The Wind Behind Us

Peter pressed his cheek against the hot concrete under the Carolina sun as the other three boys kneeled in a half-circle across the street, prodding him with their screams.

“For Pete’s sake Peter, get on with it, you’re boring us!”

“Yeah, c’mon Petey boy, light the match!”

Peter kept his hands steady and ignored them. He lifted his face from the sidewalk and lightly wiped the salty dirt from his cheek with hands that reeked of the fresh super glue he had been keeping in his pocket. He chose the spot, held the creature by pinching his fingers around its torso, and turned it over to squeeze glue upon its brown stomach. As he held it upside down, the glue started to rush towards his fingers so he quickly pressed the wiggling creature onto the scolding cement, gut down, while the thick paste glued its body to the sidewalk. It wouldn’t stop staring at him with its beady eyes filled with unfamiliar language. It wouldn’t stop begging its young predator to give up on the vicious game. He had to pick up the glue again, and squeeze a few extra droplets on the feet of the lizard, which were wiggling so wildly that it tired Peter. The salty wind of Virginia County blew Peter’s body forward, pushing him towards the pinned lizard. It would open its jaws and the pink glands inside its throat would throb, and again, it would shut its mouth mechanically, without a sound.

“It’s about to rain!” one of the boys screamed to Peter.

“No way, Billy,” another of the boys, the blonde one, replied with a nudge to the back of Billy’s arm, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It sprinkles before it rains.”

“You’re a sprinkle, a rainbow sprinkle.”

“Stop it, Billy. That’s not funny.”

“Bite me sprinkle, I’m just trying to get him to light the match already.”

They pushed each other, a display of masculinity. Billy, the eldest, grabbed the shoulders of the blonde boy and pushed him backwards into the grass, where they fumbled and rolled over each other like slinkies. They were making beastly grunts and didn’t make use of their fists because this wasn’t a real fight. The third boy, uninvolved, decided to sit down to watch Peter with an inquisitive eye, his brows curved and his fist holding his chin in place. He was Peter’s next-door neighbor, an only child named Simon who once had a sister, but who came too fast after their mother refused to use the fetal monitor.

Simon spread his pixie-stick legs across the sidewalk, his grass-covered toes pointing towards Peter, “This is only his first time,” Simon said, “He just moved here last week, calm down.”

The two boys separated, wiped off their grass and mud-smeared pants, and made bearish grunts at each other.

Peter could hear none of this, he could only stare at the helpless creature before his eyes while it struggled to scurry to the grass reservoir less than five inches away. He sat before the lizard cross-legged. The glue was permanent, there was nothing he could do. Minutes earlier, Billy had handed him the Dixie cup with his hand covering the rim. He watched as Billy shook the cup up and down. Thump, thump, thump, thump and a few scampers.

Now the lizard was desperately moving his limbs, stretching his head from side to side. Peter lifted a pocket-sized canister of lighter fluid from the sidewalk, removed the rubber lid with a pop, and placed several drops upon the lizard like a southern baptism. The lizard was innocent, he knew this, it had done nothing to deserve this. Peter leaned over the lizard and rubbed his glue-and-gasoline covered hands onto the grass, trying to conceal the formidable stench that someone might notice. He stood up, shook his legs, and took a box of matches from his pants pocket. The lizard, green-skinned and prehistoric began to take note of the smell, and its tail began to whip from side to side, causing a layer of gasoline to sheath the sidewalk like window wipers.

“Sorry,” Peter whispered while sliding the matchbox open, removing a match, and striking it on the sandpaper section of the small box. The flame twisted around itself between his fingertips and he dropped it onto the lizard while repeating, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

From across the street, the boys saw the small flame growing on the sidewalk. Peter was standing over it, but looked for the approval of Simon, who waved him over. Every day before school, they used the same piece of sidewalk. It was burnt in several places, scarred from the glued bodies of toads, centipedes, crabs captured from the nearby ocean, and snails – which made a loud pop once the fire engulfed them. The blonde and Billy gave each other high-fives, running across the street to kick at the dying lizard – tired of screeching and immobile.

