Mary

When Mary stepped onto the porch of the white farm house which she called home, she held open the door for her friend to follow her to school. The September morning was dry; she felt hot wind against her cheeks and through her hair, carrying with it the scent of Oklahoma Hackberry, freshly mowed and watered grass, and the plains.

Mary was never without her friend. Not since two years ago. She was eleven. Her parents had stopped at a gas station late one night in Comanche County. She needed water, and after she insisted her way through Stephens and Jefferson County that her spit wasn’t enough to swallow, her mother released a sigh of exhaustion and told her husband to stop at the next exit; she needed to pee anyways.

There had been shouts, she remembered. The doors locked, the sound of her mother’s heels on the asphalt of the parking lot, grunting, begging. She didn’t feel like going into it.

Her friend had been there. All those hours, waiting. Holding her in her arms. And after that night, during their time at the orphanage, and then with the Foleys, and now with the Rupps; Bumps had been there for Mary.

“Come on Bumps, we’re gonna be late,” Mary said.

The walk to school was nine blocks long. Past the manicured lawns of Cassius Barnes, and the pink flamingos that perched outside Miss Hammon’s cotton candy pink and white trimmed split-level. They stopped at a park which had overgrown grass that Bumps nibbled on for her breakfast. Mary held Bumps’ hand as they crossed NW Euclid onto NW Homestead and headed to Tomlinson Middle School.

Children sat on the patchy lawn below the flag pole in the front of the school. Some read magazines, some whispered in close circles, some smoked cigarettes in the driveways of neighboring homes. All the girls seemed to have their circles of friends to gossip with about the changes they were experiencing. Mary and Bumps stayed together, not bothering to make any new friends, and told their own stories to each other while they waited until it was time to go to Miss Belle’s homeroom class.

“Umm, what are you doing?” asked a tall and attractive girl who looked and acted much older than thirteen.

“I’m just waiting with Bumps for Miss Belle’s homeroom,” replied Mary.

The girl threw back her head and laughed. “Oh my god, what a freak,” she cawed to her friends. Her name, Mary later found out, was Landry Lane. Landry was into pageants, social status, pink jumpers, and public mortification.

“It’s okay, Bumps. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but names will never hurt us.”

The warning bell rang through the halls and Mary gladly took Bumps’ hand and led her to class. Miss Belle taught Pre-Algebra. The first day of the semester, she asked the class to forgive her for sitting down instead of chalking the equations on the blackboard. Her toe was broken but she was wearing stilettos, on the off-chance that a reporter from the Lawton Constitution might come and present her with a teacher-of-the-month feature. She was wearing a slightly sheer purple leopard print blouse and a black pencil skirt. Her hair had silver highlights and her skin was hard with tan.

Mary found two spots in the middle of the room for herself and Bumps. The middle was the best place because teachers always tended to pick on the ones in the back, and the front of the room required a great deal of eye contact. Mary had Bumps sit right in front of her, so she could pass notes and keep her in sight.

“Um, can I sit there?” asked a girl named Shellei. Mary remembered her because her name was so unusual. Her father was in the army, so her mother had had ample time to come up with a unique name for her daughter.

“Sorry, but my friend is sitting there,” Mary replied.

“Class is about to start. I don’t see anyone.”

“She’s right there. Look there’s a seat back over in that corner.”

Shellei laughed through her nose and left Mary, responding with only a what.everrr, and a toss of her hair.

The class bell rang and Miss Belle called the class to order, took attendance, and read through the morning announcements. “Alright class, today we’re going to work with graphing simple equations.” She began drawing an x and y axis on the board and Mary turned to a fresh sheet of paper in her binder.

As Miss Belle’s lecture proceeded, Mary noticed that on either side of her, the other children were heatedly whispering to each other and pointing at Bumps, and then at Mary. She was not unfamiliar with the situation of an outsider and at first thought nothing of the attention.

Halfway into graphing y=3x+1, though, Miss Belle took notice of the commotion. “What is goin’ on?” she asked of a suddenly silent class. “Shellei, honey, I see you’ve been whisperin’ with Landry. Why don’t you share with the class this urgent news that can’t wait until the end of my valuable and relevant lecture this mornin’?”

“Well, Miss Belle, I was just commenting on how it smells like somethin’ died over near where Mary’s sitting. We think it might be that ratty old lamb backpack she always talks to,” Shellei cooly replied.

“Her name is Bumps and she’s not a backpack. She’s my best friend.”

