A Summertime Journey Read online

  “Lance, I’m going to tell you a story, a true story. When you are back at home, all of this will seem like a dream; you won’t remember any of it,” she says as she releases my hand and stands.

  Vividly she describes the history of my ancestors and how they were a war-mongering monarchy with a taste for flesh. They were responsible for the death of tens of thousands of men, women, and children out of greed and power. Each stolen soul fueled their war machine forward. It all finally came to an end when a prince from the north who commanded a loyal army launched a preemptive attack against them. They crushed my ancestors during the great last battle. My ancestral soldiers’ only motivation to fight for them was fear. Once the battle turned and the outcome was going to favor the prince, the soldiers laid their weapons down and opened the gates allowing their capture and imprisonment. My bloodline was able to survive by their duplicitous shrewdness, avoiding the rope and sword.

  It has taken hundreds of years to breed the evil out of my bloodline, and she says I am the result: a male with inherited darkness imprinted into my soul that my mind rejected and evicted. That’s why she’s with me and has been my whole life; she’s charged with guiding and protecting me for something big, and that something has already started. The story she weaved could have been any horror movie so unbelievable and wicked that only the warped imagination of Hollywood could conjure it up. There’s good and evil, and evil wants to dominate our world, enslave all of us as my ancestors did, but on a grand scale. She tells me there will be a conflict between Erebus’s acolyte and us, and it will seem like I’m alone and that all hope is lost, but she assures me, standing in this dark, strange room, that she will be with me. The last thing she says to me: “Remember, Lance, no matter what, I’m always with you, and I will let no harm come to you.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ◊

  I’M JOLTED BACK BY my cheek rubbing back and forth on my bedroom carpet. I think it was more the old pee smell from when Bear was a puppy than the friction that woke me. I must have passed out and rolled off my bed onto the floor. Fear instantly consumes me as I remember Darren and my mom in her room. I hold my breath for about ten seconds so I can hear without any interference—nothing. I pet Bear on top of his head. He is no longer barking and scratching at my door; I wonder if I dreamt the whole thing. I stand and toss my Star Wars pillow onto my small twin bed and open my bedroom door.

  I quietly creep down the hall toward my mom’s room, still listening intently for any sign of an argument. Scary scenarios run through my head until I finally reach her door. I softly knock and listen—silence. I turn the knob and push the door open just far enough for me to peek inside, my heart beating so loud that each “lub-thump” reverberates in my ears. My mom is not in her unkempt bed. I rush into the room, wide-eyed, scanning every inch, and on the far side of the room, between the bed and a closet, lies my mom. Again, my worst fear rushes into my head, and I begin to cry as I launch myself springboarding onto the floor next to her. She’s curled up in the fetal position, like I was earlier, with her arms covering her head and face. “Mom, are you okay?” I yell, my face inches from hers, fearing she is dead. I grab her bare shoulders and begin to shake her. My mom slowly looks up at me, tears rolling down her bruised cheeks, and nods. Her right eye closed from the swelling, and her upper lip is split and bleeding. She looks so frail curled up on the floor in her floral nightgown. Now I realize I wasn’t dreaming about the fight, but all of the details are fuzzy, and I can’t separate reality from my dream. Confused and scared, I lie down so my mom can wrap her arms around me and we both lie on her floor, crying until we fall asleep.

  When I wake the next morning, I’m alone on the floor. I groggily get up, rubbing my red, puffy eyes and make my way to the living room. My mom is in the kitchen pouring a cup of coffee for herself, the aroma of Folgers filling our little apartment. She turns, and her face is still bruised and bloody. She walks into the living room and sits on the opposite side of the couch and places her coffee cup on the end table. She lights a cigarette, and we both sit in silence until she finally says, “I kicked Darren out last night. He won’t be coming back, so you don’t have to be scared anymore.” She reaches over and rubs the top of my foot with her soft hands. I squirm across the couch next to her, and we cuddle—mother and son, with Bear at our feet. At that moment, I couldn’t be happier or feel safer. My adventure with Emma now is nothing more than a forgotten dream.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ◊

