(Image provided by Christopher Ananias, a fine fine Hawk)
The explosion happened around the time Danny and his long-haired buddy Jay Michaels turned my stingray bike into a chopper. They added aluminum tubes to the front forks. I was pretty cool, peddling the town, kicked back like Peter Fonda in “Easy Rider.” I don’t know if Dad still lived at home or not? It was so long ago.
The bomb exploded three houses up a grassy alley from our house. Sound travels in strange ways, especially in one’s memory. It bounced off the elementary school bordering Baker Street, like all the kids hung their pigtails and buzz cuts out the windows and shouted, “Boom!”
I don’t recall any sirens or groups of people with hands to their faces saying, “Oh my God!” Not even a teenager smiling, saying, “Fuck me.”
The day of the explosion was warm. I was outside, playing with Matchbox cars. Matchboxes were a big thing, bigger than marbles and jacks.
I remember in second grade whipping one of those chunks of steel at Mark on the shiny gym floor. The matchbox skipped off his hand and hit him in the mouth. I froze—all the fun—gone. He was a hemophiliac. The principal warned us to be careful around Mark. A big handlebar mustache said, “He’s a Bleeder.”
Mark grabbed his mouth, and nothing happened. Just like every other time he fell or got slammed into, everyone held their breath for the unstoppable river of blood that never came. Mark seemed unaware of his condition, hanging upside down on the monkey bars and tackling people.
The season of the explosion was during summer vacation. When Danny and his friends were building tree forts, turning bikes into choppers, and someone made a bomb.
The explosion came from the largest house of the richest people in town. This house had pointed green gables and a conical tower on one end, like some kind of Dutch architecture. Later, all grown up at ten, on my paper route, I stared at it from Jefferson Street. The stigma of death must have turned off the sunshine, because it always seemed gloomy.
There was a lot of speculation around town…
“The bomb bout rattled my windows out! I knew those boys were up to no good!” said old Mrs. Pearson. She spoke to Darrel at the Mobile gas station, beside the post office.
“Tom, did you hear how he looked?” shouted Ken from the sunny porch. Tom and Ken were best friends.
“No, did you?” Tom stood flat-footed on a yellow three-speed by the fire hydrant.
“I heard, it blew the top of his head-”
“-Be quiet about that, Kenneth!” interrupted his mother from the screen door, always catching him.
“Sorry Mom… Tom, you wanna skateboard at the bank parking lot?”
“Yeah, let’s go!”
It circulated that the richest boy in town made the bomb. Others said it was a disastrous chemistry set experiment. A chemistry set that says, 16 AND UP. I had two competing images in my mind. I thought he was a mad bomber, then a scientist in a white lab coat. The town Marshall, an old guy named Milt, who also drove a school bus, didn’t arrest anyone. Not even “Pop Bottle” Pete who lived down by the railroad tracks.
Life does what it does, and I graduated from the fifth grade to the big scary middle school on the hill. A new world populated by gargantuan eighth graders who wore leather motorcycle jackets and fucked.
On one little keynote… For a moment, in this shuffling middle school maze, I became a celebrated person. When, in gym class, a wild swing of the yellow wiffle ball bat connected, shooting the wiffle ball over the bleachers. I rounded the bases to home. The big boys cheered! Pete, the tall sandy-haired eighth grader clapped me on the back and said, “Good one you little shit.” He later became my dentist.
#
Mark was with us for a while. A gang of us drank, smoked dope, dropped acid, laughed our asses off, wrecked our parents’ cars and our motorcycles. One unfortunate upper classmate, drinking before, during, and after a warm high school football game took a header off a highway bridge doing 100 MPH—splitting his car in half. This reminded me again of the boy who accidentally blew himself up, years ago on that summer day. Death wasn’t just calling the old folks.
I never saw Mark bleed the whole time. Not even when he stuck up for me when I was drunk and he hit a guy square in the teeth. Mark was a brave dude—probably only weighed 130 pounds.
He spent time in the hospital for his hemophilia throughout school—and out of school in the 80s. “Where’s Mark?” Someone would say, answered with, “Back in the hospital.”
The rivers of blood came. I just never saw them. Sometimes the bleeding is on the inside. When I was nineteen, he started disappearing before my eyes. His Def Leppard and AC/DC shirts looked too big, like heavy metal gowns. He never said what was wrong. Mark had always been skinny, but this was something else…
The day of Mark’s funeral, I rode shotgun, in a strange bubble of isolation with my half-ass friends dressed the same way they always did. I watched the cut down cornfields clipping by, in a sort of fog, riding in Ken’s rusty blue Gran Torino. Drinking warm Budweiser and taking lackadaisical hits off the constant joint. A hand in the bag of Seyfert’s Potato Chips
Ken jumped the railroad tracks at the steep hill by the “Doll House.” Where they sold fishing equipment, bait, and big weird Dolls with human hair on their heads. My ass lifted off the seat! The car crashed like “The General Lee” in “The Dukes of Hazard.” We laughed hard like we used to, but our connections were already coming apart. I was coming apart.
