Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread

  Jenny swings her hand, dropping my tennis shoes so they fly halfway to where I stand, flapping down in the roadside gravel. Their tongues and laces hang out, tangled.

  Standing here, my feet dark as hooves or church shoes, so coated with dried blood and dust, all I can do is point at the dirty tennis ball…fat, black houseflies circling me…except the ball only sits there, not moving, not leading me anywhere, stopped along the edge of the blacktop where the pigweeds grow.

  Hank punches the middle of his steering wheel, blasting me with a gigantic honk. A second honk comes so loud it echoes back from the nowhere over the horizon. All the flat sugar beet fields, the crops all around me and their car, filled with Hank’s loud horn. Under the car hood the engine revs, the pushrods banging and cams knocking, and Jenny leans out her shotgun window, saying, “Don’t make him pissed off.” She says, “Just get in the car.”

  A flash of black jumps past my legs, and the stupid Labrador jumps in the door Hank holds open. With his twisted-around arm, Hank yanks the door shut and cranks the steering wheel hard to one side. Flipping a big U-turn, his beater car tears off, gravel rattling inside the wheel wells, Jenny’s one hand still trailing out her open window. Behind them, Hank’s tires leave twin smoking tracks of burned rubber.

  Watching them go, I bend over to pick up my shoes. It’s right then when—pock—something slams into the back of my head. Rubbing my scalp with one hand I turn to look at what hit me, and already the stupid tennis ball is on the move, bouncing down the road in a direction opposite that of Hank’s car.

  Kneeled down, knotting my shoes, I yell, “Wait.” Only the ball keeps going.

  Running after it, I yell, “Hold up.” And the ball keeps bouncing, bouncing, big jumps right in line with the road. At the stop sign for Fisher Road, mid-jump, at the highest point in one bounce, the ball cuts to the right. Turning the corner in midair, and bouncing down Fisher, me still trucking along behind. Down Fisher, past the junkyard where it turns into Millers Road, there the ball turns left onto Turner Road and starts going upriver, parallel to the bank of Skinner Creek. Staying out of the trees, the oil-soaked, dust-packed tennis ball really flies along, puffing up a little cloud of dirt every time it smacks down.

  Where two old wheel ruts leave the road and run through the weeds, the ball turns that way, rolling now. The ball tracks along the dried mud of one rut, swerving to go around the worst puddles and potholes. My shoelaces dangle and whip against my ankles. Me panting, shuffling along after it, losing sight of the ball in the tall grass. Catching sight of it when the ball bounces, bouncing in one place until I find it, there. I follow, and the houseflies follow me. Then, rolling along the rut, the ball leads me into the cottonwood trees that grow along the creek side.

  Nobody’s standing in line to give me any scholarship. Not after my three big, fat D grades Mr. Lockard handed me in Algebra, Geometry, and Physics. But I’m almost sure no ball should be able to roll uphill, not forever. No tennis ball can stop perfectly still in one place, then start up bouncing off by itself. Based on what little I’ve learned about inertia and momentum, it’s an impossibility, how this ball comes flying out of nowhere, socking me in the forehead to grab my attention any time I even look away.

  One step into the trees, I need to stop and let my eyes adjust. Just that one little wait, and—pow—I have dirty tennis ball stamped on my face. My forehead feeling greasy and smelling like motor oil. Both my hands raise up by reflex, swatting at air the way you’d fight off a hornet too fast to see. I’m waving away nothing, and the tennis ball is already jumping out ahead of me, the thumping, thudding sound going off through the woods.

  Going all the way to the creek bank, the ball leaps out ahead, until it stops. In the mud between two forked roots of a cottonwood tree, the ball rolls to a standstill. As I catch up, it makes a little bounce, not knee high. It makes a second bounce, this time waist high. The ball bounces shoulder high, head high, always landing in the same exact spot, with every landing pushing itself deeper into the mud. Bouncing more high than I could reach, up around the leaves of the tree, the ball clears away a little hole, there, between the roots.

  The sound of birds, the magpies, drop to silence. No mosquitoes or buzz of deerflies. Nothing makes any sound except this ball and my heartbeat in my chest. Both, thudding more and more fast.