  AS JEREMY AND I walk down the middle of the street, joking with each other and playing “bloody knuckles,” excitedly talking about the upcoming party, we hear footsteps coming up behind us—fast. My head swivels just as Jeremy’s knuckles smack mine and I hear a loud “clonk” and instantly, like a quick fuse on a stick of dynamite, the pain burns up my arm. Bloody knuckles is not a game for the faint of heart. It’s both about reflexes and how much pain you can endure. Both participants make a fist and touch like “fist-bumping” hello. One tries to crash his knuckles down on the other hand before that person can pull away. If that person makes contact, his turn continues. If he misses, it’s the other person’s turn. The game continues until one person can’t take the pain anymore and quits.

  I turn in time to see Ryan and Joey neck and neck, blazing down the street toward us. Both of them are friends, and we hang out a lot when we skip school and hide in our “fort,” a burned-out, abandoned trailer. The trailer is two rows down from the single-wide trailer I currently live in with my mom. Ryan’s odd in his own way. He’s a sixties throwback and wears an old green Army jacket all year, no matter the weather, and loves to read history books, especially war history. His favorite musical artist is John Lennon. Most nights, he sits in his room, reading and listening to The Beatles on his record player. Joey is more of a heavy-metal rocker; in fact, he would probably fit quite well in Larry’s gang. I’m not sure why he hangs out with us. He has parachute pants in every color and wears nothing but black rock shirts or muscle shirts and has a long metal feather earring in his left ear. His prized possession is a Sony Walkman cassette player with orange foam ear pads. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without his Walkman.

  “Wuz up, douches!” yells Joey as he streaks past us, slapping Jeremy in the back, making a loud thwack as he goes by.

  “Nothing, dicks, what are you guys up to?” Jeremy belches out, stinging from the hit.

  “Just gettin’ ready for summer,” Ryan says as he pulls a Marlboro cigarette out of his back pocket and lights it with a dirty white Bic lighter. He takes a long drag, bends over, and starts coughing and hacking. I swipe the cigarette from him and take a drag.

  “Dumb shit, you just got done running.”

  He flips his shoulder-length blond hair back from his eyes, as he does about a thousand times a day, stalling for time as he prepares an epic comeback in his mind. Suddenly, his attention turns to the left side of the street, about two houses down. Walking across the manicured grass of a single-story white craftsman house toward the road is a calico cat. We didn’t know it then, but Ryan was traumatized by a cat when he was younger: he found a black-and-white short-haired with a bobbed tail and snuck it into his room. He was hugging and petting it when it latched onto his face like the creature from the movie Alien and left war wounds on the back of his head, ears, and even his nose. Ryan screamed and launched the cat into the wall next to his door. Once Ryan recovered, he opened the door and chased the cat under his living room couch. Eventually got the cat outside and it never returned. He has hated cats ever since.

  The cat stops at the edge of the grass, darts its eyes left and right to make sure the coast is clear, and bolts into the open road. Ryan, who sees the cat before any of us, is already in a dead run toward it. The cat makes it about halfway across the street before it decides there’s no escaping and hunkers down. I believe I can see the fear in its turquoise eyes as Ryan steamrolls toward it. As Ryan catches up to it, he lifts his leg and kicks the c
at like a football. It reminds me of a scene from Charlie Brown, but this time, no one pulls the football away at the last second. For me, it happens in action-scene slow motion, and I can hardly believe what I’m witnessing. The cat lets out a shriek of pain as it flies awkwardly through the air and finally lands on the hard cement and continues its trek to cross the street, madly darting its eyes everywhere, scared to death. I’m mortified, stunned, and mad. Very mad. I run toward Ryan and launch all 120 pounds of me at him and tackle him in the street. We start rolling over each other, trying to get the top position. Our arms and legs tangle together as I make every effort to connect my fist with Ryan’s mouth. He eventually ends up on top of me, straddling my chest with his legs; his fists are getting ready to rain down on me when Jeremy and Joey hook him under each arm and toss him off me. The fight seems like it lasted thirty minutes but only actually lasted seconds.

