Looking back on it now, maybe she was there all along. In fact, I’m sure of it. It could just be that I never looked at the right time. If I'd been patient enough to wait until the weather started breaking the rules humans had laid out for it, then peeked through the curtain, past the box gardens, rusted tricycles, and waterlogged basketball goals with torn nets, I’d have seen her. Instead, I was busy being a delinquent the day that Antlerboy stopped being a name on the firelit lips of Scout leaders and camp counselors, and started being a shadow someone spotted in the woods.
It must have been snowing so hard they didn’t notice that Antlerboy was a girl. In terms of how much I cared to hear about another sighting of our local cryptid, it was just another Friday in February. Being a door down from Miss Able, who has, or maybe had, a penchant for gossiping to anyone who happened to be on the other side of her hedgerows, I had no choice but to hear about it before my key was even in the lock. In fairness, I was struggling to make it fit with the puffy mittens on my hands. “Be grateful,” came Mom’s voice to chastise me inside my head, “some little boys don’t get to have mittens.” “And plenty more get gloves,” I muttered to myself after I missed the keyhole for the third time, “Stay out of the backyard today, Lindsay,” came that familiar voice, like a rusty bike chain. I could recall a time where she’d invent some pretense for standing in the front yard, maybe holding a watering can with a suspiciously small amount left inside, or wielding hedge trimmers caked with well-fed rust. She’d long ago abandoned that habit, unless she wanted people to think she didn’t want her furniture to smell like the Marlboro Lights she’d chain smoke in her vinyl lawn chair. With the weather being what it was, she was bundled up in a ratty pink coat, her fish-belly skin looking especially devoid of color in contrast to the faded material. “What’s the trouble today, Miss Able?” “Trouble every day,” she insisted, ashing her cigarette into a gray pile of snow. “You weren’t here for the tornado in ‘66. Almost blew half of the town away. Nothin’s been right since then.” “Yes ma’am, and the picture of it was on the front cover of all the official weather magazines for a long time after.” “Goddamn right it was. But no, no tornadoes this time. Something else might be on the way, though. Was peeking out the back window to see if the snow had stopped, and I saw that bastard’s shadow in the woods. Antlerboy always has to bring something awful with him.” “So you see Antlerboy every day, Miss Able?” “Don’t you get fresh with me, Lindsay Coleman. Whatever mischief you’re getting into today, get into it somewhere other than the backyard. Any time the weather goes screwy, he comes around. He loves tornadoes, hailstorms, and god knows what else. That ice storm a couple years ago was a field day for him.” “What happens if I do?” “Do what?” she snapped, angrily stubbing out her cigarette and reaching for another one. I wasn’t sure what had me doing the routine with her, trying to push her buttons. Maybe I was still mad at my mom for giving me a girl’s name just because she liked Fleetwood Mac. Maybe school was proving to be more than I could handle and I liked having the opportunity to screw around with someone. They always said Junior year is the toughest one. Whatever it was, I couldn't resist the call to act like a dick. “If I go be a hoodlum in the backyard, I mean.” “A lot of boys had the same question, and all of them ended up going missing.” “I haven’t heard that Enid has a problem with kidnappings. Ma’am.” “It ain’t a kidnapping if you go along without being forced, now is it?” For once, Miss Able had out-screwed me. I had to admit that her being so cryptic had me at a loss for words, and she seemed to be relishing that, taking a pronounced drag off of her death stick. “I see you’re not a complete idiot, then. That Antlerboy, maybe he’s a hypnotist, or else he’s got quite a silver tongue. Either way, you start screwing around near the woods when the weather gets strange, you’re following the Pied Piper somewhere that ain’t here.” “I understand, Miss Able. Thanks for the warning.” “Your mama’d have my head if I let you go running off with Antlerboy, don’t you go thinking I give a shit what happens to you.” “C’mon, Miss Able, don’t be that way. You’d be so upset you could only smoke two packs.” “I’ll shove a whole carton up your ass if you don’t get it in your house, Lindsay.” “I was just on my way in.” I assured her, slipping a mitten off so I could fit my key in the lock properly. Despite the deceptive sunlight bouncing off the glittering white lawn, the metal of the key stuck to my warm fingers in a painful way. With a grunt, I forced the door off the jamb and clambered my way inside, shutting it fast to keep the cold from sneaking in. “Natural gas is just getting more expensive. Eventually we’ll be burning the wheat in those silos on Main Street instead of eating it, if we want to keep warm,” came Mom’s voice again. The TV in the living room was turned to PBS, like it always was. Mom insisted that if we were going to watch television, we may as well learn something while we’re at it. She hid the remote somewhere we could never find, and wrenched off the buttons for the channels with a screwdriver. She’d caught Colin watching cartoons after coming home an hour early one day over Spring break, and that was the last time either of us ever defied her, at least in that regard. I was tuning out the idyllic voice narrating over the documentary before I could even discover what the subject was. Feeling devilish, I slid past the gap between the couch and the loveseat making up our living area decor to the sliding glass door, drawing back the thick beige curtain. I wanted to see this Antlerboy for myself. I could tell that somewhere the sun was shining, but from the low-hanging ceiling of the single-level apartment block, all I could see were thick gray clouds, dumping hordes of white flakes into the undeveloped world below. My eyes squinted, pushing past the line of