There was a time when Buck was my hero, always saving me from the shitty hand life dealt me.
Momma stumbled into the living room, knocking into the half wall that divided the kitchen from the den. I curled into the corner of the couch, pulling a little pillow in front of me, hoping she wouldn’t notice I was there.
When she bumped into the folding table, the small television sitting on it teetered. The picture flickered and went out as the thing crashed to the floor.
Momma fell and grabbed her foot, screaming. I covered my ears and squeezed my eyes shut.
Bony fingers closed over my shin and dug into my muscle. “What’s wrong with you? Get help!”
I tried to pull out of her grasp, but her hold tightened. She drew back, smacking my thigh. Pain shot through my leg. I squealed and squirmed as she hit me again and again, wherever she could land a blow. My calf. My knee. My hip.
“I’ll get someone. Let go,” I begged as she pulled me off the sofa, my butt thumping hard onto the floor.
“What good are you? You can’t even help someone when they’re hurt?”
I kicked and twisted until I escaped her hold. Scrambling to my feet, I retreated down the darkened hallway to the back door. It opened just as my foot landed on the square of peeling linoleum that served as the back entry to our trailer.
A hand reached through the opening, took my arm, and yanked me outside. I let out a high-pitched squeak, and a warm hand covered my mouth.
“Shush. C’mon.” Buck whispered into my ear.
Rain pattered onto the overgrown grass, soaking my thread bare t-shirt, as he gently pushed me down the back steps. He silently closed the door and put his finger to his lips.
He took my hand and pulled me toward his grandparents’ house. I looked over my shoulder, expecting Momma to burst out the door to call me back.
“How’d you know to come save me?” I asked, wide-eyed.
He shrugged. “I was on Nan’s front porch. I could hear you two all the way from over there.”
I swallowed as heat crept up to my cheeks.
“Don’t worry about it; everyone’s parents yell at them. My dad yelled at me all the time.”
“Yeah, maybe.” My stomach growled.
Buck wrapped an arm around my hunched shoulders. “Yup, they do. Let’s get some lunch. Nan made stew.”
Though the rain was cold, my heart warmed in his embrace. Buck always made me feel safe back then, even if it was only an illusion.
I pull my hand from the window, straightening. I might’ve been eight or nine when that happened. Buck was a year or so older and my best friend in the world. My only friend.
I brush off the memory.
He’s a scab inside my soul, I can’t stop picking at it and opening the wound. The pain’s still sharp enough to remind me why I shouldn’t want to see him. I should avoid him at all cost. Yet, I keep coming back to it, drawing fresh blood every time it starts to show signs of healing.
It’s been like this for years.
When he first took off to California, chasing his dream of being a Hollywood stuntman, it crushed the eighteen-year-old me. Eventually, I ran from the memories waiting around every corner. Every tree we climbed. Every blanket I took with us to our fort in the woods for picnic lunches. Every creek bed we waded through, with our jeans rolled to our knees and fishing poles over our shoulders.
Joining the Marines was a good decision. It got me away from pointing fingers and whispers as I walked through town, away from the stigma of being my mother’s half-breed daughter, and away from memories of Buck—
A string of curses pulls me out of my daydream. I follow Aunt Delores’s profanity outside, down the stairs, and under the house. The heat of the day wafts around me, even in the shade it’s carried on humid air. A trail of water runs out of the storage room and across the concrete floor of the parking space beneath the house.
Great. What now?
As I approach the enclosed space, moisture seeps into my tennis shoes.
Aunt Delores’s voice raises another octave. “Damn it! Now, Lord, you know you didn’t give me a dick. How do you expect me to do the things a man should do with no dick? If you wanted me to fix this house you shoulda given me a pecker!”
Oh my.
I wade into the room, prepared to duck out if she starts throwing shit.
My heart lurches.
She’s on the top step of the four-foot ladder, with one hand steadying herself against the ceiling. She rips out sopping, filthy insulation from the hole in the crumbling sheetrock above her head.
I rush to the ladder, taking hold of one of her calves. “What are you doing up there?”
She looks down at me over the rim of her glasses. “There’s a leak. That man, I swear, I’m gonna piss in his ashes when I get upstairs. Why is it that every time I turn around, I have to fix something he did halfway?”