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Saving the Summer
by Travis MacMillan
The summer of 1990 saw the death of countless brave Italian plumbers in the neighborhood of my childhood, Rice Mill. I would like to think, looking back, that they did not die in vain. That their sacrifice amounted to something, something bigger than the sum total of their lives’ calculated worth by a cold utilitarianism mathematics. What that “bigger” was, I cannot say, but I knew it was true in the part of my heart that words can’t reach. The part of my heart that died the summer of 1990. Walking through the neighborhood in summertime with Lyle, my friend since pre-school, was a hallowed tradition of sorts. We bounced back and forth between our houses playing video games at one of them until the mom who ruled the respective home unceremonially ended our gaming and told us to “play outdoors” or to “get some exercise.” Once ousted, we walked to the other Nintendo at the opposite end of our small upper middle class neighborhood to continue playing indoors, free of the shackles of either exercise or nature. One care-free evening after Lyle got Super Mario Bros. 3, we were forced to yet again make the familiar passage from one cool de sac to the other. “Dude! The new Mario is so awesome that I almost forget about part two being the retarded cousin of the series. All the different suits are so awesome, John. Makes me wish I had a hammer head suit to wear when we go back to middle school so I could throw a hammer through the gym’s trophy case,” Lyle says in an awesome way as we saunter down Springhouse Drive. “Yeah, I totally know. I wish my dad wasn’t so cheap and would buy it for me too. I wasted my allowance I had been saving at the flea market last week on some crappy ninja sword. I broke it on the first stupid tree I hit with it and now…,” I say as I look off into the never to be grasped future, “it’ll be at least another month before I can buy my own Mario 3.” Curses. I had tried taking the remaining shards of the poor shattered weapon back the next day to the vendor in a brown paper bag. He was a rather portly Santa-esque biker looking figure, who very well might have moonlighted as a carnie when he wasn’t hocking cheap crap on the weekends. He asked gruffly in a somewhat curious tone how I broke the sword. When I told him my story he said “Yep, they’re pretty crappy swords. No refunds though. Sooo… you wanna buy another one, kid?” By God if I were a real ninja, I would have taken that shabbily dressed man’s head for his insolence and then dragged the decapitated flabby corpse to the nearest black market. Then, once enough alcohol abused organs and fists of cash had gone back and forth, I would have my Super Mario 3. “John, I could understand your dad not being able to get you the new Mario if you only had a one story house like poor Larry’s, but you’ve got a two story, John!” Lyle says while shaking his head ever so lightly back and forth. “Sometimes… I think… my dad wants me to think I’m poor, Lyle. I really do.” “Why? That’s stupid! Is your dad a Democrat?!!” “No, no!! God, no! He’s a Republican, Lyle! You know that! It’s just that he thinks I should learn the value of money or something.” “What the hell does that mean? How can you learn the value of money by not having it to spend? So do the poor understand money better than…” “No, no it’s that… I mean… like, I’ll understand its value by knowing that it cost something to get it… I guess.” Lyle’s feet stop and begin to fill with a rising indignation that escapes from his mouth after the disbelief fades. “That is more retarded than the second Mario, John. You should make your dad play the second Mario after playing the third one and say, ‘Dad. This is what the crap you say about knowing the value of money is like. Lame and not worth putting into my Nintendo. So shut up, stop being cheap, and buy me the damn game already!’ I just don’t get your dad, John.” “Yeah, to be honest, I don’t get him either. Maybe because he grew up poor he’s that way. I don’t know, Lyle. It has to do with ‘character’ or something. I dunno.”
