Spidey
09-01-2018, 02:18 PM
Along The Black And White
Inspired by the writing style of Teju Cole's "Open City"
by Spidey
It was around daybreak when the sun peaked from verdant treetops that I left my hotel room and travelled up from the grease-clogged air of Dizzy Boys towards where the only theater in Demeter used to stand. There were patches of dirt mounds spread haphazard along the amber grass that made for one arching hill down into a groove where the sidewalk connected Dizzy Boys’ Greenbaum Street to Old Main. There, along the pavement no one else but the sporadic vagrant used, black and white painted pawprints from an old library adventure game faded in and out across the tumultuous walkway that the township brought up every other meeting, but nothing was ever done. By now it must have been a subject long since deceased, but I pondered the town’s ordinances on crude walkways. With all my time in Demeter I didn’t think about the sidewalk being of any great health concern, if anything it was more unsightly than dangerous, a poor aesthetic to a burnt-out town, but I kept my thoughts to myself, graduated, and sold vacuum cleaners door to door until I had the money to leave this place.
A truck sped by, a red Ford Ranger, at least twelve years passed its factory date. At the junction between Greenbaum and Coleman it glided the curve and roared through the otherwise quiet street. Adam, my first real friend at Demeter Public School, drove a red pickup, and together we would grab energy drinks at the Corner Store and check out a football game the whole town came to see each Friday night. There was a sense of comradery to the tradition, and even though I was never a fan of the Demeter Dragons or sports in general, it was a spectacle to see players’ parents and teachers carry conversation on more than classroom conduct and grades. Adam drove us from store to convenience store, mostly for the hell of it, and even though we’d complain that there was nothing to do where we lived, we found ways to occupy our time.
It was in our senior year that he felt comfortable enough to let me borrow his truck to take Ericka out to The Noose. I told him it wouldn’t take long ˗ a few minutes of exploring the supposedly haunted creek followed by a few minutes of teenagers awkwardly stroking each other - neither her nor I experienced in sex, but we were ready to learn. Adam and I knew the stories about ghosts and rope hanging from branches was made up by the graduating class before us, but Ericka was a foreign exchange student from Cozumel in her first year. The idea of getting cozy in a strange place thrilled her at first, and she would bring it up as we kissed behind the bleachers, but when it was time to pull the trigger on our rendezvous, The Noose no longer seemed safe. She didn’t want to stay, even when I assured her it was all made up. I took her back and a few weeks later we were no longer an item. Before long Adam and I had a falling out as well. In 2010 I caught news from my Facebook that they would be married in September. Two years before that, to the very day, I left Demeter in my mother’s Kia.
I wondered how Adam was holding up as I passed a distance marker that read “Mile 8”. More vehicles were on the road, heading to the mill or stopping by the gas station four blocks from where I walked. I could make out a bit of the service station from the yellow foliage to my left – a small place that still made room for the eighteen-wheelers that rested by its sides. I imagined there would be plenty of old coffee in the chrome cannisters Dennis Raybon set out for the customers filling their tanks from the pumps his boss owned. Being gone a few years I hadn’t realized then that Dennis had suffered a heart attack at Red’s Diner a few months ago. A few hours from now I would see his grave marker adjacent to Adam’s wife. It had been a long time since I checked social media, and as I placed one Converse in front of the other, I kept my eyes cast down on the black and white.
For about ten minutes the pawprints disappeared and I turned my back away from the morning sun, with dull and dusty grays that I can’t rightfully describe as anything other than the color of sidewalk. The roads were a storm of growling metal, cool winds brushed against my white dress shirt with the force of a tempered cloudburst – a moment of gust followed by lengthy hesitation. My ankles began to scream, reminding me how long it had been since I explored this dead world of grease and gasoline. I stopped for a moment to shake the burning sensation from my legs, pausing to survey the wavy hills I had passed and the ones I still had to venture towards. As everywhere else turned to Fall, my path fought the dead weed grass with everything it had. I smiled and noticed out about a hundred feet the pawprints starting up again.
When I was a day out of completing the Eighth Grade, Adam, Ross, Carlos, and I decided for the hell of it to attend the walk our local library put on, whether it was to poke fun at our town or just plain curiosity, I couldn’t remember. Old Main took students from the library, to the hotel where we were handed sodas and animal crackers, the long trip down I-20 where I kept getting phantom vibrations from the phone in my right pocket, and finally to the movie theater where we would be treated to Spielberg’s The Goonies, the trip was an endurance test – especially on one’s own. It was a Saturday morning, I had a dream of Ericka and Adam, and I walked along the trashed pathway to either clear my head or relive a barely-remembered childhood memory. My phone was ringing this time, I was sure, but I let it play out its mechanical medley and observed the natural wonders only a small town could provide a stranger.