  Panting, I say, “What the fuck, Ryan, you prick, why did you do that!?”

  “What’s your problem, you fuck? It’s just a cat,” Ryan says to me as he grabs his left shoe off the ground, a black-and-white checkered Vans, and attempts to put it back on his bare foot.

  “Yeah, dick, a cat that can’t defend itself,” I yell.

  “Knock it off, both of you,” says Jeremy in an authoritative voice. “Dick, you ever hurt an animal in front of us again, and I’ll personally fuck up your world.”

  “Fuck you, Jeremy, you dick,” Ryan says. “You go hunting every year with your dad.”

  Jeremy fires back, “Yeah, douchebag, we hunt for food; we don’t do it to hurt animals.”

  “Yeah, douche,” I say, “what are you, a serial killer? Most dickheads that torture animals grow up to be serial killers. You ever think about killing any of us, douche?”

  Ryan, now feeling like everyone is ganging up on him, says, “Fuck y’all; if I wanted any of you dead, you’d be dead already.”

  That pretty much ended our conversation about Ryan’s career as a serial killer.

  We continue down the street, with Ryan, still smarting from being ganged up on, lagging behind the pack, puffing on another cigarette. As we reach the intersection, Joey and Ryan peel off and head down Edwards Street to Ryan’s house. As they’re leaving, Joey picks up a round, quarter-size rock and throws it at us. It hits Jeremy on his left shin with a one-hopper off the street. By the time it makes contact with Jeremy, they’re around the corner. “See you dicks tonight,” Joey yells as they vanish. We ignore him and keep walking toward my house.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ◊

  I OPEN THE GATE to the chain-link fence that secures my castle—a faded green and white single-wide trailer with sheets in the window to keep nosy neighbors from peering in. When Jeremy and I walk in, we immediately turn right and head straight to the little kitchen and the refrigerator. Our footsteps squeak on the faded linoleum. I sidestep to the left on the third row to avoid stepping on the ripped piece that’s peeling up in the center of the floor. I swing open the refrigerator door and peer inside: nothing changed from this morning—there’s a half-gallon of two-percent milk, an open package of bologna sandwich meat, a head of lettuce, and some condiments. It’s pretty bare, and I’m thankful for what we do have, but I’m not going to lie—I spend most days hungry. I shut the fridge and swing open the cabinet doors above the sink; it’s more of the same—bare, except for some flour, rice, a few cans of baked beans, and an empty box of generic, frosted-oats cereal.

  “Damn, I’m tired of being hungry,” I say to Jeremy, who’s already sitting on my brown couch and turning on our black-and-white TV. It would be several years before my mom, and I would get a color TV, and it would even have a remote.

  “Shut up and make me a sandwich, bitch,” yells Jeremy from the couch.

  “Make your own if you want one, but we don’t have any bread.” I plop down next to him, and we start planning the rest of our day and the party.

  I hear the barking and scratching from my room in the very back of the trailer. It’s Bear, my dog. I named him Bear because when he was a puppy, I wanted him to grow as big as a bear. I thought if I called him that he would have to grow that big. Well, he didn’t. Bear was a mutt mix of who knows what; he was ugly as sin with long, scraggly, wiry hair and ears that flop around when he runs. He was an average small dog, a long way from the size of a bear. He probably weighs ten to fifteen pounds.

  I pass the smaller bedroom, a laundry area, and the bathroom all on the right side of the hall before reaching my bedroom. I turn the gold-plated doorknob on the cheap hollow-core door and Bear launches out, barely acknowledging me, and runs down the narrow hall to the living room. He heard Jeremy’s voice and is on a mission to find out who is in our castle. Bear goes airborne at the end of the hall and leaps into Jeremy’s lap and immediately starts licking his face. Jeremy laughs and starts wrestling with Bear on the couch, and both of them eventually end up on the green-carpeted floor. Bear is small, ugly, and pretty much worthless, except for the fact that he is my rock. Bear is my true best friend, and I love that dog only second to my mom. Jeremy gets up and opens the front door so Bear can run around in our tiny little bare yard, go to the bathroom, and bark at whoever or whatever is dumb enough to pass in front of our trailer.