“One time my dad started to
talk about “character” or some crap like that and my mom started to
laugh, but tried to keep a straight face till they both started
dying laughing and had to leave the room. Dad said we’d have the
talk later after they get back from Europe.” Adjusting to the sunlight as he comes out from the wooded area, he calls out to us. “Hey… uh… kids!” Todd’s eyes are on fire as he wears a relaxed yet crooked grin. There was something about him that seemed off but I couldn’t place it. He pulls his blaring headphones behind his ears off, rests them on his shoulders, and then finds a crinkled cigarette from behind his left ear that was hiding beneath his hair. As Todd flicks and raises his green lighter to his mouth, his head jerks back slightly while his eyes lit up, opening relatively wide. Regaining himself, he swaps the crinkled cigarette out for another one behind the right ear that he examines for a second. Finding it smoother, he lights it up and starts to smoke in a somewhat satisfied manner. “So ya’ll enjoying your summer?” “Yeah… I guess so. We’ve only got one month left before we gotta go back to...,” Lyle answers with a matter of factness that kids usually reserve for the quizzing of adults. “Awww! That’s too bad,” Todd interrupts with words not touched by the remotest sense of sympathy as he exhales. “I remember summer vacation and school and all that sh*t. You know one day all that will be over, right? Ya’ll are going to have to get jobs you f*cking hate and join the real world where life sucks. So you little f*ckers better enjoy this sh*t and make the most out of it ‘cause its going to be gone, and after that even your f*cking memories of these happy lil’ days will start to fade, and all summer will be to you is just the time of year when everything is just really really f*cking hot.” Lyle and I stand speechless. I glance over and see that he’s clutching the Super Mario 3 cartridge tightly in his quivering hands. Todd bends over slightly putting his left hand on his knee to make himself eye level with us and grins as he flicks his unfinished cigarette to the side like a warrior casting aside his sword’s sheath as he prepares to deliver the coup de grâce. “You girls enjoy the rest of your summer, okay?” Then he kinda stumbled away while laughing to himself, delighting in the gravitas of his impromptu speech. For a good ten minute we stood like corpses as his words sunk deeper and deeper inside of us. Never before had I contemplated the transience of my life nor life in general for that matter. My dad’s allergy to pet dander had shielded me from the pain of having to say goodbye to furry friends as they were tossed into a cold, merciless ground. None of my grandparents had passed on yet; they still had many years of spoiling me in praise of my good grades ahead of them. Always and forever, I had seen life as an endless cycle of school and summer with the Christmas holiday joyfully meeting me halfway to raise my spirits for the rest of the trek to summer’s sweet perpetual embrace. Life was a game with unlimited continues where you got an extra 30 men if you knew the right code to put into the title screen. Now, I caught a glimpse further through the hourglass of time and saw the unforgiving grains of sand that were covering over me slowly but surely, until I am buried and forgotten, and the once sacred mantra “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A” is but the mumblings of a tired and broken old man whose mind and time are now gone. That moment in time of my sixth grade summer forever broke the way I viewed every moment after that. Childhood had died. Game over. Later that night, we egged the hell out of that loser Todd’s car. I tried slashing his tires too but the damn blade broke on the butterfly knife that I bought at the Flea Market. I think I finally understood what “character” was that night, too. When the blade snapped on the tire, I still managed to use it to scratch what was left of the faded paint on Todd’s bomb even though it was hard to find amongst the rust in the night’s darkness. I never did buy my own Super Mario 3, but my 401k is pretty damn good and I should be up for partner at the firm soon if I don’t drink myself to death before then. ------ “Uncle John!” “Uh… yeah, uh… what Samuel?” My nephew’s voice returned me once again to my sister’s porch as I sat recovering from the Thanksgiving festivities. Awww… nostalgia and alcohol. They have such a wonderful way of disconnecting me from the present moment. I completely forgot the impetus of my sister’s shotgun wedding was sitting there with his two cousins listening to me drunkenly ramble on. “Uncle John, why are your stories always so bad? They never make any sense. Ever.” “I don’t know… Sam,” I ponder as I look past the sun as it putters aimlessly down the horizon. “Why do you have to embarrass your daddy by never starting a game in baseball? Maybe you should try out for cheerleading next year, huh? With your skinny little legs, who knows, you might be the one on top of the pyramid that all the football players want to take to the prom.” “I…I hate you Uncle John!” Samuel quivers back behind teary eyes as he bursts through the front door. In a strange masochistic way, I sort of am looking forward to my sister and I quarreling over my “lack of sensitivity”. Anger fires up my buzz like a roll of mentos in a diet coke bottle, and now that yesterday’s spell is broken, I need another escape. “Hey, Samantha! Grab your uncle another beer while you’re crying to your mom in the kitchen, will ya?” “That wasn’t very nice, Uncle John,” little Cindy says as she peers up at me evidently expecting more from a parental figure than I was delivering. “No… I suppose it wasn’t, was it? Well, did you two enjoy your Uncle John’s story?” I ask as I give them my full yet less than sober attention. They stare helplessly at me. Within their eyes, both a tender fear and a puzzled blankness stare back at me. The fear is due to a bitter jerk asking them to tell him