Fiction

Saturday

Daniel Davis

The two boys sat on the rim of the drainage culvert. That was at least what Jared insisted on calling it—a "drainage culvert." To Ronny it was a piece of pipe poking out the side of Custer’s Hill.

“You scared?”

Ronny looked up. He saw that Jared had caught him staring down at the ground eight feet below, and smiled. “No. Just, you know, wondering what this thing is here for.”

“They’re doing construction a couple miles away. Think they’re building a new housing complex. This is probably for the run-off from that.”

“Run-off?”

“Yeah. Industrial waste. Wood scraps. Rainwater,” Jared said, winking.

“Shit.”

“Not literally.”

“They gotta put that Port-A-Potty waste somewhere, buddy.”

“Shit.”

“Exactly.”

They laughed, but neither moved away. Instead they sat there, legs dangling. An oak tree provided them shade from the afternoon sun, though Ronny still felt like taking his shirt off. He didn’t though. He didn’t want Jared to see the weight he’d been gaining ever since Melissa had decided to go out with Eric Patterson instead. The weight wasn’t much, but Ronny sensed that it wouldn’t stop—that he had begun a downhill decline that would haunt him the rest of his life. Silly notions—he was only seventeen, after all, and still in halfway decent shape—but they kept him awake enough hours of the night that he figured, if nothing else, the stress would add a few more pounds.

Jared was in much better shape, and sat topless, his shirt tossed casually behind him. Ronny couldn’t help but sneak a glimpse or two. He was genuinely in awe. Jared didn’t lift weights, but he played basketball for the high school, and ran in his spare time, and it showed. Plus he had good genes. Ronny was smitten with Jared’s mother, who at forty looked half her age. He was impressed by Jared’s father too, who carried himself with the grace and dignity of a man who had actually gotten out of Harrisburg, not one who moved back two years after college.

The woods began a few feet from where the culvert exited the hillside. From where the boys sat, they were about level with the lowest branches of the trees. Ronny thought it was pretty cool, like he’d felt when he was tall enough to walk the monkey bars on the elementary school playground and not just cling helplessly to them like a baby chimpanzee abandoned by its mother. If he turned his head around—which he did frequently, afraid someone was sneaking up behind them—he could see the oak tree and the sky. The culvert exited Custer’s Hill almost near the bottom of it, creating a feeling of vertigo that Ronny found thrilling. If he looked up at just the right angle, it almost felt like he was looking down—that is, if he concentrated on the grass and not on the sky.

Ronny scratched his chest, wincing as his fingers sunk a little further into the fat gathering there than he wanted them to. He wore an AC/DC t-shirt, one his mother found offensive and his step-dad found amusing. Ronny wasn’t sure why he wore it—because his mother hated it, or his stepfather loved it. He didn’t wear it because he liked it, and perhaps that was a reason for concern.

A crow cawed from within the forest, and Ronny shivered at the sound. Naturally, it happened at just the moment Jared glanced over at him, eliciting a teasing “What’s the problem?”

“Nothing.”

“Scared of a little crow?”

“They aren’t little. And no, I ain’t scared. Just…” He shrugged.

Jared nodded, though he clearly didn’t understand at all. Neither did Ronny.

“Wonder what crows think,” Jared said.

“Huh?”

“I wonder what crows think. You know, like we think about girls and sports and stuff. What do crows think about?”

Jared was handsome, popular, athletic, and charismatic, but he was only a C student, and even then because most of his teachers—hell, most everyone who’d ever met him—liked him. That was part of Jared’s charm, and the primary reason he and Ronny were friends in the first place—despite the fact that he could easily have been a snob, Jared remained down-to-earth, friendly and empathetic. He wasn’t bright, but he was generous, and in a friendship, the former didn’t mean half as much as the latter.

“I guess they think about food,” Ronny said. “You know, worms and road kill. Probably sex. I guess they think about death, at least to the extent that they fly away from anything threatening.”

“Bird sex.”

“Bird sex.”

“Makes you wanna vomit, huh?”

Ronny laughed and lay back on the grass. There were a few clouds in the sky, and he tried to pick out discernable shapes among them, but he couldn’t. There was one that looked like a rabbit, but the feet were all wrong. There was one that could have been a dove (or even a crow), but only the upper portion seemed right.

