"We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files
We'd like to help you learn to help yourself
Look around you all you see are sympathetic eyes
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home."
-Simon and Garfunkel, Mrs. Robinson(1968)
The garden was more like many small gardens with their own little sectors. There was a koi pond with goldfish. Very big vibrant goldfish that came in hues of red and gold. One was black with gold specks. He was my favorite. I remember when we were little me and Dakota would feed them. And this one time I made a really big hunk of bread and the fish that ate it died. We fished it out of the water and brought it to Dakota's mom and asked if we could have it for dinner. We had store-bought salmon instead and the fish was buried in a flower bed.
There was a mini basketball court between a group of trees where Dakota broke his arm in two places going for a slam dunk. And right behind it was a bench that the whole family sat on for a family portrait. I was in it. Dakota's parents were very nice, even if they expected me to call them Mom and Dad. God knows they were better parents than what I had been born with. I was born with a witch masquerading as a mother. And a dad that I've been told is somewhere in Las Vegas.
The path from the back of the house was lined with paving stones and went all the way to the door of Mr. Lewis's office at the edge of the mill. Even if you were surrounded by trees and such you could still hear sawdust spewing out of the machinery and people shouting at each other. Home sweet home, it was music to my ears. This was the path I walked on as I neared the lumber mill and the sounds I listed above got louder. I cut around to one of the entrances, walking through the woodsy part.
You had to wear a helmet and eye protection when you went in there, because you would get wood shavings in your eye and a large splinter in your head if you didn't. It could really ruin your day. I took mine off the peg labeled, 'Peter.' It was next to the ones that said 'Keith' and 'Dakota.' Keith being Mr. Lewis, because he certainly didn't refer to himself as Mr. Lewis.
Speak of the devil, I was looking for him and I heard his voice a ways away. It was shouting at me. "Watch out, Peter!" I instinctively moved out of the way about thirty feet and right where I was a heavy branch crashed to the ground. Everything stopped and Mr. Lewis and Dakota ran up to me. "Okay, end of shift! See you tomorrow!" Mr. Lewis called, waving his hand at the rest of the employees on the equipment.
Mr. Lewis was a tall man. He maintained a boyish expression on his face even with a beard. He let his pale red hair grow out, not too long, but long enough so he could have some coverage in the winter months. Plaid lumberjack shirts were mainly what he wore. Even though he sounds threatening when I describe him, he was skinny as hell. His parents were hippies and he was raised at one of their communes. He often said arcane mountain men things that I didn't understand, like, "When the wild geese soar overhead, even terrapins stamp their feet on the ground." I didn't know what a terrapin was. I always pictured a small furry land animal that looked like an aardvark. Turns out it was a small edible turtle.
Always at his side when he wasn't at school, Dakota was his son and there was no mistaking it. The way they held themselves was very similar. He was a little shorter than his father, built willowy. His head was thin and angular, he always smiled, though, and usually kept the gothic priest look out of his expressions. Very shrimpy, little muscle definition. He had dark blond hair that framed his face and fanned out around his head. Dakota was a sweet kid though, and could charm the pants out of anybody. He was big on the environment, which was something no one at our school cared about, and liked creeking and camping. A lot of the activities he participated in were church-run and he was their Sunday school teacher. All fifteen kids loved him very much, and to an unhealthy extent if you ask me.
"At least you moved!" Mr. Lewis said cheerfully. I couldn't tell if he was choosing not to notice the open wound on my forehead, or if he was just paying really bad attention. His method of parenting was something along the lines of, "You pick your battles and if you lose the battles I'll give you a speech," kind of thing. I nodded slowly.
"Mom said, uh, she said you might need help." I said.
"We were actually about to wrap up when you came down here." Dakota butted in. "I'm glad you did, I was starting to think you were messing around when you said you'd come over."
"I'd hate to be there than here." I shrugged.
"We're glad you're here!" Mr. Lewis said. The three of us began to walk back to the house.
