Small Town Vignettes

Real Friends

Jimmy lives down the street on Dover. He’s an only child, and quite spoiled. His father works at the mill and his mother at the hospital. I’m not sure what she does, but she isn’t a doctor. A nurse, maybe. Definitely not a doctor. Jimmy is 18 months younger than me, but he talks to me like I’m a kid because I’m with my brother who is three years older, and he wants to be his friend. My brother is cool, and when he hangs with the younger kids he becomes God-like. They laugh at his stories and when he leaves they all talk about how they’re best friends with him, and they argue over who he likes the most. Jimmy says, well he’s here all the time so it must be me, and I say, he only comes here because you play road hockey on the crescent. He doesn’t like that, so he runs inside the house and tells his mom that I’m being mean. She comes out and tells me I oughta get back home. So I turn around and go. When I reach the sidewalk, Jimmy runs up and says, hey, hey, and I turn around, what? And he says, what’s your brother doing? And I say, I don’t know. So he gets mad, turns around, and tells the other guys on the crescent that I told him my brother thinks he’s the best. The coolest. I walk home with my shoulders slumped, wondering when I’ll get real friends.

The Albino Who Wasn’t Albino

We moved around town every two years growing up. A restlessness would sprout out of my folks like weeds and on a whim they’d say, I can’t take it here anymore, and before I could draw a long breath, I’d be packing boxes and helping my old man carry things that were too heavy for me too carry and listening to him curse. When I turned 13 we moved to the house with the red steel roof. It was in a little working class subdivision with four streets all named after battles of the second world war. Dieppe, Normandy, Leopold and Atlantic. Up the street was the skatepark, where I spent a lot of time. Basketball had become like a religion to me, and I played it religiously. There were six nets, three with mesh, and only one with a mesh that wasn’t ripped. It faced west, and in the evening the sun was blinding. But we always picked that net when it was available, because of the nice white mesh. Jacob lived a stone's throw away from the park behind the elementary school playground and would wander over everyday with shorts and an NBA jersey, with nothing underneath. He smiled a lot but it was a broken kind of smile, like the way a battered spouse would smile and say that everything is okay when people asked. He smiled like that. His eyes drooped, and his forehead was often scattered with red pimples. Every summer, he’d play and tell us that in the fall he was going to tryouts. Then the fall would come around and he’d say, nah, nevermind. Then when the season kicked off, he’d get sad and sit in the stands with hands under his chin and wish he’d joined the team. Every fall it was the same thing. His hair was snow white and he was tall and skinny. The guys gave him a hard time, and when his father got murdered during a drunken poker match, things only got worse. I want to think that I was a good friend to him, but I probably wasn’t. I needed a laugh, no matter what the cost. It was my drug, and like any addict, we searched where we could find it. And his life was material for me. He messaged me not long ago and said, hey. You know those things that seemed funny back then, don’t seem so funny now. And I said, no, they really don’t.

The King of the Trailer Park

Nate lost his virginity long before the rest of us in Campbellton and so for a little while, he became a kind of king. What’s it like? We’d ask. Is it really wet? And he’d laugh like a seasoned pro. He went through a stretch where he was overweight with long bleach blonde hair, and the kids made fun of him because of his wide fingers and his lunches. Sausage fingers, the guys called him and then fishsticks after he microwaved beer battered fish in the cafeteria. But then he became a weightlifter, and with his bulging frame, and his cut hair, and his seemingly unlimited confidence, the girls started to forget about sausage fingers and fishsticks. He also knew how to speak French, so the French girls who went to school on the other side of town became like a fantasy land to the rest of us, but a reality for him. They were beautiful, but our French wasn’t good. Then he slept with one of them, then two, then three, and while I’d hadn’t gone past kissing a girl sans tongue, he’d already slept with three. One afternoon, I went to his trailer park to shoot hoops and he said Kal from across the river was coming over. He did that to me a lot in those days. Tell me to come over and hang out, only to boot me out not long after I arrived. So she came over, and I knew her a little. Her head was hung low and her face red. She was embarrassed because she’d acted filthy when she was texting Nate, and of course, she deduced that Nate had shown me the messages. All of the things she was going to do to him when she arrived, and then she got dropped off by her mother, and realized that she was just a kid in a trailer park, a long drive from home. I walked down the street to the rink, where there was a little park and connected with a couple other guys, and told them what was going on. Kal is so young, Chris said. And she was three or four years younger than Nate. Then I instantly felt bad, the way I did when I’d joke around about Jake’s misfortunes in life. After a couple hours, I walked back and she was sitting on the step while Nate and I shot hoops. Popped her cherry, he said. Fuck, she was tight. Didn’t even shave. He kept shooting hoops and that was how Kal lost her virginity. To the king of the trailer park, on a humid afternoon in a dingy bedroom with posters of cars and Biggie and Tupac. No romance, no love, just a quick fuck, and all Nate remembered was that she was tight, and that she didn’t shave.

