dissonance. (a Böhme novel) (20 page)

I laid back on the ground next to her and put my hand above hers, waiting for her to take it. She turned her head toward me and smiled as she raised her hand to mine.

We lay there for a while until the next band began to play. Brecken turned her head toward the stage and sat up quickly, "Oh fuck yeah," she said as she jumped up. "Come on, we can't just sit here during this." She put her hand toward me and pulled me along with her as I saw what got her so excited. The band had several large drums that they were beating in unison. Then one of the guys began playing bagpipes.

When the bagpipes started in, one man rolled across the drums, creating a tremor sound. Brecken yelled along with the other excited onlookers. I couldn't stop watching her. I never saw a girl get this excited about something as cool as bagpipes and drums. The longer the song went the more into it she got. She started to raise her hands above her head and closed her eyes as she rolled her body to the music.

Her movements reminded me of a belly dancer as the resonation hypnotized her. She flowed with it and it was as if she became one with it. The music consumed her. She flowed with fluid motion as she let it take over. Several songs played through and we didn't speak a word to each other. I found myself just as occupied by each song.

When the music ended, she went right up to the stage and thanked the band. She bought a CD and smiled at me as she took my arm to walk back into the tents. "What now?" she asked.

"I want to see the joust," I said, as I smiled at how easily she took my arm to walk with me. It was different than earlier. There was no thinking about it, she just did it.

We went through several tents as we made our way to the fields where the jousts took place. The tents dwindled and the field opened up to a large makeshift arena with a flagged rope fence. Hundreds of spectators sat in the grass around the field. Many of them were dressed as knights and maidens.

“Okay, honestly now Blake, have you ever dressed up to come here?” Brecken asked before she sat on the ground in a spot close enough to see the action.

I sat next to her and rested my forearms on my knees. Adjusting my glasses, I smiled. “Yes Brecken, I’ve dressed up to come here. My parents brought Wynn and me when we were about twelve and I dressed up as a knight, and he wore this monk robe. It was kind of cool actually.”

“You and Wynn have a lot of stories, don’t you?” she asked as the crier announced the joust.

I looked down thinking of the stories we shared. “Yes, we have a few.” I laughed.

“Tell me one,” she said as she stretched her legs out in front of her and tilted her weight back on her hands behind her. “Tell me a funny one.” Her statement reminded me of Wynn himself.
Get in a funny mood Blake, I need to laugh.

“Okay, well we always used to build forts between our backyards. He lived right behind me,” I said, nodding at her as I remembered one particular day. “One time, when we were twelve, we decided our fort needed something a little more to it than just your basic blanket over some chairs. We were older and needed something solid. No more of that baby stuff." I gave her a raise of my eyebrows as I remembered how serious we took our forts.

“So we snuck into Sid’s garage while he was at work. We knew he wouldn’t be back before eight because it was a Tuesday—his first day of the work week, and those nights were always late.” I put my right hand down and leaned on my arm toward Brecken, who watched me with a serious expression. “Now, in his garage he had stacks of metal, because he was practicing with welding and making these massive sculptures. Anyway, we were in his garage and we got sidetracked because he had so much cool stuff in there. We started pulling things off his shelves and looking at them—”

“Wait, you just went into his house when he wasn’t home and started digging through his garage?” Brecken asked with a laugh as she pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes.

I laughed and looked at a blade of grass and began to play with it. “Yes, we always snooped in his house. He knew we did—I mean he gave us a key and said anytime we needed to get away we could go there. I think it was more for Wynn than me, but anyway,” I said as I looked back up at Brecken.

“We were in the garage, looking in boxes, pulling things down and then we hit a shelf that had turpentine and paint thinner on it. We didn’t realize it was open, and we started wrestling like we always did and he shoved me. I slammed into the shelf and the stuff fell to the ground and splattered all over the front of us.” I lay back onto the ground and shielded my eyes from the sun.

“His face was priceless. I’m sure mine was pretty bad too. We both just stared at each other for a minute, jaws dropped. Then without saying anything, we both started stripping our clothes off because that shit covered them,” I said with a laugh as I thought of how stupid we looked.

“You stripped? Why would you do that?” Brecken asked with another laugh.

“Well, my dad had just told us the day before about how some chemicals would burn our skin and we’d get blisters from it. I think it was a load of BS just to keep us from getting into his stuff. But when you threaten little boys with burns and we had that shit all down the front of our shorts—of course we wanted to get the clothes off.”

Brecken laughed. “So you’re saying you guys were two twelve year old boys stripped bare, standing in your neighbor’s garage?”

I nodded, looking at her from under my forearm lifted above my eyes.

“How did you get out of there?” she asked. “I mean you had no clothes on, did you get some from Sid?”

“Well, story’s not over,” I said, pulling myself back into a sitting position. “Okay, we tried to figure out what to do with our clothes, and we decided they couldn't be saved, so we used them to try and dry up all the stuff still on the floor that we had spilled. So we were on our hands and knees trying to scrub the floor of his garage.

“Then the automatic garage door opener kicked on and the door began to rise. We were too dumbfounded to move. We just looked at each other and then slowly turned back to the door. Sid was standing there speechless. Our bare asses were facing him and I’m sure we were not what he was expecting to see. I swear it felt like five minutes we just stared until he finally asked us what the hell we were doing. Wynn looked right at him and in all seriousness said, ‘We’re building a fort—what does it look like we’re doing?’ Then Sid just shook his head and went into the house and came out with a couple of tee shirts.”

“Did Sid ask anything else or get mad?” Brecken asked.

“No, I’ve never seen that man mad a day in my life. It’s like nothing bothers him, ever. Life just happens with Sid,” I said.

“You and Wynn are definitely close,” she said as she watched a couple knights begin their joust.