We arrived late at the funeral home with beer on our breath, brushing potato chips off, and stinking of pot. People were upset with us. Mark’s best friends had a role to play.
We lined up by his casket, like deserters who came back to the battle, and walked him to his grave. Then we got back into the Torino and fucked away another day.
THE END
Christopher J. Ananias enjoys wildlife photography. He likes to walk along the railroad tracks, dodging the trains. His work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Grim and Gilded, Dead Mule of Southern Literature, Literally Stories UK and others.
Saragun Springs 
Christopher
This captures childhood perfectly. There’s always the one sick kid and myth built from an sctual event. A house exploded when I was kid. (No mystery, caused by two large propane tanks.) It rattled windows two miles away.
These events connected by Mark’s illness make a great story!
And as for the feathered fellow in the picture, I am certain you heeded an obvious warning!
Thank you!
Leila
LikeLike
Hi Leila
Yes those myths of childhood are very strong. Crazy how we share this experience with a neighborhood explosion.
Life is funny in how the events grow and we sort of ride them–processing and reprocessing.
In my writing attempts and now I would call a journey. Mark has been there. We once got drunk and were down at the railroad tracks and called a radio station and requested for Mark, “Wheel in the Sky.” (Journey).
Thanks!
Christopher
PS: Yes, he maybe she, was not messing around. It’s hard to tell the gender on these hawks. A juvenile red tail hawk–I think.
LikeLike
Leila
I think the hawk somehow fits this story!
Christopher
LikeLike
Hi Christopher
I agree. Kids are similar to hunters, doingvthis and that, seeking adventures and mainly doing stuff. Like Hawks (if the picture is a girl, you certainly escaped mangling). Hawks are fierce but not mean, and I think a lot of childhood cruelty is owed to an immature nature.
Keep thinking about this one, a good thing.
Leila
LikeLike
Hi Leila
That’s what I was thinking! This predatory (and immature) thing that swoops on people. And causes them to swoop. lol–but true.
Yes hawks are not to be messed with, but they are very sweet.Just trying to survive.
Humans always try to demonize animals for their own ends. Like vilifying coyotes and calling hawks ” chicken hawks.” What would the animals say about us? Guess God will speak for them.
Christopher
LikeLiked by 1 person
Christopher
We have Red Tailed Hawks and Bald Eagles living on the banks by the Puget Sound. The Gulls hate them. But that is the Circle of Life!
Leila
LikeLiked by 1 person
Leila
That’s cool! They must be a lot of fun to watch! We have Red tails and eagles co-existing here in Indiana, which is amazing for two apex predators. One of our favorites are the ospreys, because they are more rare. They might be the most proficient of the fishing birds,. but if they are in the Eagle’s territory they have to leave.
Christopher
LikeLike
Ananias
This is another great one. Your ability to construct an intriguing title that GRABS the reader’s attention, while also remaining SUBTLE, is awesome.
There are many who can construct a reader-grabbing title, and there are maybe more who can make subtle titles. Few can make them so they grab the reader and are subtle at the same time. These two things even sound like a contradiction at first, which they’re not; they’re a paradox, NOT the same thing as a contradiction. (Like the yin and yang.) And your ability at opening paragraphs: also great! How to open a story is so crucial, whether one is writing the story or telling it aloud.
The way this story FLOWS, but maybe even more so the way it UNFOLDS, is masterful. This piece moves from end to end like a river, or like life. Too many writers steal their plots off the latest Netflix series or from the most recent reality tv show. Your plots are so natural they are more like unfoldings of life than plots, just like Chekhov, who literally INVENTED such a massive, new technique in writing. (And then Hemingway in America took it a step farther and developed it.)
The “natural” short story whose plots unfold like life are a VERY, very very RARE thing, because it’s almost impossible to make it seem REALLY REAL. But you managed to do just that. In at least a dozen pieces of yours I’ve read so far. Amazing work, all consistently good, all as good as each other. O. Henry wrote over 400 short stories. He remains famous for two or three of them (and mostly just one).
More soon, gotta go grab some more coffee.
Dale
PS
When the antagonist dies and they go to his funeral: all are like life, heartbreaking, but then one moves on to the next thing, because one has to…
LikeLike
Hi Dale
Thanks for your comments! I just got back from the Indiana State Fair!
Wow I’m glad the title grabbed your attention. I did a final rewrite of it that felt like the best version.
Love the comparison to our hero Chekhov! The plots usually come from situations in my own life. This one especially. It might be the closest thing to non-fiction that I’ve written.
Mark was/is (next life) a real person. There was something tough about him for being such a fragile–you can break me–type of person. This is what I found so brave about how he lived his life.