discarded toys and lawn ornaments lining the rowhouse to the patchy line of low-hanging evergreen branches. It was hard to tell what could be antlers and what could be simple naked limbs on the trees that weren’t hardy enough to last through the cold. Nothing moved through the thicket; there were no shiny black eyes that were a telltale sign of deer, or humanoid arms covered in oak-brown fur pushing aside pine needles. Nevertheless, I stared for a few more minutes, as if daring the apparition that had captured the attention of the neighborhood to reveal itself. When boredom started to set in, I concluded that if Antlerboy was in the line of trees, he had moved down past my line of sight. Pulling the curtain back into place, I made the private decision that Miss Able had been riled up by the sight of a swaying branch in the breeze and started spreading the rumor out of boredom and nothing else. I could relate to that, though. If I didn’t have to make sure I was around when Colin got home, I’d have abandoned my homework and left to find something more interesting, myself. The little conscience in me that spoke in the same voice as my mother perked up, reminding me that I should be setting a good example for him. With a sigh, I pulled my agenda out of my backpack, settling down into one of the chairs around the dining table a few inches from the other side of the door. I noted the assignments penciled in under next Monday that I’d been scribbling down throughout the week. I noticed that tomorrow wasn’t Saturday, March 1st, instead marked as February 29th, 2004. Leap Day, suggested the cramped text below the numbers. Pardon me if I don’t jump for joy, came a more cynical thought. I tried to stuff it down to focus on what I had in front of me. A thousand word essay on what made the Battle of Saratoga the turning point in the American Revolution, a completed Punnett Square with detailed explanations on each part of the diagram, and a report on the differences between the allegorical and literal interpretations of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”. Jesus, I don’t know if I can pick which one, they all sound so exciting. I didn’t like feeling that way about everything. It wasn’t like I’d just woken up one morning and decided that there are few things in life worth doing. Whenever I tried to find a way to explain my shitty attitude to a counselor, or a therapist, or Mom herself, I could only consider the idea of the straw that broke the camel’s back. One day in eighth grade I read about the Trail of Tears, and when I looked it up to see if it had really been that bad, the internet assured me that the textbooks were sugar coating it. Another day I read about what happened in Tulsa, a little over a hundred miles away from me. That wasn’t even out of a textbook. A year later, our history book showed me how the Great Depression made living skeletons of children, when not ten pages ago, I’d read about Rockefeller being the richest man who’d ever lived. Where was that wealth when lives were on the line, I found myself wondering. The wondering hardly stopped after that. When Dad left, the camel’s legs gave out from under it, and the wondering got louder. I didn’t think I had a bad attitude, when I got to looking at the way people treated other people. Near as I could tell, I was doing better than a lot of people that came before me, even if I were being a belligerent little shit. No one was dying because of what I was doing. If they were all so disappointed, maybe they could channel that into some anger, and they could actually make some kind of change. The door flew open, a burst of cold coiling its way through the thin opening. My younger brother willed himself through the gap, shutting the door hard and fast behind him. He slipped his wet ski cap off of his head, shaking snow off of his sandy-blonde hair. “Ronnie again?” I wagered. “Who else? Fucking asshole thinks it’s such a laugh to follow me around. Of course him and his two dumbass lackeys had to pelt me with snowballs as soon as I got off of the bus.” “He’s a piece of shit, alright. I’m sorry that nothing seems to make him want to stop, Colin.” “You’re a junior, he’s only a sophomore; couldn’t you just rough him up a little bit, tell him that one freshman is off limits?” “If I get into another fight, it’s gonna be alternative school for me. I’m even less useful to you if I’m in there.” “I know, man, I’m just getting tired of this.” Colin sighed, his voice hitching in that way that lets you know that tears are coming if you’re not careful. “He said if he sees me tomorrow he’s gonna put rocks in them first. I didn’t do anything to him, he’s just picking on me because Anthony can’t keep a fucking secret. He threw me under the bus! He wants everyone to think I was the one that came onto him.” “Even if you were, that’s still not anything to pick on anyone over. Like Ronnie has anything to worry about from you when he’s got the appeal of a truck-stop urinal cake.” Colin chuckled bitterly. “Make sure to tell him that the next time you see him, maybe he’ll start throwing snowballs at you. Then again…” I picked up where Colin had left off, subconsciously flexing the muscles that JV football had given me when they told me it might help work off the aggression. Dad hadn’t given me a lot I could take into my adult life, but Mom insisted I’d inherited my tree-trunk body from him. As for why I didn’t follow through into varsity, we never played a game against my dad, so I found that it did little for my aggression. “I’d like to see that punk motherfucker try, I’ll put him in the ground, closed casket. I might do it anyway, if he keeps giving you shit.” “Mom’ll put you in right after him if you do that.” “She doesn’t have the balls, the most she could do is put me in a coma.” Colin laughed again, sounding less cynical this time. “Yeah, probably. Thanks, man. I just wish Ronnie would leave me alone.” I put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, finding that even though I had a lot in life to be mad about, I could always find a wellspring of hope for him. “Do you need