This seems like a rotten hiding place, but he hasn’t found me yet so maybe I was wrong.
All the grass has died beneath this old tree, and it’s as hard as pavement in the summer but the branches hang clear down to the ground. If I crawl to the edge and peek through the needles I can nearly see the can. Normally he doesn’t stray too far from the can because he can’t run very fast with his club foot, and I can see him when he comes over to this side on patrol.
I can sit here all day, waiting. One of the half-Okie, half-Japanese neighbor kids always dashes out of the hydrangea or from underneath the steps and kicks the can down the sloping yard into the holly bush as soon as he turns his head, and everyone runs back to new hiding places. We have also developed a complex sign language, so spotters on one side of the yard can signal kickers on the other side when the coast is clear.
Only today no one else is in sight.
The breeze seems to be blowing the right direction – I can’t smell the paper mill – so I sweep a spot clear of dead dry needles (you can’t be too careful) and light one of my dad’s cigarettes. It’s gone absolutely dry in the box in my closet where I stash them and a lot of the tobacco has fallen out of the end so the paper flames up at first before the tobacco flakes catch.
The club footed kid’s name is Scott. In ninth grade I’d seen pictures of naked ladies before, but his identical but for the foot twin sister showed me my first ever picture of people fucking. It was on heavy stock, glossy black and white, it looked as if it had been torn from a book. A pale woman on her back with her legs spread, a man doing sort of a push up on top of her, with his wiener going in between her legs. I didn’t know quite what to make of that. Later, she joined the Air Force.
Scott’s family had a bunch of yappy little long-haired dogs, and when I played at his house once I saw a bunch of dog turds arranged like rocks in a Zen garden in the blue shag carpet under his bed. Some had mold growing on them.
His garbage can was full of liquor bottles.
I’d have another cigarette, but I already feel sick from the last one. Two fields over I can hear Mr. Chong’s tractor driving around. If I listen close, I can hear the grass growing up around the can.
Off to the other side, down the hill, I see my house has burned down to a shell. I thought that didn’t smell like cigarette smoke. But when I look again, there’s no house, just a shopping center. I must live somewhere else.
Where has everyone gone? I’d go look, but I hate to leave a good hiding place.