lot of adventures left on this continent for the next 12 days, a lot of good ones and a lot of difficult ones, but I promise you one thing. I promise, promise, promise you that we will never, ever do anything like this to you again while you’re with us. It’s finished now, people.” During this speech the man had four desperate kids hanging on him, two on each arm. Jeremy understood in his mind, but his tears weren’t yet stopping and his skinny chest was still heaving. At least he had water, and he had been able to drink his fill. His legs began moving with everyone else’s through the empty ship model, up the stairs, and towards the rest of the world. “Kwame, how long were we locked up like that?” “It’s 5:15 PM. You were locked up for a bit more than four hours.” Most kids looked at each other with wide eyes. Most had thought it was at the very least overnight. And they knew that the ocean crossing for the slaves took several days. Four HOURS?? That’s fucking ALL??? Jeremy spoke again, spoke softly but determinedly when they were about to emerge into the sharp late-afternoon sunlight. “I think I understand now, maybe a little bit. But still, that….that wasn’t what we came here for. I mean, you broke our spirits. That’s just….that’s just not fair. That’s just not right.” “I know it isn’t, Jeremy,” replied Gloria. “Probably we shouldn’t have. It wasn’t right, I know. But now, you begin to know what it was like. Now you have something that other kids don’t, you have knowledge and wisdom you can’t get from a book or a website. Jeremy, it was terrible of us, but Africa’s past and present can be terrible. But you’re going to be OK now, shower, food, we love you and we’re going to take good care of you the rest of the way.” Jeremy listened and shuffled along the city streets with everyone else toward the waiting van. He wondered exactly what you had to do to fix a broken spirit. SUMMER, PART 6 Within three hours, the kids were clean, well-fed, and comforted, but still emotionally in a difficult state after their ordeal. That was planned, of course. The words that would come out in the evening’s talk session were deep and from the heart. They gathered in the dorm’s small common room with the chaperones to discuss everything that happened. Four leaders were surrounded by twelve students, and most of the kids had the need this night to be touched, to be physically leaning on or holding an arm of one of the grownups. “You had us tricked, we never saw it coming,” began Kenny. “I mean we were all laughing and stuff, you were taking pictures, it just happened so fast, and even afterwards, we never knew what was going on. I guess my first thought was right, you were doing it to teach us something, but after awhile I didn’t know, and other guys thought maybe we were being kidnapped, or maybe something happened to you people, too, maybe that not knowing is why the thing seemed like so much longer than four hours.” “I’m from Massachusetts,” added a boy named Randy, “and I’ve been to Old Sturbridge Village where they have stocks they put people in if they’d done something bad, but it was really just to embarrass them, wasn’t like torture. You can get in and get your picture taken, but there’s no locks!” “Well, guys,” said Kwame, “if you think back so many hundreds of years, maybe the trickery aspect was necessary. People certainly wouldn’t have become slaves willingly, somehow they had to be taken, it’s likely that somehow someone must have gained their confidence knowing what was going to happen to them, sold them out for profit.” The kids’ minds were engaged now, and comments flowed freely. These were the type of students who often weren’t satisfied with just getting a “right” answer, but who had their own opinions and, when they were interested in something, were willing to explore with their minds and words. Get intense, and don’t be afraid to think. The leaders didn’t say that much, just let the young people go with it. “But how did the white people from Europe know that they would be able to capture these people without getting killed themselves?” “Maybe when they explored, they figured out that they had more advanced weapons, but still must have been a risk. And they had to know that certain kinds of crops, like cotton, needed tons of people to be able to grow and harvest them—they had to know that there was enough work for these people to do to justify the risk and the investment.” “But was there ever this kind of slavery before in history, like so many people, all the same ethnic group? I think I read something that rich Romans had slaves, but so many? And did they take them from other parts of their empire in ships like this? And did they treat them like shit?” “I still can’t figure out how the native Africans got sold out by their own people. Man, that sucks.” “Now wait a minute!” Jeremy interjected. He was all excited now, excited that here were kids of his own intelligence level, kids that he could really get into discussions with, and really stretch out his mind, which was the strongest part of his body (though another organ was growing fast…). He was breathing hard, and pleasurable endorphins were racing through his system as he worked his brain hard. The sensation of joy in something he did well, much like the pleasure Ricky had when his guitar seemed to guide his fingers to make soothing music, or like Tom had when he clicked off mile after mile on the peaceful Georgia country roads. Something that happened without the person really knowing why, or even knowing it was happening at all. “Wait a minute!” he repeated. “I got a problem with this whole “their own people” stuff. I mean, no disrespect, but that’s bullshit. Look, how were the rich African tribal leaders, the princes or kings or whatever they had, any more “their own people” than the white guys who came in and killed, captured, raped, whatever? I mean anyone who would do this kind of stuff sure doesn’t qualify in my mind as “my” people. Just ‘cause someone’s the same color as me, hell, that doesn’t cut it, if the person would sell me out. I mean, whose people are whose? Everyone’s got two arms and two legs, you know. Damn, most of the problems in this world, you go to Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Darfur, used to be Northern Ireland even, it’s all about people trying to divide into “your” people and “my” people. I don’t care if it’s human nature, I still don’t like it.” Jeremy paused to catch his breath. “Yo, easy, Jeremy, you’re gonna pop a blood vessel or something!” said Kenny, grinning and playfully pushing the smaller the smaller kid to almost knock him down. Jeremy did laugh and someone else started in on a different subject. The chaperones were surprised that the kids were so wide-awake and energized after the whole ordeal in the model ship. They had expected the kids to be unconscious by 9:00 or so. But the words kept coming, the ideas kept moving, and eventually it was approaching midnight. There was one subject that Kwame wanted to get into before everyone went to bed. “Kids, I’m amazed by your passion, by your depth of thinking. But for this minute, I want you to forget about the history, forget about the rest of the world. What did today’s experience feel like to YOU? YOU, personally, inside?” The boy who had threatened to call his parents and sue everyone was the first to speak. “Well, physically, I guess, that’s the easiest part to describe, you know, hungry and thirsty and shitting and pissing all over ourselves. But you know what was the weirdest part? When you guys came back in, and finally we got free and just were laying there, we hated you so much, hated you guys with all we had in us, but…” Kenny got up and started jokingly taunting and punching the group leader, who neutralized him with a headlock and some tickling. “Shut UP, Kenny, man,” continued the other boy, “I’m serious! We hated you guys so much, but we first of all didn’t have the strength to do anything or resist, and even worse, when we could finally stand up, well, you were the people with the water, and we, I dunno, maybe this sounds faggy, but we just needed to be taken care of then. You know, to be held onto. It was like Jeremy said, you broke our spirits. And you must have had that whole thing planned out. Do you think the slave trade people had it figured out like that, you know, how they’d mess with people’s heads?” A fascinating insight, but Kwame and Gloria could tell that the kids were finally getting tired. “Maybe, maybe,” said the woman in that clipped staccato West African accent. “It was a day that you children surely will never forget, and something that each person has to turn over in his own mind, think how what you went through will change you. All right, that’s all for tonight, we’re heading out into the countryside tomorrow, people. Go to sleep, but no need to get up at the crack of dawn, breakfast won’t be til 8:30.” The kids filed out of the common room toward the large rooms with their cots. Six boys in one large room, six girls in another. Jeremy was right behind Donna and that ass of hers. Strange, he thought. Through this entire day, I didn’t even really think of her like that. And I’m too tired to right now. This was a day, damn, this was a day. Three mornings later, the group was in the sky, winging their way to South Africa. Jeremy immediately liked this country better. More modern, seemingly