We’d been good friends at school for a year now. We didn’t hang much outside of school except as smoking buddies. Not until recently, that is. I think his friends had been giving him guff about hanging out with me, too.
My friends—and here’s the thing, and I wish the world was still functioning as this bit of insight might matter—they were the same way. I got tired of their assumptions that guys like Bass were mindless brutes. I wasn’t angry about it because I think it’s natural to defend oneself. High school, like nature, is red in tooth and claw. What I’m saying is Bass and I became tight this fall because we weren’t interested in remaining in our guarded worlds.
“Bastian. My friend Bastian from school. He texted me about the same time you did. Said to meet him. Aw, dammit. Hope he’s okay.” I pounded the steering wheel.
“Do I know him?” Johnny asked.
“Huh-uh.” My eyes scanned the road for issues as I hit sixty, took the curve around Burnet as it veers toward Hancock.
A pile of stones in each of the parking lots of the Pint House Pizza, the Noble Sandwich. Johnny’s eyes toggled on them as we blew past.
Kodie gripped the door with her hand. Neither fussed me about the speed. The speed notwithstanding, I still saw movement, forms sliding into the city’s slots.
Why didn’t they come out with their arms waving asking for help?
We do this avoidance dance and don’t know why.
They’re the watchers. I’m the wonderer.
I took a sharp turn at Hancock and gunned it. “Hey, easy there, Ricky Bobby,” Kodie said.
Johnny couldn’t contain his smile. He liked the speed and the idea that the rules were now as out the window as his face thrust out into the sun and wind. “Shake and bake!” he yelled at the Yarborough Library. The eerie echoes coming off those walls made my guts turn.
“Meet where?” asked Kodie over the engine roar and tire squeal.
“Terrapin Station.”
“What’s that?”
“The graveyard up here.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
I shook my head.
“Why do you all call it that?”
“Just a dopey reference to a band we both loathe, the Grateful Dead.”
“I’m not following.”
“I don’t like them either,” offered Johnny. “Jam bands, ugh. I’d like to kick that Bob Weir in the balls.”
I slowed down a little as we crossed Shoal Creek. “We,” I paused and looked at Johnny. He’s witnessing the world end and saw a man with his head blown off in the back of a gun store, so I knew my prudence was wasted. “It’s where we grow pot.”
“Oh, now I get it. Pot, the Dead, cemetery. Sure. Clever. Your little pothead code,” Kodie said with no opinion or judgment attached to it whatsoever.
“Pot?” Johnny asked.
The stock points representing whatever reverence Johnny had of me, if there was any left after I hit him in Rebecca’s hallway, went down a few ticks then. God, he looked disappointed.
We arrived at the entrance of the cemetery. “J, it’s hard to explain.”
Before I continue—I know this isn’t proper memoir form, nor is it particularly good narrative development to just kill the momentum by doing this, but, lest you forget, dear reader, I’m doing this on the fly and borrowed time.
So, in case something happens before I finish, I want to insert a couple of poems. One from memory I’d written last year. I gave it to Mr. E. It wasn’t assigned. On the extra-credit essay I wrote on Lord of the Flies over the summer, he’d written below the A+ affixed with a red smiley face, What else you got?
Mr. E’s my teacher and my advisor. He said he made them make him my advisor. We’ve been hanging out a lot this fall. Go ahead, use the word mentor. Go ahead, use the words father figure, in loco parentis. Martin sure isn’t one.
That’s not true, Martin. I’m sorry.
Anyway, here’s one that I’m making up now. Been experiencing these images.
I call it Milkteeth.
pretending it drips
from their soft milk teeth
they’ve all still got
so proud to still have them
those pristine pearly birthrights
rooted in malleable razor rows
suckle at the lips of wounds
gashed into their effigies
one at a time
each takes his drink
the reward a small stone
from which night’s cold has leached
drawn away by coastal morning sun
when they’re done
they look up and smile at everyone
laughter riots from their throng
like satisfied birds about to depart
in one massive uplift
an exodus that would eclipse the sun
long enough for me to get away
under its saw-toothed dark[8]
And here’s the one I gave Mr. English in his office after he’d asked what else I got. I stood there and watched him read it, his lips moving. No title:
she emerges from those ozone fields
full of requisite thoughts coursing bodywide
not mattering if yesterday was
tomorrow’s repeat or if
now is a lot like then[9]
It isn’t my favorite, but it’s the one that popped in. I guess it’s because of Kodie—the emerging she and fields. Okay. So, yay, those stunning beauts are on record. I’ve got lots more doodling epigrams like that, but need to keep things going here. The rest of them are in a spiral notebook in my desk drawer right below the SAT preps.
I remember two of Mr. E’s comments about it, after he lifted his eyebrows and blew out his cheeks. One comment was: “You know who e.e. cummings is.” I nodded, ashamed. He said, “Hey, it’s okay. Standing on the shoulders of giants is okay. That’s how the giants learned their way—”
I interrupted, “Hey, that rhymes.”
His other comment was: “Why did you say mattering when caring makes more literal sense?” I remember him trying to hide the expectation on his face by taking a long sip of coffee from his Styrofoam cup. When I said I didn’t know, it just felt right, he nodded and wiped his mouth down with his palm and said, “Good answer. Anytime you want to share your work with me, let me know, okay?”
I stupidly asked him if it was good.
He said, “What’s great is that you said it felt right. Going on feeling rather than propriety, that’s when you leap off the giant’s shoulders. That’s when you soar.”
This whole thing here, telling this story, kayaking to the Matagorda—I’m taking Mr. E’s advice: I’m going on feeling.
Okay, back to the action.
Remember how earlier in the day I was coming back from the bridge—the bus, jumpers—and passed the Montessori school and the cemetery was across from it? Well, we’re back there now. Not in time, but in place.
Memorial Park Cemetery is where the writer James Michener is buried. I haven’t read him but Mom has his books Texas and Tales of the South Pacific on the shelf at home. Big doorstop hardbacks. Mr. English said I should apply to the Michener School at UT someday for my writing and that he could help me when the time came.
8
Included in