Sixteen
Summer, 1987: the sweet-and-bitter scent of the cigar your father says he doesn’t smoke, the gritty rage in the back of your throat, the sound of his phlegm clearing, tentatively, over and over.
Twenty years later, you will realize he waited all day for the chance to stand there, on the porch below your window, until your cousin was gone to her night job and you and your sister were believed to be asleep. You keep the window open because Ohio is muggy and still in August, because you love the sound of crickets and the small, round light over the Boltz’s picnic shelter, lonely now against the backdrop of lake and grass.
All summer long, Mrs. Boltz sits on a folding chair in the center of the family’s barn and watches her sons pull down each weathered slab of wood, and twenty years later, you will see there was an easier way, that she chose this laborious un-building. But for now you know only that you like to sit beside her on a hay bale, twist the thick, blond strands in your fingers, and watch with her, breathing deeply the sweet-and-musty scent of barn. When her daughter calls out from the farm house, Mama, time for supper, you say goodbye and kiss her on the cheek.
Even on the hottest days, her skin is cool and smells of oranges, you don’t know why, and summer is that smell, too, the laborious un-building of each orange peel, each petaled clove of garlic, the garden with its bounty and its bounty, the cigar your father smokes, or doesn’t smoke, the slow line of cows against the fence, their silent parade toward the flatbed truck that will lead them to the slaughter.
Summer is fresh, warm milk and its absence, the neighbor boy’s handcuffed wrists, the neighbor boy, his absence. Twenty years later, you won't remember his family's name, or his face: only the masked terror-child who rode his bike into trees on Halloween night to scare the other children.
You know it is only a matter of time: soon band camp will begin again and you’ll have to practice. Mr. Artz will stop by to say he can hear you playing from across the field, how much better you sound this year than last, and in between Friday night football and pizza at Noble Roman’s, somebody will know what happened to your neighbor, what he did, and you’ll hear the story, too.
But for now, your father is inside again, snoring at the television; your sister is mumbling her dreamscape; your cousin won’t be home for hours. You are sitting up now, watching the thin trail of road barely visible between the row of pines and the last, tall rafter of what used to be the barn, leaning toward the darkness.
As usual, nothing is happening, but you can’t sleep. Then car doors slam. You don’t know these voices. Twenty years later you will realize the couple came to a place where they believed no one could hear them, not understanding the science of echo, valley, wind. Even from this distance, without the words, you know his anger is rising up from the small round shame in his throat; you know he’s hurt her and he’s sorry.
Then it is quiet until, suddenly, you hear the sound that comes from her—-rising slowly, octave after octave like your clarinet in the fifth grade, when you still couldn’t hit the high C, when every scale you played was screechy, laborious, off key. She is taking her time and nobody can stop her, tame her, and then you can almost make her out, or think you can, hands rising up toward a sky full of cumulus clouds.
It will rain tomorrow.
Before that, you will sit beside Mrs. Boltz for one last time until the last ream has been pulled from its foundation in the soil.
She goes on, reaching with hands and voice, higher, higher. You want to tell her, in the kind, steady voice of your first good teacher, who, much later, came to your mother’s funeral and asked you, to distract you, do you still play the clarinet? Do you still love it like you did at the beginning?
During lessons, he’d say, Slow down. Let the air move through you. Breathe. You want to take the woman by the shoulders and lead her inside, say these words to her, because grief connects with grief, because it’s the end of summer, because tomorrow, you’ll wonder if this really happened, and nobody else will have heard her scream.
(If your throat is burning, you’re not breathing right, he’d say).
Slow down. Move through.
Silence again. Then car doors slam, wheels turn against the spattering of rocks beside the ditch: sputter, sputter, screech, silence. Too late, you think. Too late to save her.
And then, the unexpected happens. Twenty years later, you'll wonder, did he really walk across your lawn, toward the Bowmans’ house?—yes, that was their name! The Bowmans!--and out into the distance, toward the woods? Did she really drive away without him?
Either way, you had already become her by then, already understood how the burn in your throat will one day rise away. Build up, tear down, sit still, forget, drive away, remember. Supper time. Summer time.