~*~
A lot of the dinner while the four of us were at the table was spent in silence. Sometimes you'd get a, "pass the green beans," but that was about it. It was a comfortable atmosphere, but you could tell Mrs. Lewis wanted to say something.
"Peter, do you want to stay the night?" She asked.
I was about to say yes when her husband stopped me short. "I'm sure the boy's got schoolwork to do." He said, forgetting one, it was Friday, and two, I hadn't been absent so I didn't have any to do. She looked across the table and glared at him. "Oh, come on." He shrugged. "He can't live with us forever."
"He's perfectly welcome to!" She whisper-yelled across the table. "You know that, right, sweetheart?" She looked at me for a second, her attention away from her husband. I nodded profusely, at the other side of the table, my mouth full of chicken.
Mr. Lewis scoffed. "The boy's old enough to take care of himself."
"You're not in his position, Keith!" Mrs. Lewis said, her face turning pink. She was getting slightly irritated.
"Neither are you, Lisa." He shot back. "You're not his real mother, so stop trying to tell yourself that."
"Oh!" She said in a huff, and put a hand to her chest to show this offended her. "I'm certainly a realer mother than what he's got now." Her knuckles were turning white, her hands clenched tight against the fork and knife she had. I though she was about to stab her husband fatally in the chest with them.
"Peter, I need to show you something in my room." Dakota said quickly and pulled me away from the table so fast the chair almost tipped over. He tugged me up the nice pine staircase and to his room where he promptly shut the door. It was on the left, third one down next to the spare room. He sat in his desk chair while I sat on the bed across from him. He had his hands on his face, clearly embarrassed. I really felt for him then, because it's bad when people who you depend on fight each other. And his parents never fought. Even when the dog Mr. Lewis bought in the fateful Christmas of '79 that knocked over the tree didn't cause an argument. And if it did it was behind closed doors.
"They've been fighting, Peter," he said hollowly, looking up at me, "they want to call the cops on your mom and they want you to live with us. Well, that's what my mom wants. Dad says we need to wait and in a year you can leave by yourself. I just want them to shut up."
I groaned. "You know I can take care of myself."
He agreed. "I know you can. But they think the both of us are still in the first grade or something. I haven't been able to walk down to the drugstore to buy a Coke by myself. No one was going with me, therefore, it was deemed far too dangerous."
For a couple minutes it was silent in the room except for the creaking of the swivel chair and both of us breathing. Then he spoke again. "I love my mom. I would throw myself on a blade if it meant she'd be happy, but I can't stand her when she acts like this," He said, stressed out.
"Take a chill pill, if you get worked up you'll jump out a window," I stated, slight humor evident in my tone. Dakota had a ghost of a smile on his face. "You'll hit the bricks and you'll break all your bones and your eyes'll fall out of your head riding a wave of blood like the Kool-Aid man rides fruit punch."
"Peter!" He exclaimed, and doubled over himself with laughter before falling off the chair and onto his green carpet. I shrugged and smiled to myself. It wasn't hard to make Dakota laugh. A simple knock-knock joke would make him smile. Add a little gore and he'd be rolling on the floor.
"Yeah, I need to ask you something," I continued. He yawned from below me, not bothering to get up.
"Go for it."
"You want me as a brother?"
"I'd love you as a brother." Dakota was grinning. I knew because I had looked down and seen him.
"No homo, man," I chuckled, getting off the bed.
"Freak," he said cheerfully and pulled on my foot. I fell on the floor, making a loud thump.
"Are you boys okay up there?" Called Mrs. Lewis from below us, most likely in the kitchen.
"We're all good up here, mom!" Dakota answered back. We both were sitting together on the floor, until I moved closer and we sat back to back, something we hadn't done since fifth grade. It was like we were kids again. Dakota was radiating happiness. He had a special talent for acting really drunk when he was happy. It was contagious.
It was about five minutes later when Dakota said something I thought was really dumb at the time, considering the situation. "When are you going to get a girlfriend?" He asked intently.