less gross, and not so hot. A sweet cool breeze tickled his skin almost everywhere he went. And on this portion of their trip, they’d get to do many more fun things to mix with heavy, serious history and politics lessons. The group had a morning at a clean sandy beach outside Cape Town, and also got to go swimming at a public pool right in the city. Almost a third of the kids swimming there were white, and Jeremy felt it kind of weird to be actually in the majority among a group of other kids he didn’t really know. At St. Brendan’s, he didn’t really think of what color anyone was, even though there were 30 or more other black kids at the school. Just different here to be considering this stuff. It was hard for him to believe what Kwame said, that until very recently, black kids couldn’t swim with white kids. But his parents had said that Georgia used to be the same way, still, that was longer ago. But somehow people’s color had so much to do with everything on this trip. Jeremy’s favorite day was the one the group spent with South Africa’s hero, Nelson Mandela. The other famous people they’d met were pretty boring, just gave a speech or a little presentation and left. But this old, old, close to 90 year-old skinny guy, he spent a whole day with the kids, got to know their names, joked and laughed with them as well as got into serious stuff, like when they all went out to that island prison where they’d kept him for 18 years, and then kept him 10 more years in jail somewhere else. Poor guy didn’t even get out until he was more than 70, but he wasn’t complaining. How much energy this old man had, that blew the kids away. Jeremy felt that he really knew him after that one special day, and he never forgot how the old man said goodbye to the kids. “Children, you are the young ones, the smart ones, the ones with the great minds. You personally will probably never have to go through the shit that I did.” Wow, a famous person saying the word shit. “But now I have to put a question to you, together and individually. More individually, really, Donna, Kevin, Jeremy, Randy, Sheila, each person here. What are YOU going to do? What are YOU going to do so that all the evil you’ve seen and will see more of can one day be gone? YOU have the power, but maybe it’s unfortunate, you won’t really have the need. You will be professionals, business leaders, important and powerful adults who won’t have a direct financial need, a direct personal need, to do the dirty work, to rock and shake this world. But I challenge you today, what will YOU do? Now I don’t know much longer I’ll be on this earth to witness what you do, but hey, maybe I’ll be watching you from somewhere else. I’ve had a great ride, but my time’s close to up and I now give the responsibility to each one of you.” The teenagers were silent as mice, sitting on the floor around the man’s chair, concentrating on every word and syllable their hero said. “So, my children, thank you for letting me spend the day with you, for seeing your young faces and hearing your voices. I love you so much and may you go in peace and joy.” The kids spent some of the next week doing lots of learning, including seeing some horrible gross stuff, but the plan for the last three days was to take the kids for something special and fun. They took the group way, way out of town to Kruger National Park, where they’d see all the wild animals of their fantasies, sleep in little primitive cottages, eat strange meats that they’d never tried before, ride tame elephants, take pictures, everything. For the final three days, to be pure tourists, really. It kind of eased the stress on Jeremy, who had really taken everything about Africa to heart, deep inside him, done much more thinking than was really healthy, but now could breathe free, relax, and get into seeing all his favorite animals. And there were tons of them, just roaming wild, just like he’d imagined in his mind. He saw only two lions, but countless wildebeests, zebras, water buffaloes, giraffes (that were way taller than Bobby—Jeremy figured even that kid could probably run under their bellies, yeah, let Bobby try to play basketball against THEM), antelopes, and other things that looked like antelopes but had weird names. In addition, the compound where they were staying had its own giraffes and elephants. Jeremy was a total animal-lover. He and some of the guys grossed out the chicks by coaxing one of the giraffes to stick his gigantic head into the open window of the place where the humans were eating breakfast. Put a banana in front of one of the girls’ faces, watch the giraffe try to damn near give her a kiss, make her scream, very cool. And the elephants, well, he was into them. Too much petting and kissing those guys, yes, you’re a good elephant, I love you, what, you want your ear scratched, no problem. One day he even joined the elephant’s handler in taking a mud bath with the beast. Just disgusting, filthy, way more fun than life itself. Made Kwame take his picture, smiling and rolling in the slop. Kenny saw all this, ragged on him, “Hey Jeremy! You finally found something gets you hard? You just gonna jerk off, or are you gonna try to fuck that thing? That’s one picture I don’t WANNA have to see, man!” The last evening eventually arrived. They’d head back to Cape Town early the next morning, then the long, long flight back to New York. One of the longest flights in the world, almost as long as it would take to go from the west coast to Australia. Jeremy and Donna took a little walk away from the compound, sensing the darkness and the evening’s coolness. Only candles lit up the cabins and common areas at night, so as night fell, the two kids could get used to the darkness and enjoy a night-time star show that was impossible in towns and cities, impossible where electric lights stabbed the eyes. They sat down, kind of leaning against each other, and Jeremy kind of sensed it was time. Time for his first. Donna didn’t resist as their faces got close and it all happened. Lips, tongues, teeth, all the sensations. Jeremy’s heart was pounding hard, and he figured, well, we’ve gone this far, hell, she seems to like it, and his hand edged up into her tits until Donna gripped it hard. Damn near broke the boy’s fingers. “You get that hand outa there, boy, ‘fore I break it off!” Shit, better try to get romantic. “But Donna, I love you.” “Yeah, right, don’t give me that love bullshit, boy, you just horny.” The young lady decided to test her theory with a grab of a part of Jeremy through his pants, a grab of an expanding telescopic part, and he had absolutely no wish to break HER hand off. Not fair, but very nice. “But anyway, Jeremy, you’re all right,” Donna said more gently. “Little weird, but you’re all right.” There was a little more kissing, close-mouthed but still good, and the two of them wrapped each other up in a deep hug. Jeremy did experiment with his hand rubbing one of her ass cheeks, and at least this she didn’t object to. Then they just held each other’s hands and lay down next to each other, lay down shoulder to shoulder on the rich African earth, and stared without speaking at the glory of the kaleidoscopic star show. Some of the stars bright, others faint, some making constellation patterns that he knew, others forming patterns right then and there. Nothing on earth, nothing in Jeremy’s life, had been like these couple weeks, nothing had been like this night. Jeremy listened to Donna’s soft breathing and began to think. Africa. It’s like….I dunno. There’s stuff so horrible, chained in that ship, that island prison, the dust, the stink, those poor people we saw who didn’t even have the strength to shoo the flies out of their eyes, those AIDS patients, damn, it was like they barely even HAD eyes, just holes in the bony sockets or something. And tonight, these stars, and that cool South African singing we learned, how did the women throw their head back and make that fast ye-ye-yiii sound, and the animals that are so cool, just running wherever they feel like, you can feel the ground rumble when they all stampede. There’s Donna’s lips, and the fun we had in Ghana with the drummers, and all this delicious silence around us now, and oh, wow, that Nelson Mandela, what a man, and everything else. Sights, sounds, and smells began popping in and out of the boy’s mind without him being able to consciously control. Africa’s like, so…so raw, everything’s mixed together, stuff that’s so disgusting and evil mixed together so closely with the most beautiful things in the world, it’s all together. It’s, I can’t really even explain it to myself, how can I explain to Mom and Dad or anyone else? Maybe I’d say it’s more upfront, more in your face, than anywhere else. Guess it’s just Africa, that’s what it is, and I’ve only seen a speck of it. I don’t know when, but I’ll definitely be back one day. For sure, 100%. Rest of the summer, will be fun of course, but really, kind of a comedown after all this. 9th grade coming up after that. Who at St. Brendan’s can I really tell about all this? I wonder if anyone at school could understand. SUMMER, PART 7 The morning after his mother’s bedtime talk, Tom began setting up his summer routine. Each day, he set his alarm clock for 4:00 and was on the road by 4:30, getting most of his run finished in the inky predawn light, well before the heat of the day. Coach P’s