Uncle Sean by Ronald L. Donaghe

Author:Ronald L. Donaghe [Donaghe, Ronald L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780982350300
Publisher: Two Brothers Press
Published: 2009-02-09T13:00:00+00:00

Three

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The next semester of my freshman year, football season was over, and maybe I should’ve gone out for basketball, like most of the other boys did, but I didn’t. I took P.E., though, and got a laugh at all the pimply butts in the shower. What I told Uncle Sean was right. We were just a bunch of ugly farm and ranch boys, and it seemed like everybody broke out in pimples, just like in grade school when everybody lost their teeth.

But Uncle Sean was right, the guys thought my wearing his dog tags was neat, though to them it was neat since it brought the war home. We all had relatives or knew somebody over there in Vietnam, and we all knew the guys who were sent home dead. Sometimes kids broke down when they heard the news—especially the time that Richard Johnson was killed. He was the all-time, most well-known football quarterback in school up to that time and, just like Uncle Sean, he was drafted straight out of high school. Nobody even thought those war protests covered in the news were a good thing. Not in this part of the country, anyway, where you played football, did your duty for the country and, if you were lucky enough, took over the family businesses, or moved away.

We had several star rodeo riders come out of school, too. Only they didn’t come back, except when there was a big rodeo or something in Arizona.

I got a taste of the idea that Animas and Hachita and Lordsburg were slowly dying, as more people left than moved in or were born here. But sometimes I had my hands too full to really notice. I worked like hell on the farm. January turned to February and, still, the winds cut through like knives made of ice and I took over the plowing, turning the old stalks under and the new soil up to the top. I was hoping I might be able to just freeze the pimples off, because when I looked in the mirror, I sure got tired of seeing all those puss-filled bumps, and I was hoping that I’d get my clear skin back.

The girls didn’t look much better, except that they could cover their pimples over with makeup, and I got kind’a sick the way the scarred and pimpled boyfriend/girlfriend pairs sprang up around school, like it was some kind of Twilight Zone, where no matter how ugly or deformed people in this high school became, they thought each other was pretty.

Then, too, it seemed like the guys in P.E., especially, were turning into sex maniacs, and all we talked about was jerking off. It was easy to join in such talk, since I finally knew what they were talking about—really knew, that is, since I had learned how to have wet dreams while I was awake. Only then I knew it was called jerking off. All the guys seemed to be in a frenzy about it, but I just kind of sat back and nearly quit doing it.

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