Fourteen

Patrick and John 1

Fourteen wanders the midway on a sweltering August night. The air prickles with an approaching storm. The roll of thunder can not be heard above the discordant battle of the manic music and the fuming generators. Fourteen and his friends waste their allowance on cheap tricks and antiquated rides satisfied that the best ride of all is being fourteen in summer, chasing skin-tight shorts. Wolffish eyes glued to sun-kissed legs. Each step offers a glimpse of tight pale cheeks. Zippered flies cup torturous female curves like bandaids screaming to be ripped off by fumbling fingers. Then the heavy penis agony of those uncharted depths between silky thighs.

The boys walk half hard because, well, because they are fourteen, and what else matters except the girls and each boy’s faith that as apples fall in the orchard, there will be sex after fourteen. The primal electricity is fed by this brazen girl-boy-boy watching and the sympathetic radiation amongst them. It passes back and forth between the boys like jolts of electricity each time a lean shoulder brushes a sweaty tee-shirt or an encouraging hand flutters across a flexing back. Tired dads pause to envy them as the pack dances by, and mothers eye them with a mixture of trepidation and nostalgia.

Patrick Hunter considers the pack of boys with a strange intensity. The young teenagers flaunt an innocent confidence snatched from him years ago. He knows the demon is on him. Patrick has a rusted out Bronco, a dead end job promised three states over, and the after. John Canon’s cigarette coils around them both: second hand smoke, second hand misery. “Have you seen enough?” John asks, Is it enough just to see? 

Patrick has definitely  not seen enough. “Aren’t you tired of driving? Do we really have somewhere you’d rather be?” Patrick replies absently, eyes drinking in the kaleidoscope of hometown fair.

“Well, I’m not interested in fried Mars Bars or the Ferris wheel. I’m thirsty. I need a cold beer.” The treakle heat makes them both quarrelsome. Tough breaks make them quarrelsome.

Patrick has a thirst too, “Okay.” It will be a few beers at a plastic table speckled with dying flies before they push on through the sameness of their lives. Take a last look at innocence.

A brash decision by a girl and Fourteen’s exhilarating trip on the interstate swerves abruptly onto the twilight back roads of America. Patrick sees a blond cheerleader turn on the boys. Who is prey and predator, boys or girls? The cheerleader flirts with Fourteen’s friend then turns it all on Fourteen, catching up his tangerine tee-shirt playfully. Twisting the hem up just so Patrick can examine a drumhead torso. Fourteen’s cock is desperately trying to nose its way free of his pocket. Fourteen knows it too. A hand that wants the girl’s hip slips fingers over the evidence.

Fourteen is spinning around a cheerleader somewhere with his forever friends. Patrick is spinning a beer bottle as John takes a cheap holiday from their long drive. John’s mind is on the too drunk farm girls primed with lager sitting around them. They can be his cheerleaders till the beer garden closes. Then what? John figures nothing will happen, but for the moment, the beer is better than the road. John is measuring Patrick’s itch.

Patrick is spinning Fourteen around in his mind. Fourteen’s a nice boy, a good boy. So are his bro-friends come to that. Patrick knows the nuclear family wraps round these boys good and tight, but not tonight. Tonight’s the freedom-fair and even good boys have to prowl. Patrick slaps John’s arm. “Time to jet.”

John is on about his past. Something about this Ray Bradbury slice of the Midwest reminds him of home. John’s personal merry go round is spinning him back to his own before. Patrick listens to him talk. Fuck the before, Patrick stays in the now, because the future is always going to be a grey zone. Gunmetal grey rusting away to fuck all. Not pulsating tangerine nights of hot August wonder, Patrick knows. Sheet lightning takes an Instagram of four boys wrestling each other through the gate at fair closing. They break away from the strollers and couples strolling arm in arm. They could be playing two on two with a fantasy ball of dreams as they head off across the darkling parking lot.

The Bronco coughs like an old man before settling into a soft rattle. John grows silent. It comes to John that the car is barely moving behind the boys. Patrick has a hand at six o’clock. He is gnawing at a knuckle. John let’s the storm breeze wash across his face, beginning to sense the aliveness of Patrick. The trip has been a lazy toke, so boys blocking the road is copacetic. Too hot for getting riled, too beer sleepy, John sighs. Just watch Pat. Let the urge pass tonight. John figures they will drive a while, pull off the road and doze.

No parent pick up on the road, Patrick taps the wheel. The boys have bikes. Ass lifting pumps and they are moving now. Midnight’s coming and you want to slip in just early enough, all angel-like. Innocent eyes for mom and covert smirk for dad to let him know the horn dogging has been good. Patrick remembered the before. Midnight and the rain would cascade down the bedroom window. Maybe there is no air conditioning, so you leave the window open. Let the storm sprinkle cool drops across your face and abs while a practiced hand reminds you how you felt cock heavy when the cheerleader tugged your heartstrings.

