pretentious drivel // short stories, poems, and the usual c**p

gardens

I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve.

Jesus, does anyone?

Granted, no other twelve year old I knew at the time had friends like mine. That was because our mothers said that the man that lived in the gas station was a rapist. And that Eddie Riley was 'retarded' because his old man was no good. And that Miss Holt was an alcoholic.

And maybe they were right. Maybe I should have listened to my mother. I definitely should have listened to my mother.

But the gas-station man taught me how to play guitar and Eddie Riley told stories so crazy that he could hardly believe them and Miss Holt was definitely an alcoholic, she said so herself, but she had a beautiful garden.

August, 1962

It was the sort of summer that couldn't decide when it wanted to end.

And by God, I wished it never did.

The third of August was the last time I saw my father. The fifth of August was when my mother told me why. Saturday the sixth was when I decided that I hated hairspray.

I met Eddie Riley outside the convenience store on the corner of his street and the schools'. I was wearing my old man's Yankees cap, sitting on the curb shredding the grass shoots that were growing out of the gutter.

He appeared next to me, seeing no need for greeting, and asked the usual question.

"Killed 'im yet?"

I snorted and shook my head grimmly.

Eddie Riley had the sort of face that you just saw everywhere. From 1959 to 1970, you could pick him out in every photo taken in Ohio. He was always a face you passed over scanning the crowd. He didn't mean to be in the background of everything. He just was.

I could never really understand why I ended up being best friends with Eddie. He was his own special brand of batshit crazy, and sometime around sixth grade we both just agreed that we were never going to do any better than each other.

His old man was never any good, prone to 'violent outbursts' and drank too much. He broke Eddie's nose when he was ten, and it never straightened out, and skewed just slightly to the right for the rest of his life. His ears were too big to be endearing, and his hair was never really properly clean. He was taller than he should have been, and walked with a hunch to disguise it.

Eddie's brother was the kind of asshole you never really thought existed in real life. As the leader of the closest thing our town had to a gang, he took it upon himself to make Eddie's life (and mine, on occasion) a living hell.