Fruit Beer

Running past the Scrambler he feels the stiffness of the grass under his tennis shoes, the crunch and the give of the blades, the enduring strength of young legs, and fresh excitement verging on hysteria. His right knee is stiff with scab and pulls as he runs but he dare not stop: there is ice cream and corn dogs and ski-ball and the sugary smile of the new girl in his class. He saw her and he returned her smile and then he ran and ran and ran.

He’s right about twelve and he talks far too loud and too often. Mop headed with dirty blond, coated in sweat and awkwardness he feels the beginning of school loom heavy on the back of his neck. A horrifying weight and a tantalizing opportunity to start everything fresh. The past week has been disappointing and confusing, but perhaps this year he will uncover the best friend movies promise … the companion who will share his adventures as he fights his way through junior high, who will grasp his wrist and pull him up when he falls, smiling with understanding and amusement.

His mother insists on buying him shoes that are slightly larger than his feet. Ever frugal she hopes to borrow against his comfort and safety to save the cost of a pair of shoes every few months. The toe of his right shoe catches on the ground in front of the Hurricane and he feels himself hurtling through the heat and the sun and the laughter and the music. For a moment he is suspended by fair magic, sustained and floating on the scent of cinnamon and the smile of a girl. He hits the ground sloppily, a bag of matches bouncing and settling. Pushing himself to his hands and knees he feels the heat of shame rising from his chest to his neck…. ‘nothing hurt but my pride’ his grandpa would have said. His face tries to crumple but he forces it to a casual smile, a good-natured grin, a charming resolution that this was but a moment of silliness and good sport.

He rises like James Stewart, surveying his own gangly failure with ‘aw shucks’ resolve and dusts himself off as though the clumps of dirt and dried grass are but a part of the show. The facade is thin and crackling as his face blushes a furious red, streaks that run from the apple of his cheeks down to his jawline. Surveying the social damage he spots those sweet lips, the sparkling eyes that had met his just moments before – now they are turned down with concern and the sugary mouth is formed into a bow of dismay and …. something that he can only identify as a kind of shame.

Is she embarrassed for him or embarrassed that she’d been connected with him, if only for the brief exchange of a smile?

Is it really shame?

Is it the same shame he feels; as if the fall was defining, was an etching of ‘this is me’ on his soul, on his character?

Is he ‘the boy who trips’? Is he ‘the boy who talks too loud?’ Is he ‘the boy with no friends?’

Is she ‘the girl who smiled at the boy who talks too loud? Is she ‘the girl who liked the boy who trips’, even if just for a moment?

I watch them both from my great distance, sipping and hurting at the familiar confusion. I want to tell them both that they are so much more and less than what they are thinking. They are whole and complicated and ugly and spectacular but mostly that they are not done, we never are. I want to tell him he’s remarkable because he noticed the way the grass felt under his shoes. I want to tell her that she is so right in smiling at the gangly mop headed boy before checking out his social credentials to see what it might cost her.

He turns from her shame and her concern and sighs into the kettle corn cloud of an August evening. He saw her dismay and felt the pull to turn his back as though a cord extended from his guts to the funnel cake and drew him about; as though she had no right to usurp his fall as her shame. She sees the rectangle of his thin back and feels a fresh kind of smallness, shrinking inside her yellow summer dress.

As the evening cools our young man walks away with steady resolve. “You can call me Jimmy,” he whispers under his breath. “Everyone does.”