The Obstacle Course (3 page)

By the time I wound up back at the obstacle course the sun was fading fast. It didn’t matter—I could run it blindfolded if I wanted to. I ran it hard, really attacking it, punishing it, running as hard and fast as I could until I ran out of gas and had to finally stop, bent over double, sucking in the air, my hands on my knees. It feels good, running hard like that, sucking in air so hard it feels like your lungs are burning.

I ran it one more time. I didn’t much feel like it, but I did it anyway.

I
T WAS COLDER THAN
shit out and snowing again. I couldn’t get a lift to save my life. I felt like some stray dog left out in the rain to fend for itself, like those dogs you see whose owners don’t want them anymore and just leave them by the side of the road, chuck them out of the car without even looking back. They come up to you with this begging kind of look, their tails between their raggedy legs, all dirty and matted up, kind of whimpering and whining, expecting you to kick them. That’s about how I felt right then.

I don’t get rides as easy as I used to. I hit my growth spurt last year and put on a good four inches. I grew so fast I outgrew all my clothes; I looked like the scarecrow from
The Wizard of Oz.
It’s especially bad at night, when you’re standing out there in the dark on Defense Highway, ’cause the only light is when a headlight hits you from a car going by and by then it’s too late for them to stop. I don’t look like a kid anymore, that’s the problem. When I was a little kid, even last year, rides would come real easy, not only men drivers but women, too, they’d see this kid standing out there with his thumb sticking out, looking all forlorn like Little Orphan Annie, and they’d get feeling guilty and motherly and they’d pull over and take a look at me to make sure I wasn’t some midget ax murderer or something and then once I was in the car they’d ask where I was going and where I lived and did my parents know I was out by myself at night and all that other motherly shit. I’d make up some story for them, whatever popped into my head. It was usually a good one. One time this woman started crying, I laid such a load of pathetic shit on her.

Finally I got a ride from some guy driving this raggedy-ass milk tanker heading into D.C. from the Eastern Shore. It was an old Mack in serious need of a ring job, the smoke was coming out the exhaust so black you couldn’t hardly see out the little back window of the cab. Not only that but the guy had a serious case of the farts—I had to crack my window, the fart smell was so putrid. The funny thing was, I don’t think he even knew he was doing it. He was a real farmer, this guy.

“Ravensburg,” he said when I told him where I was going, “I can drop you there, night like this rides’re gonna be hard to come by.” He had one of those super-thick Eastern Shore accents, the kind even people from other parts of Maryland can’t hardly understand. The only reason I can is because my mother’s people came from Tilghman Island originally, which is this real neat little island over on the Eastern Shore where they do oyster fishing in these old sailboats called skipjacks. Her people weren’t oyster fishers, though; my mom gets seasick just looking at a boat.

Anyway, big fucking deal, he can drop me there. Defense Highway, the road we were on, which is the only road between Annapolis and Washington, goes through Ravensburg. Splits it right down the center, in fact. The way he put it, it was like he was doing me a big favor, going out of his way for me. I hate it when people act like they’re doing you a big favor when they aren’t doing jack-shit. Beggars can’t be choosers, though, not when you’re out there thumbing in a snowstorm.

“Bum one of your smokes?” I asked. He had a pack of Chesterfields sitting up on the dash. I personally can’t stand Chesterfields, but I needed a smoke to calm my nerves and to cut the fart odor.

He gave me a funny look, like he didn’t want to, but he did. It’s funny how people are, they won’t want to do something like let you bum one of their cigs but they won’t come out and say no, they’ll just give you one of these looks that’s supposed to do it for them. And then you’re supposed to know that the look means “I don’t want to” and not bum one, or whatever it is you asked for they didn’t want to give you. But I don’t go for that, not if I really wanted it, and I really wanted that Chesterfield, although normally I wouldn’t touch one with a ten-foot pole, so I just pretended like I didn’t understand the “look” routine, and slid one out of his pack.

“Where you been?” he asked after I fired it up and blew a smoke ring. I blow the best smoke rings of any kid in my class, it’s one of my specialties.

“Annapolis,” I told him. “The Naval Academy.”

“Uh huh,” he said, like the Naval Academy was no big deal.

“My brother’s a midshipman,” I elaborated.

