Memorizing You (8 page)

“It’s a service you might think of offering with your work down the road,” he told me. “Most people don’t want to do it themselves and it could add a few more bucks to your wages.”

I loved watching and listening to him explain the things he was passionate about. It certainly wasn’t what you expected from a jock. Following him back to the barn, it was almost as if he danced while he talked. His body language gave him away when something was important to him.

In the rear of the barn, in what I took was once a stall, he’d set up what looked like a big tray with holes in the bottom hung over a trough. In this was a collection of debris which he
proudly
explained.

“It’s easy to make. All you need is four things. Air, water, carbon, and nitrogen.”

“Huh?” He was talking science to me, and that was not one of my better subjects.

“Easy to remember. Carbons are usually brown. Like dead leaves. Nitrogens are usually green like grass.” He stuck his hand in the tray and tossed the mixture over. “You can use small pieces of egg shell, coffee grounds, newspaper, straw, grass…anything but meats. You turn it over every couple of days and let the water drain off below.”

I bent over and saw the tray underneath was filled with a light-colored

water.

“That’s called a compost-tea. One of the richest fertilizing supplements around.” He pulled a pitchfork off its hook on the wall and rak starting quarterback. phfesed through the debris. “You turn it over every other day, and in six weeks you have your mulch. The best stuff for your gardens, shrubbery, or trees.”

You could see the pleasure in his face when he talked about the subject. I hadn’t seen that expression when he discussed football.

“That’s a really good idea,” I said. “When I get a better way to haul things around, I just might do that.”

I loved the feeling of openness around Ryan. He made me feel at ease.

“What was your first time like?” I asked. I don’t know why I was compelled to ask him such a personal question, but after the fiasco with Rosemary, I wondered what other people’s experiences were like. And I was curious.

He rehung the pitch fork and brushed his hands on his shorts. He actually looked a bit shy.

“I’m sorry.” I was embarrassed to have embarrassed him. “I shouldn’t have asked that.”

He shook his head. A lip half-curled. “It’s just that…you were assuming there’s been a ‘first time’.”

Now I was surprised. “You mean you’ve never…” The question hung, and

I knew I’d done it again.

He was blushing. I could see the color beneath the tan of his cheeks.

“Shit. I’m sorry again!” I apologized. “I should just keep my mouth shut.”

We walked out the door and back into the sunshine, squinting against the glare. I couldn’t have felt any more obtuse than at the moment. He walked to the shade of an oak and sat. “It’s funny,” he said, as I sat next to him. “The guys on the team think I have a girlfriend from Bayless High because my cousin, Gina, came to one of the games wearing one of their T-shirts. They saw her hugging me excitementImy afterward.” He wrapped his arms around his knees and looked at me, seriously. “I’ve never told them anything different.”

“We just assume you jocks get everything you want.” It was the truth.

“But I’m a bit different, too, as you remember?”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “but still.”

“I get what you mean. Sex is so easy, you could get it from anybody in the right circumstances.” His gaze went up to the clouds. “And a lot of people do that. They just have sex with the first person who comes along who’s willing. It doesn’t matter if they’re attracted to them, or even really know them. They just want to have sex. It becomes just a meaningless act.”

That hit home.

His eyes became intense. “Call me crazy, but I think sex is the absolute most intimate thing you can share with someone. You’re making yourself naked and vulnerable to another human being. It should be an act of sharing with someone you know and have feelings for. You’re giving a part of yourself to them, and they’re giving a part of themselves to you. It doesn’t get any more intimate than that. It’s not just an act.”

I had never even thought about it to that degree. He seemed to view it with such clarity.

“Years from now, they’ll look back on the experiences of their lives and their ‘first time’ will be no different than when they got a baseball glove, or a doll,” he continued. “I want that, when I’m in my fifties and I look back to my first kiss, I think, Wow! I want to remember it as being amazing. That it’s one of the most special moments of my life. I want to remember the person I share that with to be important to me. Not just someone who happened along at the right time. It’s not just an act of the body. It’s an act of the heart.”