The laughter started slowly; they were uncertain whether Mary was joking. Soon, though, Mary’s injured and intent glare at Shellei revealed that she wasn’t kidding. Some of the kids tried to hide their laughter, shaking slightly, faces turning red with the effort to keep quiet. Others turned to each other and laughed out loud; unashamed of their callousness. Mary looked around in confusion. Ricky, a short, tan boy who lived a few houses down from Mary, went over to the backpack and opened it up. Inside were dried pieces of grass, rotting chicken, hay, and moldy carrots.

“NASTY!”Ricky cried. “Look at this!”

The children, and even Miss Belle crowded around the backpack in wonder and disgust. It made the children laugh and play to see the lamb at school.

Sand CrusheR

The same thing had happened 20 years before. Walter stood below the fresh growth of blue-eyed grass and watched the children fighting on the beach. He felt the years of sun upon his back, layer upon layer, like their annual rounds of back to school shopping. The air was thick with salt, sand, kelp, the drying and cracked shells of horseshoe crabs, mussels, and other mollusks, as if all the days between then and now had been packed into this one day.
The day that Walter went to the beach was warm. The sky was cornflower blue, sparse white clouds feathered across its expanse. His mother’s dress beat against her shins and flapped like fins in salt water wind. The blanket fluttered as they held its corners, lifting it and letting it arc and fall onto the sand. Gulls sat upon the calm waves, bobbing up and down before they hit their apex and crashed into themselves, turning from slate blue to white, the foam dispersing along the shore.
The beach was an unpopular one. Not due to any deficiency of the fault lines. The cliffs which loomed about the sand and water were severe. Seaside daisies clung to their sides with sisyrinchium bellum, the blue-eyed grass which kept eternal watch over the shores below. If sis could speak, she might tell passersby to direct their attention to the northwest where a boy plays near the alkali sink, anchored in the dunes.

Walter sat on the blanket and dug his toes under the sand, patted it smooth, and wriggled them to watch the granules break apart and slide down the sides of his feet. He tried to grab ever larger handfuls of the dry top layer, feeling it rush through his fingers as they curled in towards his palms. He waited as patiently as any boy could for his mother’s call to get dropped so she could dig into her purse and give him the sunscreen. The lesson to wear sunscreen was fresh on his skin, and he waited anxiously for her, thinking about how it had stung when he peeled himself off the sticky hot leather of the the car, and how much hotter the warm water had felt on his back than it had felt on his hands.

As he waited he noticed a girl and her brother playing near the shore. The girl’s back was to the ocean and she let the water rush up and touch her skin for an instant before it rolled back and down into the sand. With a trowel, a bucket, and a plastic cup, the girl was building a castle. The castle was well-crafted. The sand she used was packed tight and damp, built with wide bases and narrower turrets. She cried as she built, wailing when her brother would take a running start and long jump into her castle. Walter noticed the boy’s swim trunks were pulled too high, as if his mother had lifted him by the seat of the pants and said ha!

He probably deserves it. Walter thought.

Walter’s thoughts on the matter concluded there, however, because at that moment the wind picked up his mother’s cell phone signal, and carried it out to the Farallon Islands. At the same moment that his mother started screaming, a gull called down a warning to the people on the beach; more to come, more to come. Walter jumped up and pulled his mothers arm as he bounced up and down and asked for the sunscreen and his trowel and pail. He smeared a thick coat of sunscreen over his arms, chest, face, and what he could reach of his back. He tossed his tools down the warm dune and rolled down after them, standing up at the end covered in sand. It was the only way to make sunscreen fun. Covered in sand, pausing to pretend he was a statue, he slowly made his way to the water, where the sand was wet and malleable.

It was there that Walter made his masterpiece, though no one would ever see it. It was there he toiled, there where the water lapped at his legs, and the sun beat down on his back, and the sand fleas jumped to higher ground. When it was done, Walter stood back and admired his work, and, surveying it’s magnificence in comparison to the coastal scenery, he fixated upon the California Oat Grass, and ran to get some to use as flags upon his castle.

Time is not linear. Hours can pass without a major event and feel as long as an eventful minute. While Walter ran to get the grass, a wave followed his lead and crept up farther than his predecessors. The wave crashed, spreading foam and water towards Walter’s castle. The water lapped at the edges of the castle and eroded the base, causing the roof to cave. The castle which had only just been miraculous, had now turned into a mushy puddle of sand.
Walter returned to the castle, at least, he returned to where he thought the castle should have been. A moment passed in shock, until he looked up from the sand towards the girl and boy he had seen playing when he first got to the beach. The boy was skipping back towards his sister, dragging a stick and acting careless. Walter was filled with rage. His vision filtered out all but the back of the boy’s shoulders. He dug his toes into the sand and pushed himself off, fists full of grass raised in the air and screaming his war cry.