instructions were to simply use the first three weeks to get mileage back into his legs, to go a solid 45-50 miles per week, to get his endurance back where it should be. Hills, pacework, all that could come much later. Tom knew a few of the roads in his neighborhood. Most of them were paved, though he liked running on dirt roads better, they were less stressful on his knees. He eventually looked at Google Earth and found a dirt road loop starting not far from the house that he could run a few different ways, making the courses, 5, 8. or 10 miles. After his run, he’d go back to sleep for a couple hours (unlike Ricky, Tom had no need for an extra morning masturbation session at those times), have breakfast, and take off on his bike. The nearby town had a really nice park with lots of organized programs for kids and a huge clean pool. Tom spent most of his days there. In the morning, there was a free karate class that was kind of cool. Maybe not exactly karate with hitting people, but they taught the kids some movements, some yells, and plenty of ferocious punches and kicks at the defenseless air. He also spent about an hour a day in various stretching exercises, not that he needed to do so much, but it filled the time. There were also basketball courts for pickup games and stuff for smaller kids to climb on. The pool was cold and just perfect in the brutal Georgia summer heat. None of the kids bothered Tom or hassled him as he swam laps or jumped off the diving board, but no one knew him either, and he had no idea how to go about getting to know them, either. Once in awhile Tom would join in a little water basketball or keep-away game, but still, without knowing anyone. He envied the other kids who knew everyone’s names, who yelled and shouted and played with each other without a thought or care in the world, kids who just socialized naturally, and who often came and left the park together. Except for visiting Ricky, Tom had never, not even once, been over another kid’s house. He knew he was abnormal, and it sometimes hurt, hurt bad. Normal kids hang out, have friends, do stuff, it all comes easy for them. How come I can’t? Abnormal, abnormal, abnormal. The word kept repeating itself in his mind, day after day. He’d return home in the late afternoon, feed and play with Foxfire, help Mom or Dad with small chores like setting the table, separating the recycling, stuff like that. Everyone would have dinner together, and Tom would either go for a short run with Dad or head back to his room and get online. Dad had given him his old laptop. Sometimes he just surfed, googled whatever was in his mind, or looked at the St. Brendan’s website, but more often he played online chess with people on the Internet Chess Club. Was a lot of fun, and also he could also look at master games, get lessons, tons of stuff. The only problem was that the strong players wanted to play at extremely fast time controls, like where you had to move instantly, and Tom always preferred to relax, look deeply at a position. But the people who liked to play slower were usually awful or only fair, and Tom won over 80% of the time. Anyway, it was something to do. He’d completely forgotten about that special job or something Mom had talked about the previous Sunday night. He wasn’t into TV, rarely watched it, and usually went to sleep between 9 and 10. By now, Tom knew he was gay. He’d been sure of it for quite some time, really, sure of it since all his masturbation thoughts involved boys and their bodies, and in this early summer he imagined exactly what certain kids at the pool would look like if they were wearing sexy speedos or nothing at all. Before going to sleep, he’d cum powerfully, imagining that he was doing it pressed against one of them, squirting his sperm all over, while the other boy had his head thrown back and was making noises. But being gay didn’t bother him, he had no special teenage angst about it. Wasn’t that big a deal. He didn’t discuss it with Mom or Dad, though he was sure they wouldn’t have minded, they were liberal people. Just there’s stuff that a 13, almost 14 year-old boy keeps private. But one thing seemed weird to him. On the gay websites and chats, it was like people were so, well, FAGGY. And the gay people he heard voices of or saw nonporn pictures of, it was like they were girly, effeminate, just all gross. Tom knew he was gay, but knew he was also 100% BOY, zero point zero zero percent girl or faggot. Damn, if I was into girls, I might as well be straight. Were all gay people like the ones online? Can’t be, or are they? He didn’t know. He got into some gay youth chats, and these got his curiosity going initially, but very soon got boring. People just talking about stupid trendy clothes or music groups or writing dumb shit with abbreviations, or people, very likely adults, IMing him with crude sexual come-ons or wanting to see his picture, which he knew NEVER to share online. This can’t be all there is to gay, Tom thought. But it didn’t bother him that much, he wasn’t obsessed, he really cared more about his training for cross-country season and playing with Foxfire. What bothered Tom more, the sad thing for him during those first few days, was not having friends. Not having Ricky around, and not knowing how to make friends with the kids at the park, who seemed like nice enough guys. But how to approach them, how to get into the group, involves risk, I could seem like an idiot and a loser, and then it would be just like Argentina again. Safer just to be on the outside, really. Don’t stay or do anything stupid, don’t introduce yourself like a dork, ‘cause once you get a reputation, it’s forever, you can never put the toothpaste back in the tube. But shit, I’m abnormal. Why? And what can I do about it? One night, while Tom was doing some web-surfing, he heard a soft knock on his door that was surely Mom. Dad always pounded harder. Mom and Dad were both really nice about knocking on his door first, and then waiting whatever few seconds it took til he acknowledged or gave permission for them to come in. Would be embarrassing if they walked in on him jerking off, or if he quickly had to get out of a gay chat or something. They were good about giving him his space and his time. Tom didn’t really know how to thank them for being this way, but he was truly grateful. He invited his mother in with a nice voice, not a bored or snarly one. “Hi, sweetie,” said Mom softy. “Well, tomorrow’s the day.” “What day?” “Remember that thing I wanted you to do for me where I work?” “Oh yeah, I kind of forgot the whole thing before. Anyway, what’s up?” “Look, Tom, I’ll tell you more at breakfast. But tomorrow, I want you to ride your bike to where I work around 2 in the afternoon. I’ll write the address and everything. Find me there. I’ve told some of the people there about you and some of them are really, really looking forward to meeting you. Going to be a special day for you.” “So you’re not going to tell me any more? Is that like some kind of special annoying grownup attitude?” “Right, Tom! But I get to have adult attitude without anyone hassling me, and if you have little teenager attitude, well, you get in trouble! Ah, poor you, so unfair, isn’t it?” Tom laughed, his mother always made him do it. “It does suck, you’re right. All right, Mom, give Foxfire a kiss, and let me sleep now, guess I’ll know more tomorrow.” SUMMER, PART 8 At breakfast, Mom finally told Tom some more. She worked in the financial office of Pine Manor Assisted Living Center and Nursing Home. Only about a half-mile from the school track, and not that much further from the park where Tom always hung out. Tom was to visit with some of the residents at the Assisted Living Center, who were much more conscious, much more in possession of their faculties, than those at the Nursing Home, who were pretty much helpless. Even though Mom’s job didn’t involve direct patient care, she had gotten to know a few of the residents and staff, and had told them all about Tom. Mothers do tend to brag about their sons, sometimes overlooking the bad aspects. When Tom heard the news, his face turned inside out, as though the eggs he was snarfing down for breakfast were poison and he was getting ready to puke. “Awww, Mom, come on, that’s so boring, no one there wants to see me. You mean just reading to the old folks, stuff like that? That sucks, it’s depressing, and I’d be all embarrassed, and aren’t people in places like that all weird and crazy?” “Well, Tom, in the Assisted Living Center, where you’ll be going, most of the people are actually pretty lucid, mentally they’re OK. They can talk to you, and I bet you’ll have fun. Most of them are there because of some injury or condition that makes it impossible for them to live alone, but they would really, really appreciate simply seeing a young face, just talking to you and being listened to. Remember what I said about bringing joy to people? It takes so little on your part, just some time, just a smile, just some words. And it’s not like you’re otherwise such a busy young man, like your time is so precious, not like you have places to be and people to see.” Guilt trip, wonderful. Mom’s good at that. Tom sighed, but tried to keep his voice from turning into an attitude growl. “All right, I’ll do it, no problem. How often do I have to go there?” “Tell you what, Tom, show up today at 2:00. That way you can