After dinner that night, I sat on the porch again with Briar. We had lights now, and I could have stayed inside and read. Instead, we sat outside in the dark; no lights equaled fewer bugs. I remembered the feeling of closeness I’d had with him the night before. I’d liked that more than the book I was reading. Maybe better than any book I’d ever read. It was something that had been absent in my life.
“Tomorrow will be different,” Briar said after a period of silence.
“Why?” I asked.
“For one thing, Pat’s coming out for dinner. She’ll spend the night.”
I didn’t respond to that right away. I had to say this just right. He had to know I was teasing and wasn’t being disrespectful and that I meant part of what I said, but not all of it. How could I do that? It was better to say nothing rather than screw it up.
However, I’d screwed up a lot with him already, and he’d never got on my case about it. It was one of the reasons I was so, so . . . so what? Happy to be with him, I guess, but that didn’t cover it. Safe. Yeah, that was it. I felt so safe, so secure and so free when I was with him. Protected, but more than that. Maybe the word I was looking for was love, like an unconditional love that wouldn’t be withdrawn even when I screwed up, or what I thought that might feel like. Whatever it was, it gave me the confidence to take a chance on this.
“Doesn’t seem fair, somehow,” I said, making my voice very light.
He hesitated, and then I heard a tinge of suspicion in his voice. “What doesn’t?”
“Well, you’re old now. She is, too. And all I really know is what I’ve read. But the books all say I’m about at my sexual peak right now. Close to it. Nearly there. And you two, well, you’re way past it. And I was just thinking. Now, I don’t know much about old people and how their bodies work and all. But with us young people, when it gets to be spring and early summer, and the air warms up a little, and the nights are soft and velvety, well, I’m sure you don’t remember, it was so long ago for you, but something in our young bodies seems to come alive, and this feeling, this incredible, intense feeling comes into us, telling us that we ought to rip our clothes off, ought to run around naked, ought to find a mate and make beautiful and incredibly ferocious love. It just sort of takes over, and it’s almost more than we can do to control it. But we do; we remain calm and collected. We maintain our equilibrium even while inside we’re raging. And then, then . . . ”
I stopped and looked around at the trees and the grass and the lightning bugs and was silent.
“And then?” Definitely suspicion now; more than an edge.
“And then someone says something about having sex the next night, and the young boys are left to themselves to simply cogitate on the mysteries of the universe or maybe read a book or go for a lonely walk, and the raging rages on, outrageously unabated. Nope, it just doesn’t seem fair.”
Nothing at all from the other chair. Then, eventually, a low chuckle. And then, even later, without the laughter, “You’ll find someone, Dustin. You’re thirteen. Time’s on your side.” And then, later, after more silence, another chuckle. And a remark that didn’t need a response and so didn’t get one. “You and that vocabulary!”
I sat and was comfortable. He left the porch and came back with a beer and a can of Coke. After the electricity was restored, we’d put some stuff in the old refrigerator that had remained with the house and seemed to run all right. The Coke was cold.
I drank about half the can. Funny, he had me drinking water all day while we worked, even if I said I wasn’t thirsty. He never gave me Coke. Now he had, and it really tasted good. But I’d got to like the water, too. I never had before.
After belching, loud and long, I asked, “The other things?”
“Other things?”
“You said Pat was coming and that was one thing.”
“Oh, right. Well, I thought we’d take a break on the house. We’ve made a lot of progress, and we have the whole summer, so we don’t need to kill ourselves right off. So I thought: let’s change the routine, try something new.”
“And what’s that?” I could hear the same suspicious tone in my voice I’d heard in his.
“Well, since it’s new, you’re sure not to like it.”
“That’s what I figured, that I wouldn’t like it, whatever it is. Not with you sneaking up on it like this.” Hey, I was learning I could get away with sarcasm with him. I never could with my father. This was fun!
He laughed. “You didn’t like learning how to use a hammer, either. Now, you’re competent with it, and you used that competence to help build something pretty special—your own bathroom. How ’dya feel about that?”
“You know how I feel. I saw you looking at me as I finished it up.”
“So maybe you’ll hate this, too, and then realize it’s not all bad.”
“Okay, you’re giving me quite a sales pitch, which means I probably should be getting worried. What is it you’re trying to soften the blow about?”
