22
Father and Son
===========DANNY===========
I stared down at my hands—my hands—locked around the steering wheel as if cemented to it. The bulbous mounds of my knuckles were popping out and growing red with the pressure, and the cradles of my thumbs were wrinkled and white with dry skin. I hated my hands. And in my hatred for my hands, I learned about the love and fear invited by a man's hands. A Man's hands. The ability those hands hold to build and destroy, and the horror in which a woman will never really know for what means a man might use those hands.
Man, stupid man, so readily expressing his rage through his hands. I've never known myself to be so moved to use my hands. Was it nothing more than a coward's instinct to raise them only against a woman? The idea that I might have been encouraged to handle Mary physically because I had unwittingly learned from her father that force was the best way to tame her behavior—absolutely sickened me.
Is my gender, renewed through each new generation, condemned to forever struggle with aggression?
Yes. Man is angry. Always will be. But, No. Man can triumph. We have the ability to choose intelligence over instinct.
But—what to do when rage arises?
It's not so easy to subdue rage, controlling our emotions is a practice much easier said than done. Anger is a wild animal: blind and unintelligent and uncompromising. Anger will always exist; the enemies of our virtuous repose will always exist too. The agents of wrath will never die. They'll exist in bad men, and they'll exist in bad circumstance, caused by the natural or supernatural. So what to do with rage? It has to be placed somewhere. It's a painful burden that can split you from the inside out if you choose to hold on. A virulent parasite to host. But I suppose regardless of the pain, it is our evolutionary responsibility to withdraw those ancient, barbaric vestiges internally, and better to let it wreak havoc on our spirit than place that rage onto somebody else. I guess the internal damage caused by receding rage is punishment for having rage to begin with. A man should be a more dominant master of his emotions.
Men will always wrestle with their rage. A man who disagrees is a liar. But a man chooses his own hand's purpose. He is not condemned.
I remember that my Dad's hands were gentle. He never hit or grabbed Mom. Dad's hands changed my diapers. Dad's hands could find their way over the infinite combinations of notes on a piano or guitar and make beautiful music with those hands. For as long as I wrestle with rage, I'll internalize it. Save it for later. Save it for the guitar.
But, at seventeen, I didn't know any better. I was terrified with my behavior, and I didn't do a thing with that terror other than place it in a black room at the far, far back of my mind.
It started with a single hard drop of rain that shattered against my windshield. The highway wind rolled the residue up and off. And then another hard drop fell. And then another, and another. Then with a loud crack, a showering skirt of rain rolled over the hood and pelted against the glass. The storm began.
By the time I had pulled up in my driveway, after leaving Wright Bros and spending the rest of the afternoon finding solitude on country roads that led me nowhere but back home, the world was drowned. The wet streets reflected the prematurely lit streetlights, and streams ran perpendicularly along the curbs, burbling at the sewage drains.
Mom's Jetta and a random U-Haul truck took up the driveway, forcing me to park on the street.
Okay, was all you had to say? Glad to know, Mary. Glad to know that it was meaningless to you, too.
I tugged the key out of the transmission, locking the windshield wipers mid-wipe. The rain fell mutely on the soft-top.
"Danny?" Mom called from the kitchen when she heard me come in through the front door. "Where have you been all afternoon?"
A subtle tremor of thunder broke from behind the walls. "Nowhere, Mom," I said, leaning over, spraying my hands as I stripped the wet shoelaces unlacing my Converse. Standing back up, I ran my fingers through my wet hair, lifting the patches that had stuck to my face.
As Mom walked towards me she said, "Ok, Danny. I'm trying to be patient, and I am really happy that you and Mary are friends, but you've not yet packed a single thing and I'm not going to remind you again. The movers are starting next week and if you're not going to pack, I'll go through your room and start throwing everything out."
My gaze whipped past her as I snapped, "Don't you dare."
"Watch your tone with me, Danny," Mom fiercely replied as I began walking towards the stairs. Lightning beamed in two bright rapid flashes through the window. A tumbling thunder followed.
Mom then continued to say, "When I was putting away your laundry, I saw that you haven't even touched that plastic bag full of junk. Danny, you can't leave this until the last minute like you do everything else. And have you yet decided what you're going to do with your car? It's going to cost a fortune to transport, and unless you plan on driving, we're going to have to sell it."
With my back to her, already halfway up the steps, I barked, "I'm not selling my fucking car."