Town boys splitting off in pairs. Patrick pulls a lazy turn and follows Fourteen. John glances at his friend, knowing where Patrick is taking him, starting to catch the feral vibrations. Patrick is not sure how he is going to play this. He is just letting it must-happen. Life is a toss. You put some money down on 14 red and zone out in the now while the indifferent wheel spins and the ball starts its roll. Patrick is just a small white ball rolling against the spin hoping chance drops Fourteen in the right slot. Another sheet of lightning then a long roll of theatrical thunder. With a last wave, Fourteen peels off down a long stretch of park toward home. John has to let this happen because Patrick’s after is on him. He has to help Patrick bring Fourteen into the shared after.

Fourteen races the storm, but that is just for fun. Getting drenched will be fine. Feel your shirt cling sopping to your flesh. Wash the fair grit free. An engine warns you you’re not alone. Fourteen showboats for a moment, riding hands free as he lets the car pull past. A cool wind blasts him with a shotgun spread warning of what’s to come. He drops his hands back onto bar as the car redlights up the way.

Two young men step out. Two slow turns of the gear while one kicks a tire. Fourteen is swinging out to pass them when the blond one flags him down. Tangerine flashes by leaving Patrick in its wake. Fourteen slows, feeling bad. There is home, just up the way. The rain tears down his face now. His phone weighs down on his pocket like a bad conscience. Dad would stop, Fourteen knows. Leave them in the street while you take a shower with memories of Emily? Not right,  Fourteen takes a u-turn.

Patrick wipes the film across his face and grins. “Thanks for stopping.” All fresh-faced responsible, Fourteen hops off his pedals and leans forward on his handlebars.

“Are you lost?” No smoke charred voice this. Sunshine sparkling off the the darkling raindrops. Fourteen is just asking for it. “I’ve got a phone. My dad is just over there.” Graceful twist to point the way. Fourteen turns back to Patrick. 185 pounds of backyard angry bench press  strips 105 nature’s-gift pounds of Fourteen off the mountain bike and drag-slams him against the driver’s door. Patrick loves the heart pounding strength of the boy just beyond his clenched fists. He loves the flash of strong white teeth in Fourteen’s surprised mouth. Only, suddenly he has 105 pounds of tawny bobcat on his hands. Hard fists are flying at him and there is a wail building behind Fourteen’s hard chest. Patrick can feel it coming. The boy’s blows are nothing to Patrick. He is in the after and no before time boyish scrapping can hurt him now.

“Hurry it up.” John urges. John has come alive now that the nick is on. He starts around the Bronco to lend a hand, or get in on the action. Fourteen breaks Patrick’s iron grip. Patrick knows Fourteen will jack rabbit away from him in a twinkling, but the cornered bobcat is still stupid-strong in him. Park stranded as he is, Fourteen will start to howl down the sleepy neighbourhood. There is nothing for it but to damage the goods.

Before he is left with nothing but tangerine shreds between his claws, Patrick drives the howl right out of Fourteen. His knuckles rabbit punch below the flat pans of Fourteen’s adolescent chest and just above the taught bands of his torso. Patrick feels the boy’s pain. There was no time to let Fourteen fall. Patrick hustles the stunned boy to the back door. “You drive.”

“Grab his phone.” Press the wobbly load against the door, fish for keys, wallet, unused tokens, and an expensive phone. Let the riches fall at Fourteen’s feet. “Clean?” John asks. Patrick grabs a shock of Fourteen’s hair and turns the head. Running snot mingled with the tears and rain can’t mar the Fourteen dazzle. “In the car.” Patrick needs this, but John can’t push passed the sick making fear each time the demon is let loose. John waits for Patrick to muscle his new rag doll onto the seat.

Fourteen is searching for the right signal to draw the next breath. Wires are crossed somewhere. He literally has no idea what hit him. He’s resting on a litter of sweet and salty filth. Sediment laid down over six days of addicting drive throughs. A cascade from the seat above patter across his face, as Patrick slides in. Fourteen does not notice. The knack of breathing still eludes him. It is too tight to curl around the pain. “It will come, trust me.” The blond guy offers with a clinical detachment. Fourteen struggles to turn over. Face planted in greasy wrappers smeared with condiments, his shattered diaphragm reboots. There is a steadying hand on the exposed small of his back. Fourteen wants to smack it away, but bobcat and the jack rabbit have a consensus that all his energy should go into this breathing thing. The Bronco jerks into motion leaving Jeremy Gates behind.