He didn’t have time to grow into a man. But he was a real man–a good one.
It’s really great to hear your comments!
Christopher
LikeLike
CJA
I love hawks! I see ’em all the time when walking Siberians and pit along the Des Plaines River.
And this is one badass and GREAT picture of a hawk! It almost looks like he’s your pet somehow, which is totally cool. Like Johnny Appleseed who came upon the hurt wolf in the forest and took the thorn out of its paw and then the wolf started following him around and being his buddy, not quite his pet, but his pal.
Both photos (yesterday and today) seem Hemingwayesque. I see both as connected to the texts because they come from the same author; different aspects of the same vision or worldview; which makes your worldview very wide, which is true of any great artist. They know what to focus on (the small things) in order to get at what’s important (the big things).
“The Battler” by Hemingway is possibly my favorite story of his, IF I had to choose just one. Check it out for sure whenever you can! Also: “The Killers.” Both pieces are 3,000 words or less, but they feel much longer (in a good way). Your work has the Hemingway spirit in an original way. That’s badass, and even better than Carver.
You should also, for sure, check out the book WINESBURG, OHIO, by Sherwood Anderson, if you never have. This is a novel in stories that is a truly great, underappreciated American book. It was a bestseller when it came out (1919). Anderson influenced Hemingway and Faulkner. WINESBURG, OHIO, is short stories about people from Anderson’s hometown; and he focuses on the loneliest, the most creative, and the most extreme people in the town. It’s great, the prose style is as good as Carver.
How did you get that great pic of the hawk???
The Drifter
LikeLike
Dale
Glad you like the hawk! He/she was a really good subject. I got him riding in my ex-wife’s car. We take a lot of our pictures from the car, with the flashers blinking. The hawk was very close.
Wow that’s a great story about Johny Appleseed. The wolf and how they became friends. I need to read up on him. He sounds like a wild character. Maybe on par with the frontiersman, Daniel Boone. This planting of trees is great! Being a true environmentalist, before such a thing was a thing.
I started “The Killers” but got sidetracked. They were in a restaurant… but I didn’t get to the part of them killing anyone.
I’ve read some of Sherwood Anderson’s “WINESBURG, OHIO,” a few years back. I was impressed! Another one to get back onto. Thanks for bringing this up!
Thanks again!
Christopher
LikeLike
Christopher
The moment when Vanda sees him dead in his coffin for the first time, and then suddenly wants to make love to his corpse and even moans about it for a second, but really she just wants him back alive, is profoundly good and profoundly profound.
It’s a moment that would have freaked out, and impressed, even Sigmund Freud himself, it’s so psychologically true, real, deep, extreme, human, the subconscious erupting to consciousness in a character and you show it so well, so naturally, and in so few words, too! That one moment has more character in it than some entire novels.
And the moment when the narrator in your story for today throws the thing at the poor kid then worries about the bleeding, then later the kid dies; this is “foreshadowing” that, again, seems taken straight from the pages of life itself. So subtle and so real it sticks in the mind. Shakespeare himself would’ve been impressed with that one.
Great work! Your understanding of human characters, and your knowledge of how to present fictional characters in writing, are massively impressive.
D
LikeLike
Hi Dale
I had wondered about that line with Vanda moaning over his corpse. My internal censor says, are you going too far?
–but it seems I’m willing to forgo the approval of others’sensibilities and write whatever it is. Stephen King said,“If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”
The way you characterized this moment is as profound maybe even more profound than the moment itself. I’m glad it means something deeper than a writer–writing lines.
It’s always very cool when you bring Sigmund Freud to the party! You have a very sound knowledge of him. That must contribute to your excellent writing and study of human nature. I really enjoyed your Freud essay awhile back on LS!
Wow that’s awesome about the “foreshadowing!” It’s great to hear about these fictional techniques in my writing. It really names what is being done, and helps the future writing. Thanks!
Christopher
PS: The picture of Boo on the latest episode of your Drifter Column is magnificent! That is one cute dog–Movie star!
LikeLike
Sounds like my early school years, but probably some years later than mine which were more innocent. I do remember one of a pair of twins died by drowning, and there was smoking and drinking, but didn’t know much about drugs until college.
A close friend died on his motorcycle later in life, so we know it happens.
Back to the story – yes, this is how it was. Bullies, the bullied, tough guys, quiet guys.
LikeLike
I was hoping the story would be relatable. Hopefully to engage the reader’s memories. That’s what keeps me reading when I’m like, “Oh yeah,” or a whole flashback of “Oh yeah(s).”
The fast lane started early for me with the alcohol and drugs, and the innocence faded quickly. I can’t say it was a good thing–losing innocence is like breaking something precious and irreplaceable.
It’s rough when a friend dies. Words and memories kind of swirl in a vacuum where they used to be.
Thanks for your comments!
LikeLike