me to step in, dude? If he’s not backing off, I’ll make him. I won’t let him make you feel bad for this. It’s not any of his goddamn business who you kiss.” “I appreciate it, and I might end up asking you to step in if it gets worse, but I want to try sticking up for myself first. One way or another, there’s gonna be a time where I have to face something without my big brother stepping in to solve it for me.” “That’s your call, man. But don’t think of it as me solving your problem, this shouldn’t have been one for you in the first place. All I’m doing, really, is putting an asshole in his place.” “Well, I’ll give you a call if I need you to, alright?” “You’d better.” * * * Mom got home later on, around five-thirty, which wasn’t unusual for her. I was still at the table doing homework with Colin when she blew through the door. “Getting a headstart on homework? Good for you guys. Lindsay, I’m proud of you. You’re a far cry from a couple weeks ago when I couldn’t even figure out where you were when I got home.” I probably deserved that. It still stung, though. I didn’t want people around me to worry, but they weren’t trying to understand what I was feeling. Even if they were right and it was just a phase they’d all been through, why didn’t they get that there wasn’t anything they could say to snap me out of my teenage angst? “I know I worried you. I wasn’t trying to, I’m just having a hard time. I know you have enough to worry about without me making it worse. Plus, I’m trying to be a good example for Colin. So hopefully it’s out of my system.” Colin, sensing that this was probably going to evolve into an awkward discussion, managed to smuggle his homework back to our shared bedroom while Mom was setting her umbrella in the holder and tossing her purse onto the couch. “Hopefully it is. And I appreciate that you don’t want to add on to my worries. I’m not just worried about you going somewhere I can’t check in to make sure you’re safe though, I’m worried about your attitude in general. You walk around staring at your feet because you think the world owes you something, that the world owes us something, and I don’t like imagining you spending the rest of your life feeling cheated out of something you were never guaranteed in the first place.” “Mom, I was guaranteed that here, in this country, people get the opportunity to make something of themselves. All I hear about all day at school is how we have to go to college or we’ll be stuck flipping burgers, but who the hell’s gonna pay for me to go, huh?” “You might have gotten a football scholarship if you’d stuck with it.” “Yeah ma, I’ll just sign away my right to do anything but get my skull rattled around by some jerk with roid rage. You’ll be visiting me in the home when I’m 35, my brains’ll be about the same consistency as the tube they’ll be feeding me through.” “Well, maybe if you applied yourself in school, you could get an academic scholarship!” “How many of those do you think they have laying around, Ma? I’m not staking my future on a “maybe”! I shouldn’t have to.“ “That’s the attitude that will make you end up flipping burgers, Lindsay.” “Why does flipping burgers have to be the bad-paying job we should be checking under the bed for? What, burger flippers don’t need to pay rent? Last time I checked, heart surgeons and business executives have to eat, too.” “You’ve just got an answer for everything, don’t you Lindsay? No matter what I suggest, you’ve always got something to counter with. Any reason you can find to be miserable.” “How do you think I feel, mom? I gotta deal with this every hour of every day! I don’t want to be a pessimistic jerk, but how else am I supposed to see the world? You did everything right; you were a great mom, you found a good career, you married your baby daddy, and then he screwed you over. Now you’re in some Midwest town answering phones for some cigar-chomping creep that wouldn’t know your name if your nametag weren’t pinned to your chest, and you’re arguing with your ungrateful son.” I could see in Mom’s face that her whole world was turning red with every syllable that fell out of my stupid mouth, but maintaining the facade like I had been was driving me up a wall. I knew she wasn’t trying to be patronizing, but I was exhausted, and now she was paying for it. She inhaled deep and long, trying to calm herself down. “Lindsay, I’m trying to be patient with you. I know that life isn’t shaping up the way you thought it would. There are always options for you. You could go into trade school, or take a welding class next year, or take a bet on a “maybe” and put some real effort in your school work like you used to. The way I see it, you have a choice about whether you should let the weight of the world pull your lips into a frown, or keep putting in the effort to smile through it. The world needs people like us to be the good in it, but you’re not making things better by being antagonistic and mopey. You’re making everyone around you think the world breaks all of us.” “What if we are all broken, and we just don’t know it because we’re faking a smile?” “It doesn’t mean the smile doesn’t help. If every smile were fake, we wouldn’t know what a real one looked like.” I knew that she was right. Talking to her, it was easy to remind myself that life was worth making a real go of. It was hard, because Mom wasn’t there when I was laying in bed with nothing but the hum of the AC to try to drown out the angry ranting in my head. “You’re right, Mom. I need to find something to focus on, some kind of goal. Right now, it’s making sure you guys don’t worry. So you won’t need to wonder where I am any more, I hope.” “That’s good, Lindsay. I just want you to be safe.” “I know, Mom.” I tried to smile at her, so she could think that I was okay now. I wondered if she’d think that one was fake, too. She spoke up again, trying to change the subject. “It’s our turn to check in on Doc tomorrow, and you know Colin has band practice now that the weather is warming up. Or, was, anyway. Can I trust you to do it?” “Yeah, yeah, of course. It’s always good to see Doc. I’ll probably