still go to your karate class and have a nice swim in the park. Get to meet one or more of the people today, and we’ll see how things go. In the long run, I want YOU to be the one who chooses to do this, and I bet you’ll want to. I’m your mother, so of course I’m perfect and always right, you know. And Tom, bring your big plastic chess set, you’ll be a big hit.” Oh great, playing chess with old nearly dead folks, excitement to the 4th power. Tom turned to Dad hoping for some relief, but Dad just buried his face deeper in the newspaper, concentrating on solving the Jumble puzzle without using a pencil. Tom was smart, but Dad was always better and faster than him at unscrambling the words and using certain letters to answer the riddle. Anyway, Dad started talking to Mom about something else, and it was obvious that Mom ruled. All right, gotta make the best of it, get your attitude better, there are worse tortures in life. Like wouldn’t it suck worse to actually BE old and living there, not being able to walk and eat and move and shit normally and stuff? Don’t make today worse than it has to be. Tom packed the pieces and vinyl board in his backpack along with his speedo, his nylon meshie shorts to wear over it, a towel, and a few sandwiches. The morning out at his park was normal, though for some reason not as crowded as usual. He decided to try a little experiment, decided to try just finding out a couple of the guys’ names. A couple of the guys who he’d seen before, who usually hung out and swam for much of the day. After karate class, he went in the cool water, and swam over to where a few guys were playing keep-away with some object belonging to one of a bunch of screaming girls. The people looked a little younger than him, maybe going into 8th grade, maybe even 7th. The object in question turned out to be a T-shirt, and when it found its way near him he pounced on it, made a gross face at one of the girls, hid it behind his back, and when the chick approached, threatening bodily harm, Tom backed away and was about to chuck it to one of the boys, but first yelled, “Hey, you guys want this? What’re your names?” “Here! Gimme! Fast! Gotta get these girls hot and bothered! I’m Rafe!” “And I’m Jimmy, and this dumbfuck here is Kyle!” All right, no hostility, and they’re not making fun of me, please, God, how do I do it, how do I make friends? Don’t overdo it, don’t push, but why is it so easy for everyone else? The four boys played keep-away for a minute more with the girls’ T-shirt until the girls correctly figured out that if they didn’t chase it, the guys would get bored fast and give it back anyway. Girls are of course smarter than boys, everyone knew that, but as compensation they had to deal with periods, gross. The boys were slightly mellower, and Tom decided, let’s just try a little bit more. “Next time we’ll take her bra or something, if she even has one!” Again no nasty reaction or snide comments, so he added, “And my name’s Tom, we just moved here a while ago from North Carolina.” The other boys kind of nodded acknowledgment, smiling pleasantly enough, and all four kids did a few jumps off the diving board, with Jimmy even managing flips. The other boys then began to melt away, getting their towels, getting dried off, and heading away on their bikes. Tom was left alone, which was his usual state. They were nice, and I guess I was cool enough. Did they think it weird that I’m almost 14 and they’re maybe 12 or just turning 13? And what do I have to do to take the next step, to not just know people’s names but to be able to hang out? Tom stripped off his meshie shorts and went over to the roped-off lap swimming area that was almost always populated only by grownups. He turned that last difficult question over and over in his mind, still unable to form a real answer. At the correct time, Tom locked his bike around a tree in front of the Pine Manor main building, and found his mother. The blasting air-conditioning inside felt nice, and Mom’s voice was sweet as honey this afternoon. She led him through a maze of hallways to a pretty outdoor area, a grassy lawn that had lots of tables, shade umbrellas, flowers, and trees. Stone fountains constantly provided the pleasant noise of falling water. Everthing was pretty much surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped building that must have contained people’s rooms. The day was blazing hot, about 97 degrees, but with the breeze and the greenery, it didn’t seem so uncomfortable. Mom introduced him to Tess, a huge black lady in a bright white uniform. “Ohhhh,” said the lady in a full southern drawl. “So you’re the famous Tom that your mother talks about just about every minute of every day!” Uhhh, how am I supposed to answer that? Doesn’t Mom have work to do here, doesn’t she have something better to do than talk about me? Tom just stood there, smiling stupidly. “Well, Maria, you just leave Tom here with me now, we’ll take good care of him!” Mom disappeared and the nurse kept talking. “You know, Tom, your mother probably told you this already, but just you being here, just your young face and your voice, that means so much to these people. Some folks who live here are pretty much forgotten by their own families, or get visits once a week or a month or so, but otherwise, there’s not much to keep them busy, to keep their spirits up. The first person I want you to meet is Victor. I bet you two will make friends, and if there’s anything you need, I’ll be around. Victor, this is Tom, Maria’s son, the boy I told you about.” Tess walked away and Tom looked at the burly old man with thick, bushy white hair sticking out at all angles from his seemingly oversized head. “Tom,” said the old man. “Your mother says you play chess?” The man spoke with a heavy deep accent. “Well, a little. You wanna play?” Not much else to say, and it seemed to be the right response. “I used to play more than a little. Long ago, too long ago. We’ll play, we’ll talk, we’ll see what you are all about, young Tom. Let’s go to the picnic table where we’ll have some room.” He spoke perfect grammatical English, just with the serious East European or Russian accent, like in a spy movie. Tom noticed a walker next to the old man’s chair, and noticed Victor clearly struggling to stand, pushing hard against the wooden chair’s armrest, grimacing with the effort. Tom didn’t know what would be the right thing to do or say, but offered the man his hand for support or to help him up. “Ah, thank you, young man, but I can get up. I’ve broken my hip twice, but others have it worse. I’m slow but I have to move by myself.” Tom felt a little nervous around the old man as they slowly ambled over to the shady picnic table. Old folks can still play chess? Probably not, but whatever, just be extra polite, Mom and Tess said all you really have to do is talk and listen to them. The guy’s not mean or anything. Do I need to show him how to set up the pieces? Maybe he doesn’t know the difference between chess and checkers. How long do I have to stay here? A few other old men who could walk on their own made their way to the same picnic table, and Tom spread out the crushable vinyl chessboard. Victor took the Black pieces and did seem to know where they belonged in the starting position. He then looked at the other four men who were still on their feet. “This is my friend Tom,” he announced to the small gathering. Oh, I’m his friend now? Uh, like that was quick, I didn’t know that. “He’s going to help me out, show me how to play shakhmatky, going to give a lesson to a senile old fool like me.” Tom grinned, as the guy was showing a sense of humor, and played his customary pawn e4. The man instantly answered pawn c5, and Tom decided that instead of bringing his knight out to f3 like most people, he’d play pawn c3, Alapin Variation, see what happened. Did the guy know how all the pieces moved? The man rocked his body back and forth, sort of chanting to himself or anyone who would listen. “Shto? Pieshka?” He brought his knight to f6, so at least he knew that the knight moved in an L-shape and could jump over people. The other men became bored and wandered away, and after pawn e5, knight d5, knight f3, pawn e6, Tom for the first time realized that he was actually in a chess game. The old man didn’t seem to realize it, he just moved his pieces instantly and chanted weird-sounding foreign words to the hot afternoon air or to the chirping birds. Tom was in a chess game, but he wasn’t in one for long. Soon after a pawn trade, his isolated d-pawn was exposed, isolated, and attacked, and the strange old man just camped out on the square in front of it, using the square to feint, to annoy, to attack, to wheel and deal death and destruction. The boy was trying desperately to withstand the slow but constant pressure on his Queenside, and just when he tried to bring a piece over to help, the old man instantly, quick as a cobra, sacrificed a bishop on the other side, and followed up with a queen check, leaving the White kid helpless, naked, defenseless. Tom stared and stared, but there was no way to resist anymore. And the guy hadn’t even thought for more than half a second over any of his moves!! All the old guy ever did was stare at whatever around him, rock back and forth, and chant in Russian. Tom shook his head and stared back at this large old man. “Victor, sir, I resign. Wow, you just