It was as he was trying to make this latter form take shape (trying to force the image of a bird upon the white wisps of clouds) that Ronny felt the earth beneath him tremble ever so slightly.

He sat up, turning around.

“What the hell?”

Jared had felt it too. He shook his head, shrugging. “The construction, maybe?”

“Could it be they’re flushing some shit through the culvert?”

“If that were the case, we’d feel it again.”

They waited. Nothing.

“Just the construction,” Jared said. He nodded to himself. “Don’t know why they’re doing it on a Saturday though. Guess those guys want to get it done before school starts, maybe?”

“Sure.” Why that would matter, Ronny couldn’t fathom; but it made an odd sort of sense, in the way that much of what Jared said—illogical or not—made sense. It was simple enough to settle doubts and encourage no more curiosity.

“Gonna have to hurry, huh?” Jared scratched his head, his hands running through blond hair just long enough to need a good trim. “Three weeks, man. Three weeks.”

“Yeah.” Ronny contemplated laying back down—the grass had felt good against the back of his neck—but for some reason felt like doing so would open himself up to…something. It was stupid to be afraid of a little construction rumble, but it was also stupid to shiver at the cawing of a crow he couldn’t even see.

“You taking Bollinger again?”

“Oh fuck no.” Ronny laughed. Ms. Bollinger had almost flunked him last semester for failing to memorize all the important bones and muscles in a dissected cat. To top matters off, Ronny’s cat had ended up being pregnant (something that Ms. Bollinger had assured all the students, after the fact, was absolutely impossible, and someone had messed up big time somewhere along the way), and he had been shaken by the image of the three lifeless kittens he and his lab partner had pulled out of the cat’s belly.

“You should, man. She’s easy on the eyes.”

“And hard on the GPA. It ain’t worth it, even if she does wear that black top again.”

“The one that shows the rolling hills of Babylon?”

“More like the fucking Himalayas. Those things are huge.”

“Aren’t they?” Ronny half-expected Jared to boast that he’d copped a feel; it was entirely possible that he had. Ms. Bollinger, along with all the teachers, liked him. Enough to let him sneak a feel? Maybe.

Instead, Jared changed the subject. “You hear from Melissa lately?”

Ronny missed a breath. He should have exhaled, but instead inhaled, and wound up coughing, leaning forward enough so that Jared had to reach out and steady him before he fell off the side of the hill.

“Sorry man. Jesus!”

“No.” Ronny coughed again, felt it settling, the adrenaline rushing away. “No, it’s okay. Just…you know, caught me off-guard.”

“Hey, maybe we should talk about something else. It’s only been a couple months, after all—“

“No, man, it’s cool, it’s cool. Just…yeah. No, I haven’t heard from her. She sent me a text a few weeks ago, to see what I was doing. I didn’t respond.”

“Bitch.”

“Yeah. I guess she is.”

“You still like her?”

“Nah.” Neither one of them believed it, but they let it slide.

“She still with that Patterson bastard?”

“Last I heard.”

Jared pulled a clump of grass from the ground, held it up to his eyes to examine it, then tossed it off the side of the hill. They both leaned forward to watch it fall, hitting the concrete spillway below them. The spillway ran into the forest, cutting a direct path through the trees, towards the water treatment facility a couple miles away. Ronny wondered how practical it was, pumping construction runoff through the woods, and figured the drainage system was meant for rainwater instead. Still, the idea that it was used to send human waste from one place to another, right under the noses of the whole community, had a certain appeal to it.

“That guy’s a dick,” Jared said, leaning back. “Total dick. Coach cut him from the team, you know.”

“Yeah, I heard.”

“He never showed up for practice. He’s still got golf, I guess. Fuckin’ pussy.”

Jared himself played golf—often with Ronny—on the weekends, but Ronny decided not to mention that.

“Seen him in the showers, too. Not, you know, intentionally or anything. It just happens. I really gotta wonder what she sees in him.”

“His brains, maybe?”

They both laughed.

“I hear his dad’s a drunk,” Jared said. “Heard he beats him, every now and then.”

