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At
the Turn Around Nobody ever came
down to the turn around unless they were lost
or missed the driveway of one of the nice houses further up. Then they had to turn
around at Charlie’s
trailer, where we lived in those days.
Drafty and wind-loud in the fall and winter. Holes in the floor yawning
mosquitoes through
in the summer. Rats,
too, but I smashed
them with my yellow wiffle ball bat.
Actually got pretty good at it.
Dropped their broken asses back down the hole they crawled
through as a
warning to their friends. I kept that bat
around, rats or no. It
was good for swatting bees out of the
air. And Charlie’s
nuts. Left or right. Sometimes both if he was
loaded and came
after me or Manny or our mom. So
I kept
that bat around. Slept
with it most
nights. Manny had it one
morning.
He was thumping around.
I jerked
awake and snatched for it right off, not knowing what the noise was. Except he was thumping
around with it out in
the living room. I
walked out there and
he was swatting at a big red balloon I won for him at the spring
carnival. He must
have been at it for a while judging
by how he was sweating. His
face was red
except for a pale v-shaped scar over his right eyebrow where Charlie
busted him
a while back for tracking mud into the trailer. My first thought
was to cuss him out and swat him around a
little bit. He
needed to toughen up
anyhow if he was gonna take people’s shit.
And especially if he was gonna survive at the turn around. But he was having fun and
looked like he was
really trying, so I let him go. He was twisting
himself into the floor with each swing, from his
ankles up to his floppy brown hair.
It
looked painful, but he could bend and twist his little kid body all
kinds of
ways. Thankfully he
hadn’t broken a lamp
or something. Charlie
would have taken
it out of his ass and probably tried to come after me, too, for letting
it
happen. I told Manny go
slow.
Just try to tap your balloon.
Feel the balance in the bat.
Get
to know it. He did that for a
while until he got good at keeping the balloon
off the floor. The
second I turned my
back, he whacked that balloon and it popped.
Scared him, too, the noise.
He
started crying. I
told him balloons are
gonna pop, baby bro. That’s
life. Try not to be
scared. He snotted and
slobbered about how he was sorry and he really
liked the balloon because I got it for him.
I liked that he thought that, and I was tired of his
crying, so I ran
down to CVS and stole him a bag of balloons. We blew those
things up and swatted them around.
It was good because we didn’t have much else
to do on summer days. Manny
didn’t
realize that I was blowing the balloons up smaller each time to help
him get
better with the bat. After a few days
of boy versus balloons, it was all wins for
Manny. He was
walking around with his
chin up. I didn’t
mind if he had my bat
so long as it was within reach at night.
Turns out I didn’t have to worry about that for long. I saw a blue bat pretty
much the same as my
yellow one in a garbage can up the street.
I pulled it out for Manny. We ran out of
balloons the next week. I
told him I wasn’t gonna steal him another
bag because it was stupid to steal petty shit.
Then I had an idea. I
grabbed a
bag of frozen peas out of the freezer and started lobbing them to him. He couldn’t swat
them at first and was about to cry, but he
toughened up and got his shit together.
We got through half the bag before he started really
whacking those
things. Then I
flicked them at him like
little green missiles. He
turned on one
and it zipped past my ear. I
was like,
damn, baby bro! Manny stopped for
a second and wiped his face on his shirt
sleeve. He rubbed
the v-shaped scar over
his brow with his finger. He
cocked his
bat, ready to slice the air again.
Charlie was gonna be surprised if he ever came after Manny
or our mom
when I wasn’t around. I
smiled thinking
about it. Manny was
probably thinking
the same thing the way he giggled and grinned real huge. Jeff Burd spends a lot of time writing and thinking about writing, and worrying about not writing and thinking about writing. His flash work has appeared recently in Scribble, MacQueen's Quinterly, and Hobart. He is a graduate of the Northwestern University writing program, and works as a Reading Specialist at Zion-Benton Township High School in Zion, IL.
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