A yellow school bus, filled with the sound of children’s laughter, stopped between the set of four boys, separating them. Simon grabbed Peter’s arm and pulled him away, “C’mon, forget about the bus.” They ran away together while the other two boys hopped onto the bus, finding seats in the very back.

Simon and Peter walked side by side, Simon much taller because of his long legs. Peter sometimes stuck his right leg over Simon’s to try to trip him. He wondered what school would be like without him.

“Did you do your homework?” Simon asked.

“I never do.”

“Me neither. 7th grade is pointless anyways. Wait until we’re in 8th grade, then we’ll be the top dogs and everyone will be begging to hang out with us.”

Top dogs. Peter nodded in agreement, thinking that skipping school had never crossed his mind before Simon, “Well then what do we do? Go home?”

“Nah, my mom is there. ‘Get to school!’ ‘You shouldn’t do this, Simon, you shouldn’t do that, don’t put gum underneath the coffee table, dirt on your shirt, can’t you say thank you more often?’” he drove his fist into the sky, “She can shove it, shove it right back where it comes from,” he lowered his hands back into his pocket and asked, “What about you? You going home?”

“I could. My mom and dad are working, but,” Peter paused, thought about his mother writing down drink orders at the Sand Bar diner while his father would be playing with his pencil sharpener. “That’s boring,” he dropped and shook his head, then looked up, playfully hitting Simon’s chest with the back of his hand, “Let’s see a movie or something.”

They waited on a bus stop bench. Above them, a frayed sign advertising the Virginia County beach was hanging. Simon showed Peter his hand, bundled into a fist and Peter responded by putting his hand into a fist, mirroring his friend. Peter punched Simon’s as hard as he could, trying to make his knuckles bleed. Leaf skeletons passed in swivels under their feet and Peter’s shoes dangled while Simon’s were pressed against the sidewalk. They gripped the edge of the bench to steady themselves as a strong gust pushed them forward. When the city bus arrived, they fought to be first to climb the high steps and ran to the very back of the bus, passing the fixed stares of the other passengers. Peter sat at the window and Simon sat in the aisle. Even though each of the bus’ windows were pulled down halfway, the sultry atmosphere weighed down each passenger. No one could bear standing and only the thought of reaching the salty breeze outside could keep their spirits running smoothly. Some of the younger adults held their hands outside of the window to feel the southern air on their fingertips, whereas the elderly held their chins to their chest, counting the stops with their eyes closed and relaxed.

Simon knew where the bus would take them. He knew every junction, every street and the names of the corner stores. He recognized every passenger only by their hands, which would rise and pull the wire dangling above their heads. There were old hands, sprinkled with white hairs and prominent veins shaded by polka dotted liver spots. There were young hands, porcelain and soft, full of movement and ease. When the bus stopped and a passenger left, he didn’t know where they’d go and he never thought to follow anyone before he met Peter. On the juncture between Maples and Oyster street, they passed the Monsoon Surf Shop, Susie Q’s Scooter Rental and the Sand Bar Diner.

As the sputtering bus vroomed past the restaurant, Peter leaned below the window peaking only with his eyebrows. He held onto the thought that his mom would see him from the diner, which was surrounded by wide glass-windows. Once slightly along, he pulled himself up and began to feel a sense of relief when his stomach suddenly dropped as the bus sprang to a stop only half a block away from the diner.

“Switch seats with me?” Peter asked with a couple taps to Simon’s arm to avoid being seen at the window.

Peter slid towards the aisle while Simon crawled over him to sit at the window. Simon began picking lint out of his pocket, finding a penny and showing it to Peter, who snatched and slipped it into his own pocket. Immediately, his fingers grazed the empty superglue container which led him to think of the lighter fluid in his other pocket. He knew the matches were next to the fluid and he wondered if he could set himself on fire that way. He considered separating them, but he was afraid someone on the bus would see him with the lighter fluid and know what he had been up to with the lizard. The dead lizard.

“It’s just a penny,” Simon said, confusedly, turning his head to the window again to watch a lady with a small black-colored poodle try to shimmy between the line of people getting onto the bus. He noticed a man and a woman he had never seen before waiting ahead of her. The man’s arm was around the woman’s thin waist, she turned and laughed at him as the lady with the dog tried to pass them. They let her through.

