Everyday People Read online

  Jackson slips into the water and walks until his waist barely rises above the water line. He stands on sucking clay. Two summers ago a boy drowned when the clay sucked him under. Jackson imagines what it is like to drown. Pulled under until the water rushes into your mouth and throat, tasting brackish like the exhalation of water oak roots into the river. If you are not careful, it is easy to die; but they are riverboys, and soon they will be five bodies floating on the river, staring at the sky and the bridge, watching the world drag above them.

  For now, Jackson is alone and twelve, letting the water stick his hair to his head and press some bits of pine straw to his side. He closes his eyes, water drops on his nose, and he listens to the hushed echoic sounds of water worlds. For a second he imagines he can feel Eric’s fingers on his stomach. His eyes open, blue and cross-eyed staring at the galaxy of overlapping stars in the sky; he sees Eric’s face, long and angular like a dog’s, black skin everywhere, green eyes staring over thick eyelashes. He’s beautiful and skinny and Jackson wants to punch him in the nose to make him ugly. He wants to punch him because he doesn’t want to feel anything for somebody who is going to leave him again.

  The voices of his friends carry through the graveyard stillness of the rail yard. They’re nearby, and he is a naked body floating on the water. He doesn’t care. He lets the water fill his ears.

  Their loss is already a distant hurt in his chest.

  la même bouche

  French is the last class of the day. Madame Gray points at the whiteboard with her fingers spread and her hand pushed up; he remembers using that same gesture to play Itsy Bitsy Spider with his mother. Madame’s bangles clang, and she looks around with slightly bugged blue eyes at them, trying to make it clear that passé composé avec avoir does not apply to reflexive verbs. Jackson knows that the way that he knows colors and days of the week; it is probably a distinction too simple and insulting of French’s abstract complexity, he thinks with a bored smile, but it is one he made months ago when he started French II. Être is for verbs of movement and verbs that reflect and rebound to the speaker; avoir is for the external, non-self verbs. He told himself to remember it, and he has remembered it for the most part. He looks down at his desk. His passé composé test has no red marks, just black checks next to the fifty regular verbs he has conjugated into the past tense. French makes sense to him. The patterns, conjugations, order, and strictures of the language are not always easy to understand, but it triggers something in his mind like memories of things he has never experienced.

  A second-string running back sits next to him, his back against the wall, with his broad thighs spread, watching from under his wide brow with a bored look. Madame makes no sense to him. He nudges at Jackson’s leg, and Jackson looks at him. He is dark-haired, brown-eyed, and tan skin peeks from the collar of his Polo shirt. There’s a ghost of a scar in the little indent of his upper lip, curled like a lizard’s tail. He smells like Old Spice. There is something grinding and burning in the air, and Jackson can feel it. It makes him want to throw up. He doesn’t. He cuts his eyes away. Jackson is fourteen and tall but skinny. His shoulders are getting broader and his stomach firmer every day, but he can’t seem to put on weight. Not enough to try out for a team. He doesn’t want to, anyway, he says to Daddy, who teases him every night about not playing sports. He wouldn’t be good at it. He isn’t a sissy, just clumsy.

  They play video games, and he watches all the lights zip up and down the outside of the machines. He is poor, but a lot of the kids in his high school are poor, from the projects. The running back’s name is Davis Howell. He’s a confident but shy guy of sixteen who hangs out with his friends in the mall. He is the son of a local news anchor. He is good at math. They have math together, too, and Davis talks to him sometimes. They exchange bored smiles and laugh. Davis has warm eyes, but he gets into trouble. He’s always looking around, chatting up the people closest to him. He is good at making people like him. Jackson likes him. Something gets between them and keeps them apart, though. It feels like a force field. Some tense force holding them at a distance like two magnets with the same charge.