“Really? I’ve met him. He’s no saint, but I wouldn’t peg him for a drunk. Or a child-beater, either.”

“Maybe not. Rumors, you know.” Jared lay back on the ground, hands clasped behind his head. “Hell, I might’ve started that one myself. You never know.”

Ronny laughed, leaning forward and looking down onto the concrete spillway again.

“He’s really got a small dick?”

“He’s hung like a gerbil: short, fat, and hairy as fuck.”

Ronny closed his eyes. The oak tree provided ample shade, but it couldn’t block out the heat or the humidity, and he let the warmth soak into him. He was sweating, and he hated the way it made his shirt cling to his chest, hated the sense of asphyxiation it brought with it, that feeling of constriction, that he wouldn’t be able to expand his chest enough. He tugged at his shirt, pulled it away from his body, but it fell back, too heavy to fight the appeal of gravity. He sighed, resigning himself to a cold shower once he got home. The thought of the water sluicing over his body helped to cool him, enough so that he finally gave into the urge to lie back down. As soon as he did so, he was glad—this was safe, this was comfortable.

“You know where you’re wanting to go to college?”

Ronny turned his head to the right, but Jared wasn’t looking at him, was in fact looking up into the sky, perhaps trying to make shapes from the clouds, but probably thinking about very different things entirely. Sometimes, Jared could go deep. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, it made Ronny uncomfortable.

“I don’t know,” Ronny answered. “I’m thinking of sticking around here, getting some money first.”

“You really think, if you put it off, you’ll actually go?”

Ronny hesitated, not because he wasn’t sure of his answer—he was—but because he knew he probably wouldn’t be believed. Usually, if you stuck around Harrisburg for more than a year after high school, you never left. That was the route his parents had taken, and he figured there was something to nepotism after all, though he hated to admit how much the thought frightened him.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’ll go.”

“My folks want me to go to Ohio State. Ohio! What the fuck is there for me in Ohio?”

“It’s a good school. At least that’s what the counselor told us at that assembly. Would you be able to afford it?”

“I can get a scholarship, no sweat. I’m good at basketball.”

It wasn’t boasting. He was good. He was proud of the fact, yes, but then so was Ronny. So was the whole school. The whole town, even, especially when the team went state—which it had every year since Jared joined.

“I might be able to get something, too.” Ronny didn’t add that it would be for academics, not sports. “But I’ll still need something else, I’m sure. That’s why I’ll stay on at the bookstore. Maybe get another job. You know, gather some cash, live at home, then move out in a year. Probably stay in-state. It’s cheaper.”

“Ohio,” Jared said again, stretching the word. “Stay the fuck away, man.”

“Trust me, I’ve got no plans to visit anytime soon.”

They stared up at the sky, and this time Ronny was able to distinguish the form of a large cat—maybe a tiger or a leopard—out of the clouds that drifted slowly overhead. He had more to work with than before; the clouds were becoming more numerous as the afternoon dragged on. Such was summer in the Midwest: a beautiful, peaceful day could turn stormy and violent at a moment’s whim. Ronny didn’t think it would storm too bad. Probably wouldn’t even rain, actually. But in an hour, an hour and a half, it would be overcast, and a few degrees cooler. That last bit, at least, was good news.

There came another rumbling from the drainage culvert, and Ronny and Jared both sat up. Without speaking to each other they turned back, looking pointlessly at the top of Custer’s Hill.

“Sounded closer,” Jared said.

Ronny nodded. “Maybe they are sending some shit through.”

“Think we should move?”

Jared’s question came with an understood answer, which Ronny voiced just for the hell of it: “Nah. We’re good.”

Jared lay back down. “God, I can’t wait until that housing complex is finished.”

Ronny remained upright. “You think it’ll actually be worth all the effort?”

“You mean, will it be a shit hole like everything else around here?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, it probably will be. An expensive shit hole, but a shit hole is a shit hole, no matter how high the rent. That’s what my dad says, anyways.”

Ronny couldn’t picture Jared’s father ever using the word shit. “Really?”

“Yep. Guess he grew up in a trailer or something.”

“Really?”

