"Dead Summer 1963"

The end of summer is melancholic and as solemn as death in Clear Creek. The boy walks along the twisting black macadam road, his worn sneakers finding bubbles of tar and stepping on them brings pops and cracks like chewing gum on molars. There is sadness all around in everything he sees because the boy knows that school is drawing closer.

The freedom of summer will be exchanged for a long sentence in a two-room schoolhouse, and he’ll join the other prisoners in the yellow brick building. Sure, he’ll be as polished as the red apples hanging from the five crooked trees he walks toward. Trees, never feeling the cut of a pruning saw, and left to grow wild and free much like he felt during the beginning of the all too quick vacation.

Already, the telltale signs showed. The new shoes ordered from the door-to-door salesman who just yesterday delivered them from the back of the Jewel-T truck. Two new outfits, one pair of blue jeans, and a pair of brown corduroy pants folded and hidden in the scarred dresser upstairs. Two shirts, a button up, and a pullover with yellow and blue stripes lay near the pants. His excitement of new clothes passed soon after trying them on for his mother who also commented on the boy’s hair length.

The boy walked up the hill toward the trees, and ran his fingers across the standing bristles of his buzz cut, and called up the memory of the hair clippers, which just yesterday scalped him in a chair out on the front porch of the house. His older and younger brothers stood lined up for theirs, and watched with fascination as his black locks drifted toward the planks. They joked and elbowed one another about the boy’s hairstyle, all the while failing to realize they were destined for the same thing. This time it was good to be the first one in the chair, for the clippers lost their sharpness, and their length of time in the chair was increased two-fold. The old clippers were in bad need of adjustment. A tiny slotted screw on the side required his mother to raise and lower her horn-rimmed bi-focal glasses, and use a butter knife turned screwdriver to silence the clacking clippers for a more smooth operation. By this time though, and after being dusted off with a swinging tattered towel, he once again found freedom.

On the way to the trees, the boy stopped in a patch of milkweed to observe the other signs that summer was drawing to a close. He closely examined the fat light-green seedpods bursting at the seams with the white feathery fluff pushing out like a hatching chick, and the boy plucked one from the plant. It was he who sped up the process of aging, and he opened the pod scattering the feathers in the air and watching them drift earthward. He looked at the nub left on the plant and watched it bleed milk, deciding it must be the reason they were called milkweed. Satisfied with his observation, he moved on.

The hot sun beat down on his bare back when he reached the apple trees, and he found some respite underneath the biggest of the five. On the ground, scattered apples drew tiny brown ants to feast upon them. He watched them work, and with fascination lowered himself to the ground on all fours for a better view. The ants worked in criss-crossed lines of determination. Soon, he became bored with the repetition of the stubborn insects, and pushed himself up. He grabbed hold of a branch and his sneakers pawed at the tree’s trunk until he found himself sitting in the tree. The seat provided him with an expansive view of the old house, the big yard, and the chickens scratching near the old coop. His brown eyes traced the curling black road passing in front the house’s porch, and he followed it until it became hidden around the sharp curve. He knew that just beyond his view stood the white bus stop shack, and with a sad shake of his head he lowered himself from the tree. There was no hunger for the apples, and he walked with slumped shoulders toward the house. Summer was dead.

Ronnie Ray Jenkins

www.ronnierayenkins.com

where the written word never dies.