The smell of Dizzy Boys was replaced by the aroma of freshly cut grass. Off into the distance, the whirring of a lawnmower blocked all other sounds from reaching me. The blades were a continued whine of aggressive, steel murmuring that gnashed against the earth with a fierce, hateful disposition. I sauntered closer to the source, a riding mower with a shirtless man at the helm. His farmer’s tan sun-beat into a hot pink, his back sporting the word “Moseley” in black Old English font, zits marking his spine and breaking the first E of what I assumed was his surname. He may have begun to bald earlier than most men; he turned a right and I noticed his face was young, practically boyish, but his hair still receded. He caught my gaze and did as southerners do and waved. I hesitated – even gone a few years made me forget that it was only polite to wave back. The man rounded a corner and concentrated on his mowing, though I am sure he remembered me back when he would call me homophobic names and wrote the words on my locker in permanent marker. Time had not been as kind to him as they had been for me, and I turned my attention to the next hill and breathed a sigh of relief. There was a huge field passed a dirt road to my left full of dirt and rubble where the Starbreak cinema had once been.
What began as a mellow stroll with the occasional buzzing of cars became a maddening flurry of traffic along the interstate. What coarse howls the lawnmower made eventually died away as the road reclaimed the morning. Another red truck zoomed passed me, with a lime Volkswagen Beetle pursuing it straight on far passed the gas stations and hotel. I glanced up at the clouds above me – a marble blanket that threatened the small town with rain, or snow, or a peaceful day; it was hard to put a bead on Arkansas weather regardless the season. I searched my pocket for my phone to check the weather and saw the unread text messages.
Adam asked if I was in town for the evening reception. I didn’t reply, opting to check the forecast instead. Cloudy with a chance of light rain by that afternoon, the smiling nimbus told me in all caps. Tomorrow was a different beast, a possible thunderstorm with at least a 60% opportunity and winds at roughly 30 miles per hour. The funeral may have to be postponed, and I would have to book another day in Demeter. To pay my respects, I should reach out to Adam, but as I tapped the glass to present letters, I couldn’t find the words I wanted to use. I pocketed my phone and traversed the golden field and its tall bobbing sod.
The pawprints of the library’s forgotten animal meandered onto the steep incline and seemed to leap onto the parking lot, becoming no more. Roots of pine and oak trees touched pea gravel and the sprawling tendrils of weeds broke apart the asphalt. Candy wrappers and illegible refuse permeated the ruins like a crowded gravesite, with the broken marquee of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music a centerpiece akin to Jesus or an angel in the middle of a prayer. I took my phone out one last time to get a picture of the old hangout spot when Adam messaged me again. It was an apology, though I wasn’t certain to what, but I expect I would find out later. I texted back that I was sorry, and that I was in Demeter. I took a photo of the cinema and turned back to the monochrome pawprints that waited for me.
Inspired by the writing style of Teju Cole's "Open City"
by Spidey
It was around daybreak when the sun peaked from verdant treetops that I left my hotel room and travelled up from the grease-clogged air of Dizzy Boys towards where the only theater in Demeter used to stand. There were patches of dirt mounds spread haphazard along the amber grass that made for one arching hill down into a groove where the sidewalk connected Dizzy Boys’ Greenbaum Street to Old Main. There, along the pavement no one else but the sporadic vagrant used, black and white painted pawprints from an old library adventure game faded in and out across the tumultuous walkway that the township brought up every other meeting, but nothing was ever done. By now it must have been a subject long since deceased, but I pondered the town’s ordinances on crude walkways. With all my time in Demeter I didn’t think about the sidewalk being of any great health concern, if anything it was more unsightly than dangerous, a poor aesthetic to a burnt-out town, but I kept my thoughts to myself, graduated, and sold vacuum cleaners door to door until I had the money to leave this place.
A truck sped by, a red Ford Ranger, at least twelve years passed its factory date. At the junction between Greenbaum and Coleman it glided the curve and roared through the otherwise quiet street. Adam, my first real friend at Demeter Public School, drove a red pickup, and together we would grab energy drinks at the Corner Store and check out a football game the whole town came to see each Friday night. There was a sense of comradery to the tradition, and even though I was never a fan of the Demeter Dragons or sports in general, it was a spectacle to see players’ parents and teachers carry conversation on more than classroom conduct and grades. Adam drove us from store to convenience store, mostly for the hell of it, and even though we’d complain that there was nothing to do where we lived, we found ways to occupy our time.
It was in our senior year that he felt comfortable enough to let me borrow his truck to take Ericka out to The Noose. I told him it wouldn’t take long ˗ a few minutes of exploring the supposedly haunted creek followed by a few minutes of teenagers awkwardly stroking each other - neither her nor I experienced in sex, but we were ready to learn. Adam and I knew the stories about ghosts and rope hanging from branches was made up by the graduating class before us, but Ericka was a foreign exchange student from Cozumel in her first year. The idea of getting cozy in a strange place thrilled her at first, and she would bring it up as we kissed behind the bleachers, but when it was time to pull the trigger on our rendezvous, The Noose no longer seemed safe. She didn’t want to stay, even when I assured her it was all made up. I took her back and a few weeks later we were no longer an item. Before long Adam and I had a falling out as well. In 2010 I caught news from my Facebook that they would be married in September. Two years before that, to the very day, I left Demeter in my mother’s Kia.