"Wh-What? What did you just say to me?"
"I said I'll figure it out."
"You watch your language with me! Danny? Danny!" Mom yelled as I rounded the railing of the stairs to my room. For the rest of the night, I turned my anger to my guitar until I fell asleep.
The next morning as the sky paled from gray to a lighter shade, I awoke the world (my house) with more screams from my guitar.
Dragging my amp across the floor, maxing out all the settings, cranking that reverb exceptionally high, I channeled my rage into the stinging notes on the fretboard. Letting my fingers unfurl onto the strings all my pent-up angst in a sloppy, directionless solo.
Razor sounds lashing out. Violently constricted to the pentatonic scale. Notes raged with velocity. No silence between the sounds. Breaking down with the full-bodied crash of a chord and a raw shout from my throat. Build up. Break down. Losing myself to sound.
I was mad at Mom. I was mad at Max. And I was so mad at Mary that I tried hating her (all these fucking M's).
My middle finger zipped down the fretboard. Moving the pentatonic pattern higher.
I wanted to hate Mary. But, I couldn't help but stop and think that I was to blame. I grabbed her and I wouldn't let go.
My fingers fumbled on a difficult chord. Slap the strings down and down until the combination sounds right. Inculcate the shape to my hand. Never forget.
What—why didn't I just talk to her? I wanted to feel what I felt in that Old Abandoned Beach House again. My lust was dangerous because it stemmed from something like my hatred for her.
Telecaster hung-low; electromotive friction against my pelvis. The memory of Mary's sweat glistened breasts flattened against my chest. Erection.
But then, in the minute I wanted to love her again, the minute I wanted to nail myself with the blame and run to her and make repentance, I ripped through a barre chord, and against my will, the image of Jim's ugly face assembled in my mind. His voice resounded louder in my ears than the feedback from my amp. "Incase they run into cute boys like you, with pretty hair." And he had the nerve to smirk.
My fingers, leaving a wake of lightning in their motion, danced up the neck. There, I swear, is no greater transcendence of self than getting lost in a guitar solo. My fingers corrugated into the G Chord shape. Slash down.
But then striking through the strings, the G string snapped and whipped against my forearm. I went for a D chord, but my index finger fell horribly out of place on the polished surface of the fretboard; the chord sounded painfully unfulfilled.
In one flawless haul, I unslung my guitar and threw it across the room. It landed on a pile of clothes.
My butt cushioned into the mattress and then I fell back onto my bed. I looked at the pink scratch pulsating on my arm and then at my—Dad's—Telecaster lying on the floor, looking helpless, the G string sprung out like an unraveled steel intestine.
My acoustic looked rather comfortable propped on its stand, and I thought I should maybe trash the shit out of those strings too. But these weren't my guitars to abuse. Both of them were Dad's. It wasn't until then that I realized Dad had probably tried to impress Mom with that exact same guitar I attempted to impress Mary with. The thought grossed me out.
I left Dad's acoustic alone.
That was when I heard something like muffled sobbing. I didn't think Mom was home. I tried ignoring her. Her problems were her own. Although Mom's crying was like a thumping headache you couldn't suspend. It wasn't my job as the kid to go tend to her pain. She was the parent. Her tears weren't mine to wipe away. Right then, I hated her even more for being selfish and crying.
And then, like an unearthed ghost, Dad's voice, louder than that of my own thinking, scolded me. Whether from some tucked away part of my imagination, or actually right then and there, he told me to go to Mom.
I might have been her child, but I was no longer a kid.
"Mom?" I said standing in the doorway of her room, and then held my breath like I had violated the pact I made with silence.
"What Danny?" she snapped, angrily, as if she too thought I'd breached the silence oath.
I guess I reconstituted the deal because I didn't say anything back. Mom sniffed and looked up at me with red eyes. I started to form the words soundlessly on my lips as I repeated over and over in my mind what I wanted to say. But when the muted gray light breaking through the closed blinds caught the gloss on a photo-album sprawled open on her bed, I froze.
The cover of the album had a textile-pattern I didn't recognize, and the Polaroids inside had long since adopted a yellow wash on their trim. Several of the photos were missing. It was evident Mom was sizing down our entire family's history into one album, and in the process, one picture had been left out big and bold and right smack dab in the middle of her floral bedspread. It was a photo of Dad that I had never seen before in all his eighties glory.
