Adventure

1.
Out in the church playground
ten, at loose ends
Scout uniforms and fall jeans
they play
run, dodge, and yell

and three of them
the old grade-school antagonists
kick him, when the game turns mean
from three sides
suddenly, the pack, the attack

He hits them, all three
the way the Korean taught him,
hard
the freak, in the shoulder
the bully, in the face
the damaged one, fleeing
in the back
where it’s too hard for a running punch
too hard for that side of his hand

He was so close to reaching the next level
where bullies are toxic
but not always injurious
where disarmament is possible

I come out, just a few minutes later
he knows it’s broken
in the way small creatures with broken wings
know they won’t just fly away

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2. After the broken arm in the spring and a broken toe at the beginning of the school year, we know that he will have to be checked again, with more blood work. Admittedly, the broken toe was clearly an accident – he was running barefoot, and stubbed it against another child’s heel. The radius in the spring was just a hard fall. The tests come back showing normal Vitamin D levels, improved from the spring. This must be his normal childhood, a precarious balance of swelling strength and growing bones. By Thanksgiving the brace is off his arm and he’s able to ride his bike in the driveway again, up and down the gravel between the trees and the rocks along the garden. We put his helmet on him and hope for the best.

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3. The scheduled activity for the first weekend after he breaks his hand is a Scout campout, but that’s obviously no longer an option. I consider it, becasue it would give the boys some closely supervised time to re-establish a normal relationship, However, Boy’s cast can’t be made with the waterproof lining this time, because it has to fit tightly on his hand. Also, it’s his right hand, and I know it would end up filthy after two days in the woods and fields. It’s regretable, because the weather is perfect and there would be fewer bugs than in the summer.

I take the extra free days to advance one notch on the chore list by cutting down two trees near the house. The first is a fifty-foot cottonwood that died last winter for no apparent reason, other than not being particularly vigorous in the first place. The other tree is one of the Scotch Pines that have been in front of the house for the twentry-four years since the dirt was pushed back up against foundation and the lawn was seeded in. The other trees are bigger now, but the house still looks bare without one of its pines.

The scaffolding on the south side of the house comes down, revealing all the imperfections in the paint that were obscured by posts and shadows. Still, it comes out about like I had envisioned it, with the dark green lap siding and the old fashioned windows. The house is beginning to realize its character as an old bungalow. This is a small achievement, because for the first ten years we lived there, we couldn’t figure out what kind of house it was supposed to be. It’s still a bit mismatched with windows that are casement instead of double hung, but the framed openings dictated the style. They now have a white prairie style grill which stands out and keeps them from just being plain rectangles. When they are all revealed I realize that I should have made the trim a little bit taller over the tops. It’s too late now – I’m not going to try to make surgical cuts in siding from a ladder. That’s what I hate most about painting and trim – it always seems like I could make it perfect, but when I pull away the tape and take down the ladder, I see all the mistakes that I have made.

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4. There’s some consolation for Boy. In November we travel to St. Louis for the Pokemon Trading Card Game Regional Tournament. There are over three hundred players, and Boy is a little overwhelmed. The tournament is held in the modern equivalent of a medieval castle’s great hall: the courtyard of a nearly closed shopping mall. Folding tables are arranged in long rows under the skylights and peeling sheetrock. The players sit at the numbered seats for each round, shuffle their cards, and play their carefully prepared strategies of entrapment and assault.

He escapes disaster after the first round, not by winning, but by not having his backyard stolen after he gets up and leaves it in his chair. It contains all his other cards and his DS3 player. We circle back to the chair and it is gone It strikes me that this could be the end of Boy’s Pokemon saga – I don’t know if he would even try to rebuild all his decks, and I’m not sure I could afford it. Desperate, we check at the judge’s table and find that someone has turned it in. I carry it myself for the rest of the tournament.

He does not do as well as he hoped, and after the fourth round I meet him at our designated checkpoint. He is red-faced from being soundly beaten by some former national champion. He doesn’t like to be beaten, and he doesn’t quite see the path to the improvement he needs. By the end of the tournament, he is thoroughly disheartened. We check with one of the “Professors” at the judge’s table – no prizes – and then we go out and walk dejectedly along the covered sidewalk to the car. The sun is down and it’s starting to rain.

We are almost ready to dash to the car when we hear someone calling Boy’s name and running after us. The Professor was misinformed, and Boy has placed twenty-second in his division. Back inside, there is a small pile of card packs with his name on them. There was a bye and a default in his placement, but there was also a victory and he focuses that. We leave St. Louis without such long faces. He falls fast asleep in the long dark miles west of Boonville.

(For the record, I win one match in the brutal Master’s class, which is mostly populated by very serious college-age kids. I hold my own in the first match as well. I would never have thought…)

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5. Boy still has bits of a child’s language. He, Girl, and I are driving to school one morning, and Girl is complaining about school and her classmates. It’s a tiresome teenage refrain, but I guess it makes her feel better. She is tired of this plain Midwestern place, with its close horizons and small lives. She wants something different.

From the back seat come words of wisdom, although I’m still not sure I have his exact meaning.

“Everyone wants a journey, but they just won’t choose an adventure.”