Kody Boye - Sunrise

A knock came at the door.

“Come in,” Jamie called.

The door opened. Kevin and his two children stood in the doorway, dressed from head to toe in winter gear.

“Good to see you,” Jamie said, gesturing them into the house. “Come in, come in.”

“Thank you for inviting us,” Kevin said, reaching out to accept Jamie’s hand over Dakota’s shoulder.

Dakota shrugged out of Jamie’s grasp so he could stand at his side. “How are you guys?”

“Doing better. Thank you for inviting us, Jamie.”

“You’re one of us now,” Jamie smiled. “Friends gotta stick together, right?”

“They sure do,” Kevin nodded.

“Get in here!” Steve called. “Dinner’s ready!”

“I just finished the cake!” Desmond added.

“Cake?” Mark said excitedly.

“How’d he make cake?” his older brother questioned, equally excited.

“I don’t know,” Kevin laughed, gesturing his children into the kitchen, “but I know I want some.”

When the father and his sons had fully disappeared from view, Dakota turned to face Jamie.

“Everything fine now?” Jamie asked.

“I’m fine,” Dakota smiled, reaching down to take Jamie’s hands. “Just thankful.”

“For what?”

“You… us… life.”

“I think we all are,” Jamie said, sliding an arm across Dakota’s shoulders before leading him toward the kitchen. “Trust me. I know we are.”

The first touch of snow began to fall in the middle of November.

“Beautiful,” Jamie whispered. “Just beautiful.”

“You act like you’ve never seen snow before,” Ian taunted, throwing himself onto one of the couches.

“Not since we got back from Iraq,” Erik said, stepping up to join Jamie beside the window.

“After being there for a week,” Jamie said, “you wish it would snow.”

“Like Canada.”

“Or Europe.”

“You were in Europe?” Dakota asked.

“We stopped off over there for a fuel run,” Jamie said. “Right, Erik? Or was that somewhere else?”

“I think that was the Netherlands,” Erik frowned. “I can’t remember. I was so jet-lagged that I could hardly keep my eyes open.”

“I remember now,” Jamie chuckled. “You had the same problem on the way back.”

“I threw up.”

“On me, no less.”

Dakota raised a hand to hide his chuckle. Erik offered the same look regardless. “I don’t do well with planes. Seriously.”

“You don’t do well with anything,” Jamie howled, slapping his thigh before falling back from the window. “You got sick in the jeeps, in the tanks. Hell, you even got sick in the cars over there.”

“It’s a fucking desert you prick! What did you expect?”

“He’s always had a problem with moving beyond the speed of foot,” Jamie said, nudging Dakota’s side and leaning in as though he were about to reveal a secret. “He can’t even sit in a swing without hurling.”

“Fuck you,” Erik laughed, lifting his middle finger.

“What’s going on?” Desmond asked, stepping out of the hallway in boxers and an undershirt.

“Nothing,” Jamie said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I heard yelling and wasn’t sure,” the boy said.

“Weren’t sure about what?” Erik asked, narrowing his eyes.

“It reminded me of the way my parents used to fight.”

No one spoke as the boy made his way to the couch beneath the expansive southern window and seated himself on it. The laughter now gone from the air, Dakota cast a glance first at Jamie, whose expression seemed to be chipping away by the second, then at Erik, whose mouth simply melted from its frown into a neutral position. Ian, meanwhile, appeared troubled, as his usually cold eyes seemed lighter than they normally did.

“Sorry,” Erik mumbled, breaking the silence everyone else seemed afraid to. “You never told us about that.”

“It’s not your fault,” Desmond said.

“I feel your pain, bud,” Ian said, stepping forward to join Desmond on the couch. “My parents used to fight all the time.”

“About what?”

“About my father for not being home more often, about my grades, about my friends and how I was running with the wrong crowd.”

“They were probably worried about you getting into a gang,” Erik said. “Guess it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“I got dragged into it because I was a pussy, not because I’m Mexican.”

“I wasn’t insinuating that.”

Ian settled back onto the couch. “That’s a touchy subject.”

“I should’ve worded that more carefully.”

“It’s ok. Besides, I shouldn’t have snapped at you anyway. I just took a lot of shit back home and I’m still bothered about it.”

“You never mentioned where you came from,” Dakota said, sitting down on the edge of the couch.

“I was born in the States, but spent half of my life in Mexico. Thirteen years. Thirteen fucking years.”

“How come your family didn’t stay there?” Desmond asked.

“Gangbangers kept jumping my dad,” Ian said. “Funny…we left Mexico to get away from that and we go right back into it when we got here.”

“That’s when you moved to the MRS,” Dakota said.

“The what?” Desmond frowned.

“The MRS—Mount Rushmore State. It’s a South Dakota thing.”

“Anyhow,” Ian said, “like I was saying, we moved to South Dakota when I was thirteen and I got the same kind of shit I got in Mexico. I’d get picked on for being half Mexican, get ridiculed for not being ‘a real Mexican,’ and asked if I was in a gang or if I planned on being in one from everyone, including teachers, which is why I snapped at you.”

“It’s understandable,” Erik said.

“You wouldn’t believe the names I’d get called.”

“I can only imagine,” Dakota said.

“Beaner, poncho, greaser, wetback. Hell, they even called me a guero because of my skin, which pissed me off because it was always used in a negative way. So, to get back to my point—whenever I wasn’t getting harassed for being a Mexican, not being enough of one or being asked if I was in a gang, I’d sit at home and listen to my parents fight.”

“What’d they fight about?” Desmond asked.

“Like I said earlier—my dad being gone, money, my grades. That kind of shit.”

“Did your parents split?” Dakota asked.

“Happened when I was fifteen. Mom caught Dad with some bimbo bitch with fake tits and kicked him out. They divorced almost immediately.”

“That had to be hard,” Jamie commiserated. “It sucks growing up without a dad.”

“I could care less about that asshole,” Ian growled, eyes once again chilling. “What pissed me off was what the assholes started doing to my mom.”

“What assholes?”

“The fucking white guys who chased my mom because she was Mexican. They’d start hanging around the house after my dad left and would do one of two things—try to get with her because she was now ‘free real estate’ or call her a whore.”

“I’m guessing this didn’t end well,” Erik said.

“I beat one of the fuckers up when he got all touchy-feely on her when I was walking home from school, said he’d kill me if he ever saw me again. I got so fucking fed up with all of it that I just wanted to leave her alone.”

“Did you,” Dakota paused. “I mean, is this when you joined the gang?”

“No. This was after I started beating up the guys who jerked my mom around and after I got jumped for protecting her.”

No one said anything. Even Desmond, whose problem had since transgressed into Ian’s own revelation, remained silent, his issues long placed behind him in order to let Ian speak.