  Davis nudges his leg again and motions with a helpless flap of his hand toward his test paper. He mouths Help and laughs. Madame catches it, sends a glare their way. Her eyes are puffy underneath. She slaps the board, saying through her nose with a tinge of Southern accent, “Darling, you need to pay attention.” They are all Darling or Chou. They go by French names in class. Davis is Cédric and Jackson is Jacques. Davis picked his name out for him. They had French I last semester. Davis leaned over and pointed at it on the paper; Jackson can still feel the warm breath on the back of his neck, and the way his fingers twitched on the page. Davis gives him a sad look, a faked sad look, and then smiles. Something remains of the sadness, though. Jackson can feel it, or thinks he can. Some deep sadness. Davis gets straight As, but in French only Cs or Ds. Jackson writes in an even, left-handed scrawl on the end of his paper, 7 the gully. He rips this corner off of his paper and tosses it at Davis, his insides twisting. He doesn’t look at Davis to see if it’s a yes or a no.

  Davis nudges his leg again, and they remain that way, magnetic rubbing against the field of their like charge.

  At seven, Jackson waits in what everyone calls the gully; it is not a gully, just a place near an old bridge with no river. It’s an overpass now. It’s deserted, except for the few people who spill into the bottom of the echoing cement tunnels for shelter or to sell drugs. The homeless people sleep there sometimes, but not in March. The sky is heavy and dark for seven, but it is not too cold. It is a mild winter day, and the wide sky hangs between the old brick buildings. Jackson waits for Davis on a cement ledge, staring down at the open belly of the cement tube. If he dropped down there, he would die. He contemplates dying. He doesn’t want to go home yet. Mama is probably cooking instant ramen again, and Daddy is sitting on the couch, watching reruns of Sanford and Son. His daddy is pale and red-faced, with a green-ink tattoo of twisted vines going down his left hand. His mother is wispy and frail, her body constantly shaking as if cold or scared. Jackson stares at the bottom of the gray pipe where a river used to run, imagining what it would have been like to slip away and die a hard, echoing death. The air between them is always ready to erupt into war cries. The yips of chaos dogs bay in the distance as he thinks of his parents. More cars. He leans forward on the railing. He hears crunching. He feels Davis. Davis walks with a wide swing of his legs and his hands stuffed in his pockets, always.

  Jackson looks back at him and feels his stomach clench. Davis sits next to him on the rail and puts his chin up on the cold bar. Their breath turns to gray ash between them. They’re sitting close enough to touch, and for a moment they do just that, sit with their hips touching, their blood dragging between sensitized planes of skin. It’s enough to sit next to Davis. Davis is wearing a blue flannel shirt under a gray jacket, and it makes his skin look dark. He smiles. The braces are gone and have left a wide, beautiful smile. His legs shake. Davis is sixteen. Older than him. He brushes a shoulder against Jackson. Jackson hangs his weight against the bar. It feels like comedy, but no one is talking. Davis leans closer. Jackson retreats, but Davis just laughs at the corner of his mouth and leans closer anyway. It’s dark and gray all at once.

  Their mouths touch.

  Jackson’s breath shudders in his throat, and he thinks about Daphne Christianson, who he kissed at a party when he was thirteen. He thinks about her skin under his hands, and the fear, wild and hectic, racing through him everywhere. He thinks about how she smelled, the press of her body, and how they fumbled through the experience. Kissing Davis is not like that. Davis is an expert, and his mouth is not shy. It is assertive and warm, verging on overheating. He makes a deep, gritty sound in the back of his throat, and Jackson feels something warm give way inside of him. Davis slides his fingers against Jackson’s skin, leaving behind a sensation like a bone-deep thirst. Jackson grips the end of Davis’s jacket.


  Their lips slide apart, and Davis pants with a broad grin. Jackson can’t look up; he stares down, his body thumping. Davis’s hand slides over the back of his neck, and Jackson coughs, finally laughing. Davis is good at math, and Jackson knows that this is some calculated move on his part, but he can’t help it. He likes the way Davis talks and moves and walks and hangs his hands on his pockets. He likes the way Davis’s clothes always seem just right, the way their colors are bright and well-kept, not dull. He likes the angles of his hips just below his stomach, and the way he catches then runs, even if he’s not that fast. He doesn’t mind that Davis is second-string. He likes Davis. For all the squinting and laughing and getting into trouble, Davis has so much energy that he seems always on the brink of snapping.