“Do I smell?” Peter nudged Simon and whispered, “Like gas?”

Simon smiled and lifted up Peter’s arm, smelling his armpit, “Gas? Sort of, did you fart or something?”

Peter punched him in the arm and lifted his eyes to the front of the bus to see a broad man with a thick mustache and beard lead a woman by her white-glove. He held her dainty hand onto the shoulder of his jacket, and her head slowly came into Peter’s view. Instantly he fell into his seat and knew her completely. He knew her short hair curling behind her ears like hooks, he recognized her deep green eyes, her thick black eyebrows that seemed so much like caterpillars. Her thin as a sheet of paper lips, they were the same lips that told him that very morning, “Get up, Peter. Time for school.”

As the bus continued to move forward, his heart hammered against his sternum, he could feel his stomach lurch with the bus’ unsteady movements, and he reached in his pocket and fingered the box of matches. The smell of lighter fluid began to overwhelm his nostrils. Feeling around inside his pocket, he tried to see if the fluid was leaking, but everything was dry. The bus stopped. Simon stared off into the streets of Virginia County and watched a majority of the passengers explode out of the bus and dissipate into the streets, some going into corner stores and others disappearing into alleys. Their world on the bus was looking emptier. Peter leaned his body into the aisle and watched his mother bend her body into the bearded stranger with smiles. Her pink gums and white teeth could be seen even from the back of the bus and he couldn’t tell if the stranger was smiling back. She placed her hand over his ear and leaned into his eyes, pressing her forehead into his forehead as if they were sharing a brief secret. The bus pulled away.

Peter thought of that morning, when his mother walked into his room and turned the light switch. The light always frightened Peter, and she’d clap a few times in the hallway to capture his attention. “Get up!” she’d clap and clap, “Get up Peter, it’s time for school!” He never wanted to tell her the her methods frightened him because he was afraid that might hurt her. Every morning she would say the same thing, in the same intonation as a cuckoo clock. She would already be dressed in her waitress outfit – a tight skirt and stockings, a matching blouse with her name tag swaying loosely. She’d be gone before he could put his socks and shoes together saying things throughout the apartment like, “Cereal’s in the cupboard, you know where the milk is.” That morning was no different, except he couldn’t remember that when he shot up from his bed, she wasn’t wearing her name tag.

The bus yanked the remaining passengers to a stop again and the couple stood up. The stranger wrapped his thick arm around her waist and began to follow her. The boys looked out the window and knew that this was the stop that was nearest to the beach.

“C’mon Simon, let’s get off on this one.”

“The theater’s the next stop. This is the bea– ”

“ –we can watch a movie some other time! C’mon,” Peter grabbed Simon’s arm and they ran off the bus.

In the distance, the beach was deserted. The pier was empty and rickety from age and disrepair. The salty feeling between the boys’ fingertips intensified as they came nearer to the beach and stalked closely behind the couple.

The beach of Virginia County wasn’t as popular as most of the beaches in the Carolinas. It was hardly a competitor for Myrtle Beach, the Wilmington County beaches, or the Brunswick beaches, all of which the tourists preferred. As the boys pushed their bodies through a heavy wind pushing them backwards, they noticed a brick lighthouse standing in the distance, ominous and historic, permanent like a statue and as useful as one too.

His mother moved in a circle around the bearded stranger while he stared at the waves collapse their heaviness on seashells and collect sheets of sand from the shoreline. His mother removed her gloves and tossed them on the ground as if they were trivial. Peter and Simon watched her undress carefully, first unbuttoning her blouse – every button a new smile – then as she pulled her skirt to her ankles, she looked up towards the stranger to watch him tug at his socks. Peter searched around the beach again. There was no one at all.

His mother, nearly bare except for her undergarments, dipped her hands into the water, lifting sheets of it from her cupped hands and throwing it towards the stranger. He did the same. Their matted hair was nearly identical above the water and if not for the breasts and beard, the two could be mistaken for twins. Though they were fully concealed simply by distance, Peter felt began to feel the fear that the boys may get noticed. He grabbed Simon’s forearm desperately and pulled him behind a stringy beach bush. They stared at the lovers, something so new to them both that they remained silent as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Being the tree that he was, his strong roots held her steady and Peter wondered They know each other, they know each other, this isn’t the first time they’ve swam in the Atlantic.

