I went over to him and put my hand on his back and asked him if he was okay but he didn’t say anything because he was gasping for air.
Three or four of the construction workers came running up to us and they pulled him into a sitting position and said c’mon buddy, breathe. There were many occasions in this town where people encouraged others to breathe, it seemed. C’mon, c’mon, said one guy with no shirt. He was moving his hands around the boy’s chest, trying to get the air circulating inside him. There we go, he said. There we go.
The boy began to cough and cry. I picked his ball cap off the ground and put it on his head.
Do you know this guy, asked the construction worker. I shrugged. I know of him, I said. We all knew of each other.
I’ll take him to school, I said.
Hey kid, said the man, see what happens when you throw rocks? The kid nodded. Gonna do it again? asked the man. The kid nodded.
He means no, I said. He better mean no, said the worker. C’mon, I said, let’s go. The boy got up and we headed off in the direction of the junior high.
What’s your name? I asked.
Doft, he said.
Do you speak English? I asked. He shrugged. Are you from Paraguay? I asked. A lot of people who had left town for Paraguay for even more hardship and isolation than this place could provide, although we did our best, were moving back. The Paraguayan girls wore dresses over pants, and the boys wore suspenders and men’s shirts. He nodded.
Hey, I said, don’t cry. You’re gonna be okay. You had the wind knocked out of you, that’s all.
He wiped his nose with the side of his hand and pulled his cap down really low over his eyes. Do you smoke? I asked. It was all I had. He nodded. I handed him a Sweet Cap and lit it for him and we sat on the curb smoking with our backs to the front doors of the junior high. When I was finished I flicked my butt onto the road and Doft put his on the ground and jumped on it with both feet.
You should go in now, I said. I pointed to the door. Doft took his ball cap off and handed it to me. Please, he said.
His English wasn’t very good but then again none of ours really was. Then he did six or seven cartwheels in a row down the sidewalk and back again. I handed him his hat and said fuckin’ A, Doft. Bueno.
We waved at each other before he disappeared inside the school. I have made two children happy in the course of five minutes, I thought to myself.
I was moved in typing today for flippancy. Flippancy was the big sin. I should have realized the inherent gravity of fjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjfjf the fox jumps over the log. And how will this help me to kill chickens faster?
On our report cards every letter of the alphabet signifies a different behaviour problem and I always without fail get a big red circle around the F for Flippant Attitude. But I don’t really give a fuck. (Oh, funny, eh?)
Travis had phoned me in the morning, before the Shreddie incident with my neighbour, and said he was mad at me for saying he looked like Ian Tyson when he holds his guitar so high up, which had put me in a bad mood. I just like them better held low, I said. He told me I was shallow. First about pant legs being tucked into socks and then about how a person holds his guitar. Well, what the hell am I supposed to think about, I asked him. I told him he was fishing around for stupid things to be mad at me for because he knew he’d said a stupid thing last night and couldn’t just apologize and tell me we’d never break up because he loved me more than life itself. And then I hung up.
Five seconds later I phoned him back and said I was sorry and he said he was too and asked me what I was wearing and I lied and said his Blumenort Jets sweatshirt.
At lunch it was raining so I didn’t go home. I went to the gym and sat way up in the bleachers and watched Rhinehart Bachenmeir shoot hoops. Man, he was good. He was conducive. That fast break and all that spinning around to the left, to the right, and his arc, stellar, beautiful like one of those marine-show dolphins. Dribbling between his legs making all those three-pointers and left-handed layups and slam dunks. What a pretty shooter. The only thing missing was the ball. I clapped anyway and he gave me the finger because I guess he thought he was alone with Kareem Abdul Jabar.
At 2:30 the guidance counsellor came to my class to tell me I should talk to her. We walked together in silence to her office next to the principal’s office and she pointed at a chair and said have a seat.
She asked me if I had any specific goals or aspirations for after high school and I smiled.
Hmmmm, I said. Lemme think. I told her I’d thought about becoming a city planner someday. She asked me if I wanted to spend the rest of my life spacing fire hydrants. No, I said, but I like looking at cities and thinking about them. She told me I needed exceptional math skills for that.
Like, for instance, I said, that our main street has two dirt fields on either end of it is weird to me. Shouldn’t it lead somewhere?
That requires engineering, she said. I nodded. Any other goals? she asked.
I told her I’d like to be able to do one chin-up. One chin-up, she said. She looked at me. I mean that would be something, right, I said. Holding my entire self up by myself. Like, my self by myself. No? She was writing something down.
Nomi, she said. Talk to me about English.
English? I asked.
Your written assignments, she said. Forgetting about “Flight of Our People” for now. You’re having some problems getting them in?
I’m not having problems getting them in, I said. They’re not…
Mr. Quiring says the…
It’s just…I don’t know. She nodded. I blew my bangs out of my eyes. She looked at her watch. I shrugged. She wrote some more stuff down and then she stood up and said she had to see someone else.
Okay, I said. Well, thanks a lot. I stood up and she came around from behind her desk with her arms out like an extra in Night of the Living Dead.
Can I give you a hug? she asked.
I…it’s just…I mean philosophically a hug is a great thing, I said. But…I smiled and left quietly. It’s so good to talk to someone who cares. I had a doctor’s appointment after school.
On my way to my appointment I stopped in at Barkman’s and stared for ten minutes at a floor model of a plastic bird whose head goes up and down into a cup of water. I wondered if it would hurt Travis to know that I was more interested in plastic birds than in procuring the female hormone that would allow our love to “progress to the next level.”
How much is that, I asked Mr. Barkman. I thought maybe my dad would like it. It seemed like such a straightforward thing for that bird to be doing. Head in. Head out. It made sense. Mr. Barkman said it was six bucks so I bought it for my dad and Mr. Barkman gave me ten or fifteen Icy Cups and a parachute jumper on the house for taking it off his hands.
I left the store and bumped into two girls singing “Let My Love Open the Door” into microphones made from screwdrivers and tensor bandages.
There was a little kid, maybe three or four, walking down Main Street by herself with a doll’s stroller strapped to her butt. Every few steps she’d stop and sit down in it for a rest and then get back up and keep walking.
From the back all I could see was the stroller and two little legs. I wondered what she was thinking. I wonder what three-year-olds think. I wonder if somebody had told her she was too big for that stroller. I wonder if she felt the way I did about people who told you something that you knew was just not fuckin’ true and if she felt like screaming at them and hurting them and plunging herself into a chemically induced oblivion.
I admired this kid for keeping her cool. She just strapped herself into that doll stroller and took off walking, probably without a word. All the way down Main Street. She’ll show the whole town that no, in fact, she still fits into the damn doll stroller.