“Wouldn’t know it to look at him, would you? Yeah, I guess Grandma raised him by herself. Just the two of them. In a trailer. Under the power lines, too, from what he tells me.”

“Damn.”

“Yep.” Jared paused. “Wonder what they’ll name that place?”

“Parkview Place.”

“Green Acres.”

“Arrowhead Plateau.”

“They sure as hell won’t be calling it Shit Hole Central.”

They laughed, and the crow cawed in the distance, and Ronny kept laughing even though he felt like stopping.

“Shit from a shit hole,” Jared said. Ronny nodded but said nothing. Not literal shit, but shit of a different sort, yes—runoff, debris, what-have-you. Certainly not stuff he wanted his feet to get caught up in, should it come spewing out. But, of course, if anything were coming it would’ve gotten there by now. Still, he leaned forward and stared down expectantly, half afraid that a wave of dirty, debris-filled water would at that moment erupt from the culvert, cutting off his legs, perhaps splashing up and ripping his face off. He would disappear into it, his body—what remained of it—being carried through the forest to the water treatment facility. There, his remains would get stuck on a filter, and some poor son of a bitch would be forced to come out and clean him up. Not a pretty way to die, but certainly an exciting one, something that would get his parents on the evening news.

Those weren’t normal thoughts to have, Ronny was sure. Not at seventeen, on a beautiful Saturday afternoon with one of your best friends. Perhaps it was the crow, though Ronny wasn’t naïve enough to blame everything on a bird. There was something wrong with him, and he figured it had a hell of a lot to do with Melissa.

That was two months ago, though. Two months. Perhaps he should ask someone else out, but for the life of him, he couldn’t think of anyone. Sam Harrison might say yes, simply because she said yes to pretty much everyone. Ronny was sure he could at least get a hand job in the backseat of his Grand Prix. That would take his mind off Melissa for a few minutes, at any rate.

As if reading his mind—but more likely interpreting the slump of his back—Jared said, “It’s funny about women, isn’t it?”

“Huh?”

“It’s funny about women. How they can, like, fuck with us so much. Like, you wouldn’t know it to look at them. They look all…innocent, I guess. And then bam, out of nowhere they fuck you up.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s like…like, nothing is for certain, you know?” Jared paused, perhaps trying to compile his words, perhaps giving Ronny room to comment. Ronny grunted but said nothing.

Jared continued: “Like at any moment, the shit could hit the fan. Women seem to be at the heart of it. You like ‘em, you love ‘em, and then they just up and cheat on you, or decide they want to be single, or feel that you should just be friends or something. I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.”

“It’s not just women,” Ronny whispered.

“What?”

“It’s not just women. I mean…that’s life, right? Nothing is for certain. Shit happens.”

“Shit happens. Yeah, I guess it does, doesn’t it?”

“Anything can happen at any time. It’s…” Ronny let his voice trail off. Scary, he wanted to say, but couldn’t.

“This is getting a little too deep for my tastes, man,” Jared said, sitting up beside Ronny. “If we’re gonna go any further, I might need a beer or two.”

Ronny chuckled, though he no longer felt like laughing, or even smiling. “Me too.”

“Wanna go get some?”

“It’s…what? Two o’clock? Three?”

“I meant tonight, dumb-ass. I’m sure we can convince Billy to have a party at his place.”

“Aren’t his parents in town?”

“They were there for the last party, too. Just stayed upstairs. They don’t care.”

“Yeah.” Ronny looked down at the concrete spillway again. He wondered what would happen if he just fell off, dropped down like a stone. The fall wasn’t enough to kill him unless he landed just right; most likely he’d break his arms and legs, maybe his neck. There was the possibility of landing on a rock and cracking his skull open, or of his face being smashed into an unrecognizable chunk of flesh. He wasn’t sure which was worse—falling and dying, or falling and living.

He shook his head and stood, turning his back on the culvert.

“Yeah, I could use a beer.”

Daniel W. Davis was born and raised in Central Illinois. His work has most recently appeared in Juice Box: A Journal of the Ordinary, Foundling Review, SUSS: Another Literary Journal, Eastown Fiction, and the Foliate Oak. You can follow him at www.danieldavis.blogspot.com.