  They sit for a while together, mouths grazing and fingers pulling along the solid ridges of their denim jeans. They’re getting to know each other’s edges. Davis kisses him and asks if they can meet again. Jackson nods, then shrugs. He doesn’t want to seem to want it. He doesn’t want to want it. Davis gets up and walks backward, grinning at him. When he is gone he licks his lips. They are raw from Davis’s teeth. His fingertips hum from the rasp of having touched Davis’s jaw. His body feels scraped and abraded. He is hard and the sensation of wanting but not having is familiar to him. He glances at the imprint of his erection.

  To get hard. Which auxiliary does that take in the past?

  nouveau et ancien

  The wrestling team has a 100 percent acceptance policy, and because Jackson is human, he qualifies for a spot on the junior varsity team. He is sixteen, and after four months of working out and practicing, his body is strong and firm. He is no longer tall for his age, and has evened into a healthy six feet no inches. He is taller than Daddy, who is only five-ten, but Daddy is stronger than him, though not by a lot. Jackson works out every day after school for two hours. Working out is lifting weights and running laps, trying to put weight on and turn it into lean muscle. His arms are muscular and taut, his stomach is even, and he can see the beginning of muscles peeking through the skin. He is not a good wrestler, but he likes the long bus rides to wrestling meets. He likes getting to see the river slide under the bridges; he likes the way the light in the trees spills into the quiet of the long rows of pine and oak that line the roads. He likes stepping off the bus into new places. At each school, he strips down and lets them weigh him. He then stands around listening to the sounds of bodies thumping mats and shouts ripping through the air in terse barks of command.

  He wrestles at the 165 class. He handles his weight okay, but the other boys are faster and stronger than he is; their hearts are in it. He would rather be somewhere watching the sun track across the tops of buildings or reading. He writes in energetic bursts on the backs of napkins from fast-food restaurants when he gets spare moments. These he crams into the side of his backpack. The other boys don’t write. They stand with their hands on their hips, staring under their eyes at their opponents across the gym and chewing thick wads of gum to limber up their mouths. They are dark-skinned and curly-haired.

  There is a pair of Italian brothers with English last names from their daddy’s side, Southern through and through. Their names bring cheers. They are known throughout the state. They are gifted athletes, and watching them is thrilling. The older one, Justin, has English with Jackson. He sits in the back with his head down. He has diabetes, and has a wire sticking from under his shirt. His arms are thick, his body tight, and everywhere there is muscle, no fat. He walks with a shuffle-footed swagger, smelling like sweat and something like cinnamon. His body makes Jackson’s hands itch. He has warm skin. He is always pulling Jackson into a headlock and farting in his face when he walks by. Justin is loud and eager for a fight.

  The younger one is Heath, and his hair is very dark and shorter than Justin’s, but curly. His body is not as heavy as his brother’s, but he moves with the same shuffle-footed walk. He is shy and picks at his shirt when he talks. His voice is still cracking from the change. He is fifteen, and he has the same birthday as Jackson. Heath and Jackson sit together sometimes on the buses, slumped down next to one another. He asks Jackson if he wants to come over and swim, but Jackson always says no. He is embarrassed because he does not have swimming clothes. He is more embarrassed that he does not want to be around the boys with better bodies all throwing each other into the body. He does not want to go because he does want to go and does not want to want to go.

  The last time he wanted, the wanting turned to long nights sweating on top of his sheets, waiting for Davis to answer his text message. Or waiting to see him the next day. He wasn’t built for that kind of wanting. He isn’t now. Heath makes him uneasy, but he likes the way Heath laughs, in that raspy, breathy way that is barely getting air inside and outside. He likes the way Heath does not insist or beg for company, but seems to want it the same way he does. It is nice.

