The target was now 150 feet away. I shot my eight times, then went to look. All my shots had hit the target. Two had just missed the center. I felt like cheering. Then I felt like challenging Briar. But I thought better of it. Didn’t want to hurt his ego. More and more I saw the child in him wanting to get out, leaving the hardened adult behind that. So much of what he said to adults was borderline inappropriate. Just like a teenager being rebellious. He didn’t speak to me that way, but to adults, a lot of what he said seemed like a challenge. Made me wonder. I didn’t know anything of his early life.
» » »
The inside of the house was finished except for the painting. I’d learned how to hang wallpaper. Let me just say this: if you want to remain friends with someone, it’s best not to engage in papering a wall or two with them.
I’d also learned grouting and measuring and cutting baseboards, and how to bevel them at 45-degree angles so they fit like they belonged. I learned how to find the studs so the nails hit something besides drywall. I’d learned some basic plumbing and wiring skills, things such as: if you’re sweating pipes and don’t use flux, you can spend all day at it and the joints will still leak and you’ll be so frustrated, so mad, you’ll want to throw your tools against the wall; with flux, you do it in one try, and it doesn’t leak at all. Things like that.
Now we were painting. Briar wanted to do the outside first.
“You’ll learn to use a brush without dripping this way, and while you’re learning and are dripping, the drips will go in the flower beds and get tilled into the ground when Pat decides what flowers and bushes to plant.”
What I learned mostly was what a pain it was to do what Briar called ‘prep work’. If I ever have a kid and want to punish him, I’ll rent him out to painting contractors and have them use him to scrape old and peeling paint all day.
“You bitch more than you peel,” Briar complained, but I couldn’t help it. What we’d done before had taken some artistry, some intelligence, and the end result showed it, whether it was the making the drywall seams tight and perfect or the elbow joints on the pipes I cut for under the sinks fitting with just the right amount of excess pipe on either side, or the windows sliding easily up and down. These all showed skill and accomplishment. A scraped piece of siding just showed old, tired wood, and not the hours spent making it that way.
“Not that I mind,” he finished. “You’re finally sounding like a teenager. Teenagers are always griping about something. That’s what they’re best at. Well, that and eating.”
I thought about that. The fact was, I was complaining more. But there was a reason. I’d been unhappy before, but always too timorous to complain and so I’d just swallowed it. Now, I felt free to express my discontent. That was what was different. That was new. It was like I’d earned the right to express these opinions because becoming competent at what I did made me worthy to do so. Thinking about it, realizing it, made me smile.
It was glorious, swearing out loud and knowing there’d be no censure. The fact Briar just laughed when I bitched didn’t even bother me, after I thought about all that.
» » »
Travis hadn’t ever asked me over to his house. I thought about that, and about his dad, who he said was drunk all the time. I didn’t want anything that might be a problem standing between us. I wondered what his house was like and what living with a drunk father was like. I wanted to ask, but Travis was such an open, unassuming, happy kid, and because it was so unlike him to keep anything inside, I just didn’t ask him. If he wasn’t talking about this, then he wasn’t comfortable doing so; besides, I hadn’t told him many details about my father, all the things he’d done to me and all the reasons I had for hating him. It wasn’t that I was keeping secrets from him, just that what my life had been then was something I didn’t want to keep thinking about. It was private even from Travis. If I could have something like that I kept inside of me, he could, too. What continued to bother me, though, was that while I was done with that part of my life, Travis was still living at home.
» » »
I was in town with him. I was allowed to drive the Moped outside the town limits, but not inside, so we’d ridden to the edge of town and then chained it to a bicycle stand, taken the key and left it. Then we’d gone for a walk, and he’d pointed out things to see. We’d stopped and I’d bought us some lunch at a hamburger place. I’d paid. Briar had given me some money. I’d seen that Travis tended to wear the same clothes most of the time. I’d thought about the lawns he mowed. I was beginning to worry about him.
We walked around some more after lunch and ended up at the high school. I’d be going there this fall. We both would.
“I wonder what it’ll be like,” I said, looking at the red bricks, the green lawn. I knew it would be the people inside who’d make it good or bad. And then I had the craziest thought I’d ever had. It wasn’t up to them at all. It was up to me! I’d always left how I got along up to everyone else before. But why should I do that? Why couldn’t I just be me, the guy who’d built a bathroom and tiled it and wired it and plumbed it? The guy who’d taped the drywall seams and painted the walls? Scraped the hell out of the outdoor siding and painted that, too. How many of the kids who went to this school could say that? They could do other things, things I couldn’t do, maybe, but I could do some things they couldn’t, and I could do the hell out of them.
They probably had friends, maybe even boyfriends or girlfriends, but I did, too. Maybe they had parents they liked and respected, but I had adults in my life just like that, too.
What if instead of being the shy boy who waited to be picked on, I was just myself? What if I stood up tall in the hallways instead of walking looking at the floor, hoping no one noticed me, or spoke to me? What if I said something to them, instead? What if I nodded at someone who was looking at me, and smiled, and said, ‘Hey, I’m Dustin. How’s it going?’ What if? God damn, what it?
And what if someone did say something to me that was meant to diminish me? What if I looked him in the eye and asked, ‘Why did you say that?’ What then?