"Never!" I exclaimed. It was like it had been drilled into me. He scrunched his face up.
"Why not?"
I searched my brain for a reason I reacted so strongly. "Well, because it's not a good idea given my current situation." I tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about.
"There's never a bad time," he assured. "Or are you scaarreed?"
"Pfft! Of course not. I don't have any money to buy her stuff. I don't have a nice outfit to wear on dates with her. I don't want a girl if they're all like my mother, I don't want a girl to ever meet my mother, I'd have to protect her from Ray Charleston, I work best alone, and I can't take her home because I don't have a good place to go back to."
"Well, allow me to give you some options. I give you money, I give you an outfit, I can assure you not all women are like your mother, we can get her out of the house, Ray isn't a threat to anyone, you don't have to be El Solo Lobo, and you can take her back to my place. I'll promise I'll get my parents out and take them to a nice dinner," he answered perfectly.
I was perfectly cringing. "I'm not taking a girl to your house, 'Kota, that's the stupidest, not to mention weirdest, thing I've ever heard."
"Die alone in a cesspool of your own device, see if I care," he said, folding his arms. "I'm trying to make sure my best bud doesn't die alone. Is there a nobler cause?"
"I don't have a car," I said as a last resort.
"I have a car," he said.
"You have a truck, girls don't like trucks."
"Maybe the stuck up ones, but the kind you like love trucks," he winked.
I stared back with an unamused expression. "You're acting gayer than usual. Is there something wrong with you?" I asked flatly.
"I'm good," he assured. The rest of the night we talked about some random crap not related to trucks or girls. I told him about the party and he said he'd try to make it.
At around ten o'clock we both went downstairs. His parents were asleep and this time he genuinely asked if I wanted to spend the night. I declined, my mom would've probably tried calling the house. Or worse, getting off her ass and driving down there to get me at the ungodly hour we were facing.
In response, he took out several Pyrex bowls and put food in them to take back so I could survive the weekend without eating any of my mother's cooking.
~*~
"Catch you later!" I said, waving goodbye. Dakota was in his porch and waved back. He asked me if I needed a ride back. I wanted some silence so I walked back alone. It was a dark night, practically no stars. I guess that's why street lamps lined the road. I could've been mugged and killed. My dead body could've been dragged into the sewers and nobody would know about it until like, 2017 when a robot construction crew found me. By then I'd be just bones and some rotted teeth.
Ahem.
I think I have an idea of why I dreamt about the massacre.
Yeah, I did have an active imagination for a teenage boy, thanks for asking. Thanks for reading this too, a boring account of something that happened when your parents were kids. You're the real troopers of society. The bitchin' kids that got it going on.
...
I'll stop now.
Anyway, the night was cold and dark, and I had on a light jacket so I thought taking things at a steady run was best.
About two hours later I was back at my house, if you could call it that. Sweaty, tired, smelling like a pig pen. I had gotten in a tangle with a lapdog after I crossed over a backyard. I tiredly walked inside the front door that was left unlocked. I don't condone leaving your house unlocked, it wasn't even a good idea for ours to be. Let's just say there was a good reason why all the houses in the neighborhood were so cheap. It definitely wasn't just the cost of building materials.
"Where were you?" My mom screeched from her room. "It's midnight!" I can guarantee that she'd come home later than that way more times than I ever had.
"Go shit a brick, mother!" I shouted, kicking my shoes off.
If you couldn't tell I had little respect for the woman. I would've called her white trash but she'dve kicked me out of the house and I'd have had to join the circus.
I then walked down the dark hallway with the faded red fleur-de-lis wallpaper and opened the door to my bedroom. It smelled like old used socks and was still a postage stamp, but it was mine. I set the food containers in the top drawer of my dresser. My coat fell on the floor and I threw my balled up shirt in a corner of the room before I turned off the light.
Bạn đang đọc truyện trên: Truyen247.Pro