  • • •

  Jackson is sitting outside of the school on a bench at the end of the school day. There is no practice today, so he sits and writes in a notebook so that he does not have to go home to Mama throwing Daddy out again. She has already thrown him out four times this week, and it is only Wednesday. He can’t keep up with their ripping and raring. Their change is too fast, too sudden, too much for him to keep inside of his head; it makes him dizzy. So he sits and leans over his notebook, writing nonsense lines of poetry about the winding crack in the brick outside of his window. He has been writing poetry since Madame Gray suggested it to him. Writing to him is not so much relaxing as it is an erratic and fast-breathing attempt to scratch out something true. His heart is beating faster, because he still does not understand what to do about Heath, and his sideways script turns from sidewalk to Heath and he writes in loose French: Je ne sais pas.

  A shadow sticks across the edge of his book. Heath stands above him, looking down at his notebook. Jackson pulls it away, out of breath and afraid that something showed even though he knows it didn’t. Heath smiles in a confused, small way, and he drops down on the bench. They’re sitting together when Davis walks by across the pavilion. Jackson’s eyes sting, but he shrugs and drops his notebook into his backpack. Davis stops and stares at them. Heath speaks quietly, his voice deep and wobbling between pitches. He wants to know if Jackson wants to go hang out. Come this time, he says with an exasperated look. Jackson can feel Davis’s eyes on the back of his neck. Heath’s eyes are olive green. How did he get eyes like that? He reaches out and puts his hand on Jackson’s knee, and Jackson turns red-faced.

  “Okay,” Jackson says. Heath grins and slaps his knee.

  He stands and hangs his backpack on his shoulder, and Davis, who has watched all of this, frowns and walks away. Jackson watches him go. He will have to do something about that, he thinks later. There will come a time when he and Davis must talk about the time when they were together last, rolling around in Davis’s room, pulling at shirts and their bodies against one another. It never went further than that. Davis kept pressing, touching him, and Jackson wasn’t sure he was ready for more than what they were already doing. He stopped talking. Stopped coming around. Stopped leaving notes in his locker. The hurt in Jackson’s chest flexes and cuts deeper, coils around something like fear, a hard little knot of want. Davis, Jackson thinks. Heath reaches for him, grips his shoulder, and Jackson’s head jerks toward him.

  “Where’d you go, space cadet? Earth to Jackson.”

  “I’m here,” Jackson says. “I’m here.”

  “Let’s go, then,” Heath says, and Jackson nods again, but he’s thinking still about Davis, the pressure of his body, the solidity of it on the bed, how they’d lain there together, touching, close. The wet sound of Davis’s breathing. His thick eyelashes. He’d fallen asleep there next to Davis, and had gone home late at night, climbed in through the window and gotten into his own bed, still feeling Davis’s warmth around him. And then the next day, the great silence, dropping down all around them. Not a word. Not a sound. Just quiet. But whe
n Davis is ready for words again, Jackson will be too. When Davis is ready to say something to him, Jackson will be too. Waiting—he hates it, the terrible beat, the awful rhythm, how waiting is so full of quiet. But he thinks, watching Heath’s curly hair bounce as they walk, that waiting, for Davis, could be worth it. Is that what love is? Waiting despite how much it hurts you to wait? Being silent no matter how much you want to speak? How strange that language seems to him. How odd. But this is a language he can master as readily as French.

  He walks behind Heath, and the other students empty out of the courtyard, leaving only the gray shadows of later afternoon in early fall.

  THE KONTRABIDA

  Mia Alvar

  MY MOTHER WAS waiting in front of our house when I rode up in a taxi. “There you are,” she said, as if we’d simply lost each other for an hour or two at a party. I only half embraced her, afraid she might break if I held too tight. She hadn’t been able to collect me from the airport herself. Years ago my father had forbidden her to drive, though I supposed he could do little to prevent it now.

  “Let me,” she said, reaching for my suitcase. I waved her away. I would no sooner allow my mother to carry my suitcase than allow her to carry me. “Oh, Steve,” she protested. “You don’t know my strength!” She dropped her arms, flattening the palms against her lap, a habit I remembered well. Throughout my childhood she often looked to be drying her hands on an apron, whether or not she was wearing one.

  In the decade since I left she hadn’t aged, exactly. To my eyes she seemed not older but more. More frail; more tired; softer-spoken; her dark, teaspoon-shaped face cast farther down. Every feature I remembered had settled in her and been more deeply confirmed.