There weren’t too many cars parked along the cul de sac. The strange tree was glowing from a near-full moon. We kept on foot. It felt nice to walk. It was funny, you’d think Sean would have led, since, that is, the adventure it was his idea. But Marc did. I liked this. We were ghosts. It felt as if no one could see us.
The houses were silent. Lights burned behind blinded windows. Some houses you could hear the pale electricity; others were just dead boxes.
Marc seemed to know where he was headed. Sean walked diagonal to him. He looked as if he weren’t following him (but he still was).
We trekked throughout the suburb maze of streets, for about ten minutes, maybe less, until we reached a field. There was some kind of generator, in the form of a green box, planted into the brown grass, making a humming noise sounding like a power chord with too many plugs in it. Marc kept glancing over as if he were looking for something. He cut to the left, where the field spread out into darkness, and headed in that direction.
Further up the moonlight shone a silver luminescence onto train tracks. The grass had turned to dirt, the dirt to rocks, which mounded up into a slight hill where the tracks lay in-between. Beyond these tracks were more houses, and beyond them a neon sign that read: CUE’S POOL & PUB. Marc, who had stopped, turned and faced us.
“There’s a bar and a cemetery over there,” he said.
“What’s the difference,” Sean quipped.
“They’re both right over there,” Marc pointed as if he hadn’t heard Sean’s comment.
Sean Dusk walked up the embankment. He stood up on the tracks. He drank from the beer as if it were the last one on earth. Marc put his can down and lit up a cigarette.
Sean was visible because of the moonlight. He stood there with a lazy slouch, for a moment staring up at the freckle-face of stars. He lit a cigarette of his own.
“Shit, man. I used to walk around all the time,” he said. “In high school I’d walk just about everywhere. I remember once I got kicked out of Kirkland High. I hopped a fence and walked down the ditch, all the way to the continuation school on Felder Street.”
“You went to Hardy?” said Marc, referring to the continuation school. “My brother Robert went there.”
“Robert. What was his last name?”
“Sandoval.”
“Oh yeah,” Sean replied. Then he had a look of contimplation, that didn’t open up to anything more than that – then he said: “Robert Sandoval. I don’t think I knew him. Or maybe I do and just don’t remember.”
He pounded his beer and chucked it out along the other side of the rocks. He grabbed out his second from his blue jeans, opened it, and drank.
“Why did you walk all the time - wouldn’t your parents buy you a new car?”
That was Marc. Sean gazed out towards the neon sign.
“No,” Sean said. His voice seemed deflated. He sounded struck suddenly. He looked right at Marc. “I did too many things that my parents didn’t agree with.”
“Drugs?” Marc asked knowingly. “Yeah. I heard you did a lot of drugs. My brother Robert did too.”
It was interesting the way Marc said drugs: it was like a child says “monster” as he lay in bed, facing an open closet lit vaguely by the hallway light, the mother about to leave the room.
Sean walked down from the tracks. He seemed as if he’d gotten bored up there but I don’t think that’s why he came down to our level.
“It really bugs you about my parents, huh?” said Sean to Marc.
He’d said this bluntly, but not in a confrontational tone. It did come out of the blue though, and I could see it caught Marc slightly off guard.
“It doesn’t bug me,” Marc said. “You’re lucky to have rich parents.”
Sean grinned wryly, though the grin was deplete of any sarcasm – his face was suddenly narrow, and a bit clearer too. He had an expression that resembled a pallid wolf caught in a bear trap, but a wolf nonetheless, eyes sharp and keen yet at the same time somewhat afraid and also a bit perturbed: wondering where the bear was for whom the trap was set for.
“Lucky,” Sean said, a bit shrewdly. “Yeah. I guess so. My dad’s a real creative entrepreneur. He can make something outta nothing. It’s amazing what the guy can create. It just seems to come naturally for him. He can’t go wrong in business it seems. He’s one of the few people who have creative sense and business sense at the same time. Shit. I can’t help who my old man is. I wish I could sometimes, in a strange sort of way. Since, that is, I seem to get all kinds of flack for it.”
Marc seemed suddenly broken from that dull weight he’d lugged around since Gale and David were over.
“My dad’s never been around,” he said plainly. “He lives in Detroit, I think. Maybe Michigan. I’m not really sure anymore.”
“What is this,” I said cutting in, “a fucking John Hughes’ movie?”
They both laughed hollowly.
“It’s a real trip,” Sean said to Marc, back on track, as it were. “The greener grass is mown just like any other.”
“But the hired hand mows that lawn,” Marc replied.
“Yeah,” said Sean, “but believe me – they drink the best Tequila when the work is done.”
“I guess,” said Marc plainly.
Sean cleared his throat.
“Having a father like mine can be a hindrance of sorts. You wouldn’t believe the rules I had to follow as a kid. I mean shit – there were fences all around me.” He gazed out beyond the tracks at a line of trees, and the darkness beyond the trees. “And I still see them sometimes. Even stargazing…”
Marc inhaled from his cigarette. Then before exhaling he drank from his beer. He swallowed the beer, and then exhaled the smoke.
“I could do whatever I wanted when I was a kid,” he said in a weary tone.
“I can tell,” said Dusk.
“I had a wild childhood,” Marc said - kind of forced how he said WILD.
Then Sean Dusk rose up his beer can…
“Well,” he toasted, “here’s to freedom.”
They both clinked their beers together. Sean continued the toast:
“To some it’s a gift, to others, a pleasure.”
And they drank. The train never did pass by. Marc seemed pretty at ease the rest of the night. He didn’t have that stiff itch to him like before.
We didn’t stay out for too long. It was nice finishing those last beers while we trudged back to the Cavern…
Later on, Marc and Sean seemed past a phase while we drank and watched TV. Cudd, Sissy and Ed weren’t home. Cudd trusted Marc enough to always let us stay there, even without the rent payers present. I guess a while back, when Cudd’s folks had moved out of state, he had lived at Marc’s for about half a year.
That night when Sean and Marc drank they talked about Cudd, and it didn’t sound like Marc thought too highly of him. He felt the same way I did about Ed only Marc shared his aggravated abhor out loud. Marc could be, when he wanted, a pretty out-loud guy. He went on and on about some of Cudd’s shortcomings, but it wasn’t too mean-spirited. He sounded like one cousin talks about another…
Dusk was all ears…
He laughed aloud during the good parts…
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.