wiped me out like I wasn’t even there! You hardly had to even think or look at the pieces! Where did you learn to play chess like that?” “Well, my young friend Tom, you were a pretty difficult opponent yourself, you know. Ah, where did I learn? Far away, a little village, from my father, maybe like you did. Tom, do you know who I am?” “Uhhh, who you are? What do you mean?” “I’m Victor Taschenko.” Tom didn’t know what to say, was the guy introducing himself? He didn’t get it. “Well, I’m Tom Klein,” he said, trying to act polite. “Nice to meet you. You’re really good at chess!!” “Ah,” said the old man dreamily, not directly to Tom, “they don’t know the name, I’m 82 and they’ve all forgotten, it’s all passed by.” Then he slowly, achingly stood up and smiled at the boy. “Tom, there’s so much to tell you, so much you can know. I have to go in now, I need my medication and I always have a little nap now. Will you come back to see me again?” “I guess so, sure.” Tom looked at the back of the guy’s bushy head as Victor carefully made his way back toward the green-painted building. What the hell, no one’s Sicilian Defense ever busts up my Alapin Variation like that. Least no one’s ever did til today. Victor Taschenko? SUMMER, PART 9 Tom rode his bike the five miles back home, still curious about the old guy, not thinking much about the kids at the pool or even Foxfire. He got home and he thought Mom would grill him for information about how his time at the old folks’ place went, when he’d go back, who he met, everything. But everyone had dinner and Mom didn’t say a word about it. Dad talked mostly about a possibility of getting a part-time lecturing and graduate student advising job at U of Georgia in Athens. Dad seemed really into it, and Tom shut up, though he was kind of hoping that Mom would actually ask him something. There was stuff to tell and even more to ask. Mom had no intention of discussing anything with Tom. She was every bit as smart as her son was, and she knew what made him tick. Don’t get up in a teenager’s face to do things, he’s 13, don’t pump him for information, that’s the surest way to make him back off and mistrust. Tom loves Foxfire, but really his personality is more like most boys his age, more cat than dog. He’ll come to you when he feels like it, when he’s curious enough, on his terms, his time. But even as she listened carefully to her husband, she was watching her son’s face out of the corner of her eye, observing every little movement, every little angle of eyes, every curl of lips. Patience with him, let him come to you. I love him, and he’s so good, but how to treat him, it’s never simple. When Victor said goodbye to Tom, the old man was of course right. He was 82 and people had forgotten his name. That is, the few people in the world who had once recognized it, a small group that didn’t include Tom. Victor Taschenko had been a serious Soviet grandmaster for many, many years, from the late 1940’s to the late 1970’s. Serious, but not quite strong enough to be a real contender for the World Championship. Close, close, so close indeed. He wanted to be at that level, desired it, yearned with all that was in him to be one of those who would go down in history. He was a loyal Communist Party member, lived in icy Leningrad with his wife and son in near-poverty but without complaining. But in the rarified air of highest-level Cold War Soviet chess, there were other players, too, who were close, and these guys didn’t get the perks, the consumer goods, the nicer apartment, the few luxuries given to the most elite. Regarding those most elite, basically, Victor was their bitch. Good enough to give the world’s loftiest players, including World Champions, serious challenges, to make them sweat and suffer and work, and once in a great while, to break through in an individual brilliant game, published in all the magazines. An uncompromising warrior who gave them all headaches, but just didn’t quite have the consistency to get over the top. The one blunder at the critical moment, the one slip of the finger in time pressure, the strong positions that would somehow fizzle into draws, his prime years were marked by some spectacular triumphs but even more painful frustration, that frustration eventually mellowing into acceptance as they years went by and his hair turned to gray. He knew all the men. As a little kid, he’d played in a simultaneous exhibition against the great, though nasty and insane Alexander Alekhine. To this day he remembered the piercing blue eyes of the champion, standing over Victor’s board, the blue eyes seeming to pierce right through his Young Pioneers uniform, maybe right through his 12 year-old soul. He knew them all, mostly as players but also as people, with their personal stories, even their hidden weaknesses and cowardice. Capablanca, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Keres, Bronstein, Geller, Polugaevsky, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Karpov, and even the crazy American Bobby Fischer, back when that adolescent boy had come out of nowhere to make the entire Soviet establishment shake with fear. Shake with fear as though the American teenager knew how to build some missile that could penetrate Soviet air defense and destroy the Motherland. He knew the men, was friendly with them for the most part, and knew what evil some people in his own country were capable of, involving this silly game with little plastic or wood statues that people’s fingers moved around the 64 squares of a larger square board. But his own name, that wasn’t known anymore. He was a footnote, an also-ran, and that was his lot in life at his advanced age. His one joy was the success of his son, a rather famous and wealthy engineer, who’d come to America thirty years ago, and was successful and important. Successful and important in the real world, not the fantasy one of the stupid chessboard. After Victor’s wife died in 1984, the son had arranged to bring his father over to America, too, to live in middle-class comfort that was pretty much impossible in the old country. His son was good to him, making sure that Victor had a comfortable life as possible after his hip injuries, visiting at least once every few weeks with his own wife and their teenage kids. Wasn’t a bad life, really. Other residents of the home were forgotten by their own families, but not him. It was OK. They say your old men shall see visions, your young men shall dream dreams. Victor lay down to go to sleep, but was still awake for quite some time. He saw the vision of Tom’s face, kind of morphing into and out of the vision of his own face as a kid. Visions of chesspieces combining together, dancing and flying. He imagined Tom’s eyes and mind, curious to hear his stories, to learn at his feet, to go over the old games. Victor hadn’t played in a tournament for fifteen years, and until yesterday, hadn’t even actually been across the board from a live human being for six. His old magazines and books, many with his own picture in them, were his chess friends. The pages were beginning to yellow, but he had long ago carefully put plastic covers over all of them, both the Russian and the English literature. Protect what must not be lost. With his last bit of consciousness for the night, he figured that the first thing he’d do in the morning would be to select some stuff to share with the boy. Haroshi malchik. Tom, for his part, kept to his next day’s routine, but put something extra into his backpack when he went to the park that morning. The day was cloudy and breezy, not as hot as usual, but still plenty warm enough to go swimming. Rafe and Jimmy were there, but not Kyle, and not the shrieking girls. This time Tom didn’t see their bikes, but the guys had skateboards with them. “Hey Jimmy, hey Rafe, what’s up?” Tom said when he saw them, maybe a little self-consciously but not too badly. He’d grown up enough since he’d entered St. Brendan’s that simply talking to other boys wasn’t such a big deal anymore. “Yo, man, how ya doing?” Jimmy answered, and Rafe just nodded. Tom played with them for awhile, everything was basically cool, but still, one thing kept bugging him, wouldn’t get out of his head, even while he jumped around and laughed with the guys. One thing, and it brought his mind back to his first night at school, the first night he’d known Ricky. These kids at the pool, they just won’t or can’t call me by my name. I hate it when people call me “man”, I don’t like that name. Or when Bobby calls me “rodent”, that sucks too, even though I know he doesn’t mean anything bad by it. Still, is Ricky the only kid in the world who can say the word Tom? Am I the problem, or maybe my name is weird, or maybe I’m acting like a fag without knowing it? No way, I do NOT act or look like a fucking queer! Or maybe I gotta just stay patient, not get stressed out like a mental case, it’s only a name. In mid-afternoon, Tom pedaled the short distance to Mom’s workplace, and found her in her office, though he had to wait to talk to her for a few minutes while Mom was on the phone with someone. Sounded like she was giving some lame excuse why the nursing home couldn’t pay one of its bills til next week. “Hi Mom. Can I go see Victor?” “I think he might just have time to hang out with you for a little while, he’s surely not going anywhere today. You know the way to his part of the