“Yeah, we are. We never told anyone about that. Sid kept it to himself. I think he was as embarrassed as us. So, what about you—any funny stories from your childhood?”

She leaned forward and swept her legs to the side. She looked at me with sincerity, “I have a few stories, but I’m not ready to tell yet,” she smiled coyly.

“What? I just shared an embarrassing story of being caught with my loader hanging out there for all to see. You gotta give me something,” I said on a laugh.

She laughed. “Where did you ever come up with that name anyway?” she asked.

“No, you think I’m going to tell you that after you evaded telling me a story?” I asked and sat back, looking at her.

She laughed as she nodded her head. “You’re right—I’m lame. But you kind of make me nervous Blake. It isn’t in the sense that I can’t talk or get shy. It’s a nervousness based on you. This is foreign to me because I haven't talked with a guy like this in a while and if my saying that scares you, I’m sorry. But I’m in a place in my life where I don’t need to dance around truths. I want to tell it as it is. I like listening to your stories for now.”

“Maybe if I admit something to you it will help. I’m kind of shy about telling you about things that are important to me,” I said with sincerity and she gave me a confused expression. “Stories are one thing, but what I’m saying is, I’m an open book. I will tell anybody anything, but that doesn’t mean I will tell you the whys of what makes me tick. But with you Brecken, I can’t help but tell you. So, as far as loader goes, I got it from my grandpa.” I laughed. "Damn, that sounds really fucked up. I should've worded that better. I got the term, ‘loader’, from my grandpa."

“Really?” she asked with shock and a laugh.

“Yes, my grandpa. He’s a big time hunter and is quite the outdoorsman. He’s awesome. He loads his own bullets, and I watched him using his reloader one day and he said that making bullets was as intricate and involved as lovemaking. He remembered I was only seven and then tried to change the subject. But he already said it. I had the idea of sex locked in with the idea of loading bullets. My only understanding about sex was that people lay really close together.

“So when he explained the process of loading bullets and how the one part pressed so close to the other and locked the gunpowder in, I couldn’t help but think that was where babies came from. I mean, my grandpa said it was like lovemaking. So I got it in my head that to put a baby in a woman, the man had to press real close to the woman with his loader to do it. So I guess I was right in a way, but I lost the logistics of the process.”

She looked at me straight faced and leaned in and kissed both my cheeks. “You are so fucking hot.”

I laughed and looked down. “You know I’ve heard that a lot and I’ve fed off it actually. I like to hear it. Everyone wants their ego fed. But damned if when you said it, it didn’t mean more,” I said as I put my hand out to her again.

“That can’t be true,” she said with a half smile and taking my hand.

“Believe it. You’re this awesome chick with such soul to her. I’m afraid I’m out of my league and every time I open my mouth I confirm it even more,” I said, as the burn of embarrassment climbed my neck. “I mean, I know I’m hot,” I said with a mocked serious expression. “But deep down, I’m just a guy that likes to play video games, watch horror movies, and whittle wood. As you pointed out earlier, I’m kind of a nerd Breck.”

She put her hand on my face, “Oh Blake, all those things make you hot as fucking hell.” she said with a sigh and light voice. “I hate to say it but you are out of your league though. Now tell me some more things you think are nerdy about you.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s nerdy, but I help my mom with abandoned reptiles—mostly iguanas. I have one that’s my buddy. His name is Rather.”

“Rather? What kind of name is Rather?” she asked.

“You better not mock his name when you meet him,” I said as I put a finger to my lips and shook my head at her with a false scolding. “He’s sensitive about his history. His full name is Rather Dan, you know because he’s alive Rather Dan dead. But I chose the name as an ode to my mother because she always loved Dan Rather. It pissed her off when he left the nightly news and she boycotted the channel for a year. It really pissed my dad off too because after Dan left, the news went downhill,” I said with a smile.

“Oh my god, that is so fucking cute.”
Her voice
was so fucking cute. I could listen to the rasp of it all day. I intended to actually. “So why would he have been dead?” she asked.

“Someone bought him thinking it would be a cool pet to have, but they knew nothing about raising him, so they brought him to my mom. He was pretty sick when we got him, but he pulled through,” I said as I turned to watch a knight get flung off his horse in a joust. “Ach! That looks like it hurt,” I said.

“Yeah, you think?” she asked as we both let our attention focus on the show. The previous knights left the field and two new ones entered.

They trotted their horses up and down the field. The riders were giving a show to the audience, and on the other side of the field the spectators cheered for one knight while the surrounding people on our side cheered for the other.

“It looks like the black knight is who we’re supposed to cheer for,” I said as Brecken looked to me with a broad smile.

“Okay, what happens if he wins?” she asked.

“Let’s wait and see, but I bet he won’t win and it’s all a set up,” I said with a nod.

“Oh ye of little faith—our knight will win,” she said as she sat on her knees and began to cheer.

The crier came near our side of the field and began to yell to the audience that each knight would choose a lady. This lady was to be whom the knight fought in honor of during today's joust.

The black knight rode his horse up and down our side of the field and looked over the many women that hollered to be chosen. He rode past us twice before he stopped in front of Brecken. He put his hand down and with his helmeted head he nodded to her with a wave of his hand.

She looked back at me with a smile and questioning eyes.

“Don’t look at me—your knight is waiting,” I said on a laugh.

“Okay...” She stood and wiped her hands across her thighs, flinging pieces of grass on me as she did. She laughed and leaned down and brushed them from my shoulder on a curtsy. “Musn’t keep my knight waiting then, shall I?”

She climbed under the fence and stood before the knight. He lowered his hand to her and in one swift motion, lifted her to the horse and she took the spot behind him on a yelp. They rode across the field to where the king and queen of the faire sat.