Chapter 2 Samson
I wake to the smell of bacon being expertly fried mere feet from my head.
“Thought that’d wake you, boy. You don’t hear us talking, but I start frying bacon and you spring to life.”
It sizzles and spits.
My bed is warm.
Dad’s nodding to himself. Paint-splattered overalls and a Band-Aid where he shaved last night before writing. One of his many rituals.
“Get yourself up. Catch a worm.”
I can’t move because it’d be obvious I was woken mid-dream, and that the subject of said dream was private in nature.
“I’ll get up when Mom’s finished in the bathroom.”
“So you can put your makeup on?”
I sigh and check my Walkman’s still in its place, and then I carefully maneuver myself off the bed.
“Turn it back into a table. Your mother might want to sit there.”
I hear the bathroom door slide open and then the bedroom door shut. I scamper into the bathroom and lock the door behind me.
My belly rumbles.
I wash my face with Irish Spring hand soap and spike my hair with the gel I received for my birthday. It makes my hair look darker, I think, almost brown, and, in theory, in my head at least, that could mean I’ll have less trouble today at school.
Dad always fries our bacon. The only other thing he cooks is beans because he claims she overcooks them. Only need heating up, cook ’em too long and you ruin it. Everything else is woman’s work according to him. I know Mom wouldn’t agree, but she does it anyhow because of how he can be.
He doesn’t believe in cereal. Other kids have Lucky Charms and Cheerios. None of that sweet goodness here.
I put my bedding away and pull on my school uniform.
Sometimes I resent the scholarship I got, the one set up long ago by some rich Indiana family who used to own the local mine.
I was told the school would be fancy. It’s not like that at all.
It’s lots of kids with lake houses and campaign signs on their perfectly manicured lawns, but it’s nothing special.
Same bullshit just with neckties and rules about how you can wear your hair.
“It’s wet again,” I say, looking out of the window.
“Won’t hurt,” says Dad as he places crispy strips of bacon on sliced whole wheat toast, always whole wheat. No eggs today. No ketchup either.
A train thunders by in the distance. Pigeons erupt from the gnarled oaks on the towpath and beat their wings above our boat. Mom told me once how both pigeon parents care for their young, and how they mate for life. She said that was important. They manage to stay strong together come what may.
“Diseased pests,” says Dad, glancing up at the roof. “Be better where we’re moving to. Less tree vermin.”
“Moving?” I say.
“Breakfast,” he booms, ignoring me.
She emerges with wet hair and a towel wrapped around her head, looking like a movie star from the silent era.
“Smart mother you’ve got making the most of these convenient amenities while we’re still in the marina. If you had any sense, Samson, you’d take a leaf out of her book. Won’t be much water where we’re headed.”
“Leave him,” says Mom, cupping my cheek with her palm, and taking the plate of bacon and toast.
The other boys in my class don’t have these conversations.
Eyebrow, so-called because of his one panoramic eyebrow, has two bathrooms in his house and his cousin Mickey has three.
Eyebrow doesn’t talk to me much anymore.
At elementary school we’d play baseball and touch football, but now he’s wary to be seen close.
The other kids would say to him: Why you hanging around with that redhead trash, you two going steady or what? Why you chatting with Noodles?
They call me Noodles because of my arms.
Because they’re so thin.
Breakfast is delicious. Better than Mom’s pancakes, even. Dad fries the bacon until the fat crisps.
“Are you serious about moving the boat?” she asks.
Dad puts down his bacon and slowly turns his head to her.
“You asking me that?”
“It’s just that…”
“It’s just that…” he says, mimicking her. “I told you we’re moving. Maybe if you weren’t running around with some electrician with a bicycle we wouldn’t need to. We reap what we sow, Peggy.”
We finish breakfast in silence. Mugs of coffee and the sense that moving from the bungalow, Nanna Ruth’s two-bedroom bungalow, to this boat was one thing, but moving from Robertson’s Marina to some distant empty stretch of canal is quite another.
I’m beginning to experience the familiar sense of dread that comes with every weekday morning.
They’ll be there, see.
Waiting.
“How will I know where to walk home to from the library tonight?” asks Mom. “And Samson, from school?”
“You’ll figure it out,” he says. “The Lady Brett Ashley is a fifty-footer, woman, you can’t miss it. Name’s painted on the side, clear as day. Use your eyes, both of you.”