complex, right?” Mom was about to add a little more about how nice it was for you to be here, and wasn’t I right when I told you that the best….but she decided to shut up, like Abe Lincoln said, better to shut up and have people think you’re an idiot than to speak and remove all doubt. Leave Tom alone, he’ll do his thing. On this slightly cooler day, Victor was in the same chair as yesterday, sipping some juice, reading something in Russian. “Good afternoon, young Tom. I hope you’re well today.” Victor’s English was 99% perfect, but sometimes his style of conversation was more formal than necessary for the occasion. Tiny nuances of the language still escaped him, even after being in America for so many years. “Hi Victor! Hey, I brought something to show you. You wanna see?” SUMMER, PART 10 “Back in February I was in a tournament in Tennessee. We had to write down all the moves on a scoresheet like this. You see, like if you put a capital B it means bishop, or N means knight, ‘cause K is reserved for the king. Then you put a small letter and a number for the place it moves to, and you can see those because they’re on the side of the board. Like Nf3 means the knight goes up this way, then lands on file f and row 3. See? It’s not that hard to figure out, really. For pawn moves you only put small letters. And I brought you the scoresheet from my favorite game from that tournament. And I thought if you want, I could show you the moves, how I played in that game.” Tom was being Tom, getting wound up, babbling on, and not remembering to shut up and listen or even breathe. But he eventually remembered that if he inhaled, the oxygen would feel good, and also that a conversation was supposed to have two participants. “Hey, Victor, have you ever been in a real tournament? I bet you could do pretty well.” “A real tournament?” asked the old man slowly, dreamily. “Well, I don’t know, old people like me can’t think very well any more, I’m not sure I remember. Maybe in the old country? I don’t know. But let me see how you played, I hope I can learn something.” Tom set up the pieces and began to go over the moves of his 4th round game, the one where he’d beaten the skinny guy by offering that shocking knight sacrifice. As he talked and talked and talked, he noticed something about Victor. As the man saw the pieces move and whirl in their patterns, it made his body go into a motion of its own. Like a rocking back and forth of the torso, but his shoulders would rise upwards just a bit at the beginning of the movement, so it was slightly circular or oval. It seemed to Tom like the dance of the pieces cranked up some sort of battery in the old guy, like a hand-cranked electric generator, maybe. After a few minutes Tom was ready for his explosive 12th move, the razor-sharp knight b4. He put the piece there and the old man’s eyes opened wide, his rocking stopped for a moment, and he made some sort of noise, not a human one, maybe a horse whinny noise, but deeper in his throat, more from the gut. He began shuffling pieces around for the first time. “Ohhhh!!! You want to open c-file, rook check, he blocks, then check, then you give him mate! Mate, MATE!!!” Victor’s voice was loud now, loud enough for a few other people sitting even a few yards away to stare a little angrily. “But I…” Oh wow. During the game, if the guy had accepted my sacrifice, I’d only thought of winning the guy’s queen, damn, I would have had a mate, I didn’t see that at the time. Well, it’s only a variation, the guy didn’t take the thing. But anyway, how did Victor figure that out? This guy can really see stuff. “I figured that if he doesn’t take, my knight is threatening to mate him on a2, so he has to clear a way for his king to get out, and then I just take the pawn and rip his whole Queenside open. See what I did next?” Tom kept talking, on and on, but Victor didn’t mind listening, even though the variations were simple and childish. Well, the kid IS a child, and once he won the pawn on a2, the game was for all intents and purposes over anyway. There was no reason to look at the board, really, so Victor just looked into the boy’s face and listened to his excited voice. And smiled. “And the only other piece that can guard the mating square is the queen, and if he brings it back, knight forks on c3. So here he resigned.” Tom tried to say all this coolly, but was having trouble being humble, as it had been quite a game. His 13 year-old pride and joy. “Well, young Tom, it looks like I have witnessed a brilliancy! Very interesting. Interesting indeed! Now, will you show me one of the games you lost?” Tom’s mouth opened a little bit in surprise. “Uhhh, well, I only lost one, even though I probably should have lost another, I was in trouble but squirmed out and got a draw. But I didn’t bring those games, I only brought the one I showed you.” “Ahhhhh,” Victor sighed. Ahhhhh seemed to be his favorite word in English. He tilted his head back and half closed his eyes. “Ahhhh yes, you want the joy, you want to go over and over again the glory of winning, imagine how big a champion you must be, everyone, especially yourself, is supposed to worship your greatness. Yes, in Russian we have a saying, if I translate it means mental masturbation. But how many times have you gone over the two games where you played stupidly? How many times have you done the hard work of analyzing when it hurts?” “Uhhh, I dunno, I kind of wanted to forget those games.” “Yes, you sure are a little kid, aren’t you? Don’t feel bad, Tom, other little kids are like you, too. Yes, yes, you all like the sweet candy to feed your chess mind, you like the easy part, but the losses, the bitter medicine you need to drink, those games you’re not so happy to go over. Ahhhh yes, I know you now, Tom. I know all about you! But Tom, you learn much, much more from your losses than from your wins, you must develop the courage to search for your weaknesses, to find the reason inside your mind that you blundered. Find it, feel the pain, only by feeling the pain can you get rid of it.” Tom didn’t respond to this, just thought about it, turned over the whole concept in his head. Find the reason I blundered? I dunno, I always thought I just played stupid moves sometimes. The reason? How the hell should I know? Feel the pain, sounds like the guy from Karate Kid. This guy’s old, but Mom was right, he can still think. “And now, if you still have some time, there are a few things I’d like to show you. Here, will you come with me to my room? I don’t think anyone besides me has seen these things for ahhhhh, has it been ten years, twenty? We’ll walk now, I’ll show you.” Victor’s individual room was quite small and very cluttered with magazines, clothes, a small table, and various other objects. Seemed cluttered to a visitor, but of course to him it was just right, was the closest thing he’d ever know anymore to home, and likely the last he’d ever know, too. Victor bent down, reaching into the lowest drawer of a cabinet, his broad back and butt more than double the width of Tom’s. He had what he wanted, had previously selected just what he wanted the boy to see. He opened one of the magazines to a certain page, a page with an old but clear black & white photograph. Five men standing together, smiling, wearing suit jackets with skinny ties. “Victor, this is cool, but I can’t read Russian! I know Spanish, my mother’s parents are from Mexico and I lived in Argentina for awhile. The letters are strange! But I can recognize the pieces in the chess diagrams, they’re about the same as from magazines in English.” “Well,” Victor grinned, “of course you won’t know the words, but do you recognize any of the people in the picture?” “I dunno, let me look carefully, let me think. Wait a minute, that guy with the thick hair, is that Boris Spassky? Looks like he’s only about 20 or 25 years old, maybe.” “Ahhhhh, yes, old Boris when he wasn’t so old. That was when he was still a rising star, many years before he played that celebrated match with your Bobby Fischer. I think if you look carefully, you might recognize someone else.” Tom looked and looked, couldn’t figure out who else was supposed to be who, then noticed Victor grinning a sly grin, cocking his huge round head diagonally. Look again. “Wait a minute, that guy to the left of Spassky, no way, no way, that isn’t……….” Tom’s head went back and forth from page to man, from man to page. “Is that YOU????” “Well, younger, much faster walking and running, then, hair nice and black, but yes, I was there, I was there. The two smaller guys are Tal and Petrosian, and the tall one is Vassily Smyslov. Long time ago, but yes.” Now it was pure hero worship on Tom’s part. This guy was really, was really some sort of huge Russian superstar, oh my God oh my God oh my God. “YOU NEVER TOLD ME!!!! HOW COME YOU NEVER TOLD ME?? You mean you played in tournaments and matches with people like that??” “Ahhhhh, Tom, well, you never asked. Well, you did once, but anyway, I bashed heads with all of them, and plenty of others. So many others, so many years. Here, take a look at this old American magazine, Chess Life and Review. I wonder if there really exist any more copies of these issues that are so old. This has more pictures and results, this is from 1953. See, I was muscular back then, not so fat!! Time will do that to you, yes it will.” “Were you as good as those guys? I mean those