Long dark curls of hair touched his bare shoulders, and the baddest beard that I had ever seen on a man surrounded the cigarette dangling from his lips as his fingers stretched over the keys of a piano. "Why are you crying?" I asked, unconsciously aware that I was prolonging the time I got to look at this picture of Dad. He was smiling.
"I'm not," Mom said.
"I heard you crying," I said, breaking eye contact with Dad. Mom looked up at me under her furrowed brow.
"Danny, there are certain things that kids just don't understand."
Mom was right. There are things kids don't understand. But it wasn't her accusation of my ignorance due to an age limitation that provoked me. It was "kids," and claiming, while I looked at a picture of someone who wouldn't even recognize me anymore, that I don't understand.
"What don't I understand?" I pried, mocking the condescending tone Mom had used.
"Holy shit, Danny. Losing everything!"
The wallpaper in her room was exactly the same. It was one of those strange things you inexplicably, for no good logical reason, remember from childhood. Vertical lines of tiny triangles ran against the beige backdrop. A long moment later, an "Okay?" slipped from Mom's quivering lips.
"Right." I hiccupped on a sob I fought back. "Because I'm nothing, and I didn't lose them too." I turned and pushed through the door and bolted out of the room.
Mom called my name and kept calling until she sounded angry, but I was already down the stairs and determined on charging out the front door and getting away.
Arriving at Oceanside Park, I blasted into the deserted parking lot littered with potholes of rain, and pulled my car right up to the curb. Parking in the exact same spot the night I came here with Mary. I rifled out of the car and slammed the door so hard that I thought the window would shatter.
May as well fuck up Dad's car too.
I didn't even like Oceanside Park. It was depressing and actually really dumpy once the rose-colored goggles came off.
What was so special about this shithole?
I tried to remember what had made me take Mary here. And for the life of me, tried to remember what we even talked about.
I walked through the vacant lot and saw that the carousel was closed due to the weather. All I could remember of my night here with Mary was that she was being a bitch on the rocks. And maybe that's all she ever was. Just a bitch on the rocks. I'll have one of those, Mister Bartender.
My thoughts and memories were in disarray. I didn't even know how to begin sorting and processing them. Nothing in that moment was appealing to me, not a thought, not a line of a lyric, not some sort of vista-inspired epiphany, just the stroll of depression. The complete and utter drowning of self-pitying.
Maybe if luck were on my side, a tidal wave would come crashing down and its undertow pull me away and lose me at the bottom of the sea.
The sky was stacked in various shades of gray, and the waves were a hell of a lot rougher than usual. I thought of how only the most overly ambitious surfers would be drawn to those conditions.
With my back hunched, and my hands buried deep in my pockets to protect my fingers from the numbing cold, I continued down the pier. A loud gash of wind, followed by the implosion of a murky green-brown wave crashing against the boulders, caught my attention.
I looked up and saw that a fence had been erected, blocking off the pier. I read about two sentences of the sign claiming that the New Jersey Parks and Beach Commission had declared the pier 'unsafe' before I booted the fence with everything I had—the fence jolted me back. Fence: 1. Danny: 0.
I rerouted my walk. I couldn't put up a fight.
Underdressed, and therefore, unprepared for the cold that only deepened the longer I spent outside, practically made my walk intolerable. Having then decided that the sanctuary I'd hoped for did not exist on that desolate, depressing shore, I called it quits and figured I would shortcut to the parking lot by crossing the beach.
The wet sand felt firm and looked cold beneath my feet, but at the very least, I was grateful that it wouldn't kick up in my shoes. I walked along the edge where the tides and beach met, the undercurrent ambitious in its worship of the shore, and lifted my eyes from my feet to scan the shoreline ahead.
That was when, in the distance, I saw someone sitting slumped against the back of the snack bar.
I got all worked up, angry that someone had occupied the barren scene I wanted outfitted only for me. Their presence was ruining the atmosphere that completely suited my deep, miserable thoughts.
Continuing to tread along with my head down, watching the tide creep up and almost catch my feet, I glanced up only slightly enough to scope out the slumped figure against the snack bar. With each bobbing step closer, the details of their figure became clearer, and it nearly damn shocked me to death when I realized who it was.
"Mary?"
I ran towards her, yelling her name. Clumps of wet sand kicked up into my shoes. The aching in my head got worse with every pounding step. Mary sat on the beach floor cradling her knees into her chest. Everything she wore was darkened from being damp.