“Tomorrow, we begin to run twice: morning and evening. During the day, you start lifting weights and begin other training.”
“Other training? This must be really awful if you can’t even tell me what it is.”
“Okay, okay, this is what it is. I’m going to show you how to fight.”
» » »
I was getting used to the rise-and-shine business at the ungodly hour he picked. The fact I was going to bed earlier was the only thing that made it even slightly tolerable.
I was still stiff the next morning, but I wasn’t nearly as sore. The run was okay, too. This time, when we’d gone the same route and had stopped at the trees at the end of the field, he asked if I wanted to try to go farther.
“We’ve gone a mile, or thereabouts. You’re not breathing hard, and you’re not laboring. I’d guess your lungs don’t feel like they’re on fire anymore. You’re doing much better. And sooner than I thought you would”
I didn’t say anything. I still wasn’t sure how to respond to his occasional words of praise.
“I think we’ll start stretching it out. It’s early, and I don’t want to push it, but some people are able to progress faster than others. You probably didn’t know this, but you’ve got a good stride, you use your arms well, and your posture is good; you’re a natural runner. I’ll give you some pointers, little things, but you’re not ready for them yet.
“So . . . you okay to extend this to three miles? Just an extra half mile out and back?”
“Sure.” That was pure bravado. Maybe I did know how to respond.
When we got back, I was spent, as usual, but happy, too. Briar had said I was making progress and making it faster than many people managed when they began. I didn’t really believe that. I was used to being worse than average. Much worse. It was really all I’d ever known. But hearing him say that, I was happy.
He made breakfast, and I made it disappear. I wolfed it down, to be honest. He’d taken to making big breakfasts, and I’d taken to eating them. I wasn’t getting fat, either. If anything, if felt like I was losing weight.
We walked around inside after that, discussing what to do next. As usual, he wanted my input, but I knew nothing about the right order in which to do things. Still, I liked him including me in the planning. I realized, later, that when I said I didn’t know, he’d nod and then tell me what his reasoning was. This was his way of teaching me stuff, and I hadn’t even been aware of it.
We went outside and he told me about weight lifting and fighting. He said he thought muscle-bound men were freaks, and were mostly all for show. He thought speed was far more important than strength in a fight, although you needed both if you wanted to win the thing. “But there’s something even more important than either,” he said. “Can you guess what that is?”
I thought I’d be glib. “The ability to run away?”
He looked surprised. “That’s pretty close to the right answer, actually! It’s keeping your head about you, not letting your emotions, one of which is fear, take over. You have to be smart, assess the situation, and do what gives you the best chance for success. Success depends on what you want the outcome to be. So, first you have to decide what you want to achieve. If it’s merely survival, running might well be your best course of action if that’ll assure your safe getaway. But whatever the situation, you have to stay in control of yourself; you have to keep thinking—you have to do that first and throughout whatever the situation turns out to be.”
I nodded. I was sure if I ever got into a situation where I was supposed to fight, I’d be way too scared to think at all. Whenever I’d been confronted by bullies before, I’d been lucky not to wet my pants.
“We’re going to work on all three things: strength, quickness, and your mental approach. They’re all separate. We’ll start with strength.”
He took me over to where the weight bench was and the weights and barbell were waiting. They were all under tarps which he’d used to protect things from rain. I thought he’d hand me the barbell with some weights attached and tell me to get on with it. Oh, no. Not a bit. He talked and talked and talked about what we were trying to achieve. He explained which muscle groups would be strengthened with what exercises. He explained safety measures when lifting weights, and why it was that, for me, light weights with multiple reps were better than lifting heavy weights. He went on and on.
I did finally get to do some lifting, with him monitoring me closely—he called it spotting. He had me stay with it long after I was bored to tears, and my muscles were screaming ‘enough already’. Long enough that I knew I’d be stiff again tomorrow, too.
When we were finished, he gave me another bottle of water and had me rest. As I did, he started talking about fighting. He had an awful lot to say about that, too. As I was too tired to talk, I didn’t try interrupting. I didn’t have anything to say regarding fighting anyway.
