Sonder

Chapter 22

Molotov cocktails? Nope. Not tonight. There have been whispers about a "Gallon Challenge" though. 

The demands of a bop-it can be heard floating through the air from an unknown location. Near the now-subdued fire, English-salted-Spanish is spoken by new Americans sheepishly kicking rocks. There's a Guadalajaran who just earned himself a full-ride track scholarship. He's grateful when a young blonde with stuttering Spanglish starts telling stories about her grandfather's obsession with cockfighting, tail size, talon shape, etc. The girls are repulsed, and the boys wax nostalgic about a "wild and free old world" where men could watch and gamble on games of life and death.

The distasteful stench of living beef and the lack of smog has led many of the city-dwellers to run back to their culdesacs. They will quest for Taco Bell and other mind-altering substances before stealing away into their parents' basements.

Tessa and the other teetotalers are happy to ferry the less saintly attendants back to civilization. They are often rewarded with spare bills, fresh Mcnuggets, and only occasionally a coat of stomach acid upon their vehicle's interior or exterior. Sometimes, a minivan crawls across the parking lot, driven by a mother with bed hair and a bathrobe. Friends from kindergarten are embarrassed but grateful. They climb in the back of the mommy-mobile. There is no lecture, only Phill Collins.

 A cow-tipping coalition has been formed. This group is full of suburbanites mesmerized by the possibility of touchable sleeping cows. They nearly soil their shorts when they are attacked by an emu when they flop over the wrong fence. New limits of laughter and humiliation are discovered. They are lucky they didn't encounter the goats three pens down.

The "Drunk Walk" group was slightly more successful. Led by Corey, they executed a Tom Clancey-style raid on the steel mill to the north of Nick's house. Their mission was to simply sneak in and steal tiny tokens of trespass. Like a pen, or a bolt, or a company mug. They returned with their hearts dancing behind their teeth. They had convinced themselves of the videogame stakes, afraid they would be shot on site. This kind of real-world role play made video games seem like humping pies. It takes them years to discover that video games, just like misappropriated pies, will always leave them with an empty, incomplete, shameful feeling.

Later they are crawling around on train tracks. Some of them are lounging near the train tracks. The whistle blows. Everyone there vibrates as if they were the coins they've left balanced on the tracks. They scream about the impending danger and the train's headlamps cause goose-pimples to rise. Even though many of them are 18, few of them have ever done this before. Some of them ponder the myth: Might this cause the train to derail? Did Myth Busters debunk this? They cannot recall. Their nerves bunch, their hair curls, and their faces stretch, everything distorted by the inebriation and the deafening racket of the locomotive. They imagine it flipping, careening on top of them, one mile of cargo and steel crushing and grinding them into the dirt. The train passes without incident. The coins are inconsequential.

***

Back at the trailer, the toilet flushes. Terry exits the bathroom like a blind prairie vole wearing stained smiley face drawers. His limbs float as a buffer helping him avoid the washer and dryer. Some young party-goers see him and hail him.

"Terry? Terry! Hey man! Did we wake you? No? Great! Well, shitman, come have a beer! You don't have to work tomorrow do ya? Good. Good. Common out back! We haven't seen you since your 50th birthday party last month!" Terry resists them feebly. But, he resigns. He is eager to please and dreads to offend. 'Put everyone else first' is his philosophy. These two fans scurry about Terry like groveling serfs. One holds the door and the other swipes debris off the porch couch, clearing a spot for Terry to sit. Terry's face and arms are dark as mud. His body and feet are pale as skim milk. He sinks into the seat where he is handed a beer and a cigarette by the fans. One of them holds out a lit lighter when the cigarette reaches Terry's lips. They regard him as if he were a warlord... or a wizard. They know their debt to this tired yet youthful-looking old man. They light their own cigarettes and recline in excessive familiarity around him. They ask Terry polite questions. Questions about work, his health, about Nick.

"You know if Nick is giving ya any lip, we'll fix that right quick" They smack fists into palms chuckling. They're joking... but they would. They ask Terry about his move back up north. They hand Terry a luke-warm chicken thigh when they notice him eyeing the BBQ. Terry pries a giant chunk of meat off with his teeth, he chews, ingests. He takes a drag from his smoke.

"Maybe I'll get a night's rest" He jokes to them about moving away. They all laugh as if he had just said the most clever of jokes. Freckles wiggles onto the scene, her bobbed tail wagging the dog as she pokes her nose towards Terry's chicken. She licks his toes and Terry squirms.

They continue to talk and smoke. Terry chews his filter into a cotton ball and he hands his scraps to the dog. He thinks about telling them the story of his wild horse racing days, but he thinks better of it. He just washes the last bit of chicken down with a swig, sets the half-empty bottle on the floor, and excuses himself off to bed.

***

Corey and his "splinter cell" climb over the fences, into the back yard, and raid the coolers and bbq. The people who are left spend most weekends out here. If they aren't here, they're somewhere else. Together. There is a small game of strip poker played between old friends and long-suffering girlfriends. "Where have Krista and Tera been?" someone asks.

Corey wanders off into the darkness again. He's humming "I drink alone". His pockets are bulging with beers.

As the morning approaches, people grab blankets, quilts, and compressed sheets of army wool from Nick's stockpile in the living room. They scatter to find a place to dest down. The spare room, Nick's floor, the living room couches, the living room floor. Every square inch of soft space is covered with tired, happy, lost, homeless, adopted children. Adulthood is just a couple of sunrises away.