John McManus - Born on a Train - 13 Stories

That’s not true.

I’m a Gemini, so I’ll meet people.

Ben shook his head like he was disappointed in the answer.

You’re a Scorpio, so you’ll be depressed and lonely.

I’m not depressed and lonely.

You’ll pry into other people’s lives, wishing they were yours to live.

Ben turned and faced the other way, trying to breathe quietly. He didn’t want Froggy listening to his breaths. He didn’t want to be in the room with Froggy, or beneath a roof at all; he thought of walking to the beach and wading in the water, but the girls would be there. He thought of crabs that ran so rampant on the beach, scuttling across dead skin that fell from all the people’s bodies.

Hey, Froggy said.

What?

I wasn’t trying to be mean. Ben didn’t answer. Really, Froggy said. I wasn’t.

I know.

It’s not my fault Dad screwed Mama when he did. If he’d waited a few more days, you’d be a Sagittarius, and you could travel all over the world. People would flock to you like seagulls.

If his father had waited a few days, Ben thought, he wouldn’t be himself at all. It made him nervous. Froggy fixed his bangs so they stood out from his forehead, ending at his eyebrows. He put a T-shirt on and looked in the mirror and took it back off and flexed his muscles. You know what? he said to Ben. You haven’t seen me naked in three years.

Ben didn’t answer.

Look at my muscles. I can bench-press a hundred fifty pounds now.

Ben shrugged.

Froggy had a glassy glint in his eye that faced the light. That’s just six months, he said. Imagine in another whole year. He bent to touch his toes. He sat on the carpet and did butterfly stretches. Ben closed his eyes again; he couldn’t imagine another whole year. He had a hard time believing one would come at all. I wonder if Scorpios can get strong muscles, Froggy said. I can’t even remember. Ben thought back to last year and tried to recall his vision of the current one but couldn’t. The number had sounded strange. He remembered that much.

* * *

When Froggy was dressed and ready, he went out the swinging door and drank from Celeste’s tall glass of lemonade as he passed her and assumed his shades and ran his fingers through his hair. What’s in that bag? Celeste asked him, as he slung his backpack onto his right shoulder.

Drugs, he said.

She smiled at him.

And rum. Drugs and rum.

You’re just like your uncle, she said.

Except I’m still alive, said Froggy.

Celeste looked at him with amusement. Ice clinked against the side of her glass. Don’t stay out too late, she said; you’ve got to come home and spend some time with me, too.

I’ve spent my whole life with you, Aunt Celeste. Why don’t you spend some time with Ben for once, instead.

You know, she said, you’re the kind of boy I would have liked. Water was glistening on his smooth, hairless arms.

As a son?

As a lover.

He gazed at her intently.

When I was your age, she added.

People don’t have lovers at Froggy’s age, Mama said. He’s fifteen years old. Barely even that.

You’ve got exactly what I looked for, said Celeste, ignoring Mama. How old are you?

Fifteen.

Fifteen, she repeated, smiling into a shaft of sunlight that brightened her henna dye to orange. You would have liked me when I was fifteen, she said. I was something to look at.

Celeste, said Mama, stop it.

I don’t mind bragging about it, since I’m so ugly now.

You’re not ugly.

When you’re my age, Celeste told Froggy, you can brag too. You can say you were the prettiest boy in all of Florida. If anyone will listen.

Boys aren’t pretty, Mama said. They’re handsome. Her finger moved across the page of her book as Froggy rolled his eyes. He folded his arms and stood there starkly fleshed between his shadow and the sun and walked away down the boardwalk.

* * *

Mama read faster than Ben did. He shuffled restlessly in his chair and stood and stretched and paced the porch. This beach is boring, he said. Ginger licked his leg, and he kicked her away, making sure Celeste didn’t see. She was probably almost blind anyway.

It’s only as boring as you make it, Mama said.

I didn’t make it, Ben said. It would be a lot more fun than this if I had.

Mama didn’t answer. He went out to the beach an hour after Froggy and he turned left when he reached the sand and left his sandals on a mound of crushed-up cockle shells. He kicked sand at the crabs that ran away to sink into their chutes below the earth. He kicked plain-patterned shells. He hadn’t seen a sand dollar all week; he would walk until he found one, he decided, even if it got dark. He took off his shirt and left it with his sandals and decided to get a tan. Sunscreen was a lie, like toothpaste, designed to make his life more complicated.

He walked for half an hour counting his steps, ducking beneath a row of propped-up fishing rods with lines that stretched into the surf. He stepped on slimy seaweed washed ashore. He stepped on a beached jellyfish to see if its dead body could still sting him or make him bleed, but it didn’t, and he looked at every face on the beach to see if it was Froggy. He watched the birds. Mama liked birds, and Ben was supposed to like them too. They were interesting.

He took note of their number and their size. Some of them were everywhere, like blackbirds. A large black creature stood upon the sand in front of Ben but it was different. He approached it with a mechanical precision, expecting it to fly away. He wanted to identify it in the bird book when he got home, but it hobbled down the beach when he approached, holding an injured leg up as it walked. Birds were fast but not if they were crippled, and maybe he could catch it. He began to run.

I just want to look at you, he told it. He wanted to know its genus and its species. Froggy would just return to playing his Game Boy, but Ben would return with the name of a new kind of bird. He ran and ran but couldn’t catch the bird; it stayed always the same distance out of reach. Goddamn you, he said. He stabbed its forked and narrow footprints with his toes, eradicating them.

People watched him as he ran, plain-faced men and familes on the sand. The bird still hobbled east along the sparsely populated beach. When Ben got tired of running the bird slowed too; this was an ugly, stubborn bird, and he wished its leg would give out so he could quit walking. He kicked up sand again but none of it reached the bird. He couldn’t tell how old birds were; maybe this one was about to die. Maybe the others didn’t like it.

Certain men on the beach sent waves of chills across his body when he passed them, and boys, too; they did it with their eyes. He knew it meant they hated him, that they wished he were dead. It happened every day. The injured bird rocked back and forth as it progressed along the breaking waves. He tried to blast it with all his energy, but his eyes emitted nothing. Fuck, he said aloud, and it sounded strange inside his mouth, and the bird had ruffled feathers sticking up like a carrot from its ass.

Ben hurt the callus of his foot on the sharp end of a crab shell. His elbows itched where biting flies had tasted him, and sand was in his shorts. He hated beaches. He hoped the bird he chased belonged to an endangered species. He hated the men around him on the sand. He tried to think of one thing in the world he didn’t hate. He waded through tidal pools of stagnant water. The bird would have to stop eventually, because beaches didn’t stretch on forever; they all ended if you walked far enough.

He reached the stretch of beach that fronted condos where lifeguards sat watch every several hundred feet on towering wooden chairs; they sported heavy tans. The beach was crowded here. Ben weaved his way between the bodies in the footsteps of the bird. He knew its color pattern now by heart; he’d watched it so long he could close his eyes and draw it with acrylics on his eyelids. These people looked good. He was thin and white and lanky, and he stumbled on a crab hole. He wished he’d worn his shirt. Topless boys played volleyball and Ben looked among them for his brother, who was laughing, holding hands with girls, telling dirty jokes to every unfamiliar face.