  Another bounce, and the ball clinks against metal. Not a sharp sound, more a clank like hitting a home run off the gutter of old Mr. Lloyd’s house, or skipping a rock off the roof of a car parked on Lovers Lane. The ball hits dirt, hard as if it’s pulled with a magnet, stops, and rolls to one side. And deep in the hole it’s dug, a little brass shines out. The metal of something buried. The brass lid of a canning jar, printed Mason, same as your mom would put up tomatoes inside for the winter.

  No tennis ball has to tell me more. I dig, my hands clawing away the mud, my fingers slippery around the buried glass outsides of the jar. The ball waiting, I kneel there and pull this dirty jar out from the sucking mud, big around as a blue-ribbon turnip. The glass so smeared I can’t see what feels so heavy inside.

  Using spit, spit and my T-shirt still wet from the graveyard sprinklers and sweat, I wipe. The lid is stuck on, tight, swollen with rust and crud. I spit and wipe until something gold is looking back from inside the glass: gold coins, showing the heads of dead presidents and flying eagles. The same as you’d find if you followed a stupid leprechaun to the base of a rainbow—if you believed that crap—here’s a quart jar filled with gold coins packed so tight together they don’t rattle. They don’t roll. All they do is shine bright as the alloy wheels I’m going to buy to blow Hank’s crap-burner car off the road. Bright as the diamond ring I’ll take Jenny to buy at the Crossroad Mall. Right here in my two hands—and, pow.

  The bright gold, replaced with shooting stars. The smell of motor oil.

  The next smell, my own nose collapsed and filling with blood. Busted.

  The tennis ball blasts against my face, bouncing angry as a hornet. Slugging me, the ball flies in my face while I fight it back with the heavy jar, shielding my eyes with my arm muscles burning from the gold weight. Blood runs down from my nose, sputtered out by my yelling. Twisting one foot in the slick mud, I launch over the creek bank. Same as Cub Scouts teaches you to do in a wasp attack, I splash into the water and wade out to over my head.

  From underwater, between me and the sky, the ball floats on the surface of the creek. Waiting. The heavy jar of gold coins holds me tight to the rocks on the creek bed, but rolling it along, my chest full of my breath, I work my way upstream. The current carries the tennis ball downstream, while the gold anchors me, cut off from the sun and air. Working my way into the shallows, the moment my breath gives out and the ball’s nowhere to be seen, I pop my head up for a gasp. One big breath, and I duck back under. The ball’s floated, bobbing, maybe a half-mile downstream, hard to tell because it looks so oily black on the deep water, but the ball’s following the trail of my nose blood, tracking me in the direction of the current.

  When my new air gives out, I stand up, half out of the water, and wade to shore, hauling the gold and making as little splash noise as possible. Snorting the blood back up my busted nose. One look backward, over my shoulder, and I see that already the ball’s swimming, slow as a paddling mallard, against the current, coming after me.

  Another Sir Isaac Newton impossibility.

  With both my arms wrapped around that jar full of gold, I scramble up the creek side, the water squishing in my shoes, and I take off running through the woods.

  With my every running step, mud slides under my shoes. The jar swings me sideways, almost off balance, spinning me when I jerk too far the other way. My chest aches, my rib cage feeling caved in. With every footfall I just about face-plant, grabbing the jar so tight that, if I fell, the glass would bust and stab straight into my eyes and heart. I’d bleed right to death, slipped here, facedown in a puddle of mud and gold and broken glass. From behind, the tennis bal
l shoots through the leaves, snapping twigs and branches, whistling the same whiz-bang noise as a bullet ripping through the Vietnam jungle next to your head in some television war show.

  Maybe one good bounce before the ball catches me, I duck low. There, the rotted trunk of a cottonwood has busted and fallen, and I stuff the heavy jar deep into the boggy center of the roots, the mud cave where the tree’s pulled out from the ground on one side. The gold, my gold, hidden. The ball probably doesn’t see because it keeps after me as I run faster, jumping and crashing my way through blackberry vines and saplings, stomping up sprays of muddy water until I hit the gravel of Turner Road. My shoes chew up the gravel, my every long jump shakes the water from my clothes. The cemetery sprinkler water replaced by dog piss replaced by Skinner Creek replaced by me sweating, the legs of my jeans rub me, the denim stiff with stuck-on dust. Me, panting so hard I’m ready to vomit both lungs out my mouth, turned inside out, my innards puked out like pink bubblegum bubbles.

