Page 19 of Possibly Texas

Jack held a finger up gruffly, his mouth twisted up in frustration, then began to write again. Once more, I had to wait for Jack to give me a response to my multiple questions. Or non-questions. They were really just observances. Finally, Jack was shoving the notepad in my face again.

Just because people are different than you doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with them.

Jack waited for me to have enough time to read the paper, then he shoved it at me again, his way of saying I needed to read it again. A few moments later, he threw the notepad down on the table and glared at me. He reached up and wrapped both hands around his throat loosely as he scowled.

I felt like shit immediately.

“Jack,” I said, “man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that people who are, uh, different than me, uh, are weird. You know I didn’t mean anything by that.”

Jack’s hands fell from his throat and he snatched up his tool. His eyes went back to the table as he started to violently chip away at the tabletop. The scowl didn’t leave his face, but Jack was taking his anger out on the table instead of me.

“Jack,” I said, “come on, man. You know I didn’t—”

Jack stood up from working just long enough to wave me off.

Get out of here!

That’s what his waving arm told me. I didn’t need expertise in sign language to understand his intention. I wanted to stand there and try to explain myself further to Jack so he wouldn’t think that I thought that he was weird, but I knew that would only make things worse. The way his mouth was curled up in a scowl, the hurt in his eyes, I knew that I needed to walk away.

So, I did.

“Sorry, man,” I muttered as I walked towards the front yard once more.

The only sound that reached my ears was the scraping of Jack’s tool on the table and the sound of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue in the distance.

Back at the front yard, I risked a glance towards the graveyard again. The mist was dissipating and no hooded figure was in sight. So, I climbed the front steps to the house and let myself back inside. My feet carried me on auto-pilot up the two flights of stairs to my room. I grabbed my phone off of the desk on my way to the bed and fell onto it.

My room was already getting warm.

And I didn’t have any messages from my mom.

I opened the text messaging app to tap out a message to her.

Come get me! Jack already hates me. Why did you leave me here in this crazy place?

But I stopped myself. Mom wouldn’t turn around to pick me up. She had left me in Possibly because I was cramping her style anyway. She had offloaded me on Jack—my stepfather I hadn’t seen in a decade—because…I didn’t know why. Life had been okay on the road. Maybe not great; but it was okay.

I started to tap out a message again. Just to ask if she was okay.

There was no signal.

At least that made me feel a little less crappy.

Maybe Mom hadn’t messaged or called because my phone hadn’t been picking up a tower in the armpit of Texas? It wasn’t that she had already forgotten she had a son.

Before being ditched in Texas to live with Jack, I’d never really done something like sit in bed and stare out the window at the moon and stars. I’d never sat in the dark of my mind and the silence of my loneliness, thinking about my life. My life—my every day existence—was full of noise and movement. The sounds of the road and theaters and motels were my constant companions. I never really had friends to talk to—not even via text. I never really stayed anywhere long enough to meet people my own age. My friends lived in the T.V. or on the radio. Or maybe, for a single day, some kids I swam with at the motel swimming pool.

Those friendships were fleeting. If they were even friendships. They were just one lonely boy searching out temporary companionship from other kids who had some other city or state to be in the following day. Except they were going somewhere new on vacation or back home. Sooner or later, when I left a motel, it was so Mom could move us into a new motel in a new town where she had found work. I’d never know for how long.

After a while, at least, once I stopped being a stupid kid with stars in his eyes, I realized that trying to make friends was pointless. Eventually, I stopped trying to play Marco Polo in the pool with other kids who were staying for a night or two. I stopped talking to kids I saw at the vending machines. I stopped trying to be friendly with the kids who lived near the motel who walked by on their way to the corner store or to the movies…or wherever kids with a permanent home go to have fun. I started to think of myself as a desert tortoise.

Desert tortoises live on their own in the desert. Naturally. They only meet up to mate or to share a burrow during hibernation. Even when a momma desert tortoise lays eggs, she digs a hole, lays the eggs, covers them, and leaves them, rarely ever to return. The hatchlings, no bigger than a quarter, are on their own from birth. Sink or swim. Maybe one day they’d share a burrow during hibernation if ever their paths crossed again. My mom and I hibernated together at night at motels, but otherwise, I was on my own. We shared our burrow. But I spent my days in the desert alone, wandering, foraging, and waiting for another hibernation period. Night time was good. Sleep was good. Because I wasn’t alone then. Usually. Sometimes Mom spent the night with one of my “uncles.”

Yeah. I’m sixteen. I know what they were doing.

But that was me. A desert tortoise.

No real purpose other than to exist, forage, hibernate and, eventually, maybe one day help to perpetuate the species.