I was listening to him discussing how one needed to move around when sparring, but then I got distracted by another noise. It was an engine, and coming from the direction of the road. It didn’t sound like a car; it was too rattly a noise, and it wasn’t coming very fast. It was getting louder, though, and I began to pay more attention to it than I was to Briar. Sparring wasn’t something I had on my to-do list ever.
When it was really loud, Briar stopped, and we both turned to look at our driveway where the noise was coming from.
I could finally see the source. It was a lawn tractor, a large one, and it was being driven by a boy wearing jeans, a tee shirt and a straw hat. I don’t think I’d ever seen a straw hat on a boy before, but there was one on this one. It shaded his face so I couldn’t see that well.
He drove up as close as he could come to where we were and stopped. He reached down and the noise died. Much better.
He got off and came over to us. He glanced at me, then turned to speak to Briar. “Hi, I’m Travis. I live in the neighborhood. I’ve been doing the lawn here since the Williams family left. They’ve been mailing me a check every month, but there was a note with the last one that explained they’d sold the place and there’d be no more checks. So I came up to see if you wanted me to continue.”
Briar sort of looked out over the lawn, then back at Travis, and asked, “How old are you?”
He looked startled. “What’s that got to do with it?”
Briar laughed. “We’re negotiating here. That was my first foray.”
“Foray? You talk funny. But my age shouldn’t have anything to do with what I get paid. You’re paying for the job, not the number of years I’ve been around. You can see the yard looks great. You want me to keep it that way?”
“Well . . . ” Briar drew it out, then glanced at me. “I’ve got a boy about your age here, he’d probably be able to do that now that he’ll be living here, and it wouldn’t cost me anything.”
“Hey!” I said. “Don’t I—” I’d gotten used to being included in decisions, and as this one involved me, I expected to have a say in this.
“Shhhhh,” Briar said, interrupting me, then shaded his mouth with the back of his hand so Travis couldn’t see, but he spoke loud enough so he could hear. “I’m negotiating here.”
Travis turned to look at me. I was sitting on the lawn, leaning back against the weight bench. My hair was plastered to my head with sweat, my naked torso was sopping with it and was dirty in the bargain. My legs were bare as I was still in my running shorts. I’m sure I looked like what I was: a no-account, dirty, weedy ragamuffin.
Travis seemed to look me up and down, pausing while his eyes rested on the place where my thin, bare legs came out of my shorts, then turned back to Briar. “Think he can handle it? Looks sort of scrawny to me.”
Briar really laughed that time. Threw his head back, actually, and guffawed. When he stopped, he said, “This is Dustin, and he looks the same age and about the same weight as you do. You’re no Mr. Muscle yourself.”
“Well, maybe, but I got a tractor and he don’t!”
“I’ll grant you that point. How much do you charge?”
“Fifteen bucks a week, and I do both lawns. No edging or garden work or weeding or raking up the cut grass or anything. Just mowing.”
“That sounds kind of lazy to me.”
“Lazy? Me? How can you say that? You don’t see me sitting on my ass on the lawn swigging water and sweating. I’m out here hustling a job! Lazy? No way, man!”
Briar laughed again. If this kid had said that to my father, he’d have been belted for his disrespect. Briar just thought it was funny. I did too. It was the way the kid said it, how assertive he was, but I didn’t care much for the scrawny remark.
“Hey,” I said, and stood up. “I’ve been working hard, not riding around on a tractor. There’s a good reason I’m sweaty and you’re not!”
“Okay, okay,” Travis said, holding his palm up towards me. “No offense.” He smiled at me and shrugged. “Your dad isn’t the only one who can foray. I’m still dealing for a job here.”
I could finally see his face better. Damn! This kid was seriously cute. He had light reddish-blond hair that was mostly red and was sneaking out from under his hat, freckles sprinkled lightly across his nose, and sky-blue eyes. Man oh man.
“What do you say, Dustin? You want this kid coming over every week and disturbing our peace and quiet, or you want to do the yard?” Briar was looking at me, and it was clear this one was up to me.
He was finally really going to let me make a decision, and this was one I had no trouble making. I didn’t even have to hesitate. There was no question what I was going to say.
“Yeah, well, I’m going to be way too busy doing important stuff, and I guess we can turn the trivial stuff like mowing over to Travis.”
This kid would need a lot of supervision to mow the lawn right. I’d figured that out already.