Nineteen Forty Three

She sat in front of me in English, and the back of her head became my personal, yet intimate display of desire. Her hair sprouted out of the golden field which was her scalp, strands of ripe gold falling to the earth. Sometimes her hair fell onto my desk and would cut a little off with scissors and pocket the precious gold. I stole the scissors out of Mr. Swanson's desk, next to a Playboy magazine and a revolver. Mr. Swanson didn't trust the Japanese students in the class, ever since the mushroom cloud made its appearance on the television. The gold was inevitably lost in the bottom of my pocket, along with my switchblade and fifty seven cents. Dad gave me the knife when high school started and told me to always keep an eye on the gooks. I eventually found out what a gook was, and the word scared me, resonating the image of mass death in my mind. Soon that word spilled out of every ones mouth, even hers. 

She laughed often, and her laugh made me want to laugh along with her, but only a smile cracked my marveling gaze. Hey eyes met with mine when she turned around, and I couldn't look away. 

“Atticus, do you have a pencil you could spare for me?” The water in her pale blue iris splashed, and I wanted to swim. She smiled and I gawked at her flawless complexion. 

“Of course, Erika.” I smiled back and reached into my bag and revealed a pencil. 

“Thank you, Atticus. Ill give it back to you after the test.” Red lips smacking, tongue slapping. 

“Don't, keep it.” Erika smiled and turned around.

After school had ended I walked behind her to my house, hers being a few streets away from mine. She apparently didn't know I behind her; she kept her gaze steady at the ground in front of her. The buildings were brick and barren under a sky too bright without clouds. Erika was wearing a polka dotted skirt and a black sweater. I was wearing overalls and black boots. Ericka's parents were rich once but Dad told me that the government took all their money.

Ericka lives in a tall building across the street from my house. Sometimes I'll pass my house and continue walking behind her and watch her disappear into the building. Dad says its an apartment building and only rich a******s live there. Ericka might be rich but I don't think she's an a*****e.

I slowed my pace because I was getting too close. If she saw me and said something, I wouldn't know what to say. I'm not good with talking to people. Sometimes I'll dream of having long conversations with people and the words just flow out of me. Sometimes they're really big words, words that Dad says when he talks on the phone to the Union. But I can't talk good when I'm awake.

Its cold outside and my breathe is like smoke. I smoked real smoke once. I thought it would make me feel good because Dad always smokes, but it made me sick and I tried to vomit but I couldn't. It was like puking dry air that burned. 

Ericka turns onto my road and I follow. I put my hands in my pocket and feel her hair. Her hair is soft and warm. Sitting in class I just want to bury my hands in her hair. I want to kiss her. I don't know why. It seems kind of pointless, pressing our lips together. But everyone does it. It's in the movies. Maybe the movies just made it up and people started doing it. 

Last week I walked into Mr. Swanson's classroom and he was kissing one of the older girls. His face turned red and he looked angry and when I tried to apologize he pushed me out of the class room. I had just wanted to thank him for helping me with my addition. I'm not good at math. I feel like I go to school excited and then when we do math I just want to fall asleep. And the thing that gets me is that numbers aren't even real. Mr. Swanson says they're made up. What the hell does that mean?

It starts to rain gently and Ericka walks in front of my house. She turns her head and looks into my yard. She stops walking and just looks. What is she looking at? I don't know if I should keep walking, so I stop. I'm standing in Mr. Dicks driveway watching Ericka stand in my driveway. She is so beautiful. It makes me sad how beautiful she is, because she doesn't even know it. 

There's a loud honk in my ear and I jump. Mr Dicks is trying to drive out of his driveway, and he sticks his head out of the window and yells at me to move. He honks again even though I am out of the way and drives off down the road. , She waves at me but I don't wave back. Her smile fades and she turns around and continues walking. 

Stupid, I should have waved back. I walk up the sidewalk and into my driveway. The shadow of Ericka's apartment building covers my house and a few others. I walk across the freshly cut grass and up the wet porch steps. I knock on the door because Dad keeps it locked now. He says we might get robbed by the gooks. Or the n*****s. They're both bad people dad says. Sometimes he gets mad about something and blames it on n*****s or gooks. Sometimes he says they aren't even people, aren't even human. 

Dad answers the door and says, “Well good grief, son. It's about time you got home. I've been waiting an hour. We have to go see your Aunt Caroline.”

Aunt Caroline lives on the other side of town, and to get there we have to drive through a gook neighborhood. Every time we drive there Dad swears and shakes his hand and yells at the gooks on the side of the road. He says they have no right to be here after what they did to Pearl Harbor. 

But I don't see why Dad gets mad at all of the gooks. Some of them are nice people. One of them used to work at the meat market, and he sold fish. He wore a dirty white apron and it was stained red with fish blood. Dad says gooks are just walking fish. 