take the opportunity to do some homework while I’m over there, maybe he could even help me out.” Mom seemed like she felt satisfied with the resolution of our little scuffle, so I tried to let it roll off of me. I sat on the couch and finished a Ken Burns documentary with her, trying to further mend the rift I’d helped to open between us. We didn’t say another word to each other, trying to simply appreciate the company. Colin and I both knew that she would fish the remote out of whatever subspace pocket she was keeping it in and change the channel to her crime dramas the moment I slunk back to our bedroom. That was how she unwound, and I wasn’t mad that she didn’t follow her own rules. When I got a job I could buy my own damn TV, as she’d said herself. “Alright Ma, I’m gonna head to bed. I love you.” I mumbled, trying to sound tired so she wouldn’t think I was leaving out of residual awkwardness. I leaned in for a hug, and recognized the increased pressure of an embrace that was trying to say more than a simple declaration of affection. I could feel her digging her concern over me into the gap between my shoulder blades with gently-clenched fists. “I love you too, Lin. Please just hold on through this. You aren’t going to feel this way forever, and I don’t want you to regret doing something that seemed like the right thing to do at the time.” “Relax, Mom, I’ve got you and Colin to keep me from doing something too dumb. I don’t want to cause problems for you, I just feel like I’ve got too much on my mind to consider whether something is a good idea or not.” “Then run it by one of us first, I’m sure that we can help you decide if you should or not.” “I’ll keep that in mind.” She let me slip out of her grip, settling back into her oasis in the corner of the couch. I knew she’d be counting my footsteps down the hall, so I ducked into our room and shut the door softly behind me. Colin was at the desk nestled just past the doorway, shoved perpendicular to the bunk beds we’d nearly outgrown, especially in my own personal assessment. I hopped into the bottom bunk, kicking my shoes off with two dull thuds. I laid my head on my pillow, shutting my eyes for just a moment. There was only the sound of Colin’s pencil scratching across the crisp white paper of a school handout. I tried to hone on it so it could lull me into relaxing, pretending the steady scraping of pencil lead was the sound of raindrops against a metal roof. I was relaxed, but not tired. The seemingly inexhaustible wellspring of adolescent restlessness was all ablaze in my shoulder blades, my ankles, the tops of my ears and the joints of my toes. Seemingly any part of my body without many nerves, just cartilage or a buildup of bones. I thought that maybe those were the places where the soul seeps in to fill in the cracks, like molten aluminum filling an ant tunnel. I fucking hate being a teenager. “Sorry about that thing earlier with Mom.” I said to the bottom of Colin’s mattress, without opening my eyes. “It seems like you got it straightened out, so no worries.” “I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but I’m serious. I know you have enough shit to worry about without me being an asshole.” “I don’t think you’re an asshole, Lin, I think you won’t cut yourself a break for feeling like shit, and it makes you do things an asshole might do because they like hurting people’s feelings.” “When’d you get so smart?” I wondered, my eyes drifting open to count the bars suspending the mattress above me. “Probably because I’m the goody-two-shoes that does my homework before the day it’s due.” “One of us should be, I guess. Speaking of being a goody-two-shoes, Mom wants me to stay with Doc tomorrow. She knows you have marching band stuff now that the brass players’ lips won’t stick to their mouthpieces.” “Good thing about being a flautist, I guess; our lips don’t touch the metal. Although technically a flute is a woodwind.” “Such complexities. I guess that’s how it is with most of the shit with orchestras, though.” “I won’t argue with you, it’s a lot of fuss. It’s a lot of fun, too, though.” I’d finished counting the bars. Thirteen altogether, just the same as there’d ever been. I wondered if that was bad luck for me, or bad luck for Colin. Maybe it was for both of us, starting from the same point. “Where do you think Dad is right now?” I asked him, knowing that I couldn’t be the only one that missed him, and hated that I did. “If there’s any justice out there, he’s in a studio apartment drinking himself stupid all alone. He isn’t going to change for anyone if he wouldn’t change for us.” “Sometimes I wonder if he had some kind of idea of what a little shit I was gonna turn out to be.” “Jesus, Lin, what the fuck is your problem?” Colin had abandoned all of the leeway he’d been granting me for getting into a scrape with Mom. “Dad left because he was a prick that wouldn’t treat Mom right. Stop blaming yourself for everything but the Black Plague. There wasn’t anything you could have done to make him stay, and that’s his fault, not yours.” I shut my eyes again. I briefly entertained the notion that I was a prisoner, and the hollow metal tubes that formed the skeleton of our bunk bed were the bars of my cell. Typical teenage drama. “Here I am, the older brother, and I’m getting a lecture from my younger brother. Not that I’m mad, it’s just a little ironic.” “I learned this because I talked with the counselor about it, like she told us we could after Dad left. She also told me that I should remind you that there’s a difference between charity and assistance. And you should accept that you can’t solve every problem you have on your own.” “I’m not trying to solve this problem on my own,” I relented, rolling on my side to face him so I could at least pantomime that I wanted to make eye contact. “I want to understand what put this problem here in the first place. It’s not that I think I shouldn’t have problems, I want to understand the forces. A lot of people would tell me it’s God, and some others would tell me it’s all because of Dad, or Mom, me, you, or whatever. Blame a person