“Oh, yeah?” That impressed him—kind of. Like I said, he was a real farmer, having a midshipman for a brother had to impress someone like him.

“He’s a middie second-class,” I continued, “he graduates next year.”

He didn’t comment on that. Probably still worrying about that one pathetic Chesterfield.

“He’s captain of his company. Actually of his whole brigade. He’s on the football team, too. Halfback.”

That got his attention. The funny thing was, if he’d known anything at all about the Naval Academy he’d have busted me there and then, because you don’t get to be a brigade commander until your senior year. But he was so stupid he didn’t even know that.

“I must’ve seen him play last year,” he said. “I went to the Maryland game.”

“Right,” I answered, getting into it, “that was him. He had a real good game, even though he was only a sophomore.”

“Maryland creamed ’em,” the driver said, real pissed-off, “nobody from Navy had a good game the Maryland game.” He said it like it was my fault Maryland creamed Navy last year.

“He had a better game than anyone else,” I said, quick to defend my “brother,” “anyway, they’re gonna be good this year. He might make All-American.”

The driver looked over at me kind of suspicious, like he thought I was bullshitting him but wasn’t sure.

“What did you say his name was?” he asked. “Your brother?”

“Tolliver,” I lied. It slid right off my tongue. “Peter Tolliver.”

“Oh, sure. I’ve heard of him. Everybody’s heard of him. There was a big article in the
Sun’s
sports section about him last fall.” His tone of voice was suddenly a lot more respectful.

“I ride the team bus when they’ve got a game in Baltimore,” I continued, really into my own bullshit now, when I get on a roll I can talk your ears off and make you believe it. “They eat breakfast early Saturday morning and then they get on the team bus up to Baltimore. I eat breakfast with them and ride up on the bus.”

“Like the team mascot,” he chipped in. I had him eating out of my hand.

We drove a little ways without talking. It was snowing good, he had to pay attention to the road.

“It ain’t none of my bidness,” he said, looking at me again, at my raggedy jacket and all, “but this is lousy weather for a kid to be hitchhiking in. How come your parents didn’t come up with you?”

I fidgeted around in my seat like I was embarrassed, which I was, kind of, but not because of the reason he thought.

“My father’s dead,” I said real low, like I didn’t want to, “he got killed in Korea. He was a fighter pilot in the Marines. He got shot down over North Korea.”

“Jesus,” he muttered.

“My mother has to work weekends,” I went on. When I get going on a story I’m like a runaway freight train, I can’t stop even if I want to. “She sews clothes. She’s never seen my brother play.”

“Damn.”

“That’s why it’s real important for me to go. So I can come home and tell her all about it. She listens on the radio, though.”

“It’s a shame she can’t get one weekend off to see him,” he said, real sympathetic-like, “especially since you live so close. Not many mothers have a son who’s starting halfback for one of the best teams in the country.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference,” I told him, my voice getting real quiet. “She’s blind. She’s been blind ever since my father died. It’s in her head is what the doctors say. Like once he died there wasn’t anything for her to want to see anymore.”

He had to jerk the steering wheel real hard then, because he’d practically driven off the road when he heard that.

“Jesus.”

I thought he was going to cry, he sounded so sad.

“The doctors hope someday she might be able to see again,” I told him. “If she can ever get over my father’s dying.”

He let me off in front of the elementary school. It was snowing to beat the band, I felt cold as soon as I opened the door.

This car coat of mine just doesn’t do the job, not when it’s snowing and freezing like this.

“Thanks for the ride, sir,” I told him politely. I actually did appreciate it, I could still be standing in Annapolis with my thumb out, freezing my cookies off.

“That’s okay, kid.”

