1962, Donora, Pennsylvania

By Scott Mastro

Squinched to the box width and eyes closed and purring in the garden shack two-day-old shade, each a color variation of the mother and one another, the runt arrived, double-cursed, black. Seven newborns, eight teats; a good chance of survival for all.

The boy understood he could sit and watch but not touch, wanting to roll one off the others, pawing, stretching, the mother shifting every so.

“Leave Nature alone,” the old man told him, but he worried for the littlest and he’d take of that one if the old man let him.

His fear hidden by the grapevines, the boy said, “I hope nothin’ happens to ‘em,” side-saddled on the door-stoop, head in the wet-smelling interior, legs in the sun.

The old man walked slow and steady, pushing thick glasses up his nose, a blue bandana tied in corners on his head, row by row sunk down from the road, the lower half of the hillside a natural earth-indentation sagging from the mines, carved only 10 feet below.

Strung down from the house, a hose nourished the lettuce, cucumbers, onions, carrots, peppers, and even the grapevines and the quartet of trees, apple, plum, peach, cherry, but the tomato plants received a bucket each, twice a day.

Leaning into the shack as far as he could, toes anchoring him to the allowable ground, the tips of his tennis shoes drug to the soil, rutting the dry ground, hands on the door-frame supporting him, craning his neck to the kittens, their rising and leveling bodies breathing.

His mother would let him have one, she’d said. What would he name it? Galahad? Rooty? He scratched his leg, his weight on one hand. A kitten yawned, a silent sound, tiny tongue and barely teeth, mouth as pink as the edge of the morning sky on the hilltops.

The old man put his bucket down. Here he was near the door.

“Don’t go in there.”

The boy’s body shot back, the sun making him squint, raising his hand as a shield.

The old man sat down under his vines, pulling the bandana from his head, wiping his brow, then the back of his neck. He put the bandana back on his head.

The boy stood, folded his arms, and walked in a circle on his heels.

Up the hill, his mother called. He dropped full-footed to the ground.

“Coming. My mother’s gonna’ let me have one.”

A girl went by on a bicycle. The old man didn’t speak. The boy circled on tiptoe looking into the shack. He exhaled.

“My Mom wants me.”

He moved in front of the old man squinting, his eyes blurred by thick lenses, scrunching his nose, as if reading the boy’s face then looking into the bucket, his Jonah to its whale.

“I’ll come when I’m done.” The boy lifted his bike off its side, walking it to the gate in the full glare of the sun, the coolness of the shack, the kittens and their dozing mother in his head, clicking the gate behind him and struggling to pedal up the hill, the first few strokes taking all his might.

The sun was hiding in the treetops when the boy returned. He’d hosed the sidewalks and the outside cement walls, tied up old newspapers, and studied spelling for half an hour. He’d watered his own little garden like the old man, the hose for everything and the bucket for the tomatoes, laying in the shade afterwards, thinking about the kittens.

The old man was closing the gate behind him, a burlap sack dangling from his clenched hand, a chipped brick in the other. He handed it to the boy, the boy pretending it was a bar of gold and he a Brinks guard walking from the armored truck to the bank.

They walked down the rest of the hill. At the two-lane, crossing carefully, the old man’s age and load both factors, he squinted and wheezed as they started down through the woods. It wasn’t fun like delivering gold anymore, just carrying a dumb brick in the woods. His father’d said, “Some people are dumb as a brick.”

He pretended he was carrying his English teacher’s brain, Mr. Wetford. English was boring. Mr. Wetford made sure of it, his droning voice and robotic drills. The boy likened Mr. Wetford’s classes to carrying this brick in these woods, the old man walking like Mr. Wetford’s classes, the boy’s imagination walking on to the river ahead of them.

What was this thing, “old age,” this tired, dragging slowness. The old man was old and his parents were as old as they’d ever be. He’d be a little boy forever, sitting in Wetford’s classes an eternity, riding his bike, spraying sidewalks, and now a kitten, to sleep with, to play with and pet, to think about during Mr. Wetford’s classes.

The sun was near down when they reached the water, but its tendrils still laced the sky, making a rim of red over the hilltop’s edge.

The old man lowered the sack to the ground. He pointed to the brick. The boy gave it, returning Mr. Wetford’s brain to a store that would fix it and make it run faster.

The old man placed the brick in the sack and tied a knot in the top.

“Throw it,” he said, swimming his hand out over the water.

Now the boy was a strong man in a tossing contest. He lifted the sack so it hung down his back, the knot resting firmly in his grip on his neck. He swirled the sack around him once, twice, launching it out over the water, a perfect score from the judges, as it slapped the surface and sloshed down under the broken calm, bubbling, gurgling, fighting a moment to stay afloat, then folding and disappearing, the boy doing his end-zone victory dance. He looked at the old man standing silent, squinting.

The boy thought of the garden shack. The walk back would take years.

Staff writing for Image Magazine, ghost writing for Arbor Books, business writing for The Poised and Purposed Pen, and freelancing the world wide, Scott Mastro has and continues to live all over the place. His novel, Monkey Business ~ Close Up When You’re Done or Two Chimps and a Chump, has been compared to the works of Jack Kerouac, George Carlin, and Douglas Adams. Find him at dyingwriters.com/mdw/ScottMastro.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Monday, November 27th, 2006 | Email This Post

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