  Midway, between one running step and the next, the moment both my legs are stretched out, one in front and the other in back of me, in midair, something slams me in the back. Stumbling forward, I recover, but this something smacks me again, square in my backbone between my shoulder blades. Just as hard, arching my spine, something hits me, a third go-round. It hits the back of my head, hard as a foul ball or a fast pitch in softball. Fast as a line drive fresh off the sweet spot of a Louisville Slugger, slamming you dead-on, this something hits me another time. The stink of crankcase oil. Shooting stars and comets swimming in my eyes, I pitch forward still on my feet, running full tilt.

  Winded, sucking air and blinded with sweat, my feet tangled together, the something wings me one more time, beaning the top of my skull, and I go down. The bare skin of my elbows plows the gravel. My knees and face dive into the dust of my landing. My teeth grit together with the dirt in my mouth, and my eyes squeeze shut. The mystery something punches my ribs, slugs my kidneys as I squirm on the road. This something bounces, hard, to break my arms. It keeps bouncing, pile driving its massive impact, drilling me in my gut, slugging my ears while I curl tight to protect my nuts.

  Past the moment I could still walk back and show the ball where the gold’s hidden, almost to the total black of being knocked out, I’m pounded. Beat on. Until a gigantic honk wakes me up. A second honk saves me, so loud it echoes back from the nowhere over the horizon, all the bottomland cottonwoods and tall weeds all around me, filled with Hank’s loud car horn. Hank’s whitewall tires skid to a stop.

  Jenny’s voice says, “Don’t make him pissed off.” She says, “Just get in the car.”

  I pop open my eyes, glued with blood and dust, and the ball just sits next to me in the road. Hank’s pulled up, idling his engine. Under the car hood the engine revs, the pushrods clattering and lifters knocking.

  Looking up at Jenny, I spit blood. Pink drool leaks out, running down my chin, and my tongue can feel my chipped teeth. One eye almost swelled shut, I say, “Jenny?” I say, “Will you marry me?”

  The filthy tennis ball, waiting. Jenny’s dog, panting in the backseat of the car. The jar filled with gold, hidden where only I can find it.

  My ears glow hot and raw. My lips, split and bleeding, I say, “If I can beat Hank Richardson just one game in tennis, will you marry me?”

  Spitting blood, I say, “If I lose, I’ll buy you a car. I swear.” I say, “Brand-new with electric windows, power steering, a stereo, the works…”

  The tennis ball sits, nested in the gravel, listening. Behind his steering wheel, Hank shakes his head side to side. “Deal,” Hank says. “Hell, yeah, she’ll marry you.”

  Sitting shotgun, her face framed in the car window, Jenny says, “It’s your funeral.” She says, “Now climb in.”

  Getting to my feet, standing, I stoop over and grab the tennis ball. For now, just something rubber filled with air. Not alive, in my hand the ball just feels wet with the creek water, soft with a layer of gravel dust. We drive to the tennis courts behind the high school, where nobody plays, and the white lines look faded. The chain-link fences flake red rust, they were built so long ago. Weeds grow through the cracked concrete, and the tennis net sags in the middle.

  Jenny flips a quarter-dollar, and Hank gets to serve, first.

  His racquet whacks the ball, faster than I can see, into a corner where I could never reach, and Hank gets the first point. The same with his second point. The same with the whole first game.

  When the serve comes to me, I hold the tennis ball close by my lips and whisper my deal. My bargain. If the ball helps me win the match—to win Jenny—I’ll help with the gold. But if I lose to Hank, it can pound me dead and I’ll never tell where the gold is hid.

  “Serve, already,” Hank yells. He says, “Stop kissing the damned ball…”

  My first serve drills Hank, ka-pow, in his nuts. My second takes out his left eye. Hank returns my third serve, fast and low, but the tennis ball slows to almost stop and bounces smack-dab in front of me. With my every serve, the ball flies faster than I could ever hit it and knocks another tooth out of Hank’s stupid mouth. Any returns, the ball swerves to me, slows, and bounces where I can hit it back.

  No surprise, but I win.

  Even crippled as I look, Hank looks worse, his eyes almost swollen shut. His knuckles puffed up and scabbed over. Hank’s limping from so many drives straight to his crotch. Jenny helps him lie down in the backseat of his car so she can drive him home. Or to a hospital.

