Keith 5

Jennifer Keith

Prose

Tumbleweed

Johnny glanced out the window of his dad’s red Bronco. The unlit Unity Bank sign loomed over the empty parking lot. The gears clicked as his dad shifted into park. Johnny watched a tumbleweed float across the sea of black macadam and crest over the white waves of parking lines. He squinted into the sudden glare of angry headlights. Johnny sank lower in his seat, until the seatbelt threatened to choke him.

The black Honda squealed as it came to a jarring halt next to Johnny’s dad’s car. The front door of the Bronco opened and closed. Johnny didn’t budge. He was busy watching the tumbleweed sail off out of his sight. He waited for it to return. Three staccato raps on the window jarred Johnny out of his intense concentration. When he looked towards the source of the noise, his mother’s scowling face greeted him.

The door shielding Johnny was torn away and his mother pulled him from the car. Johnny’s dad offered Johnny the faded blue backpack that Johnny carried to school each day. Johnny strapped it to his back, and stood between his parents. His mother looked down at him, tight-lipped and tapping a finger against the crook of her arm.

“Come here, kid.” Johnny’s dad squeezed him harder every time he left. “I’ll see you in two weekends, okay champ?” Johnny felt a hand ruffle his hair as his mother’s bony fingers wrapped around his forearm and clinched. Johnny watched his dad’s expression as he was shuffled into the Honda. He squirmed to the other side of the backseat as the voices outside got louder.

Johnny sat in the back seat and watched the empty lot. Voices leaked into the glass and tin of the old rusty car. Phrases like “this is what I meant by irreconcilable differences, Luanne,” and “what was irreconcilable was that whore you’re seeing,” meant nothing to Johnny, who began practicing his three multiplication tables and humming a song. The front door of the Honda slammed, breaking Johnny’s chain and chant.

“If you turn out like that bastard father of yours Johnny, so help me I will take a belt to your backside, don’t think I won’t.”

Johnny pitched forward as the car went in reverse and slammed back into his seat as his mother shifted into second gear. Johnny watched his dad wave before getting back into his car, and slowly beginning to back out of his parking spot, until they turned a corner and his dad was gone for another two weeks.

Monday mornings were always hard for Johnny. He would be very tired after a weekend filled with matchbox cars and trips to the zoo with his dad. The teachers would ask questions that Johnny was sure he knew the answer to. Johnny was wrong.

The teacher was mean on purpose, asking Johnny about the six and eight times tables, the ones he hadn’t learned yet. His s’s lisped and his t’s stuttered. All the kids laughed. Luckily, through a series of naps and daydreams the day passed quickly, and Johnny moseyed home.

Johnny walked through the broken screen door, just like he did most days. And like most days Johnny walked into the kitchen. Unlike most days, there was someone else home. Johnny observed the way that the overhead light cast shadows on his mother as she was pressed into the fridge by a man he had never met. Johnny turned and went to his room. The high-pitched giggling coming from the kitchen sounded tinny and new. Johnny thought it was his elephant lamp, the one his mother had gotten him for Christmas, which was always mocking him. Johnny hated elephants; they were big and could stomp on you without even knowing it. Johnny would have preferred something that featured the ocean, a dolphin, like Flipper.

Johnny loved the sea, ever since his father had taken him to the beach one weekend. They had gone with his dad’s friend; Johnny liked her because she let him feel her soft hair. He had wanted to play in the sand, mostly. It had been very clumpy, and made good castles. His dad had warned him against building too close to the water, before he and his friend had gone to look for sea shells. Johnny wanted his moat to fill with water. A wave drowned his work. After that, Johnny played in the ocean. It wasn’t going anywhere. The door downstairs slammed; the giggling was gone.

Today had been the first time that his mother had been home when he got there, normally she came home later, dressed in pink with an apron and smelling of smoke, complaining about small tips and big orders. Johnny liked it better that way, but instead for the rest of the week it was the same way; Johnny came home and his mother and her friend were together. Sometimes Johnny caught them wrestling, sometimes Johnny caught them sleeping, but they never caught Johnny.

The next week Johnny made a calendar at school, and on it he put big x’s on each day that passed, and he watched with growing anxiety as the x’s got closer to the days he outlined in red. When the big day arrived Johnny was more than ready to see his dad again. Johnny’s dad was to pick him up after school, and maybe this could be the weekend when his mother finally let him stay.

Johnny tapped his fingers against the desk. Pinky finger to index, and then tapped his index finger three extra times for good measure. The clock ticked each second slower as it approached the three o’clock mark. Waiting was awful. Hours later the bell rang.

Johnny blasted through the front doors and scanned the rows of cars. No red Bronco yet. The other kids rushed past Johnny and into the arms of their parents. When those kids left, it would be easier to find the car he was looking for.

The parking lot got emptier and emptier. Johnny waited on the cold stone stairs in front of his school. Waited and waited. No one was coming. Johnny waited. He waited and imagined riding away on a tumbleweed, cascading across parking lots.