A sudden gust of wind blew under my jacket, making me shiver. I pulled it tight. My mom had wanted to get me a decent jacket at the beginning of the school year but my old man nixed it, next year would be soon enough, he’d said, times are tough and money doesn’t grow on trees, he’s always saying stupid shit like that, plus of course I’d lost my other jacket. “He’s a regular absent-minded professor,” he’ll say, “except he ain’t no professor, not with his piss-poor grades.” Then he’ll go on about how after the bare necessities, like the house payment, there’s never anything left, which is a crock of shit, he has a steady job at the Government Printing Office and makes good money. “There’s always money for Four Roses,” my mother rags on him. Her voice is hoarse, deep as a man’s, more from the constant ragging on him she does than the two packs of Kents she smokes a day, “there’s always money for Jim Beam, how come there’s always money for whatever you can pour down your goddamned throat but the kids got to walk around looking like we’re on tobacco road.” That’s an exaggeration, of course, there’s plenty of kids in my school who actually are from tobacco road and we don’t look anything like them. My parents fight all the time, he’ll knock her upside her head and she’ll throw a frying pan or something at him and then she’ll start crying. She hates looking poor. My old man doesn’t give a shit, though, he’ll tell her if she don’t like it she can lump it. That’s one of his favorite expressions—it’s about the best he can do, he doesn’t have a real good vocabulary, I know twice as much as he does already and I’m only in the ninth grade.

My hair was turning white from the snow. It was covering my head and shoulders, too.

“You get inside where it’s warm,” the driver said.

“I’m going straight home,” I promised him.

He crunched the gears and pulled away, heading for Washington. I stood there and watched him go, feeling the snow falling on my head.

Even though it was cold out I took my time walking home. It was past seven, so I was already late for dinner; no sense rushing a bad thing. I looked in some of the windows as I walked down the street. People were eating dinner or watching television. Some were doing both at the same time. I know everybody in the neighborhood, practically. Ravensburg’s one of these real old towns going back to the 1600s, there’re stones in the graveyards going back to 1640. I like the graveyard, it’s quiet there, not scary at all. I have friends whose people go clear back to the 1600s in Ravensburg, you can see their family names on some of the old markers. There’s no real reason to stay here but hardly anybody ever leaves. Not me, though. When the time comes I’m leaving in a cloud of dust and a hearty “Hi, ho, Silver, away.”

The lights were on in our kitchen. I peeked through the window. My family was eating dinner. Even from outside I knew what it was: Swiss steak, kale, potatoes, and bread to dip in the gravy. None of those things are my favorites, but beggars can’t be choosers. My old man, as usual, was washing his down with a jelly-jar glass of booze—probably Four Roses, his everyday poison.

I was jittery—being late for dinner is a sure way to piss my old man off. Just about everything I do pisses him off. He’s pissed off with me about something almost every day.

I counted from twenty backwards three times, took a deep breath, and ran inside, huffing and puffing like I’d been running a mile.

“I couldn’t help it!” I immediately started improvising like mad, you never know, someday someone might believe you. “I swear to God I’d’ve been home an hour ago but this old lady got a flat tire and I had to help her fix it ’cause she was going to Prince Georges Hospital ’cause her husband’s got cancer. He could die any minute.”

My old man didn’t even bother to look up from his plate.

“Tell me another one.”

I threw my coat on the couch, sat down at the table.

“It’s true, I swear to God.” I blew on my hands to get them warm. “Boy, I’m starving, what’s for dinner, mom?”

She shuffled over to the oven, took out my plate (which she’d kept warm, like always), and put it in front of me without saying a word. She’s been doing this for years.

Ruthie glanced over at me.

“I liked the story about the kid whose dog got run over better,” she said, real snide.

“Up yours,” I told her under my breath. Like her shit don’t stink.

“You can do the dishes tonight,” my mother told me.

That was okay, it beats the shit out of getting your ass tanned any day. Her and Ruthie got up to go in the living room for a smoke. She looked tired—she usually looks tired. Even though I don’t favor women coloring their hair unless they’re old and gray, my mom’s one woman who ought to. It’s this kind of dishwater-blond that doesn’t look pretty no matter how she styles it. She doesn’t wear makeup around the house, so the lines around her mouth and eyes are starting to show pretty strong. She’s only thirty-six but she’s aging fast. Living in my family’ll do that to you.

Ruthie was wearing one of her extra-tight Orion sweaters, the kind where her bra shows through. She doesn’t hide them, that’s for sure. By the time she’s twenty-five she’ll have an ass as wide as two ax handles, the way she chows down. She’s built good now, though—once in a while I’ll sneak a look at her while she’s getting undressed. She’s got a set on her like Jayne Mansfield, I swear to God. All my buddies’re always trying to get me to let them sneak a look, but I never do. She’s my sister, after all, and anyway my old man would whip my ass from here to Hyattsville if he ever caught us.