Evans, Justin by A Good; Happy Child

Author:A Good; Happy Child
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-03-05T22:00:00+00:00

Man of the House

In the morning I awoke with the icon in my hand. Its lightness again surprised me, its hue seemed more golden, the worn features of Saint Michael in the wood, more sad. I brought the icon to my lips and kissed it. The gesture came to me naturally; I had no idea that I had discovered for myself the ritual gesture of millions of Orthodox Christians; nor did I understand that I held the symbol of the church's warrior archangel. I only guessed that if the devil appeared to me as my Friend, or as an evil-favored black dog, Saint Michael could help.

My mother called me. I dressed hastily, one of those times when, in search of clean clothes, I dug deep in the back of the drawers.

I retrieved a red-and-blue-striped shirt that had slumbered at the bottom of my drawer like a rotten log in a woodpile. From the same zone, corduroys that did not zip all the way. But I did not stop and check; I grabbed my schoolbooks and ran. When I at last arrived at school and recognized the extent of the sartorial damage (my underpants were exposed by the defective zipper and my belly stretched a broad horizontal hole in the striped shirt, like a run in a stocking), I was forced to walk the corridors with my crotch to the wall. By noon I was twisted up like a piece of taffy.

I carried my lunch in a brown bag, my first time doing so. It had not occurred to me, before, that the cool kids carried their lunches in brown bags, and only the oddballs used lunchboxes, which smacked of Mommy and back-to-school shopping. It was an early version of slumming it; the hicks also carried brown bags (though often the outsized grocery-sized brown bags rolled from the top, not the slim, stylishly crumpled ones that Byrd and Dean brought to school). So perhaps it was my new accessory, a brown paper bag, that emboldened me, against all reason, to join Toby, Byrd, and Dean, gathered at one of the Formica tables. Trouble started before I even sat down.

"Uh-oh, here he comes," said Dean, loud enough for me to hear.

This did not deter me. I sat.

"Hi guys," I said weakly.

"Woooooooooo!" Dean said, waving his arms.

"What's your problem?" I said in as cool a voice as I could muster.

"It's not my problem you need to worry about," said Dean, darkly.

"Guys," protested Toby.

"Wooooooooo!" Dean said again.

"I shouldn't have said anything," said Toby.

They watched me quietly then. Dean stared at me with his ferocious, narrow eyes.

"What," I demanded, but halfheartedly, smelling disaster.

"Toby heard a rumor that you went to the hospital," explained Byrd.

"Byrd!" squeaked Toby, like a scolding spouse.

"Cuckoo, cuckoo," said Dean.

"I did not!" I protested.

"It was only a rumor, Dean," Toby scolded. "God, I just said I didn't know."

"It's not a rumor. Your mom told you," Dean replied.

"How does she know?" I demanded. I had forgotten that Toby's mom volunteered at the hospital

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.