something that will inevitably anger him. The blankness is from the moral quandary of having to either decide to tell the truth or to avoid the claws of the drunken tiger by lying. “I…uhhh … liked it?” Cindy forces past her conscience. Good girl. Best to learn to play the game early before any naïve idealism begins to take shape in you. It makes the whole “growing up” thing less painful, I think. “Yeah, yeah. Me too, Uncle John! Me too!” “That is so good to hear Cindy and Sivan.” I beam back at them as my face threatens to rip from my forced smile. Sivan is only 5. I’d need at least another three beers to rip into her feelings like I did Samuel. I’m no monster. Cindy is 8, however, and that’s old enough to get an emotional beat down in my book. By “book”, what I really mean is the ever changing list of justifications I manufacture in vain to try and hinder my conscience in its crusade to demonize me. Try as I might, I can’t ever seem to drown my damn super ego in booze. Looking around, I feel the usual restlessness settle on me. That and I really have to take a piss. “I think your uncle needs to go for a walk, kids…” Standing up, my legs wobble a bit, but no more than any seasoned sailor’s legs would when he was out to sea. I walk towards the sunset without much in the way of fanfare over my departure. The girls start whispering as I begin to escape ear shot. Cheryl, my sister, did well for herself marrying Chet. Chet’s family owns a bunch of those crappy Quincy restaurants that you only find traveling on the interstate. Lousy food or not, they have a really giant lake in their colossal back yard that I’m enjoying at the moment. It almost seems like the lake stretches out past the horizon that is pulling me into itself as I lose myself in the view. Captured by the tranquil lake, the sun’s golden reflection infuses the body of water with a temporary majesty. Beautiful. How incredibly beautiful. The warm yet brilliant colors burn the sky along with the water with a god-like fire that melts away all of my problems along with everything that I hate about myself. Makes me wish I learned to paint, I guess, so I could capture this moment, or at least the idea of this moment, and hold onto it long after the original has decayed somewhere in the back of my mind. Perhaps the heart holds onto such things. Not as distinct things onto themselves, but rather in some kinda patchwork that is just rolled up and mashed together in one big ball. That would make sense. It would explain why I can look at a sunset as wonderful as this and yet have tears stream down my face. “Dammit,” I mutter to myself as I throw a stone into the lake shattering the illusion. My wife with our newborn, Ichabod, is probably ready to leave and make the drive back to our house. I turn around one final time and absorb as much of the sunset into my heart as I think there is room for. “Good bye, sun.” Walking up the stone laden path to the ante-bellum style plantation home, I see Samuel slowly twisting back and forth on an old tire swing suspended from a large oak. Staring at a large patch of dirt, he is unaware of my presence. I suppose he is absorbing the dirt into his heart. “Hey… Samuel.” “What Uncle John,” he says with his downward gaze weakening as he slowly raises his head. Sighing, I lift my head from the former place of his focus. I stare as deeply and softly into his eyes as a bastard like me can. “I’m sorry for saying those stupid things to you earlier. I… I didn’t mean them. Will you forgive your stupid uncle?” Samuel uses his elbows to launch himself out of the swing as gracefully as a kid who warms the bench can, landing three or so feet from me. He looks down again at first, then back up at me sheepishly. In his eyes is something familiar yet somehow now very foreign to me at this point in my life. For the life of me, I can not place it. “Uncle John…” “Yes, Samuel?” As the “..el” was released from the boy’s name, he steps forward, driving his little foot less than gently up into my balls. The welcoming ground receives my graceless crash magnanimously. Like the prodigal son, I have returned. “I still hate you, Uncle John!” As I lie in the dust watching my nephew storm off, I try to say “you should try out for soccer” but the words find no place to take root. Owww. The other members of my clan look on from the porch that is quickly gathering with gawkers gleaming with both curiosity and shadenfreude. Yeah. The bastard got his. Enjoy the show you assholes. As I spit the dirt that has combined with my spittle to form mud out of my mouth, little Cindy walks over to me as meek as a little lamb. With her arms behind her back and her red curls bouncing angelically over her blue eyes, she looks so dear, so precious. “Uncle John?” she sings. “Huhhhhkkk… yes, Cindy? “It was a stupid story.” “I know, Cindy. Thanks for telling me.” ------ “Mr. John!” “Uhhh, uhh… yes? What is it? What do you want?” “It’s time for your medicine. You can finish telling everybody your story after you finish taking your medication, okay?” Furrowing my brow, I snatch the little cups and down their contents as begrudgingly as a senile old curmudgeon can in petty indignation for being interrupted. “These kids nowadays respect nothing and no one. When I was younger we knew what it was to respect one’s elders! Anyway… where was I…” “Not now, John! Matlock is coming on. Shhh… Finish your story later,” the chorus of my enfeebled fellow nursing home residents barks at me in unison. But there will be no later. I doze off in my recliner in the retirement home and drift off into forever. No one notices until Matlock is over when a nurse tries to wake me so that I can choke down a microwave Salisbury steak supper. I loved Salisbury steak. Why couldn’t death have waited for meatloaf night? After I am lowered into the ground, all that will remain of me is what the sun retained of my memory in its heart from so many years ago. God, I hope the sun has some kind of consciousness.
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