  “Lance, let’s go to the cabana,” Jeremy says from the couch as he tries to stretch his leg out far enough to hit the knob on the TV to turn it off. That’s what we call our makeshift fort we discovered shortly after I moved into the trailer park.

  “Okay, let’s go, but let’s go to your house and get something to eat first,” I say.

  “Fine, fucktard, let’s go.”

  I let Bear back into the trailer, and we head off down the street, the TV still flickering. I’ll hear about it tonight when I come home, and my mom lectures me on the price of electricity and explains that once that TV goes out, we’re not getting another one.

  About three trailers down, on the opposite side of the street, is Diana Reno’s house. She’s my neighbor, a high school girl who’s three or four years older than I am. She, like me, lives in a trailer with just her mom. We hang out when her school friends aren’t around. She’s taught me about music, high school, drugs, and alcohol. My crush started when I spotted her sunbathing in her little patch of grass next to her trailer. She was lying on a green and orange beach chair, the kind that reclines like a bed, wearing a two-piece, white bathing suit. Her skin glistened from the Hawaiian Tropic suntan oil and she smelled like coconuts. She was wearing black sunglasses, and her blonde hair was tied back to keep the lotion out of it. Every time I walk by her trailer, that vision runs through my head, including today. We walk eight blocks to Jeremy’s house, a three-bedroom made out of brick with a large English oak tree in the center of a severely neglected front yard.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ◊

  THE YARD ITSELF HAS more square footage than my trailer lot. I’m not sure if he is considered poor, middle class, or what. From where I come from, anyone who doesn’t live in a trailer and has an actual house is considered rich. We go through the side door that leads into the galley-style kitchen, and we start shoveling through the cupboards and the fridge. There’s way more food in his house than mine, but we can’t find anything we want to eat. Jeremy claws at the handleless drawer closest to the sink, working his fingers under it. He finally coaxes it open and grabs a packet of food stamps and starts thumbing through them, counting how much he has. His mom receives food stamps, but unlike my mom, she doesn’t use them for food. She puts them in the drawer for her kids—Jeremy and his older, high school jock of a brother, Brian. Jeremy grabs a five and stuffs it into his front pocket.

  “Let’s go to A&W Foods and get some candy,” he says.

  “Cool, let’s roll.” We head into the living room, dodging the couch and a basket of clean but unfolded clothes on the way to the front door.

  “Hey, little dicks.” It’s Brian, coming out of his bedroom with two girls. Scorpio
ns’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane” is blaring on his record player. His room lit with the distinctive hue of black light, which he uses to illuminate the fluorescent posters on his wall. Oh shit, I think as dread envelops my body. Every time Brian catches me, he picks on me.

  “Hey, Lance and I are gonna go to A&W and grab some snacks,” Jeremy says. Brian is average height with slightly more than average muscles, and a lot of girls say he looks like Tom Cruise. He is a handsome, arrogant, and often mean person.

  Brian walks up to me and says, “How much you pitching in, little man?”

  “Nothing. I don’t have any money.”

  Brian starts laughing, and Jeremy makes a break for the door. Brian’s much quicker and gets there first and blocks us in—his hand on the doorknob and right leg stretched across the bottom of the door.

  “Dork, if Lance doesn’t have cash, how’s he getting anything?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer to his own question.

  “I’m using the stamps to get us both something.”

  “Bullshit, you’re not using our stamps to buy food for this poor little fuck,” Brian says with an emphasis on “poor little fuck.”

  “Just put them back, and let’s go,” I say, knowing that this is going to get ugly.

  I don’t have siblings, but I never imagined brothers would fight as much as these two. Sometimes they get into very violent fistfights that end with broken furniture and bloody lips. Jeremy said he loves his brother and would do anything for him, even though they fight all the time. I never understood how he could do that.

  Jeremy replies, “No, Mom said we could use them for whatever we want.”