and that’s the end of it.” “Lin, you’re driving yourself crazy over this. You want to know what I think? It’s chaos out there, nothing happens because of fate or anything, it’s just whatever comes your way. You have to learn how to get hit and keep going.” “What if it knocks me down, Colin?” “You’re not dead, are you? You have to get up, and if you can’t on your own, you reach out for someone’s hand. They can’t pull you up unless you hold on.” I blinked once, and then again, feeling something in my eyes like tears. It was just me and Colin, and yet somehow I still didn’t want to cry. It just felt wrong somehow, like I didn’t have a right to be upset about this when he’d been Colin’s dad too, and Colin had, at the very least, built up a better facade of acceptance than I had. “You’re right. Thanks, man. I’ll let you do your homework now. I’m just gonna lay here until I pass out.” “Talk to the counselor on Monday if you want to stop feeling this way, Lin. Or shit, talk to Doc tomorrow. I’m sure he knows a thing or two about this.” Maybe I would. At that moment, I was tired of putting up my front. The trouble was, a good night’s rest might give me the mental energy I needed to buy into my own bullshit. I laid facing the wall, and dreamt the kind of dreams you do while you’re still conscious enough to see your eyelids. I imagined I was eleven again, watching my dad step off the front porch for the last time. I grabbed the toy cowboy rope I’d long outgrown and lassoed him with it before he could climb into the hazy blackness in the cab of his Chevy, yanking him back onto our lawn like an ornery steer. In the next moment, I was the size I was now, so he had to look up at me when I stood over him. I screamed in his face that nobody, even if she was better than Mom somehow, could possibly be worth the three of us. That there were other insurance firms he could work at instead of running away like a dog with its tail between its legs, his secretary following after. And because I made the rules in my dreams, he hung his head in shame, and cried, and I just laughed. When I tried to open my eyes again, I found that they were too worn-out to obey me. The shining pearl of wisdom, that I needed to talk to someone about this, seemed to slip into the folds of an encroaching lethargy bubbling out of me like oil. My thoughts quieted until there were only sounds: spinning tires on asphalt, dogs barking, leaves rustling in the wind. Chaos. * * * I woke from a dreamless sleep to find the apartment empty. Colin had already gone to band practice, and I knew he’d be done a little after noon. Mom left a note saying she had some errands to run, also reminding me to lock up before I went down to Doc’s. Remembering the argument we’d had the night before, I felt my stomach sour up, confirming I wouldn’t be eating breakfast before I left. The sunless sky suggested that it wasn’t going to be any warmer today, so I grabbed my coat from the slim closet across from the doorway into the kitchen nook. Looking at it always made me feel guilty if I were mad at Mom; it was a nice coat, olive green with sherpa lining. I knew I was growing up when I found I was actually happy to receive it as a Christmas present, appreciating that I’d gotten something so fashionable in my size. Even fake fur was an investment on her part, struggling like she was to raise two boys on a single salary. My key was still in the pockets, along with my mittens. I walked out the door, locking it behind me before making my way two doors down to Doc’s apartment. Doc was a man that wore his age like a tree, his face and hands ringed with creases. I could still tell when he was smiling through the folds of his brown skin, like he was when he opened the door to find me standing on his stoop. “Ah, Lindsay, already time for the chosen Coleman to have their turn of being bored out of their skull with my company?” He laughed, with that unmistakable bristle the worn vocal cords of someone who’d live a full life had. I stepped into his entryway after he took a few careful steps back to give me room. I shut the door behind me, scanning the room for all of my favorite things of his. Drawings he’d collected from younger patients peppered his refrigerator door, held up by magnets purchased from tourist traps, gas stations, and science museums. A family heirloom hung from frayed twine on a nail above the hallway entrance: a circular piece of dark stone made to look like the sun, with a spider carved into the center. Photos of his family decorated the walls and the mismatched furniture, much of which he’d acquired from the people smiling back at me from the wooden frames. I sat in a mushy chair that had lost much of its color while he took his favorite spot on the couch. “Hardly, Doc. I’m not a kid any more, I’ve grown to appreciate all your stories now that I sit still long enough to listen.” I responded, trying to be warm to him in kind. I was a thorn in the side of a lot of authority figures in my life, but Doc wasn’t one. He’d never shown me anything but kindness and understanding. Perhaps like a grandfather I couldn’t recall, if I could be so bold. I’m pretty sure he’d appreciate the comparison. “This is the part where I usually tell boys they’re starting to look like their old man, but yours didn’t stick around long enough for me to know if that’d be the truth. Need me to tell you I’m proud of you on his behalf?” “Only if you mean it, Doc.” “I am, then. I’m proud that all you’ve gotten into is some youthful mischief. I’m sure a lot of other people want to tell you about how much you’re letting everyone down, but all that’s a load of bullshit. They were just as wild, and I should know, because I watched most of them grow up the same as you. They want to pretend like they never wanted to be James Dean, or Robert De Niro, or… hell, who was that guy in Fight Club? Lotta guys your age wanna be like him, I bet.” For a man like a tree, Doc was equally adept with an axe, which he used to tear down any facade I might try to construct in his presence. “Haven’t watched that one, yet, although I did read it. I gotta