"Mary!" I gasped. "Oh my God! What are you doing?" I stammered between heaves as I skidded to a stop in the sand and crouched down next to her.
Tiny droplets of water dripped down the hair clinging to her face. I was confused and scared, and felt betrayed, somehow, that Mary was sunken and hiding on the beach. But the real horror—and the real anger—came about when Mary tilted her head to the right, slinging the wet hair off her face, revealing a black eye.
My knees hit the sand. The universe exploded to the farthest reaches of the cosmos, and then collapsed back into my stomach.
"Who did that?"
The wind howled, sweeping a droplet of water off Mary's face.
"Who did that?" I persisted, but Mary failed to part her lips and just answer me. "MARY! Tell me, who did that?"
The spike of anger found a release in my tightening grip around Mary's shoulder. Drenching my hand in the water squeezed out of her soaked hoodie. Shame strapped the back of my wrist and I lightened my grasp.
I asked if it was Tanner who hit her, hoping for the best. But Mary only slightly motioned her head no.
"Your dad?"
And that time she didn't flinch.
"I am going to kill him."
A sudden frenzied, murderous ambition drove me to my feet. I was certain in my mind that I was going to murder Jim. I was going to get in my car, drive to Mary's house, push through the door, and beat his face into a disfigured pulp with whatever available weapon was in my reach. Be it a chair, a golf club, a bat, the screen door. It didn't matter. In my books, he was dead.
My feet bashed into the sand as I stomped towards the parking lot, engulfed in rage.
Mary suddenly shrieked at the top of her lungs.
"NO! No Danny! Don't! You've fucked things up enough for me!"
I stopped dead in my tracks, caught off guard. My anger thrown sideways.
"What?"
Mary didn't answer, so I ran back and crouched down beside her again. "What happened?"
I reached my arm out to hold her, but she hit it off.
"No, Danny!"
"What's wrong with you?" I retaliated, realizing afterward that sounded harsh.
"Great. Thanks," she said. "That's just what I needed to hear right now." She trembled and tears surfaced on her eyes.
"I didn't mean it like that, Mary."
But by then it was too late to explain myself. Mary was beyond the threshold of reason. Within her body writhed a blinding hysteria that erupted into a maniacal shaking.
"Everything's wrong with me. I mean, why am I even alive? What the fuck isn't wrong with me? You said it yourself, didn't you, Danny? My family is fucked. My life is fucked."
Using all the willpower accessible to subside my anger, I softened my voice. "Mary—please. Tell me what happened."
Hoping she would feel safe. Hoping that she would know that as long as I was at her side, there was nothing to be afraid of. Because more than the tumultuous storm of anger I'd been fighting with, I loved Mary, and I wanted nothing more than to be her hero.
"Fuck, Danny! Just FUCK!" Mary screamed into my face. "What do you want to hear? Some problem that having a dream can fix? Some fucking bullshit that this happened for a reason? I was hit and kicked out. There, are you happy? Is that what you wanted to hear? I didn't fucking think so!"
The wind whistled through the tall grass and cut through my flesh to the bone. "Mary, why wouldn't you just come to me?"
"Because."
"Because why?" I demanded.
Mary stayed silent, staring at the muddy colored waves crashing along the shore. I looked at the waves too, and then glanced back at her. Blood had dried around the swollen pocket below her eye.
"I'm here for you."
"Oh, SHUT—UP!" she screamed. "No. You're. Not!" Her eyes ripped a hole right through me. "Stop thinking you're some fucking hero! You put your hands on me too, you know! So, grow up Danny! This isn't some fairytale. This is the real fucking world, and you weren't there for me! NO ONE is ever there for you."
"Don't tell me to grow up." I backed up, but I wasn't going to give up. "I meant what I said, Mary. I promised I'll always be there for you, whether you like it or not."
"Oh, whatever."
"Okay, fine!" I slapped my hands against my thighs and stood up. "If you're going to act like a bitch then I won't be!"
And just as I began storming away, Mary screamed, "SCREW YOU!"
I looked back around and saw her trip as she tried standing on her feet. "SCREW YOU DANNY!" Mary's voice cracked as she finally broke into tears, collapsing back down onto the sand.
"Yeah, that's right. Just walk away! Just walk away and go to California and never talk to me again." She started to tremble as tears shivered out of her black and ruined eye. "I just wish I could go back," I heard her say, before she pressed a hand to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut.
