I Am a Boy

High-energy chaos. Cellular phone waves in coitus with our nervous
systems. Light steals our night skies. Things like these make me wish
that I had just one less chromosome so that I could have an excuse for
not understanding. Oh, the longing.

This, realized sitting atop the grassy knoll, waiting for my star to
flicker.

I had been sitting there for what felt like yesterdays, escaping time
in my memories. It's hard to escape. My arms ache from the weight of my
body. I've been leaning on them for as long as I've been there. The
grass is sticking to my skin, itching. Dew causes me to slide ever so
slightly. I tilt my head back and take a deep breath.

I am a boy. The autumn sky is gray and there is a fine mist in the
November air. The school bus has just dropped me off and I run down the
gravel driveway for the black and white trailer. We live in a trailer
because we know we can. I run up the stairs to the front door and grasp
the handle. Locked.

I set my books down on the steps and jump from the top step, the third
step, to the ground. I run across the driveway next door. There is an
old lady who lives there. She is our landlady. She hates the coloreds.
But I don't. We still get along. I have a certain affinity for her
these days, the cold brisk autumn afternoons, when the bus drops me off
and Mom isn't home. She gives me little boxes of chocolate cereal
because she knows I like them and she doesn't. She is a good
woman.

As I cross her yard, I see something in the moss at the base of the old
sycamore next to her house. As I approach, I start to realize that the
thing is not a thing at all, but a blue jay, lying on its side. It
looks like it is breathing, but perhaps that is my own hastened
respiration. My heart beats rapidly and I am scared. Is the bird dead?
Or is it sleeping?

I kneel next to the bird and get on all fours. I lower my head to the
ground until I am at eye level with the bird. Yes, it's dead all right,
or close to it at least. In case it's dying of the cold, I take off my
stocking cap and lift the bird into it. I wrap it tightly, hoping the
warmth from my body will warm the bird's. My ears begin to tingle. They
are cold.

The bird never chirps again, but I do.

I open my eyes and see the first shooting star of my life. It fades as
quickly as it shone, crossing the sky east to west. The springtime
night is warm, muggy. A shower that day had washed the pollen away. Oh,
how pollen makes me cough. The night sky is dark. The moon is oblong.
The stars are vivid. Another star moves across the sky slowly. This
star has a red blinking light. That star is an airplane.

I wonder where a shooting star goes when it is shot. Does it fall away?
I've fallen away before, but not until much after seeing my first
shooting star. Later, I read that a woman has been killed by a shooting
star. It crashed into her home while she was watching the news. She was
a good woman, I've been told.

The crickets are chirping loudly now and it makes my ears tingle. I
take a deep breath and enjoy a pollen-free world.

I exhale. I inhale. The smell of ozone in the sky quickens my pace. I
fear the crackle of thunder, more than I fear than I fear the crackle
of my father's leather belt across my leg. It is that fear that
strengthens me. I face the clothesline and the sixty yards of open
field ahead of me. I read once that lightning most likely struck in
open areas and I feared that. I would open the door, heart screaming,
eyes focused through the blue-gray overcast.

Despite the darkness, everything looks brighter. Greens look greener,
whites look whiter. The coloreds look colored. The clothesline itself
shines like a beacon through the mist.

I glide across the lawn, dodging pine cones that had fallen from the
loblolly next to the clothesline, I avoided that tree during storms
whenever possible because I had read once that lightning was attracted
to tall objects. Electricity follows the shortest path. On the nape of
my neck, the hairs begin to rise. My ears begin to tingle. I close my
eyes and a flash of white heat swallows me. I smell burning pine.

I open my eyes and it is night. The campfire crackles and spits. I am
still a boy. The marshmallow on the end of the stick glows in the
flames. I see the flicker of raw heat begin to gnaw the edges of the
puffy white confection. Perfection. The warmth from the fire kisses my
face and I smile. In the distance I hear the muffled sound of a
television show coming from a tent. On the show, someone is dying. I
can tell by the music. Somewhere, someone is really dying, on the
inside. I pull the marshmallow from the flames and it is on fire. White
turns to black and I blow.

Candles smoke as their thirteen collective heads disappear. Smoke wafts
from the wicks like fog on a lake. I am told to wish. I wish to be
told. I close my eyes.

My hands itch. My arms ache at the elbows. Behind my eyelids I see cell
phones and radio-friendly sound waves. I see the end of the end and I
am no longer afraid. I open my eyes and look to the sky.

Thus, I realize, we sit on the grassy knoll, waiting for our star to
die.