wonder how well it’d work as a movie.” “What was the bad guy’s name?” “Tyler… something.” “Was he an asshole in the book?” “Yeah, he was.” “They got that part right, at least. But you’re not really wanting to talk about that, I don’t think. My point is, you loitering around in some parking lot, breaking bottles when everyone’s outta range, or rolling cigarettes with your friends in welding class… it’s gonna work its way out of your system if anger isn’t all that’s in your heart. So let’s talk about what else is in there.” I was spending a lot of time admiring the brown carpet under my shoes, noting how the stains from wading through slush yesterday made them match. A lot of people, like Miss Able, made it easy for me to feel like they had just given up hope on me, throwing up their hands in lamentation of where it had all gone wrong. Maybe there was a little part of me that thought it’d be easier that way. Doc saw right through that, and I let him. There’s no reason to not be forthcoming with someone that can give you the readout on your soul before you’ve even connected to the printer. “What can I say, Doc, you can read me like a book. I don’t think the vagrant with a heart of gold is a new concept, though. I don’t think I’m a bad person, I just can’t escape the fact that I have this… anger that I feel, and I don’t want to take it out on anyone I love, so I end up doing stuff that I know upsets them. I try to tell myself that at least it’s indirect, that they choose to get mad, but I know I’m not making it easy on them. I guess I hoped that they’d see it as the phase I want it to be, like you do.” “I think they’re worried because a lot of them know that phases only end when you really want them to be over. It’d be nice if I could tell you that you’re going to just wake up one day and that little pin in your heart will be out. That’d be easy, and it might even be how it went for some people, but you? I think you have way too much going on in that head of yours.” “How am I ever going to get past this, then?” “You want my take? You’re going to get a job, and you’re going to get good at it, and you’re going to have more time to think than you’ve ever had in your life. Sure, you’ve done some thinking before, but never for long. When you’re at home, you’re thinking about homework you’ve put off, or friends you want to see, or how you’re gonna spend your weekend, or when you’re gonna get some sleep. Sure, some nights sleep doesn’t come, and you get a good six or seven hours of thinking in, but that’s every once in a while. Most of your time gets spent sleeping, or reading, or watching, or playing, or dreaming. Occupying your mind with something. When you’re at work, though? You’re fucking bored, Lin. Sure, when you were younger you got dragged to parties you didn’t want to go to with a bunch of boring adults that would ask you stupid questions, and you had to be quiet and sit still so your parents didn’t have to think for a while, too. But that’s not boredom, that’s restlessness. True, mind-numbing, soul-crushing boredom comes when you’re standing behind the counter at some restaurant, and you’ve swept all there is to sweep and wiped all there is to wipe, and no one wants to pay you to make them a burger. At first you’re gonna think about the stuff you think about at home, just to pass the time. You’ll think about how bad you want to go home, how nice it’ll be to have a few paychecks under your belt, all the cool shit you’re gonna buy with the money. But you gotta stand there if you want that money, and when you’re standing there you gotta keep yourself from going crazy. So eventually you’ll think about why you’re so angry, and why you have to feel that way, and you’ll realize that you’re exhausted. You’re tired of being so angry all of the time over someone you’ll never see again. And when you’re tired, you ain’t angry. You’re just sad.” He’d talked for so long that I wasn’t ready for his speech to suddenly be over. With a couple more moments of absolute silence, I realized that Doc was baring his soul to me, and I would do well to hold on to every word he could muster up for a pitiful kid like me. So I needed to keep this going. “What do I do when I start feeling sad instead?” Doc’s eyes flicked over to the pictures on his wall. “If you have any sense, you’ll start looking for someone that makes you forget what you were so goddamn sad about.” I had more time to digest everything he’d said after that. I studied the tracks in the carpet, snaking my way across the floor and up the walls, taking in the aura of what was important to someone so wise. “How do you know so much, Doc?” “I’d imagine I know as much as anyone that’s lived as long as I do. It’s not like I’ve traveled the world, although I guess I have met a lot of people when I was working. I’m just blessed with the ability to relate some of that knowledge to the next generation. Plus, it wouldn’t matter how good I was at talking if you didn’t care to listen. Give yourself a little credit.” “I’m working on that.” “Speakin’ of working, think you could give me a hand with some chores?” “Yeah, of course.” It was the whole reason I’d come over, after all. Sagely wisdom was just a nice bonus to helping an old man. I dusted the tops of bookshelves and ceiling fans, cleaned the windows and the floor molding, washed the dishes in the sink, and took out the garbage. The first few times I’d come over Doc had insisted on helping out as best he could, but my own insistence would eventually override his. I made it clear that he’d earned his reprieve from working, and that I would want someone to lend a hand when I got to be his age. As I worked, we chatted intermittently. He told me stories about leaving the Cherokee reservation to study medicine in Oklahoma City, and how he’d eventually chosen Enid to settle in. “Why Enid?” I wondered while I was swabbing the electric stovetop with a discolored rag. “Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. It just felt like the right place. Housing didn’t cost too much, the city was the right size for me, the people were friendly. Seemed as