I think I must have stared at him for an eternity. I could hear the droning of bees, the wind rustling through the trees and the buzzing of electric lines. In all those seconds I had realized what a unique person Ryan was. Unlike anyone I had met. And what was on the surface truly hid what was beneath it.

“What? Did I bum you outer subjects.

I shook my head. “Not at all.” I looked back at the barn. “But you got me thinking.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was a brilliant idea. When we approached Ryan’s father with it, he jumped on it. The idea struck me as I listened to Ryan talk with such a keen insight and intellectual capacity that I knew how smart he was. That he was failing two subjects in school was incomprehensible to me. English Lit and World History. Two subjects I breezed through. His dad took the matter seriously enough to look for a tutor rather than leave him to the devices of just-out-of-college summer school teachers. A fairly costly solution.

Ryan had convinced me on the idea of adding compost-mulching services to my business. Taking yard scraps and turning them into something I could sell was a no-brainer. I just needed the set-up. I already had a place to do it. The old garage in our backyard. It was only used for storage and was a perfect size for the set up. I just needed someone who knew how to do it to help me build it.

His father shook my hand. He was delighted that I would help his son with his studies during the summer in exchange for Ryan helping me set up the rig for home-making my own fertilizer.

We set to building it in the back of the garage. It took us the better part of a Sunday afternoon. My dad watched, interested as Ryan explained it to him. My mom brought us iced tea and toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches. When it was done my dad inspected it and then explained the whole thing to my mom just as Ryan had told him. We then mowed the lawn and threw the first bag of cut grass onto the compost tray.

My parents took to Ryan right away. My mom loved that he was a guy who liked to garden. My dad could talk his football fanaticism with him. By school’s end, I hadn’t seen Rosemary at all. She had dropped from sight entirely. My parents asked nothing. My pain over the situation never lessened.

Every morning as Ryan and I started our run, I carried a book and some graham crackers in a small back pack. We’d stop in the park, eat, and I’d read a chapter aloud from one of the books he needed for the tests he’d take in August. If he didn’t understand it, I’d explain it. It became apparent to me that his problem was he was easily distracted. It was di to sleepdi. My mindfficult for him to concentrate. I’d heard about kids having trouble with hyperactivity and having this problem. But once he’d run and worn off some of the energy, he could concentrate fine.

It was becoming clearer as we entered the summer vacation that my dad’s work was dwindling. With no work to be found, he was home more and more in the middle of the week. He took to helping me with my work, and with him driving a car, I was able to expand out farther into outlying neighborhoods. We didn’t talk much, but I could tell he liked to stay busy. He was careful in bagging the cuttings for the compost. He and mom added to the pile everyday with cut-up newspapers, coffee grounds, apple cores, and the like. It was becoming a family affair.

During that first month free from school, Ryan also introduced me to his secret for gaining muscle mass. Protein shakes with raw eggs and Hershey’s syrup. He made one for us after every run. In six weeks I’d added eight pounds. Mostly in my chest and arms. I measured them daily with a tape measure. I was determined to not be a skinny runt forever. One small compliment can sometimes produce a large incentive.

I, also, know that from the day of that compliment, I’d started to develop feelings for Ryan. I tried everything to deny them, shut them out, and turn them off. But they were there beneath the surface of my thoughts every time I was near him. I buried them because I knew I wasn’t anywhere in his league. I buried them because I didn’t want to humiliate myself, or have to deal with the pain of rejection. But they were there, and they were strong because the most important part of any of my days was when I was with him. To be near him made me happy.

For the weekend, I planned to get him through the works of Edgar Allan Poe, but he had something special in mind. I arrived at his family’s home at dinner time as he requested, and found them grilling burgers on the barbeque in the backyard. A picnic table had been set up with the black and red checkerboard table cloth, and decked out with potato salad, dinner rolls, and baked beans.