I wondered how Adam was holding up as I passed a distance marker that read “Mile 8”. More vehicles were on the road, heading to the mill or stopping by the gas station four blocks from where I walked. I could make out a bit of the service station from the yellow foliage to my left – a small place that still made room for the eighteen-wheelers that rested by its sides. I imagined there would be plenty of old coffee in the chrome cannisters Dennis Raybon set out for the customers filling their tanks from the pumps his boss owned. Being gone a few years I hadn’t realized then that Dennis had suffered a heart attack at Red’s Diner a few months ago. A few hours from now I would see his grave marker adjacent to Adam’s wife. It had been a long time since I checked social media, and as I placed one Converse in front of the other, I kept my eyes cast down on the black and white.
For about ten minutes the pawprints disappeared and I turned my back away from the morning sun, with dull and dusty grays that I can’t rightfully describe as anything other than the color of sidewalk. The roads were a storm of growling metal, cool winds brushed against my white dress shirt with the force of a tempered cloudburst – a moment of gust followed by lengthy hesitation. My ankles began to scream, reminding me how long it had been since I explored this dead world of grease and gasoline. I stopped for a moment to shake the burning sensation from my legs, pausing to survey the wavy hills I had passed and the ones I still had to venture towards. As everywhere else turned to Fall, my path fought the dead weed grass with everything it had. I smiled and noticed out about a hundred feet the pawprints starting up again.
When I was a day out of completing the Eighth Grade, Adam, Ross, Carlos, and I decided for the hell of it to attend the walk our local library put on, whether it was to poke fun at our town or just plain curiosity, I couldn’t remember. Old Main took students from the library, to the hotel where we were handed sodas and animal crackers, the long trip down I-20 where I kept getting phantom vibrations from the phone in my right pocket, and finally to the movie theater where we would be treated to Spielberg’s The Goonies, the trip was an endurance test – especially on one’s own. It was a Saturday morning, I had a dream of Ericka and Adam, and I walked along the trashed pathway to either clear my head or relive a barely-remembered childhood memory. My phone was ringing this time, I was sure, but I let it play out its mechanical medley and observed the natural wonders only a small town could provide a stranger.
The smell of Dizzy Boys was replaced by the aroma of freshly cut grass. Off into the distance, the whirring of a lawnmower blocked all other sounds from reaching me. The blades were a continued whine of aggressive, steel murmuring that gnashed against the earth with a fierce, hateful disposition. I sauntered closer to the source, a riding mower with a shirtless man at the helm. His farmer’s tan sun-beat into a hot pink, his back sporting the word “Moseley” in black Old English font, zits marking his spine and breaking the first E of what I assumed was his surname. He may have begun to bald earlier than most men; he turned a right and I noticed his face was young, practically boyish, but his hair still receded. He caught my gaze and did as southerners do and waved. I hesitated – even gone a few years made me forget that it was only polite to wave back. The man rounded a corner and concentrated on his mowing, though I am sure he remembered me back when he would call me homophobic names and wrote the words on my locker in permanent marker. Time had not been as kind to him as they had been for me, and I turned my attention to the next hill and breathed a sigh of relief. There was a huge field passed a dirt road to my left full of dirt and rubble where the Starbreak cinema had once been.
What began as a mellow stroll with the occasional buzzing of cars became a maddening flurry of traffic along the interstate. What coarse howls the lawnmower made eventually died away as the road reclaimed the morning. Another red truck zoomed passed me, with a lime Volkswagen Beetle pursuing it straight on far passed the gas stations and hotel. I glanced up at the clouds above me – a marble blanket that threatened the small town with rain, or snow, or a peaceful day; it was hard to put a bead on Arkansas weather regardless the season. I searched my pocket for my phone to check the weather and saw the unread text messages.
Adam asked if I was in town for the evening reception. I didn’t reply, opting to check the forecast instead. Cloudy with a chance of light rain by that afternoon, the smiling nimbus told me in all caps. Tomorrow was a different beast, a possible thunderstorm with at least a 60% opportunity and winds at roughly 30 miles per hour. The funeral may have to be postponed, and I would have to book another day in Demeter. To pay my respects, I should reach out to Adam, but as I tapped the glass to present letters, I couldn’t find the words I wanted to use. I pocketed my phone and traversed the golden field and its tall bobbing sod.
The pawprints of the library’s forgotten animal meandered onto the steep incline and seemed to leap onto the parking lot, becoming no more. Roots of pine and oak trees touched pea gravel and the sprawling tendrils of weeds broke apart the asphalt. Candy wrappers and illegible refuse permeated the ruins like a crowded gravesite, with the broken marquee of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music a centerpiece akin to Jesus or an angel in the middle of a prayer. I took my phone out one last time to get a picture of the old hangout spot when Adam messaged me again. It was an apology, though I wasn’t certain to what, but I expect I would find out later. I texted back that I was sorry, and that I was in Demeter. I took a photo of the cinema and turned back to the monochrome pawprints that waited for me.