There used to be mystique
but now it’s gone, it died the death of a thousand clicks. Good riddens, false
as all that—faking the rest of everyone into a diminished corner. Someone’s
crouching there; it’s our turn to notice him.
A
boy, maybe twelve, maybe fourteen, chubby and red-faced, crying in a way that’s
painful to hear and watch. His mother, no, check her age, too old, his
grandmother, she’s talking calmly to the boy from the driver’s seat of a car
pulled to curb near a row of tall bushes, passenger’s window rolled down. It's winter;
her breath visible; window down for how long, to empty the car of warmth? Still
has her seat belt on, leaning over the passenger’s seat, head ducked to train a
clear line of sight between herself and the boy. It’s two days into the new
year, no one else outside. This neighborhood indistinguishable from any other,
unburdened by importance, might double for some miniature model of a
neighborhood, the houses, the fence lines, streetlights arranged along the main
thoroughfare by grace of some collector’s god-like hand and meticulous anality.
It was pre-arranged; it was destined to be so.
The
boy is crouched between two bushes. He’s picking twigs and pebbles off the
ground and throwing them in the car’s direction. Occasionally a sharp tinny hit
as a pebble strikes metal. Is there aura here? Some power surrounding an indefinite center—a boy, ugly red, snotty, cheeks shiny with tears messy as
saliva? Her and him; woman and boy. What’s she asking him?
She
talks but her voice is too far away, buried beneath what the boy’s screaming
but not explaining.
No;
his head shakes; doesn’t want to hear it. She keeps talking and clearly he
hates this—in protest, buries his head into a bush, shoulders-deep. Like an ostrich.
Ostrich-Boy, Bush-Boy, Half-Boy Half-Bush.
The
patience of the grandmother, the redness and shininess of the boy’s hidden face
(he had short brown hair, he wore a Steelers hoodie, was barefoot—these remain
in mind, as memory, and in that way equally hidden)—screaming, shrieking
really, as the cliches of old would have it, an animal in pain; too much
feeling in so tightly-wound a body; childhood cornered and headless in protest
of what some adult woman wants of it. Come home, maybe. We love you, maybe. The
car idles and doesn’t drive, the Ostrich-Boy screams himself hoarse into a
bush. It could last an hour, a week, a year, one winter to another. A scene without
resolution or knack for calculated mystery: a boy inconsolable, a grandmother
patient if not masochistically stubborn. She will not drive off; he will not
stop failing to hide. Not unlike the hunting tactics of iKung bushmen, who would
take turns chasing an eland or giraffe through the full length of a day and
another until it drops from thirst or hunger or exhaustion. Hunters close to collapse, barely strong enough to complete the kill. Prey on the
ground, panting, and hunters crawling towards it. Meek with weakness, it accepts the spear.
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