We walked out to look at the athletic fields behind the school. There was a running track around a football field that had some tall bleachers on one side, and lower ones on the other. The track looked new. I wondered about running on it.
“Does the school have a track team?” I asked. “Or maybe cross-country?”
“I think so,” Travis said. “I haven’t paid that much attention to the high school before. I’ll be new here, just like you. I guess we’ll find out. You going to try out for either one?”
What a strange question to ask. Me, going out for anything athletic? What was even stranger was: it didn’t seem impossible any longer. I was really enjoying my running now. I had no idea if I was competitive, would be good enough to get on a team, but suddenly that door wasn’t closed to me. That door was wide open. What a scary, wonderful thought!
» » »
Pat was staying with us out at the house a lot now, sleeping there quite often. She liked to watch Briar work and then instruct him how to do what he was already doing. I could hear the laughter she tried to disguise in her voice. I didn’t know if Briar could or not. He probably could. He seemed to understand things in a profound way and kept to himself what he knew and what he didn’t. He was funny that way. He also seemed to act like a kid a lot. I hadn’t met an adult like that before.
He responded to Pat’s ‘advice’ by thinking of things she could be doing to help instead of kibbitzing; sometimes she’d even do as he asked. She seemed to know how to not go too far when teasing him.
Pat had overheard Travis call me Dust and had asked me about it. I told her that was his nickname for me now and why I thought it fit. I told her that I liked the way it sounded when he said it, and even though my memories hurt, I liked to be reminded of what I’d been before she and Briar had taken hold of me and shaken me up. I liked to think that dust was what I’d been before, and Dust was what my boyfriend called me now.
She thought about that, and hugged me, which she did now—I never objected—and then got a funny expression on her face. I asked what she was thinking, and she grinned and said I’d know soon enough. Damn it! I hated it when she got secretive like that!
It was later in the week. The three of us were eating dinner together. Briar had shown me how to make a pie, and the two of us had fixed one for dessert. We’d picked up some ripe peaches and very sweet raspberries at our local farmers market and mixed them together in the pie.
Pat was cutting it, and my mouth was ready for it, when she stopped and said, “Oh, Dust—” she’d taken to calling me that. So far, Briar was sticking to Dustin “—I got something for you. Can you go get it? It’s in our bedroom.”
I got up and went into the room they were sleeping in and found a tube about three feet long and maybe six inches in diameter, wrapped in gift paper, lying on their air mattress. There was a bow around the middle. I picked it up and took it back to the kitchen.
“That’s for you,” Pat said. “Open it.”
“Hey, it’s not his birthday.” Briar was frowning something fierce. “How come he gets something and I don’t?”
“Shut up,” she explained, and he acted like he was in a funk, but he was watching me open the present.
I was too curious to pay much attention to them and did just as she suggested and opened it. Inside the packing tube was a poster. I pulled it out and unrolled it.
What I was looking at was me. Pat had taken a lot of pictures of the house and of Briar and me working on it. She’d taken pictures of me lifting weights and shooting and all that stuff, too. She’d taken so many I had stopped being embarrassed about them.
She’d taken one of those pictures and had it blown up and printed on the poster. It was a photo I hadn’t seen before, but I knew what it was. It was a picture of me taken when Briar and I had come back from our run one day. It was a couple of weeks ago. I’d really been getting into the running. That day, for the first time, as we’d come down the driveway back to the house, Briar had been dragging a little. He’d been in front, as usual, but I could see he was making an effort to keep his pace up.
I, on the other hand, was feeling good. And so, just on the spur of the moment, I sped up and passed him. Then looked back and grinned.
Now you have to know Briar. The guy was competitive. He was all about winning. Being fiercely independent. Being the best at whatever he did. Winning. It was who he was.
When I grinned at him, his eyes changed, and he sped up. If I thought I was going to beat him back to the house, I had another thought coming! His face told me that.
So, I began to sprint. And I heard him right behind me. He was coming—and coming fast.
This was our afternoon run. We’d run five miles in the morning. I’d lifted, then sparred a little, and then we’d hung new light fixtures in the kitchen and cut and installed new boards on the steps up to the back door. Then we’d cleared some dead bushes from the back of the house before we’d taken off for that afternoon run.
We were both tired. But something inside me told me I wasn’t going to be beaten, running those last few yards toward the finish. I sprinted, and my side began to hurt, and my legs were feeling wobbly, and I sprinted even harder.
I won. I got back to the yard, and he was still five yards behind me and still trying to catch me. I ran into the yard and stopped and lowered my head, with my hands on my knees, and breathed and breathed. Then I threw my head up into the air, raised both arms above my head, and yelled. I didn’t yell any words, I just yelled. I felt a sense of triumph that was bigger than fit the situation. But I felt it and couldn’t, didn’t want to, hold back.
That was the picture Pat took . That was the picture on the poster, me, shirtless, arms raised, head back but with a smile of triumph not just visible but radiant on my face and shining from my eyes.
Below, on the lower right hand side of the poster, she’d had something printed.
Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
At the very top of the poster, centered and in large letters, was just one word: DUST.
~ End of Part 2 ~