He faced the opposite direction and put his back to his mother, “Their clothes…” he whispered, his palms clenching his knees.

“Look at ‘em, Peter,” Simon laughed in a timid tone that showed he didn’t know what he was watching, “What are they doing out there?”

“They just left them there. They just left them there.”

“What are you mumbling about?” Simon asked.

“Follow me.”

“No way, I don’t want to go anywhere else,” he drifted his eyes from the sea lovers to Peter, saw his strange eyes and asked, “Where man?”

“Just follow me,” Peter sprinted across the beach, sand flying from his feet.

“Peter!” Simon rubbed his knuckles at his eyelids, following Peter at a much slower pace, “You got sand in my eyes! I can’t see…anything.”

“Shhhh, c’mon, you’ll be fine,” Peter whispered as he reached the pile of clothes the couple left, “Help me grab his clothes, I’ll carry her’s.”

Simon laughed at that, “You pervert.”

“C’mon, hurry up before they notice what we’re doing.”

He hid his mother’s sheer pink blouse, jeans, and socks underneath his shirt. Peter looked to the ocean again and the couple had disappeared under the water as the waves roared and smothered them. The boys ran away from the sea, the wind pushing them forwards, and jumped over a loose metal chain that was tied to the wooden gate. This gate went a few more yards down the beach and didn’t end until it reached the outskirts of the non-functioning lighthouse. The man who used to work at the lighthouse still lived there, still survived in darkness and in secret. The town told its curious children that the man was born on a ship called the Pew somewhere in the Atlantic, came to Virginia County without purpose, met the lighthouse and enjoyed its darkness, Once he had decided to die, he went back to sea. The town didn’t need it anymore, there were no ships coming and going, only fishing boats and local jet skis.

They reached the lighthouse and Peter tapped his pants pocket to make sure the canister of lighter fluid was still there. The lighthouse was built near the edge of a cliff that jetted out from the beach in a straight line. The top of the cliff was patched in grass whereas the plummeting edge of the cliff was held together by sharp boulders. Round stones circled the outside of the lighthouse. Bricks were made to piece together the tower and the glassed-in lantern room at the top had metal bars running vertically to protect the glass from lightening strikes. The boys came closer to it and dropped the clothes in a pile a few feet from the entrance of the lighthouse.

Simon looked back and said, “Maybe we should put the clothes back, Peter. It’s going to get colder.”

“They should’ve known better,” he said as he pulled out the lighter fluid and a matchbook.

“This doesn’t feel right,” Simon said.

“I know, it doesn’t feel right for me either,” Peter laughed, understanding that Simon didn’t know who the woman in the water was to him.

“Then don’t do it, Peter. We can take the clothes back, we can lay them where we took them. I remember where we took them, I remember exactly where.”

“They might be out of the water and we can’t get caught. Do you want your mom knowing what we did?”

In a scared voice, Simon said, “We shouldn’t be doing this,” then searched around for witnesses, “This is different. This is different, Peter. Stop pretending like you’re tough.”

Peter ignored him and spread the gasoline over the clothes. He took a match out, lit it and without a thought or a second more, dropped the match onto the clothes. Flames gently rose from the rocks as Peter slowly stood up. He dropped the lighter fluid by the stack of burning clothes, making sure he’d leave it there. He smelled his dirty hands.

“I’m done, Peter. Come on, let’s go. Let’s go back home.”

“Don’t be a wuss, we’re not going to get into any trouble, don’t worry. I don’t want to go home anyways.”

Simon nodded, “I’ll see you later,” and looked towards the burning clothes one last time before turning away, “My mom’s going to be expecting me,” Simon thought about his mother standing in front of the kitchen sink in her yellow rubber gloves, her gray roots sprouting from her scalp, and he remembered how his father used to pay him five cents for each gray hair he’d pluck from his thick black hair. As Simon crushed the stones away from him, Peter sat cross-legged again and threw round pebbles into the fire. The school day was over and the sun sat at the tip of the sky. As the fire began to dissipate, he dropped the matches and the empty superglue container by the lighter fluid, and walked home.