Six Beers In The Dugout

We had a bar downtown that was going under during the market crash. In a desperation attempt, the owner decided to host teen nights on the weekends. Of course, you couldn’t buy liquor there but we all found a way to get some before and saunter downtown to the Flagship and act like fools for a couple of hours. Jake had a friend named Becca, whose boyfriend was 18. 18 was legal age across the bridge to buy a beer. Me, Pat and Jake all chipped in for 24 Bud’s. Now he’d had a sort of career out of doing this and kept the beer in his basement. It was warmer than hell, but we paid whatever he was asking, shoved them in a couple of book bags and walked to the dugout behind the school. We didn’t know our limits to drinking because other than a couple of sips of my old man’s beer here and there, I’d never actually drank a full one. So, we had six each, laughed our asses off, walked downtown and then passed out on Jake’s floor. The following morning I was introduced to the hangover.

Stitches and Stuffed Bears

J.D headbutts me during basketball practice. It’s not on purpose, so I don’t say anything. It hurts a little, and when I look up my coach’s face is white, and hollow. Someone get him some towels, he says and a couple of my teammates run off to the dressing rooms outside of the gym. I don’t know what’s going on. Another teammate says to tilt my head back, and I do. There’s blood everywhere. My other coach tells me to get into his car and he’ll drop me off at the hospital. I have a date with my girlfriend across the river, and I’m bummed that I won’t be able to make it. I text her in the emergency room and tell her I’m sorry, she says don’t worry about it, and if I can still make it later, she’d love to see me. I’m falling hard for this girl, so I tell her I’ll make it if I can. The doctor takes me in, he’s tall and slim. All business, there will be no laughter here. He gives me a couple of needles on the side of my face to freeze the area and gives me 12 stitches. I’m out in a half hour, feeling woozy from the blood and the needles, and the fact that I haven’t eaten anything in half a day. Before I exit the hospital, I pass the gift shop and see a large teddy bear in the corner on the floor. He’s brown with a heart and I buy it. I don’t tell my girlfriend I’m coming over, I just go. I hop in another cab and place the large bear in the seat next to me, and look out the window as soft February snow falls and we cross the bridge to the other side of the river. The snow starts falling harder and I forget where she lives. I tell the cabbie to drop me off at the church, and he does. I think it’s only a block, maybe two and I walk through the reserve with my bear, who’s half the size of me. It takes longer than I suspect because I got him to drop me off at the wrong church. I knew she lived close to a church, just not which one. So I walked for a half hour and when I find her door, the snow is falling in heaps. I know, and she answers. The look of surprise and joy on her face is still seared into my brain all these years later. That someone could be so happy to see me. What a brilliant feeling. Surprise, I say. And she hugs me, then kisses me, and I can feel a couple of stifled sobs. I’ve never considered myself a romantic, but a busted face and a teddy bear is pretty good, if I may say so myself.