  I tell her, “Even if I won, you don’t have to go out with me…”

  And Jenny says, “Good.”

  I ask if it would make any difference if I was rich. Really superrich.

  And Jenny says, “Are you?”

  Sitting, alone on the cracked tennis court, the ball looks red, stained with Hank’s blood. It rolls, making looping blood-red handwriting that reads, “Forget her.”

  I wait and wait, then I shake my head, No. I’m not rich.

  After they drive away, I pick up the tennis ball and head back toward Skinner Creek. From under the roots of the downed cottonwood tree, I lift out the Mason jar heavy with gold coins. Carrying the jar, I drop the ball. As it rolls away, I follow. Rolling uphill, violating every law Mr. Lockard tried to drill into me, the ball rolls all afternoon. Rolling through weeds and sand, the ball rolls into the twilight. All this time, I follow behind, lugging that jar of pirate treasure. Down Turner Road, down Millers Road, north along the old highway, then westbound along dirt roads with no name.

  A bump rides the horizon, the sun setting behind it. As we get closer, the bump grows into a lump. A shack. From closer up, the shack is a house sitting in a nest of paint curls peeled off its wood by the weather and fallen to make a ring around its brick foundation. The same way dead skin peels off a sunburn. The bare, wood siding curves and warps. On the roof, the tarpaper shingles buckle and ripple. Stapled to the front door, a sheet of yellow-color paper says “Notice of Eviction.”

  The yellow paper, turned more yellow by the sunset. The gold in the Mason jar, shining even deeper gold in the yellow light.

  The tennis ball rolls up the road, up the dirt driveway. It bounces up the brick steps, hitting the front door with a hollow sound. Bouncing off the porch, the ball beats the door, again. From inside the house come footsteps creaking and echoing on bare wood. From behind the closed door, the “Eviction” sign, a voice says, “Go away.”

  A witch voice, cracked and brittle as the warped wood siding. A voice faint as the faded colors of paint flaked on the ground.

  I knock, saying, “I have a delivery, I think…”

  The jar of gold, stretching my arm muscles into thin wire, into my bones almost breaking.

  The tennis ball bounces off the door, again, beating one drumbeat.

  The witch’s voice says, “Go away, please.”

  The ball bounces against the wood door, only now the sound is metal. A clack of metal. A clank. Across the bottom of the door stretches a slot
framed in gold-color metal, written with the word “Letters.”

  Crouching down, then kneeling, I unscrew the Mason jar. Twisting off the cap, I put the lip of the jar against the “Letters” slot and tip the jar, shaking it to loosen up the coins inside. Kneeling there, on the front porch, I pour the gold through the slot in the door. The coins rattle and ring, tumbling inside and rolling across the bare floor. A jackpot spilling out where I can’t see. When the glass jar is empty, I leave it on the porch and start down the steps. Behind me, the doorknob pops, the snap of a lock turning, a dead bolt sliding open. The hinges creak, and a crack of inside darkness appears along one edge of the frame.

  From that inner dark the witch voice says, “My husband’s collection…”

  The tennis ball, sticky with Hank’s blood, coated with dirt, the ball rolls along at my heels, following me the way Jenny’s dog follows her. Tagging along, the way I used to follow Jenny.

  The witch voice says, “How did you find them?”

  From the porch, the voice says, “Did you know my Cameron? Cameron Hamish.”

  The voice shouts, “Who are you?”

  But me, I have nowhere I want to be more than bed. After that, I’m thinking this tennis ball owes me. I figure this Mr. Hamish is going to make me the number-one tennis hustler in the world.

  EXPEDITION

  “In order to know virtue we must first acquaint ourselves with vice.”

  —Marquis de Sade

  Even first-time visitors to Hamburg will notice a curious aspect of the Hermann Strasse: A portion of the street in question is blocked at both ends. Not just a single barricade, no, but two layers of wooden fencing standing four meters tall run across the thoroughfare from building to building, the inner barricade approximately six meters from the outer. Vehicular travel is forbidden. Wooden doors allow only male pedestrians to pass through, and those doors are spring-loaded, slamming shut the instant they’re released. Furthermore, the doors of the outer barricade are offset from those of the inner, making it impossible to see clearly into or out of the blocked section of street. Men are mentioned here intentionally because women are dissuaded from passing through the doors. By custom, only men are encouraged to breach the barricades.