Bill and Bonnie, his parents, were the typical brand, doting on their only son. His father talked ceaselessly about his football aspirations for Ryan. I listened but heard little. I noticed that Ryan detached himself from the conversation the minute it struck on the subject of a football scholarship. He’d look off in the distance, seem to have his mind somewhere else. So I listened and nodded and smiled.

The food was good. Especially the salad that was entirely homegrown. When I complimented that, Ryan returned to the conversation with an appreciative smile. anyone who thought they00d

“So you guys are studying Edgar Allan Poe tonight?
Telltale Heart
and all those goodies?” his father inquired.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Well, you sure got the right setting for it.”

I was confused. “Setting?”

Bill looked toward his son. “You didn’t tell him?”

“I was saving it for a surprise.” Ryan said, wiping his mouth on a napkin and rising from the chair. “Wanna follow me?” He looked at me with a sly expression.

“You guys have a fun night!” his mom called after us as I followed him across the field.

“What kind of surprise?” I said, straining to see ahead in through the encroaching twilight. Just barely viewable halfway across, I made out a shape that looked like…a tent. A campsite. A ring of rocks with a small fire burning in it. A stack of wood next to it.

“What the hey?” I was amused by the idea. Reading scary stories by a campfire.

“I thought you’d like that,” he said, running ahead of me toward the tent.

I ran to catch up and was surprised that it was a good sized tent with a lantern, a stash of graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate for s’mores, a couple of thermos of grape Kool-Aid, some pretzels, and chips.

The fire had been started earlier and had dwindled down. Ryan threw two more small logs on it to rekindle it. refrigeratorImy

“There’s gonna be a full moon tonight. That’ll make it even better.” The guy was something else. Who would have thought of turning a study time of Edgar Allan Poe into a campfire side story?

Darkness fell fast, and from where we were situated we couldn’t even see the lights of his house. Only our campsite and the canopy of stars in the cloudless night. We pulled the sleeping bags from the tent around the fire, and propped the lantern on the outside of the tent.

I started with
The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
. The story of a dying man being hypnotized and still able to communicate after he was dead. Ryan listened intently, only breaking the discourse when he didn’t understand the meaning of a word.

Next I read
The Fall of The House of Usher
, then,
The Masque of Red

Death
, and finally,
The Tell-Tale Heart
.

Ryan looked at me after the last sentence and said, “Wow, that Poe was one sick puppy. He shoulda been in a home.”

“Yes, but he was probably a greater influence to the modern writers of horror and suspense than any other writer. He was more readable than the others. The terror was more realistic. That’s why he’s so important.”

In the flames of the fire I could see he was looking at me with what appeared, to my eyes, to be admiration.

“How do you know all of this stuff?” he asked. “Are you like some whiz-kid genius?”

“I just like to read,” I answered. “Never made a lot of friends; wasn’t good at sports much. So, I read.”

“Well, good for me,” he said. “I get a tutor and a running buddy all rolled into one.”

He made s’mores and we ate them watching the full moon rise high in the starry night. There was no doubt he was a true nature boy. He loved everything about being outdoors. He sat bow-legged in the semi-darkness listening to the sounds of the night like they were a song being sung for him.

I cannot lie. I was captivated by his raw beauty. His blue eyes shone in the lunar light. The curve of his head with its close-cropped blond hair made me think of an imposing Roman statue of a conquering hero. The masculine inclination of his nose from a square forehead, the slope of cheekbone to a strong block of chin, both alluring and majestic.

“Such a beautiful night,” he commented, his eyes still fixed on the moon. “People lose sight of how beautiful the world is that we live in by sitting in front of the boob tube every night.”

I stared at the curve of his back, the full bicep as he raised his s’more and ate. The blond hair on his legs gleamed in the duo of light.

He turned to look at me, orange embers catching his face again. “Where do you plan to go after high school? Which college?”

I explained to him how it was unlikely I’d be able to attend any college. Our family didn’t have the finances. That I’d probably decide on a trade and go to a school for that.