good a place as any.” “Well, for what it’s worth, Doc, I’m glad you ended up here.” “That’s a kind thing to say, Lindsay. I’m glad I ended up here, too. But enough about me for now. Why don’t you tell me some of that interesting teenage gossip. I know you hear things rubbing shoulders with the folks that you do.” “It feels like all I’ve been hearing about recently is Antlerboy.” I replied, a tinge of cynicism in my words. “You want my opinion, people are seeing tree branches and shadows and letting their minds run away with them.” “You’re probably right, but can you blame people for wanting something special to be happening here? I’ve always loved a good folk tale, myself.” I ran tepid water over the soiled dishrag, wringing it out into the worn steel sink before leaving it hanging over the curved tap to dry. “Did you ever hear any stories that sounded like Antlerboy on the reservation?” “Well, there’s Deer Lady, but I think the name’s a dead giveaway that she’s not a boy at all. To be fair, she didn’t have antlers, since she wasn’t a reindeer. As the tales went, she’s a fertility goddess to women and a kind forest spirit to children, along with men that have proven their respect. However, she’s also a spirit of vengeance to men that cause undue harm. I never heard anything about the weather playing a part in seeing her, nor that she shows up before a bad storm. I can see how Enid might tack that on, though, with its history. I’d imagine some wires got crossed when someone was repeating a story about Deer Lady. Drink might have been involved.” “Makes sense to me, thanks for clearing that up, Doc.” So there it was; the boring explanation for the interesting story. Some people might have felt that their fun had been spoiled by that, but I was glad that I could now safely throw the thought away as nothing more than a tale cooked up by gossipy, bored housewives. I had enough things to worry about without adding harbingers of despair to the list. As if to voice its displeasure with my being so dismissive, I heard a peal of thunder from somewhere far away. “Thunder, when it was snowing yesterday?” Doc said, more to himself than me. He swept the curtain away from his sliding glass door, peeking past the glass at the dark gray clouds. The first flakes of snow were already beginning to fall. “Thundersnow.” Doc confirmed, this time more to me than himself. “There’s something you don’t see very often. And on Leap Day, no less.” “What’s strange about Leap Day?” I asked him, noticing the time on the stove as I put the last of the cleaning supplies in the cabinet below the sink. Colin would be getting out of practice about now, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t run into the same trouble he had the day before. “I’ve always found it fascinating. We had three-hundred and sixty-five days for a long time, and then Caesar decided to add an extra day once every four years. Assuming he’s really the one who thought of it. Either way, that seems like a day where things that don’t have to respect human laws might be especially restless.” “If you believe in that kind of thing, anyway.” I responded. I had a feeling that he was trying to pull my leg. “Keep an open mind. Imagination can be a wonderful thing.” “I understand, Doc. Is there anything else I can help you with? I want to make sure that Colin makes it back from band practice alright. He’s been getting grief from some assholes at school.” “Then I’d hate to keep you. Feel free to come by anytime you might need to hear the ramblings of an old man.” “I appreciate the offer, Doc. I’ll see you around.” I told him, shrugging my way back into my coat. I stepped onto his front porch, pulling the door shut behind me. I had a full view of the angry sky now, and the army of snowflakes coming down, already adding to white piles on the grass and dusting the sidewalks. I pulled up my hood and fished my mittens out, thankful for the barrier against the cold. An errant breeze made the skin on my legs shiver through my jeans, the tremble passing into my torso. I sniffled, stepping across the patch of grass that constituted the communal front yard to the sidewalk. I felt the crunch of rock salt against my sneakers as they led me down the road towards the intersection. The rowhouse was to my left, the woods following the road past the rowhouse. A line of derelict shops was across the road on my right. The liquor store, the cell phone shop, a rundown gym. Past those was the convenience store, gas pumps standing at attention for anyone foolish enough to not hold off on getting gas until the weather calmed down. I turned my eyes forward, eyeing the street sign up ahead that signaled where I’d turn, following that road down until I hit the school or ran into Colin, whichever came first. Or at least, that’s what I’d been counting on, before I saw Colin, his blond hair disheveled and blood leaking out of a cut on his face, running as fast as he could towards the narrow space between the back of the rowhouses and the woods, barely held at bay by a narrow incline. Chasing after him were two boys around his age, one lanky and acne-ridden, the other stockier and shorter but with noticeable muscles underneath his track jacket. Ronnie and one of his fucking stooges, Warren. Mark must have been busy. “God damn it, Ronnie.” I muttered to myself, recalling Coach screaming in my ear during drills as I tore across the snowy field, trying to intercept the two lowlifes before they could reach Colin, who had already made it to the perimeter of the apartment yard. I saw him roaring down the incline and out of my sight, begging for neither one of us to slip against the fresh snow. Thunder roared in my ears as I closed the distance, seeing the fear in Ronnie’s eyes as he realized I was after him now. He shoved Warren, was in football himself, in my direction, being more the brains than the brawn. Not that he’d have much of those brains left over when I was done with both of them. “What’s the matter, you fucking string bean? Gotta let your lackey take the first punch? That ain’t gonna save you, you dumb motherfucker!” I