Something Is Wrong With Mom

I live in the country. The boonies. A place with swerving roads that people call dead man’s curve. Darkness and silence so absolute if it wasn’t peaceful, it would drive a person insane. I don’t mind it, but sometimes I feel trapped. One weekend my mom drives to her father’s place for a couple of days. I watch movies, play ball, and call my girlfriend on the phone, telling her I’d go see her in a heartbeat if I had a car, and a license. She comes home on Sunday, she hugs me. She bought me an Allen Iverson jersey, and I wear it to death. I hug her, and she’s quiet. She’s normally talkative when she returns home from trips, giving me the scoop about every bad driver, the water on the beach, the cottage, the music stores, everything. But she doesn’t say anything. A couple weeks later, she says she’s leaving. And I suspect she’s going on another trip. I ask if she can pick up another jersey, I need Iverson on the Pistons to complete the collection. She says she’s leaving but she isn’t coming back. I don’t understand, my father says I’ll never see grampa again, and to get that through my fucking skull. My mother cries, and I wonder if I did anything wrong. She says she’s leaving Sunday, my brother and father both say they won’t be here, they’ll let her have the house to herself. I have no place to go, so I stay. She has two suitcases at the door, and she’s crying. I tell her she doesn’t have to leave if she doesn’t want to. But she says she does. And she hugs me. She leaves and I watch her pull out of the driveway, and I’m alone. The silence so absolute that if it wasn’t peaceful, it could drive a kid insane.

Insecurities

I meet a girl who lives next to the elementary school in a little one story home. She’s pretty and straight forward. She speaks her mind, and laughs when she hits you in your deepest insecurity. I’m skinny, and the hair on my chest is coming in miles ahead of anyone else, so naturally those are the two areas she attacks. She curls my chest hair and laughs, and puts her thumb and forefinger around my wrist. She says things like I need to eat a hamburger or I need to shave. But when I’m about to get upset, she shoves her tongue in my mouth. She swirls it around, and I’m on another plane of existence. It doesn’t taste good exactly, but it feels great. I’m only 12 years old, and she talks about having a threesome with a friend of hers. They rip my belt off one afternoon at her place, and she throws it across the room. It hits a lamp with a loud CLINK, and I’m nervous. They kiss me, but I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m visibly shaking, and they laugh. I feel like Kass in the trailer park with Nate. All they’re going to say after this, is he was skinny as a rail, and he should have shaved.

Midnight Video

In the summer I rent movies. 3 for 3 for 3. 3 movies for 3 nights for 3 bucks. The movie store is called Midnight Video and it’s in a strip mall next to Tim Hortons on Roseberry Street. I’m living in the house with the red roof before the boonies, and my mother is screaming at me. She tells me to go outside and play with friends and I tell her I just want to watch movies in the basement with the air conditioning on. She huffs and puffs because she wants the house to herself. I walk up the steep incline of Dieppe, past the skatepark where Jake shoots hoops. I wave to him and say maybe next time when he asks if I want to play. I keep going down and hang a right at the funeral home before heading down the street through the alley next to the movie theater. Then across the street is the movie store. I go through the seven aisles of movies a couple times each. It’s a time when artwork and actors I like, judge the movies I pick. I don’t know if they're beloved or amongst the worst ever made. I just look until the three feel right in my hand. Then I head over the counter where a sort-of cousin of mine works. He seems to have a couple screws loose, and his hair is sticking up like alfalfa. I hand him the movies, and he scans them. It’s the dream job, I think. Two TV’s on either side playing kick ass movies all day. The smell of popcorn, and getting to talk about the most important thing in the world. I leave with the movies in a bag, and head downstairs. My mom is cursing upstairs, I can hear her, and I say, don’t worry mom, I’ll leave the house tomorrow, when I rent three more.

Europe Bound

Pat is a natural athlete. One of the best ball players to ever come out of Campbellton. He dribbles effortlessly, shoots effortlessly, and never loses his temper, in a game where many do. He’s my friend and we sit on the thin line of grass between the fence and the asphalt. He says we should go to Europe after high school and play ball. I say that sounds tremendous. My father is a railroader and his is a fishing guide, and laborer. He tells me that his future needs to be ball and I tell him the same thing, though I know I’m not cut from the same cloth as he is. But it’s a fun dream and in late July with a basketball on the back of my head, staring at a deep blue sky, drinking gatorade, I can almost believe it. Europe, I say, can you imagine? Last time I talked to Pat, I said what’s going on with you? What are you up to? He says he quit school and he’s working with his old man. You? He asks. Railroader, I say.