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"Tales of the Monocacee" |
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"Floyd and Me" Floyd was my friend and compatriot. Where my mother was the wicked witch of the north, his father was the devil personified. Floyd's favorite joke was about that rat bastard's plan to take his little sister's virginity when she turned six, (he'd done it with Floyd's older sisters, and took one of them to bed as often as his wife,) but he bragged on it and Floyd always laughed when he got to the part about their city caseworker already screwin' her for the last year. They'd all laugh. His sister's eyes'd light up with excitement and they'd fantasize about their father killing the caseworker and going to jail forever. Floyd and I would go up to the stores on Michigan avenue and steal stuf. We got caught stealing seeds we wanted to plant for a garden and had to stop stealing. Floyd got a beating and was in bed for a day or two, but my folks didn't use physical punishment, so they just hated me more. I couldn't tell the difference. Floyd and I turned six together. We'd become instant, inseparable friends the moment we met, realizing we were both alone but for each other, and each having a younger sister we cared about but could help only through commiseration. No matter how early I came down and left the big Victorian house we shared with a friend of my mother's and her no legged husband who walked around on his knuckles in big leather pads, Floyd was already in the yard, ready for whatever we wanted to do. Six is such an excellent age. We could go through the mud flats South of the house to Bladensburg Road, or up 24th Street to Michigan Avenue, or just around the neighborhood. The park was only four blocks away, so we could spend a day in the woods anytime we wanted to. We both loved buildings and would spend hours exploring vacant houses and empty businesses. We didn't talk much, neither one of us having anything to look forward to, but once we put a city block between ourselves and our families, we could be happy and enjoy the wonders of life. Floyd and I entered first grade together. I liked school. When I started in, I felt that I'd been freed. I had a miserable home life and I was suddenly with people who seemed to like me and bunches of kids doing interesting things. I thought it was excellent. Then one day they gave us all brown envelopes to take to our parents. Mine became ferocious. The next morning Floyd could barely walk for the pain. We moaned all the way up the block. Halfway up the hill, looking off to the right at the park with the creek and the sharp hill down from our sidewalk, I stopped and turned to Floyd. "Fuck it." I said, and headed down the hill. Floyd wasn't a blink behind me. The girls, (his two older sisters, my one,) stood there dumfounded. When they could close their mouths they humphed off, noses in the air. I didn't give a shit about mine, because I'd let her know almost a year before that if she ever uttered one word again to our parents that got me into trouble I would kill her, and she knew I meant it. And I didn't give a shit about Floyd's sisters because they both hated their father and besides, my folks considered them white trash and wouldn't lower themselves to associate with them. So Floyd and I hit the park. It was mid-October in Washington D.C., and the weather was beautiful. We played in the park all day, and met the sisters again on their way back home. We never talked of course, boys don't talk much anyway, but we hung out there for the rest of that fall, off the sidewalk at the park while the girls marched to school, then up and mingling with the crowd heading home. It was even better than school had been. Six hours a day, five days a week, everybody leaving us alone, and it was just one long grin. Until that fateful day I saw that selfsame grin on my sister's face as we merged with the teeming masses. In her hand, held aloft like the prize at a county fair, was a slightly oversize brown envelope. I turned to Floyd. "Well," I said, "it was nice while it lasted." One morning Floyd and his sisters didn't show up to walk to school. They weren't there when we got there, and they didn't show up all day. We walked past their house on the way home, and it was empty. I never saw Floyd again. THE END :::::::::::: © John C. Hagerhorst |