Aunt Carolyn lived in Pearl Harbor when it was bombed. She said she was frying bacon and she spilled grease on herself and scolded her hand, and all at once she looked out of the window and saw she explosions and the planes flying over. 

In the car I close my eyes because the drive is tedious and quiet. Dad drives at a steady fifty five, and it begins to rain. The rain beads down onto the car in a calming rhythm, and the wipers come on and sway back and forth across the windshield. Left, right, left, right. It becomes a mantra. I hold Ericka's locket of hair in the privacy of my pocket, and caress it in between my thumb and index finger.

Dad says something about Aunt Carolyn, but I didn't hear him. The mountains had consumed my attention. The soaked cliffs and the fields and the clouds dampened my eyes and I fell asleep thinking of Ericka.

       I wake up and we are pulling into Aunt Carolyn's driveway, the familiar jerk of the Ford as it crawls into the driveway. Dad honks the horn of the car once, real long, and he has a facetious grin on his face. He looks at me and says, "You don't think she heard that?" And then he slammed the horn again and I had to laugh even though I was so cold. I was wearing thin jeans and a t shirt, and the cold fog sat lingering behind every near object.

       Aunt Carolyn appears in her doorway with the stature that only time or disease can create. Aunt Carolyn has an illness, Dad says, something called, Leukemia. Aunt Carolyn is thirty three years old but she looks like a sack of hundred year old potatoes. Dad said that to her once and she smacked him. Carolyn is my Mothers sister. Mother died when I was six.

       Dad got out of the car and said hello. I sat still in the car, where any possible warmth lingered. He eyed me and I got out of the car. Aunt Carolyn started off the porch of her small veranda.

       "No, no need to walk over here, Carrie, we're coming. Get over here now, Atticus!"

       I walked towards the porch and breathed in the smell of the cold sea. Behind Aunt Carolyn's house is the cliff. Dad tells me not to go over there, but sometimes when Dad and Carolyn disappear into a room, I go outside and sit on the edge. At the bottom of the mountain is the Pacific, dark, a vast mirror of the graying sky above.

       "It's about damn time you got here. I've been waiting for you for over an hour, William! The pie is not going to be warm anymore, William. No pie for you tonight." Aunt Carolyn face twisted into a glare that only presents itself in front of my father. Its as if they have some secret lingo. Carolyn's eyes twinkled in a sensual kind of way, and my Dad told me to go outside and play.

       "But I want some pie!"

       "No."

       "No pie for Atticus."

       They shut the door on me and then I had the thought that there wasn't any pie. There was never any pie.

       The cliffs are angled at a forty five degree angle so the wind from the sea blows up violently on the house. No trees grow back here because of the harsh wind. Carolyn made my Dad plant trees around her back porch, but the ocean just blew them right out of the sod.

       The wind is saturated with the stinging salt of the sea, and it blows so hard I have to try to stand straight. Vague memories from about ten years ago surface in my mind whenever I am on the cliff. In the memory I am sitting  in a chair. Mother walks past me off the porch and heaves herself off the mountain. She didn't fall off. She heaved  herself off.

I look down at the ocean below, at the rocks and the clashing waves. I think of Erika. I think of her wavy hair, and walk back into the house.

That night I sleep in the bedroom by myself. It rains outside and thunder shakes the walls of the house.  I head voices in the next room, muffled. I wonder what Dad and Aunt Carolyn are talking about.

I slip my hand in my pocket and reveal the lock of Erika's golden hair. The moonlight bleeds into the room from the window and illuminates the hair. I smell it, rub it against my cheek, rub it gently with my hands.

There is a knock on my door. I assume it is Dad, come to check on me. I am facing the window, away from the door, but I shut my eyes tight just the same. Footsteps tap on the hollow floorboards, gently and slowly. I put the hair under the covers and hold it in my hand.

The bed shifts gently, a weight pushed upon it. I keep my eyes closed and squeeze Ericka's lock of hair. A hand pats my head, runs its fingers through my hair, so soft, so calm. I think to myself, Dad must be drunk, because he never gets sentimental over me, and Aunt Carolyn doesn't hardly look me in the eye.

But it was the voice that told me who it was, the cool whisper that sounded like the ocean, and the fingers waded slowly through my hair, like a calm tide.

 

Author's Note

A Childish Noire

Reviews

[Gaston Villanueva]

the ending was unexpected but very powerful. great job as always but I just wanted to say that initially you wrote aunt Caroline and then it switches to aunt Carolyn. Solid work, Max!

[Chadvonswan]

Oh s**t, I never even noticed that. Haha thanks man. And I never even finished this story, that's why it ended so abruptly.

[Mother_Yolk]

This is one beautiful story. Nice...

[Chadvonswan]

Thank you very much, very much appreciated! :D

[ZackOfBridge]

You're writing is so damn good

[ZackOfBridge]

Like I said before, this is damn good, but I'm curious why the title is 1943 because the setting seems to be after world war dos