Damn It All to Hell

Damn it all to hell, my dad says when something goes wrong, like the Toyota getting a flat or the dishwasher leaking or the drill running out of battery right before the screw is flush. He said it when I ran over a sprinkler head with the lawn mower as a kid and when I dropped a Lego castle from the balcony on the stairs and it shattered on the entryway tile into a million pieces, chipping the porcelain. He said it when I crashed the snowmobile into a pine tree and the dirt bike into a barbed wire fence. He said it when I backed my car into a post down at Ronnie D’s Drive In just a week after getting my license. Damn it all to hell, he said when I didn’t get the job I wanted, when someone stole my credit card, when my transmission failed on the highway. Damn it all to hell, he said when he tore the ligaments in his shoulder while rolling trusses for a spec house. Damn it all to hell, he said when his own father died, when he looked into the casket at the funeral and saw not the man he built homes with for sixty years but instead someone too small and sallow to be his dad, someone with blush on his cheeks and powder on his forehead and maybe even lipstick on his thin straight mouth. Damn it all to hell, I say now as my father’s hair goes gray at the temples and we stand side-by-side staring at the mountain covered in cedar and golden larch, storm clouds building behind the peak, winter coming on.

Halloween, 1994

I was 4, my brother 6, and we wore Power Rangers costumes my mom sewed herself from scraps of bright pink and red cotton. A few inches of snow on the ground already, so my dad pulled us in a plastic toboggan around the circle of our neighborhood. We wore boots and coats and gloves that covered our costumes, but at least we still had our masks, store-bought plastic molds with elastic strings that got caught in our hair, holes for the eyes and mouth. At least our neighbors knew who we were, or who we were trying to be: not the quiet kids at the top of the hill who rode their bikes through the woods until dusk, but a pair of superheroes saving the planet from space villains like Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd. We didn’t complain about the cold even as we shivered, even as nickel-sized snowflakes gathered on our shoulders and melted on the crowns of our heads. We accepted handfuls of candy from each grown-up with gracious bows and nods, knowing we were giving them a gift, too. We were stoic when we got back home, eager only for sleep. We hid our plastic pumpkins full of candy under our beds and dreamt of galaxies far far away, of hand-fought battles under bright stars, of victory.

Redneck Fountain

There’s a boy of nine or ten lying face up and shirtless in the grass, skinny and white with a suntan, red basketball shorts down to his knees. Another kid of the same age stands a few feet from him with a green garden hose, and the water falls on the shirtless boy’s chest and stomach. Both boys stay still and serene, like statues that make up a redneck fountain, a piece of art I understand without explanation because it’s already familiar to me. I remember drinking from the hose on hot summer days as a child, the cold metallic water, dirt on the mouth. After, I’d always put my head under the stream until I got a brain freeze. Then I’d throw my long blonde hair over my shoulders and let the rivers of water trail down the back of my t-shirt as I rode my bike across the shimmering asphalt, sun on my arms and face but the inside of me still impossibly, magically cold.