The circus: The logs at the tracks [VI]

We rode up and down a few streets and weaved back and forth around obstacles, as if slalom skis were attached to our tires. After a few blocks, I decided I didn't feel much like the farm fields or forest anymore, and I convinced Kat to follow me to the abandoned train tracks at the back end of town, past the turnoff we used to take to the river, and Barnhouse Row where the empty disintegrating barns slept back to back for miles. My body pulsed with the deep exhilaration of late summer and sweat as I inhaled large chunks of thick air to fuel my legs.

The tracks hadn't seen a train in decades. Brush grew up and over, swallowing them in green and spitting them out in a faded mix of silver and hazy red. A clearing of dirt and dust sat nestled next to the road, a place where I'd spent many hours building bonfires, attacking splintered wooden crates in mock battle, and running through the head-tall foliage engrossed in juvenile games of tag or hide and seek.

Kat and I skidded to a stop in the old clearing. It had been some time since we were last here together. We dismounted and walked to the line of upright log chairs that faced south. Every time winter approached, there were mountainous stacks of chainsaw-hewn wood all around town, waiting to be sold and loaded up onto truck beds. Sometimes a thick circular cut would be stolen by a town youth and brought out here to be used as furniture. I know at least one was placed here by Fas. We sat side by side in two of the large coveted chairs, as king and queen of the August nothingness, and remained silent for a few minutes, absorbing the heat and watching the flutter of dragonflies and grasshoppers. I picked up a smooth flat rock next to my shoe.

"Are you glad to go back to school Kat? Things will be starting up again here soon," I spoke indifferently, eyeing the smooth outline of my rock and the fashionable slope on one of its sides that made it a near-heart in shape.

"Yep," she answered, neck cocked back and face held openly skyward, basking in the sunlight with closed eyes. "I love school."

"I'm glad to be done with it. I'm ready for… something." I jerked alive and looked across at her. She must have sensed my gaze for she slipped her eyes open into cracks and looked back at me. "But Kat, don't you ever think about doing something different? I know you're still pretty young, but don't you ever get sick of Parsons? Me – I'm starting to feel so claustrophobic; I've been here so long and I just want to leave, rid myself of that stupid river and these worthless train tracks and our old fake streets. I don't know. Don't you ever feel like that?"

I threw my rock sidearm towards the tracks, as if I were skipping it across the smooth surface of open lake water. It hit a crosstie and shot off angled into the weeds.

"I've never even seen the ocean," I muttered, fingering a second rock and then throwing it again at the same spot, harder this time. Kat sat looking a little bewildered. She put her finger to her chin in a contemplative pose, pointed her face skyward again for a moment and then faced me and stared me down with her beautiful shining eyes.

"Well I haven't seen the ocean either." She seemed so naive, but oh how I loved that kid. "And I like it here. This place is wonderful. My friends are here and my family's here. You're here, too. What's wrong Clay, what do you mean?"

"Oh, don't bother." It wasn't worth explaining. I just paused there in the sun's shadow, my thoughts dwelling on Sven and Officer Mooney and Mrs. Follick the librarian with her deep-set eyes and crooked nose, Dan Arbuck the yard man who rounded the neighborhoods each Saturday morning offering to mow your grass and tend to your garden, Gabey the redheaded kid who sang the national anthem at baseball games up in Erid - a little small-town celebrity in his own right with his v-necked sweater vests and button-up shirts, Shauna Dawson who was only a few years older than me and had left town for Hollywood three years ago, only to come back after only 18 months to work in the newsstand at the corner of Main and Alley. I started to feel queasy and turned my head to the left so Kat couldn't see my disgust. I breathed in deep.

"Sorry Kat, never mind. Look, I've got to get to work soon, so let's start heading back."

"Aw what're you doing, you don't want to leave us do you Clay? You love it here, I just know it! How couldn't you?"

She wouldn't convince me so easily. I smirked.

"Don't worry Kat, I won't leave you."

"Promise?"

"Yeah sure I promise. Now let's go."

We stood on our pedals and swerved around back towards the road. I winked at the tracks and they winked back with a flicker of sunlight reflection as our tires churned the dust and sent it swarming towards the bushes, speckling them with dirt like glistening morning dew.

After seeing Kat back home, I figured I might as well ride to work, considering I was already soaked in sweat and my heart was still fluttering. I lingered long on the roads, taking unnecessary shortcuts and backroads I'd never ventured on before, absorbing the spilling sun and the hint of a breeze that told of approaching fall. My reluctance at spending the rest of the day laboring with tools was proven in my procrastination.

I ended up arriving late at our current job site, the home of Doris Baker. She was the introverted widow with two kids – one of them a girl, my age – who you'd always overhear in supermarket lines, audibly complaining or otherwise grumbling. The curtains adorning her front window were held aside, a face pressed up against it watching me as I slowly and silently rolled onto the cracked driveway concrete and laid my bike to rest on its side. It was obviously Mrs. Baker studying me, disapproving at my lateness. I glanced again and the face was gone, a slight sway to the curtain the only evidence of that spy. The door opened to greet me and Dean Williams, the handyman and my boss, stood half-tilted in its frame, dressed in dingy coveralls and not particularly pleased.

"Hi Dean," I mumbled, hurriedly making my way through the door to the stash of tools and equipment neatly and orderly arranged in the room's center. "Sorry I'm late."

"That boy's not much like his father now, is he?" Doris Baker's haggish, shrill voice eked from around the corner, her words were nails thumping steadily at my temples one after the other. I pictured her an ancient Irish banshee with mouth agape, four fanged teeth reverberating the cackle of her otherworldly shriek.

"Hi Clay," Dean managed, ignoring Mrs. Baker's comment. "We're working on the ventilation system today." My tool belt hurtled across the room towards me from his outstretched hand. "Let's get started."

Marvelous.