2. The Rebellious Skater #3
Friday afternoon, Gus and his father loaded a redwood table into the truck bed of their customer, Mr. Maven.
“There. She’s all set,” Dan said, stepping back as Gus hopped down from the truck. Mr. Maven provided payment to Dan, and the two men shook hands.
Mr. Maven then looked over to Gus and smiled. “Glad to see Dan finally has some extra hands around here.”
Gus nodded in response. “Thanks, sir.”
After their customer drove away, Gus and Dan returned to the woodshop and took off their work gloves. Gus sat down to drink some water as his father went to his desk and filed some paperwork. When he walked back to Gus’s side, Dan handed Gus an envelope of cash.
“Your first payment. Plus a small tip from Mr. Maven. You’re doing good, kid,” Dan stated.
Gus smiled and accepted the envelope, then sighed. “Why’s college so expensive?”
“Beats me. I never went. No one in our family has,” Dan replied. He nodded at Gus with a hesitant smile. His face then turned serious. “Keep working hard, Gus. Don’t get… distracted,” he said sternly as he looked Gus in the eye. “You could end up the first of our family with a degree.”
Gus breathed in that added pressure and raised his eyebrows. He didn’t know what to say.
Distracted by what? Does he know?
Dan patted Gus on the shoulder stoically and walked out of the woodshop.
Left alone, Gus stood still. He was torn between what his father expected of him and what he was thinking—building—in secret. His eyes glazed over. Art college had felt so far away before this summer. Now he only had three months left…
Gus drooped his head. The sudden obvious weight of his family’s hopes hung heavy. Maybe the skating idea was stupid. Dad’s gonna think I’m lying to him…
However, as Gus opened his eyes, his head still hanging low, he spotted the bucket of scraps leftover from the day’s carpentry. It was all perfectly good wood he could use to re-attempt a homemade board. Gus cringed at the thought. He pushed the bucket under a side table to hide it from his view.
With a guilty, quiet groan, Gus debated with himself for a moment. He watched his diligent father through the window as the aging man walked off into the cabin. Gus hated all this secrecy.
But I can’t tell him. He’d never let me do it.
Gus huffed. He leaned down and picked up the scraps bucket and stashed it in his secret closet.
Gus used his next day off to de-stress and get out of the woodshop.
He couldn’t resist driving by the skatepark again and parked near the sidelines, just like last time.
He sat at one of the picnic tables and sketched the park’s cottonwood tree again but from a new angle.
Gus had hoped he’d have enough courage to enter the mix of all the local teens and finally meet some potential friends here in town, but he just couldn’t do it.
Without a skateboard, he’d look like a weirdo.
Gus stood up and leaned against the far-off fence, watching the skaters pass back and forth in the concrete bowls.
He spotted the gruff older kid from the skate shop and the daredevil Bridger along with a few boys he recognized from last time.
Did they hang out here every day? Gus never had a group like this. He sort of wished he had.
Suddenly, Max lunged to pull off Bridger’s snapback. Bridger whipped around trying to swipe the hat back, but his older friend lifted it out of reach. Max then ripped off his own cap and threw both to the ground.
“Hat Match!” Max blurted out.
All the boys quickly hooted with bravado and formed a circle around Max and Bridger.
Gus squinted, confused.
One of the skaters, Coop, stepped forward to moderate. He raised his arm, ready to signal. “No limits?”
“No limits,” Max confirmed, grinning sneakily at Bridger.
“…shit.” Bridger chuckled as he crouched down, hands on knees, prepared to play.
“GO!” Coop hollered, driving his hand down as if he held a checkered race flag.
Max and Bridger both dove for the other’s hat.
The two tussled violently, ripping, pulling, and wrestling each other away from their trophies on the ground.
All the other boys watched every swerve and maneuver.
Gus, stunned by the savage display, couldn’t stop watching.
He had never seen a game so chaotic. The rest of the boys cheered over the mayhem, choosing sides.
After a few stretched seconds, Max pinned Bridger down and climbed onto his chest to straddle him. Bridger struggled to escape.
“Yeah! You like that?” Max taunted, looking down at Bridger beneath his pelvis.
“Get off!” Bridger tried to wrangle his way out as Max continued to boast his strength for all the other boys surrounding them.
Max leaned down close to Bridger’s reddening face. “C’mon, Bridge. Never let them see you weak,” he whispered through grimaced teeth.
Bridger pulled one arm free, trying to escape the grapple, but Max caught the arm and pinned it down again. Max turned to his crew, gleefully smirking, as Bridger tried to thrust him off.
“YEEHAW!” Max exclaimed, riding Bridger like a bucking horse. “We got a wild one, boys!”
All the guys in the skate crew laughed as they stepped in closer.
Max then elbowed Bridger hard in the side, flipped him over, and pressed Bridger’s face against his own hat.
Gus’s eyes darted to Coop, who gestured to Max as the winner.
All the boys whooped and hollered. Max gloated in victory as he got off Bridger’s back.
Another boy, Avery, lit a blunt and puffed smoke.
He chuckled at Bridger, who was rolling around groaning from his loss.
“He got you good, Bridge,” Avery chuckled.
Bridger winced, catching his breath. “I think I broke a rib.”
“You wanna hit this?” Avery offered, leaning down.
Bridger reached for the blunt and took a rip while lying on the concrete. “Best medicine,” he coughed out.
I gotta impress them, Gus thought. Something legit. They wouldn’t let him hang for no reason, and there was no way they’d teach him how to skate without his own board. They’d never share. He was going to have to teach himself first. Like he always did.
Gus turned to leave, determined to put the scraps from earlier to good use.
A few days later, Gus repeated all his same carpentry steps to build his homemade deck again.
His aim was to build this board thicker than the last. The night after the deck mold finished drying, Gus recut, resanded, and repolished the denser board.
It was almost sunrise when he finally got to a place where he could test the skateboard on the railroad ties again.
Gus took a deep breath and jumped up and down on the piece multiple times.
He beamed when the board stayed strong. He picked up the better board and looked it up and down for cracks.
There were none. Gus smiled with satisfaction.
While listening to Nickelback on his MP3 player in his room, Gus penciled a mountain scene on the bottom of his skateboard.
He referenced the landscape he’d drawn in his sketchbook on his first day back in Montana.
He strayed with his pencil, erased the error, and fixed it with a fresh line. This was why he never started with ink.
Later on, Gus changed into one of his older shirts that he didn’t mind dirtying.
He mixed and arranged small bowls of leftover paints that his dad had instructed him to throw away over the past few days.
He didn’t have all the colors his mom had used in her old art studio, but Gus was good at making do with little.
He swept the brush in careful strokes, watching the muted colors slowly cover the penciled mountain-themed graphic.
He let the wet paint dry and then screwed in the cleaned silver trucks on each end of the board.
They were still a bit scuffed up, but Gus could tell the trucks were built to last. The faded green wheels he popped on brought the colored graphic together.
Gus peeled the grip tape from its plastic and laid it down over the board’s top surface.
He pressed it to fit and trimmed the excess. That was it.
Gus smiled. It was finished.
He turned the board over under the lamplight to view its construction and final aesthetic. It wasn’t perfect, but it was impressive. More than that, it was all his own.
Proud as he was, as he gazed at the skateboard’s painted mountain range, he shook his head in doubt. Gus knew it wasn’t enough. Not yet. He still had no idea how to use the board. All this work would be for nothing if he couldn’t actually skate.