You are 16. You are learning.
Twenty years later, you will realize he waited all day for the chance to stand there, on the porch below your window, until your cousin was gone to her night job and you and your sister were believed to be asleep. You keep the window open because Ohio is muggy and still in August, because you love the sound of crickets and the small, round light over the Boltz’s picnic shelter, lonely now against the backdrop of lake and grass.
All summer long, Mrs. Boltz sits on a folding chair in the center of the family’s barn and watches her sons pull down each weathered slab of wood, and twenty years later, you will see there was an easier way, that she chose this laborious un-building. But for now you know only that you like to sit beside her on a hay bale, twist the thick, blond strands in your fingers, and watch with her, breathing deeply the sweet-and-musty scent of barn. When her daughter calls out from the farm house, Mama, time for supper, you say goodbye and kiss her on the cheek.
Even on the hottest days, her skin is cool and smells of oranges, you don’t know why, and summer is that smell, too, the laborious un-building of each orange peel, each petaled clove of garlic, the garden with its bounty and its bounty, the cigar your father smokes, or doesn’t smoke, the slow line of cows against the fence, their silent parade toward the flatbed truck that will lead them to the slaughter.
Summer is fresh, warm milk and its absence, the neighbor boy’s handcuffed wrists, the neighbor boy, his absence. Twenty years later, you won't remember his family's name, or his face: only the masked terror-child who rode his bike into trees on Halloween night to scare the other children.
You know it is only a matter of time: soon band camp will begin again and you’ll have to practice. Mr. Artz will stop by to say he can hear you playing from across the field, how much better you sound this year than last, and in between Friday night football and pizza at Noble Roman’s, somebody will know what happened to your neighbor, what he did, and you’ll hear the story, too.
But for now, your father is inside again, snoring at the television; your sister is mumbling her dreamscape; your cousin won’t be home for hours. You are sitting up now, watching the thin trail of road barely visible between the row of pines and the last, tall rafter of what used to be the barn, leaning toward the darkness.
As usual, nothing is happening, but you can’t sleep. Then car doors slam. You don’t know these voices. Twenty years later you will realize the couple came to a place where they believed no one could hear them, not understanding the science of echo, valley, wind. Even from this distance, without the words, you know his anger is rising up from the small round shame in his throat; you know he’s hurt her and he’s sorry.
Then it is quiet until, suddenly, you hear the sound that comes from her—-rising slowly, octave after octave like your clarinet in the fifth grade, when you still couldn’t hit the high C, when every scale you played was screechy, laborious, off key. She is taking her time and nobody can stop her, tame her, and then you can almost make her out, or think you can, hands rising up toward a sky full of cumulus clouds.
It will rain tomorrow.
Before that, you will sit beside Mrs. Boltz for one last time until the last ream has been pulled from its foundation in the soil.
She goes on, reaching with hands and voice, higher, higher. You want to tell her, in the kind, steady voice of your first good teacher, who, much later, came to your mother’s funeral and asked you, to distract you, do you still play the clarinet? Do you still love it like you did at the beginning?
During lessons, he’d say, Slow down. Let the air move through you. Breathe. You want to take the woman by the shoulders and lead her inside, say these words to her, because grief connects with grief, because it’s the end of summer, because tomorrow, you’ll wonder if this really happened, and nobody else will have heard her scream.
(If your throat is burning, you’re not breathing right, he’d say).
Slow down. Move through.
Silence again. Then car doors slam, wheels turn against the spattering of rocks beside the ditch: sputter, sputter, screech, silence. Too late, you think. Too late to save her.
And then, the unexpected happens. Twenty years later, you'll wonder, did he really walk across your lawn, toward the Bowmans’ house?—yes, that was their name! The Bowmans!--and out into the distance, toward the woods? Did she really drive away without him?
Either way, you had already become her by then, already understood how the burn in your throat will one day rise away. Build up, tear down, sit still, forget, drive away, remember. Supper time. Summer time.
You are 16. You are learning.
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