I think she was sick of me seeing her cry. The vulnerability was killing her as much as the wreckage of her soul was. It would've been naïve of me not to recognize that her harsh words, and short-tempered vagueness, were just a part of her vain attempt at being strong. It was so devastating to stand there and watch that strength fall apart.
"Go back to what, Mary?" I asked as I paced back towards her.
All of a sudden, her faint sobbing stopped. Mary caught a breath in its momentary absence, then gasped, "I don't know." And then clawed her fingers into the sand. "I'm so cold, Danny."
"How about we go some place else then?"
Mary didn't answer me right away. She sat quietly. I felt convicted of a crime looking down at her with pity, so I looked at the meaningless graffiti tags on the wall of the snack bar instead. When I was a kid, that wall had been a mural of a cartoon beach with a stupid crab and sandcastles. Now, it was white and speckled in dirt, and collected mold and algae along the bottom.
"Where?" Mary asked, finally answering me.
"I don't know." The gray mist on the horizon blended with the distant storm clouds. "Some place better than here."
"Okay."
But as she stood, she lurched forward and said, "Oh fuck." Mary lost her balance and stumbled. "I'm seeing double."
She snatched her hair in fists, muttered another oh fuck, and puked yellow stomach acid.
"I'm taking you to the hospital. Now."
"Don't tell me what to—" Another burst of yellow erupted from her mouth.
"Mary, we're going!"
"NO—"
But then Mary collapsed into her puke on the ground.
To pass several incompetent drivers in the left lane, I had to drive on the shoulder of the 306. I gunned through a pointless red light too. My eyes scanned back and forth from the highway to Mary. She was pale and heaving nothing but air into a plastic grocery bag. She made sounds like she was choking, and her face grew whiter and her cheeks thinner. I was certain she was going to die.
I zipped into the Emergency driveway of the South Gilmore Park General, unbuckled Mary, and trudged in with her body in my arms as I held her barf bag, calling for help. Raw panic deafened my senses, but I was very aware of the faces of the other patients staring, and those of the nurses, as they rushed up towards me while I explained the story. I was also intently aware of how I was only one false accusation away from having been the one who hit her.
The waiting room smelled of disinfectant and fresh airborne disease. But that was so cliché of the hospital, I was upset. There could have been a nice lemony scent. That would have been accommodating. Fuck, shoot for the moon, they should have had coconut. That would've been luxury.
Everyone in that department of dying looked as if they'd been plucked off the street, or brought in from the downtown bus terminal. I tried not to look too long.
I then jumped in shock at the abrupt vibrating of my phone. The wait for Mary had drifted me into a near paranoid state. I slid my hand into the pocket of my jeans and whipped out my phone. Max was calling. I hit the button to mute the call. A moment later, after the vibrating ended, my phone buzzed with a text.
Lol bro did you use my shit in the beach house?
An hour after Mary was admitted, a nurse appeared around the corner, at last, calling my name. I leaped out of the teal-colored vinyl seat and rushed over.
"Does Mary have medical coverage?"
Not having a clue, I could only shrug my shoulders, and so the nurse walked away. Moments later, a man that I assumed to be the doctor, judging by his white coat and all, came up to me and explained the diagnosis. After first going through the review in a complicated medical language, the doctor told me, in his simplest terms, that Mary suffered from what was known as a "fractured trapdoor." When the doctor asked how she'd been injured and I couldn't provide an answer, he shifted ever so slightly, looking at me askance as if his suspicions were growing. Despite the doctor's wariness, he granted me the okay to go see her.
Seeing Mary in the Emergency Room was the second worst thing I had ever seen.
She was draped in a hospital gown, lying half-awake in a medicated haze, only separated from other patients—coughing up what sounded like death—by a thin tarp. Christ, nothing smells worse than the sick.
The light from the low ceiling kept flickering, and atop the metronomic beeping of the heart monitors, Mary's roommate kept hacking. I felt sicker with every breath I took, so I tried to breathe as little as possible.
"Mary..." I said softly, as if it were her ears that were damaged. According to the nurse, she was jacked up on an IV with a strong sedative.
Mary opened her good eye and flashed me an upside-down peace sign. The bulge under her bad eye was a terrible color of red and purple and looked like a bag full of liquid. If you touched it, it would pop.
"Are you okay?"
Mary nodded. Conversation would have been nice, but her face was once again safely saturated in color, and that was more than enough for me. Despite the scene of the Emergency Room, I got the impression that Mary was now only suffering from extreme drowsiness.