players, people still think about them today, they were the best.” When a 13 year-old boy is in the presence of someone he thinks is some big hero, the emotions come out quickly. You can tell in his eyes, in the timbre of his voice, in the shape of his mouth. “As good as?” responded Victor, raising his eyebrows almost sarcastically. “That is too complicated to answer, at least for now.” Victor smiled affectionately at the kid, and felt the boy’s respect wash over him. A pleasurable sensation, a sensation he hadn’t felt for so long. As good as those guys, well, are we talking about simply over the chessboard, or are we talking about somewhere else, some battlefield far more dangerous? A place where people can…no, the kid doesn’t need to know for now. Let him be a little boy, enjoy him. Maybe one day he should know. But it will have to be one day soon, I’m 82 years old. Just not today. Victor slowly stood up and ruffled Tom’s black hair. “See you next time!” said the boy excitedly as he headed out. SUMMER, PART 11 “Girls from Cripple Creek, ‘bout half grown Jump on a man like a dog on a bone I met a gal on Cripple Creek, visits me in the middle of the week Goin’ up Cripple Creek, goin’ on the run Goin’ up Cripple Creek, have some fun……..” Ricky warmed up in a smaller room outside the main recording studio part. So easy now, the banjo and my fingers and my voice, it’s like I don’t have to do anything, just happens. But it’s gonna be strange with the microphone and all the controls and the cues and stuff. People watching me, that’s cool, but behind that soundproof glass, kind of not real. It’s not the same. It was to be his first day recording his music for the streaming radio show, and Ricky was a little bit nervous and intimidated by the new conditions he was facing. The people were nice, and tried to make him feel at home and relaxed. There was a husband/wife couple named Mike and Julie who said that today they wanted to hear him do various instrumentals and songs on his own, various styles to see what he had, and tomorrow he’d join in with them and another musician. “You’ll be fine,” said the lady. “Just imagine you’re playing on your own or in front of people you’re used to, just let it all come out. Nothing to worry about, and remember, if you make a mistake or something isn’t right, we can always erase and try again. Everything’s cool, Ricky.” She had a sweet comforting Southern voice, and she put her arm around the boy, gently squeezing the back of his shoulders. She left the waiting room and returned only 10 minutes later. “OK, Ricky, looks like you’re up! Good luck!” Ricky was in that recording booth for over an hour. He played ten pieces, using all three of his instruments. He tried to relax as best he could, and he figured he did OK, nothing went wrong or sounded gross. He saved one of his favorite slow songs for last, one that he thought was pretty easy, had a waltz beat, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, nice. He didn’t exactly understand most of the song’s story, but he could rock and sway his body and guitar a bit, helping him out with the rhythm. It was slow and relaxing for his voice, with plenty of the syllables streched way out. “So fare thee well, my pretty maid, I never shall see you more But I’ll never forget your kindness in that cottage by the shore And at each social gathering, a flowing glass I’ll raise And drink a health to my Creole girl, from the lakes of Ponchartrain” Then the last guitar chord, and over, over, it was finished. Ricky was sweating and tired, but happy. He raised both arms over his head, smiled at the people on the other side of the glass, and moved his hands outward in a “that’s all” gesture. He walked out the door, and everyone was all over him, especially Julie and Mike. “Way to go, Ricky! You were great, you have what it takes, you got it!” shouted Mike. Julie, who looked almost as old as Mom, gave him a medium-serious kiss on the cheek. “Oh yes, oh yes! Sound like an angel, you do! Wow, you were amazing!” “Thanks, everyone. Tired is what I am, more like it! That was a lot of stuff to play, that was intense. Do you think you’re going to put some of that on the radio? There’s a girl I know in Georgia, I bet she’d want to hear it online if you do.” “You bet, Ricky,” continued Julie. “When we figure everything out, we’ll give you all the information about when and what. Now tomorrow, let’s hear how you combine with us and someone else we know. Now you said you don’t have to work at Wal-Mart tomorrow, so why don’t you just leave your instruments here overnight, they’ll be safe here. Thanks for everything, and we’ll all make some big noise tomorrow.” Dad had driven him to the studio earlier, but now Ricky decided to walk the three miles back home, de-stress himself. Ohhhhh yeah, that was something. I better call Jenny now on her cell. “Hi there, you sweet bitch, remember me?” “Who exactly do you think you are, one of those filthy disgusting St. Brendan’s boys or something, calling your one and only me names like that?” “Hey, guess what happened today?” Ricky kept talking before the girl could answer. “I went to that recording studio I told you about. Really different, you know, didn’t seem as natural, but I recorded a bunch of songs and music for them, and they seemed to like it. They were really nice and they’re gonna put some of my music on streaming internet radio. Today it was only me recording, but tomorrow I’m joining with a few other people, a band I think.” “Oooh, Ricky, now you’ve got me all excited, you’re all famous, this is so cool. Do you know when I can hear it?” “Not yet, they’re gonna tell me when they know more. Guess maybe I’m professional now.” There was silence on the other end, and Ricky thought maybe they got disconnected, until the sexy girl’s voice came back. “Aren’t you forgetting something, Ricky?” “Huh?” “Aren’t you supposed to say now that you played all your music just for me, and that you love me more than anything in the world, and that forever and ever, I’m the reason you live?” “Uhh, yeah OK, Jenny, but all that gross stuff, can I like puke or something first?” “No, Ricky, say the words, and then after you hang up you do whatever you damn well feel like.” “All right, all right already. I play all my music for you, I love you more than anything, and forever and ever you’re why I live. You satisfied now?” “Yeah, that worked. Mmmmm, I love you too, Ricky. Bye now!” Ricky put the phone back in his pocket and walked home smiling, a bit faster, a little spring in his step, a little stirring in his underwear. Yeah, my pretty love, on the lakes of Ponchartrain. Wherever the hell that is. Who cares, wherever Jenny is, that’s where it can be. While Ricky was on his way home, Julie and Mike were discussing him back at the studio. “Man, that’s a musician,” said Mike. “He doesn’t seem to have to think about what he’s playing, it just comes right out of him, it’s all there!” “Not only that,” added his wife. “He’s got a real stage presence. I’ve seen him a couple times at Wal-Mart, and he reacts to the people in front of him, he moves, he gets them into it, he puts joy into that voice and those instruments. And he’s handsome, too, that blond hair, that smile, he just projects himself. Special kid! Seems maybe a little shy when you talk to him, but sure is at ease when he’s performing. How old is he?” “Says he’s 14, will turn 15 in November.” “I thought he was a little older than that, he’s tall, but yeah, still has the face of a kid, I guess 14’s right, now that I think of it. So unusual for someone his age to be into our kind of music, especially someone who has the talent. What a novelty.” Now Julie paused, and looked hard into her husband’s face. Sometimes their minds just simultaneously clicked. “Darling, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” “No, old lady, YOU’RE thinking what I’M thinking! But not yet, too soon to tell. We don’t know enough yet about this kid. And who knows if he’d even be allowed to or anything. Also, he seems like a nice friendly kid, but we don’t really know much about his personality, how he’d deal with all this. Let’s hear him tomorrow, see how he combines with all of us, see if he can follow our instrumentals, see if he can sing harmony, let’s not get all crazy yet.” “OK, Mike, but we can’t wait forever.” SUMMER, PART 12 “How did it go, Ricky?” asked Mom. Upon entering the house a moment before, Ricky had collapsed and stretched out his long limbs on the couch. “OK.” “That’s all?” “Mmph.” “Oh, little Ricky thinks he’s going to be 15 this fall, he doesn’t have to talk to his mother anymore. Yeah, we’ll fix that, fix this kid GOOD!” Mom walked over and pounced on her son to tickle him. “Oh yeah, MAKE him open that mouth! MAKE him!” Ricky did laugh, but still wasn’t in the mood. God, I don’t want to talk to Mom now, I don’t want to talk to anyone, just leave me alone, but all right, she’s trying to be nice. Still, why can’t she just gimme some space? “I played a lot of solo pieces, all three instruments, sang too, and I think they liked it. I have to go back tomorrow to play together with some other people, I met two of them, they’re named Mike and Julie, they’re all right.” If I close my eyes now, maybe she’ll think I’m sleeping, or at least that I want to, please, Mom, just take the hint. Mom petted her son’s face and kissed his forehead. “OK, I guess