screamed past Warren, hoping to psyche him out before we’d even squared off. Truth be told, even having two heads on him in size, I knew that Warren made a hobby of punching trees in his backyard until they were smeared with his blood. I could see the weave of scars along his bony knuckles, wondering if I was making the right call as I removed my mittens and jammed them into my pockets. The cold wasn’t going to do me any favors. I needed to end it quickly, or else Ronnie was gonna make it to Colin. “Y’aint gonna make it that far, fag lover.” Warren insisted, hocking a thick, discolored loogie into the dusted snow a few inches from my feet. “I’d like to see you stop me, asshole.” I said, oddly calm. I needed to let that anger well up inside of me, or else I’d take way too long. I thought about them calling my brother a horrible slur, and how Warren used his own dad walking out as an excuse to bully people that were weaker than him, crying to the counselor that he couldn’t control his temper whenever he got called out. It’s time to teach him a lesson, I thought to myself, feeling my fist clench. I held it loose, knowing a tight clench just results in aching fingers, or worse. “I just gotta slow you down, is all.” Warren sneered, putting his fists up. “Even if you do slow me down, everyone at school on Monday is gonna know you got your ass kicked by a… what was it again? Fag lover? You’ll still be in the hospital, and I’ll be able to tell them you didn’t get a single hit in.” That did the trick, all right. Warren threw a fist out hard, aiming straight for my sternum. I took a long step back, letting him stumble forward. Jerking my leg back, I swung my leg up in a long arc, aiming straight between his legs. A solid sound of fabric colliding with fabric and the wheeze of air escaping his diaphragm let me know that I’d hit my target, but he didn’t go down. I could see him getting red in the face, struggling not to tear up at the pain. “Didn’t they give you a cup in JV?” he smirked. Fast as I could, I wadded up a fistful of powder snow from off the grass and sent the cloud into his face. Before he could put his hands down, I cocked my fist back and decked him across the jaw, watching his body crumple into a heap. If he wasn’t unconscious, he wasn’t getting up fast enough to stop me from making sure Ronnie wouldn’t get up for a long time. I charged back into the backyard, following the fresh tracks. I could see Ronnie catching up to Colin, who was standing on the concrete pad behind our tenement, as if it were home base in a game of tag. He’d probably already tried the door, and knew that he couldn’t make it the way he’d come, a tall wooden fence at the end of the row blocking him from getting around the other side. Ronnie hadn’t slowed down to a gloating saunter, knowing that I was seconds behind him. He wasn’t a runner, and I was going to catch up real soon. “Keep running, Colin!” I yelled ahead, knowing that Ronnie might surprise me with a burst of speed and put his hands on my brother before I could make it to him. Thunder sounded again when Colin whipped around and started running. My heart was pounding as Ronnie’s puffy black coat got closer and closer to me, until he was close enough for me to leap and get him right in the hip, bringing him down into the cold grass. He let out an angry noise when my weight landed on top of him. I realized something that made a chill having nothing to do with the weather run down my back. Something hard and sturdy was in his jacket pocket. The kind of thing that could really escalate a simple teenage scuffle. I tried to restrain his arm before he could get a hold of it, but adrenaline let him finish the motion, the familiar click of a switchblade letting me know that the situation had indeed escalated. I half-hoped that someone from one of the neighboring apartments would hear all the yelling and come out fast enough to defuse this altercation with an assurance that the police were on the way, but not even nosy Miss Able was here to save the Coleman brothers now. I felt the blade in my gut, pressing against the fabric of my shirt. “Get the fuck off me or I’m gonna stick you, and your faggot brother, too.” I complied, moving away from him fast enough to keep the blade from staying against my stomach. He clambered to his feet, waving the knife in my general direction. He tried to speak with assurance, but I could hear a cadence of genuine fear and relief in his speech. “Yeah, yeah that’s what I thought, you dumb motherfucker. You aren’t gonna get the drop on me like you did with that dumbshit Warren. I gotta let everyone know we don’t appreciate fags being at our school, so you’re gonna let me work, or you both get it. You might anyway; can’t have a fucking queer lover get off that easy, either. You sit right there and let me do what I need to do or he’ll get it ten times worse, you hear me?” I had a choice to make here, in the span of less than a few seconds. On the one hand, people had survived being stabbed tens of times, and I could get the knife out of his hands before he’d done it more than once. On the other hand, I had it on good authority that being stabbed hurts really badly, and that arteries generally don’t appreciate being severed. More pressing than my own wellbeing, however, was the wellbeing of my brother. He hadn’t done anything to deserve this, and I wasn’t going to let him be threatened by Ronnie or any other hateful shithead like him. I scrambled to my feet, rushing down Ronnie, praying that he wouldn’t be able to turn around fast enough for the knife to find itself in my guts. If he did stab me, I have to admit that I barely felt it. It might have been the adrenaline, or maybe being stabbed just doesn’t ever hurt as much as it should at first. I remember that Colin was screaming, so maybe Ronnie did stick me, like he promised he would. The only other thing I can remember happening before things went dark was a flash of something brown and spiky moving between the evergreen boughs, like the antlers of a very impressive buck.
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