Peter sat at the kitchen table in one of the four chairs and had his school textbooks – Anatomy of Beings, Arithmetic Solutions, Language & Art – sprawled before him in methodical order. He was tapping his pencil on his cheek when he heard the front door squeeze open. He knew it was his mother because she dropped her keys heavily on the end table in front of the door, unlike his father, who would silently hang his keys on a nail next to the peep hole. His mother darted her head into the kitchen, her hair was dry and frizzy, uncombed and very unlike her. Mechanically she went to the coffee pot, wearing unfamiliar loose brown pants and a baggy white t-shirt that read “Virginia County Beach” – something from a souvenir shop – and pulled open the cabinet doors to pull out a bag of grinds. She drew out a filter, stuffed it into the coffee pot, then opened the silverware drawer to look for a spoon.

With her back to Peter, she sniffed the air and asked, “Did you leave the oven on?”

“No,” Peter said, not lifting his eyes from his book and feeling his pocket to make sure the lighter fluid wasn’t there anymore.

She turned to him, “Are you sure? It smells like gas in here.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

She smelled the air again and came closer to Peter, “It sure does smell like fire…” she set her eyes on him, a gaze he did not return. “You want something to eat?” she struck the spoon against the coffee cup twice, placed it by the saucer, and cupped both hands around the rim, “I can make you something. Cereal, eggs, you want some orange juice?”

“I don’t like eggs.”

She scoffed, “Of course you like eggs, what are you talking about? You’ve always liked eggs! I can make them fried. Scrambled, if you’d like. How about an omelette?”

“No. I don’t like omelettes, I don’t like them scrambled, I don’t want them fried, eggs are eggs. I’ve never liked eggs. Besides, it’s eight o’clock at night. Eggs are supposed to be for breakfast.”

“Well that’s a stupid rule, whoever made that up?” she scoffed, “That rule’s just begging to be broken. Nonsense. Well, tell me,” she lifted her thick brow and trying to look deeper into Peter’s dark eyes, “how was school?”

Peter shrugged, “Same, I guess.”

“That doesn’t sound like fun,” she began to open the kitchen drawers again and asked, “Matches Peter, I can’t find them.”

He panicked, but held back his gasp, “They’re in there…”

“Hm, I don’t see them. We need them to light the stove or else we can’t make dinner for your father, can we?”

“They’re in there…”

“Oh wait,” she tapped her pocket, “Oh here they are. I forgot about them,” she turned her glare towards Peter again, who darted his eyes towards his textbooks, “So strange. I wonder how they got there.”

“Beats me.”

“It’s okay Peter. I know you don’t know anything. I’ll tell you what though,” she took out her pocketbook from underneath her chair and unclipped it, “I’ll give you some money for lunch tomorrow. You can eat what you want there. You can do as you like with it, even.”

Peter stared into the reflection of his mother’s face in the spoon next to her coffee cup.

She picked up his hand and unfolded it across the table, palm up, “I’ll tell you what. Here,” she fingered through her pocketbook, pulled out a two-dollar bill, and placed it in Peter’s open palm, “How are your grades?”

“They’re okay.”

“Not so good, huh? Let’s make a deal, between you and me, we won’t tell your dad…about your grades. It’ll be our little secret. If you raise your grades on your next progress report, I’ll give you twenty dollars, all in two-dollar bills. You’d like that, huh?”

Peter raised his brows and finally lifted his eyes at his mother. She had a piece of lint in her hair and he almost told her.

“Yeah, just between you and me, Peter. That’ll be our little deal.” She took a deep breath and focused on Peter, “I know what you want to ask me, but you’re too angry right now. I would be angry too,” she said earnestly, “Sometimes people don’t know what they’re doing, and how and why they can’t stop themselves,” she stood up, pushing the heavy kitchen chair back with the back of her knees, “We’ll talk tomorrow. You should take a bath, I think it’s you that smells like gas.”

He watched her walk out, stop at the entranceway and knock three times on the wooden wall. Peter thought of the small space between the two of them and the lizard corpse out in the front yard. He smelled his hands and thought that three could keep a secret, if you get rid of two.