you’re tired, take it easy for awhile, Dad won’t be home til almost 7. If you want something before dinner, you know where to find it.” A few minutes later, Ricky slowly oozed his way down the hall to his room, and lay down, ready to sleep for real. For whatever reason, his thoughts turned to Tom, and realized that his friend hadn’t even been in his mind for several days. I’ve stopped missing him, I guess, with all the stuff that’s been happening. But now I kind of do. How many more days is it til Dad has time off and we can invite Tom, and yeah, I guess his dad, he’s cool too, hiking with us? I wonder if Tom’s doing Tom stuff again, accidentally making people think he’s a freak. Hope not. Ricky then slept completely through dinner and just about continued til morning, only waking up at 11 for three bowls of ice cream followed by two of cool applesauce. Stuff that always made his throat feel better after a lot of singing. The next afternoon, Ricky rode his bike to the studio, and there were Mike and Julie, tuning instruments, practicing, working with the audio technicians. “Hi Ricky!” said Mike. “Hey, right on time. In a few minutes, we’re gonna jam, and we’ll be joined by someone you know a little, or he says he knows you, Matt Parsons.” Ricky shivered and his mouth opened. Oh no, oh shit. “Y-Yeah, I’ve, uh, I’ve seen him at Wal-Mart a couple times.” “Well, get out your instruments, get set, we’ll have some fun.” What are you thinking, you idiot! Why are you so scared, don’t be a wimp! It’s not like his name is goddamn Voldemort and he’s gonna put some lightning scar on your forehead, other people in this world are named…Matt, may as well get used to it. And the guy hasn’t done anything to you, he’s just been nice, you gotta get over this thing. You’re almost a professional, remember? A few minutes later, there was the guy, definitely the same guy from Wal-Mart, pretty much wearing the same clothes, too. Nice smile, and he shook Ricky’s hand pleasantly, but the boy still could feel his skin crawling with a tingly sensation. But Ricky forced himself to be sociable, to talk with the guy while the man prepared his instruments. Some were different ones than Ricky had usually seen before. Mandolin, bass guitar, and a hand-held drum that Ricky knew was called a bodhran. Also one other, a strange thing like a small table with strings. “What’s that?” “Hammered dulcimer, Ricky. Ever heard one?” “Oh!” Ricky’s eyes opened wider, and his curiosity got the better of him, and he forgot about the man’s cursed name for a moment. “Well, in recordings, but never live, and I didn’t know what one looked like. It’s cool, so you just drum the strings with those little mini-spoon things?” “That’s it, just like this.” Matt played a few bars of something, and the lively bingy-bingy-bingy-bing-bing-bing noise made Ricky smile, got his head bouncing up and down. The guy was OK, really. But where was he from, if he didn’t have any southern accent at all? Seemed kind of mysterious. “OK, everyone!” said Julie with authority. “Let’s get this thing started! Ricky, for most of today all we want you to do is follow us on your guitar. You’ll know some of the tunes, and on the others, I think you’ll pick them up as we go along. And later, we’re going to ask you to sing harmony with us on some choruses, a few Celtic ballads, you’ll know most of the words. Just try to blend in with our voices, you’ll be fine. You haven’t played much in groups, have you?” “Never really, only classical stuff in school, I played violin with the orchestra.” “All right, already,” interrupted Mike, “are we gonna talk are we gonna play? Here we go, people, ‘Devil’s Dream’. Energy, now, let’s go!” It wasn’t as hard as Ricky thought it would be, he could follow on the guitar on all but the fastest bluegrass songs, and Matt’s smiles and encouragement helped out. These people were good! So this is what real pros sound like, what the hell! Julie could sing like Ricky couldn’t believe, and Matt could play any of about six instruments just so smoothly, just easy for him. Today wasn’t as stressful for Ricky, as the other musicians took the lead, really carried the load. When it came time for singing, he mixed his voice in, didn’t feel self-conscious, and it was fun. They let Ricky choose the last song, and he picked his old gospel tune “Every Time I Feel the Spirit”, this time switching to banjo and just this once, making his own voice take the lead. The ninety minutes passed quickly, with plenty of laughing to mix with the music. “HOOOO!!” shouted Mike after Ricky’s last chorus. “All right, guess we just about tore this house down. Let’s give it a rest for today, I think we’re done!” He signalled to the audio people, who took off their headsets as the musicians put down their instruments and congratulated each other. “Not bad, kid!” said Matt enthusiastically. “Hey, ‘bout time I had someone next to me helping out, taking the attention off me! Way to go, how you feeling, guy?” “Great, great, tired like yesterday, but this was easier, I wasn’t having to do everything for myself, and really, no kidding, you guys are the best I’ve ever heard! I’m just like, uhhhh, woh.” “Ricky?” Julie said sweetly, coming up from behind him and rubbing his shoulders and spine. Julie was a toucher, her fingers just had a way of making people get in a certain mood. “We have some things to talk about ourselves, but then we have something we want to talk to you about in about a half hour. Could you maybe take a little walk around the neighborhood and meet us back here in a little while?” “Sure, no problem.” What could they want to talk about? Well, I dunno, I’ll just go out, maybe have an ice cream, definitely call Jenny. And yeah, now it’s time, I’m gonna call Tom, his number’s stored in my cell, I want to tell him stuff. Ricky was appropriately romantic with his forever love chick, and then dialed the number of his one best and only friend, getting more and more excited, wanting to hear Tom’s voice again. Ring, ring, ring, “Hello?” “Uhhhh, hello, is this Mr. Klein? This is me, Ricky. Is Tom home?” “Ohhh, Ricky!! He’s out right now, but I know he wants to hear from you! I think he misses you a lot. But talk to me for a minute while I’ve got you. What’s happening, what are you doing this summer?” “Well, I’ve been pretty busy with my music. I work part-time at Wal-Mart, and just the last couple days, I’ve been doing some recording, going to be on internet radio, and just today jammed with a really good band. It’s kind of cool. And one other thing…” Ricky wasn’t really planning on talking to Tom’s dad, but he was excited and words spilled out. “Mr. Klein, my father’s going to have some time off later this summer, I don’t exactly when, but we were planning, him and me, on doing some hiking, maybe like backpacking, somewhere for a few days. Do you think Tom could come with us? And if you want to yourself, all of us together, that would be OK, too.” “Hey, Ricky, well, we gotta see about when all this could happen, all the details, but I bet he’d be into it, and me, ahhh, I dunno, we’ll talk more. Hey, it’s so great to hear from you, pal. Why don’t you call us back later this evening, after we’ve finished going for a little run, maybe after 8:30 or so? Ricky, thanks so much for remembering us, you’ve made things so much better for Tom…” Dad suddenly figured he was getting way too mushy, calm down. “Anyway, talk to us later, and take it slow, kid! Bye now.” Ricky slowly wandered back to the studio, and the three musicians were by now the only people left there. They asked him to have a seat, and Mike leaned forward in his own chair, leaned over pretty close to the boy. “Ricky, there’s something important we’d like to talk to your parents about. If it’s OK with you, could you please write down your phone number for us?” PART 13 Ricky walked home again, and when he arrived, there was a note in his mother’s writing on the kitchen table. Hi, Ricky, we had to go out for awhile. There’s cold meatloaf and corn in the fridge, put it in the mike if you feel like, or eat something else, or starve to death, whatever. See you later! Love, Us. OK. I’ll eat the stuff cold, too lazy to even microwave it right now. Sleep now, wake up and call Tom later, it’s good, no one to bother me. At the time, Mom and Dad were seated in the comfortable living room of Mike and Julie Reynolds, listening to things that they knew, but didn’t always hear from strangers. “Well, Mr. and Mrs. Spann, I guess you know that Ricky is a really talented musician for his age. Actually, not just for his age, but for any age. These days, it’s almost unheard of for a kid to take up traditional music and be so into it. Where did he learn all this?” “We’ve wondered that ourselves for quite a few years now,” answered Dad. “We honestly don’t know. He just one day when he was about 9, he watched someone play guitar, picked it up, and there you have it. It’s as much of a mystery today as it was then. He’s very, very weak in academic subjects, and quite frankly, doesn’t read or write much past, say, a 6th grade level. But he has this gift. He goes to St. Brendan’s School in Georgia, and they’ve really taught him a lot more, especially in classical music.” “St. Brendan’s?” said Matt. “That’s interesting, I never would have guessed Ricky as the prep school type of guy.” “Yeah, I know what you mean. We wouldn’t either, to |