Other boys my age don’t have to contend with this. School is challenging enough in this town without having to go search for your own home each night, a home named after an Ernest Hemingway character.
“Just don’t moor it up too far from the road,” says Mom. “We need to get to the bus.”
“I’ll moor it where I see fit.”
Mom goes to the bedroom to finish getting ready.
She works at the municipal library, but they don’t actually pay her.
She’s a volunteer. Dad doesn’t want her to have a paying job because he says it’d be too much stress on her.
Because of her nerves, and what happened to Nanna Ruth before I was born.
And he claims the bosses would take advantage of her better nature.
“You training later, Dad?”
“What is it to you?”
“Thought we could do some together, once I’ve finished my assignments. Maybe back and chest.”
“Back and chest,” he mutters, shaking his head, glancing at my white shirt, gray in places, hanging off my shoulders like it’d hang off a hanger if we owned any. “You’ve got Mr. Turner tonight. Make sure he pays you in full.”
One day we will train together. I’ll be more like him by then. Strong, and living life on my own terms.
I drag on my school blazer, three sizes too big, and my shoes, also several sizes too big.
Hammer Adams says I look like I’m wearing my grandpa’s suit.
I told him I don’t have any grandpas, and he said it’s a good thing because they’d be ashamed to have a scrawny carrottopped grandson with clown shoes.
The walk to the bus is all right as it goes.
Local hit music show on my Walkman radio, the foam headphones stopping most of the wind reaching my ears.
R.E.M., Depeche Mode, and two songs by George Michael.
I keep my hand loose around the plastic shell of the Walkman in my jacket pocket in case I stumble and fall.
I would rather fracture my wrist than lose my Walkman.
No kids from school on this local bus. Sometimes there are older guys from other schools: seniors too poor to drive in, too old to be seen dead on a yellow bus.
Dad doesn’t like school transport just like he doesn’t like food stamps or voting or welfare.
Hates anything that might make life easier.
The big kids don’t bother me too much but they’re aware that everyone in ninth grade hates me.
They see what happens in the cafeteria and on the football field each week.
They don’t interfere with me directly, but I can see a mixture of pity and dismissal in their glances, and this morning I am relieved not to witness it.
Window seat to myself. A call-in game on the radio followed by Nirvana.
The raucous drumbeat of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” echoes in my unsettled stomach as we approach the bus station.
This is not a good place. Understatement.
There is no supervision to step in if things turn, no teachers to help.
I disembark and walk fast with my head bent, avoiding downtown, heading around the Salvation Army store and past the Baptist church.
A pair of girls from St. Benedict’s approach so I cross the street.
They are probably laughing at me.
They probably know.
I turn off my Walkman, wrap it in a long sock, and stow it safely in my bag.
There are boys from my school everywhere now, swarms of them.
My throat tightens. I’m sweating as I pass the church and head to the candy store.
The owner is a middle-aged woman from Wales, which is someplace in Europe.
Her family came over because of their mining expertise, so goes the rumor.
The store is small.
A converted room in a row house.
I am sick with the anticipation of what this day might bring.
I can never predict exactly what it’ll be, that’s the worst of it.
I’m OK at handling stuff if I can think it through beforehand, like the times Dad makes Mom upset.
But this first year at high school is a series of unpredictable life-and-death challenges, one after the next.
I have done nothing to them; I have not hurt them or called them names.
I have never broken their stuff. And yet they despise me.
I look up at the candy options. It’s all loose in big glass bottles.
As I’m waiting, a boy behind me steps on my heel. I ignore it. He does it again.
“Eighth of an ounce of lemon drops, please.”
The boy kicks the back of my knees. Nothing hard but it causes me to stumble forward and the lady tuts.
She measures out an eighth of an ounce and then removes one lemon drop, a misshapen one so no great loss, and slides them from the gleaming steel scales into a paper bag, and with a flick of her wrist, she twists the bag to close it.
I pay her and the boy behind me steps on my heel again.
Just ignore him.
My palms are damp and the day hasn’t even begun yet.
While he’s paying for gum or baseball cards I walk out quickly and then I sprint toward school. I need to put distance between us. It’s not easy running in these long shoes.
I approach the gates by the gym building, the set of gates I consider to be the safest at this time of day.
They are waiting for me.