Copyboy by Vince Vawter

Author:Vince Vawter [Vawter, Vince]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Capstone Editions; Capstone; fiction; middle grade fiction; young adult fiction; own voices; stuttering; authors who stutter; characters who stutter; speech disorders; speech impediments; adventure stories; road story; road stories; coming-of-age; Hurricane Hilda; Hurricane Betsy; Mississippi River; New Orleans; Memphis; Louisiana; philosophical stories; newspapers; journalism; historical fiction; 1960s stories; first loves; stuttering; characters with speech impediments; segregation; Southern novels; Southern fiction; quest; bildungsroman; first love; death of a mentor; death of a friend; stories about the Mississippi River; realistic fiction; books for all ages; 9781630791056; 9781684460205; 9781684460199
Publisher: Capstone
Published: 2018-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

The abandoned building where my car was parked had once been a mill that processed sugar and sorghum cane, Phil explained, but had not been used for decades. The family who owned it had gotten lucky in the oil business and the mill and acres of land around it were forgotten. She and her high school friends would camp out all night at the old mill and see how many fires they could count.

“Fires?”

“They have to burn the gas off the wellheads when they’re pumping oil,” she said. “Some nights we would count twenty or more wellhead fires. If we got brave enough, we’d go ride a pumpjack.”

“A what?”

“You’ve seen those oil well pumps that look like a horse bending up and down to drink water?”

I nodded.

“We’d climb on and ride ’em like horses until that day we saw one of our friends almost get his leg ripped off.”

Running down swamp rabbits. Riding oil-well pumps. My toughest baseball games seemed tame and ordinary.

“Take off your shirt and I’ll wipe the grass off you,” Phil said.

“Right here?”

“I don’t bite. That Louisiana salt grass we were rolling round in can sting. You’ll think you laid down in a bed of fire ants if I don’t wipe you off.”

Phil turned me around several times, brushing me with my cotton polo shirt turned inside out.

“I’m going to step in the mill and take off my shirt,” Phil said. “You best brush that grass out from your waistband if you don’t want to sit in a tub of Momma’s calamine lotion all night.”

Phil tugged at the tail of her plaid shirt inside her shorts and stepped behind what was left of one of the mill’s interior walls. I walked outside and continued to clean the grass out from the waistband of my shorts.

“Oo, ye, yi!” Phil cried. “I can’t get this grass off me and it’s stinging. You need to help me.”

“What should I do?”

“This flannel won’t shake out enough. Is there anything in your car to wipe me off with?”

I ran to the car. My gym bag was at the Moreau’s house and a girl couldn’t be brushed off with an Esso road map. I opened the trunk and removed the urn from Mr. Spiro’s duffel bag. Years of wear and many washings had left the canvas bag soft and pliable.

“Hurry,” Phil said. “It’s stinging some kind of bad.”

I raced to the wall and offered her the cloth bag through a missing plank.

“No, no, Vic,” she said, coming around the wall. “You start wiping my back and I mean every inch.”

Red welts had popped up on her skin. I wiped her back with gentle strokes. Every inch, as ordered. Only one of the three hooks on her bra was fastened. Should I mention this to her? No. I was already in way over my head.

When she pulled down the waistband of her shorts in back for me to brush out the grass, I saw what I first took to be a birthmark but then recognized it as a small tattoo.

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