One

A mysterious person hints at the return of the protagonist's long lost best friend.

September 2006                     

 

It took me a few minutes to realize I've never been here at night. The apparent irrelevance of the courtyard's archaic lampposts somehow remained a sharp edge in the blurry memories. The school had never turned them on in the daytime, I suppose.  Now, I finally saw them cast that caustic orange parking-lot glow, a dim rash all around my hunched shadow and the lunch-table it sat on. Hot wind tossed a Cheetos bag over my sandals and out towards the field. I spied on its crawl, trampling the burnt-out lawn, bypassing all sorts of safe playground equipment …. And then nicking Sammy's tree.

 

That one had to have been his. Mine was the dumpy oak to the side. And Sammy's was the tallest one, out towards the fringe of the playground and shaped like the statue of liberty. I rose as soon as I recognized it, and its branches seemed to briefly bow in acknowledgment. If Sammy ever saw a Cheetos bag flittering so close to his mighty fort, he would have sprung from its canopy and snared it faster than I could warn him not to fall. That tall oak, that was Sammy's island, his tower, his throne …

 

"He's an Air Force baby, and his mom can't support him." The man who said that at last night's opening football game did so from behind an old chain-link fence, a new leather jacket, and a lit cigarette. He'd seen me wondering. And then he sounded like he'd been chuckling, but he hadn't. "But I'm guessing now you didn't know that."

 

If he'd said anything further right then, I missed it beneath the automatic roar of pass completion. "Alright man, who the hell are you?" It was my sham macho act.

 

I'm guessing, now, he caught me on it. "My name is shut up and go to your old elementary tomorrow night and –" the cigarette made a cursory pause to think, "And then just listen, ok?" He'd timed the touchdown of the cigarette on the ground with that of the football, and then departed into the hoorahs.

 

He had to be a jackass, I mused yet again, to have such great timing. And I was one hell of an idiot for coming here, for sneaking out simply to remember how much I'd forgotten. Could I have forgotten it all? I sulked back down. And I listened. Hard. My old school provided limited few sources of audio after dark. Humming lamps, chirping shrubbery, creaking oaks … my cell was turned on and set to loud.

 

I listened harder. Sammy was back in that tree, saying something about neckties, something about Braunow, something about car keys, something interrupted by wind and then the lightest metallic snap of a lighter, and the shrill claxon of a faulty car horn. The desecration of my mnemonic nostalgia alone threw me into a 180 – to face a dark sedan with the passenger door cracked open. I squinted through the darkened window. Something slithered. A calm cigarette protruded and beckoned inside.

 

The wind gusted again and my envoy's embers glowed like the lamplights. I glanced back once more at those rippling trees. Sham macho as I approached the car, slid inside and shut the door.