Earlier, the doctor said he needed to know—or needed me to find out what coverage Mary had before they could proceed. The question needed time to wrack within me before I asked her. Unfortunately, the only questions she answered were the ones that only required one word, and even so, most were only answered by a shrug. Mary's breathing quickly slipped back into the rhythm of sleep. The sedative was probably fucking her up more than anything.
When I went back to the doctor, I told him. He looked bitter, as if displeased with the alternate option we were now forced to make. I was only catching half of what he was saying, and then when he said, "despite the trauma, she should be fine," he sounded unconvinced, and I felt the floor slip out from under my feet. However unreasonably, I felt guilty and responsible.
More could have been done—should have been done—but the doctor assumed we couldn't afford it. I would have obviously paid for it with the Emergency Credit Card, which I had already used to pay for the initial hospital bill, including the blood thinners and painkillers. Thankfully, the medical care and drugs weren't crazy expensive. I figured Mom would understand.
After I had picked up whatever Mary was prescribed at the pharmacy, I went to check up on her, still fast asleep. The nurse informed me that, when she awoke, it was okay to go home.
"Oh, great. Thank you," I said and thought of how Mary had been kicked out of her home.
I went on to explore the hospital to pass the time. South Gilmore Park General hadn't had a facelift since the seventies, and it looked as though the medical gear hadn't been turned over since the eighties. The drop ceiling tiles had those questionable brown stains, and the white walls were streaked with black marks from either hastily delivered medical equipment, or what I had imagined at worst, violent episodes. Certain hallways had been marked off, particularly the psych ward.
Doctor, Doctor
The Savior / Accused of Theft
The Surgeons Knife,
The Thirty-Eighth Miracle / The Kiss of Death
To pass the time, I waited on a bench outside the main hospital entrance. The grooves in the damp driveway reflected the light from the gray and brooding sky; rain continued to sparingly fall. A skinny guy with a buzz cut and a larger gal in sweatpants were off on the sidewalk smoking as they argued about hospital bills.
While waiting for Mary to wake up, wishing I had my Lyric Book with me because the greatest literary insights only occur when you are nowhere near a pen and paper, a dark red van pulled up in the circular driveway. In the instant that the man driving got out of the front seat, and the woman exiting the passenger side pulled open the back door, letting a black Labrador out, a nurse emerged from the doors of the foyer, pushing a horribly disproportionate boy in a wheelchair.
"Winny! Winny!" The boy cried as the dog jumped right up onto his lap and started licking his face. "Hey—hey!" He laughed. "Oh, oh, I missed you! I love you so much! Oh, my best friend! I love you so much!" The boy wrapped his arms, as best he could, around Winny as the dog snuggled and rested his head on his lap.
The man (whom by this point I assumed was his father) fitted his arm snugly around his wife's shoulders. A high, jutted-chin grin stiffened his face as her eyes watered and she brought her hand around his.
"Ah-ra-ra-roo!" The boy howled, and then Winny, as if answering a dialectic greeting, howled the chorus back to him. Winny and the boy sang the chorus back and forth until Winny splayed his long tongue back over the boy's face.
The murmurs from the arguing couple off on the corner of the driveway rose when the guy with the buzz cut shouted at the gal, "Well if your daughter wasn't so fuckin' conceited, thinking the whole fucking universe owes her shit..." And then lowered to a rumbling whisper when the nurse, the boy's parents, and I looked at them. Winny and the boy couldn't be bothered, for nothing existed in the world outside the two of them.
Following a conversation between the nurse and the mother, concealed by a raised hand, the bitter-sweetness that suffused her face receded into the same high, jutted-chin grin as her husband. His hand held hers tighter.
Winny patiently, with his tail wagging, lapped about as the parents and the nurse, in a team effort, pushed the boy up the ramp that extended out of the back door. Once inside the van, Winny dutifully jumped in behind. And as the gray wind stirred and bent the palm leaves in the planters to its might, the shining wet wheels of the van sloshed over the pavement and drove away.
Then with a loud stomp on the pavement, the guy with the buzz cut scoffed, "Fuckin' bullshit," and ground the butt of his cigarette into the sidewalk with his sneaker.
I burned an oath in my spirit that if my music career ever took off, I would come back and visit the South Gilmore Park General's pediatric floor. God knows kids are the only ones who deserve it.