Jay Bird

Chapter 1

Jay Bird

By Thomas Grant Bruso

“How was your weekend?” I asked Rocco.

“I drank good whisky, played pinball with a few buddies at The Watering Hole, and got my d**k sucked in the restroom by a Hooter’s girl with humungous tits.” A conspiratorial smile tweaked his puckered lips.

Rocco’s tough bravado was always a thin, sugarcoated shell of low self-esteem.

“Sounds like your typical weekend,” I said.

“It was F-U-N.” Rocco smiled with an air of dignity as if drinking and fornicating were a lifelong ambition.

I passed him a lit joint.

Taking a hit, he held it for a second or two, his eyes rolling up somewhere in his head, lost in a dream, engrossed. When he released a plume of smoke, he sighed, content. Unlike me, he was used to it, a hardcore stoner. I was a rookie, he’d say, an amateur, a novice in training pants. “How was your weekend rendezvous with your grandma?” He chuckled, and I could hear the phlegmy gurgle in his chest from years of smoking. He handed me the joint.

I took it between my forefinger and thumb, held it up to the pale milky moonlight 238,900 miles away from us and filled my lungs with a deep long breath. Annoyed at the sarcastic bite of Rocco’s comment, I answered, “My Grams is ill. Don’t joke about it.”

He laughed, coughed, and spit down onto the small patch of dry grass from where we sat stargazing thirty feet off the ground on my Grams’ slate garage roof in her backyard, a ten-foot high rhododendron hedge enclosing the five-acre plot. The landscape service company she had paid to trim her trees and bushes had half-assed the job last week when they were here, three men on the wrong side of sixty, and the result was abysmal. Tops of spruce trees and evergreens were hacked to incompetent existence.

My skin was damp from the June heat.

“I wasn’t joking,” I said. “Chill.” I handed him back the joint.

The intoxicating air hummed with barbeque smoke, m*******a, and Rocco’s Fish Fry Special at the diner.

We both had essays to research for history class and a presentation to work on together. Rocco always waited until the last minute to hit the books. He told me high school wasn’t his strength. He wanted to travel, see the world, and meet people less interested in academics, more free-spirited folks and daydreamers like himself.

A cold darkness swallowed us. I shivered at the likelihood of Rocco’s future spiraling downward.

As Rocco passed the hand-rolled joint my way, I caught a whiff of his body odor. Fear, caution, and hunger exploded in my nose like a firecracker.

His next words were senseless, brutal, and tragic. “I want to die in space.”

I inhaled and held my breath for a millisecond, frying my brain cells with the heavy-duty cannabis I had gotten from Rocco three days ago. I choked out an equally dumb response, my eyes watering and burning from the smoke. “Most of my friends are already dead. What’s another one?”

“How do you want to die?” He sounded upset, his voice quivering, as if it was being taken over by an otherworldly spirit.

“I don’t know, Roc,” I said.

“That’s not an answer. It’s a cop out.”

“Have you been drinking?”

He was tetchy, wary. “Does it matter?”

“You sound anxious.”

“How can you not be anxious in this f****d up world?”

“Did something happen at work today?”

“Nope.”

“How are classes?”

“I’m failing everything but P.E.”

“Swimming and lifting weights doesn’t count.”

“The hell they don’t.” He reached for the joint, ripping it from my hand, and taking the last hit.

“What do you want to do this weekend?” I asked.

“I thought you had to take care of your grandmother.”

“I’m not her caretaker. She’s got a nurse who comes in five days a week. In the morning and afternoon. I’m here to visit. And see you.”

“You taking up babysitting the elderly?” He laughed.

I wanted to wallop him.

Then I noticed his cheek, hidden in shadows, and as he shifted and reached in his back shorts pocket for another fat doobie, a knuckle-size bruise marked the side of his face beneath the left eye. He adjusted his grungy, pale blue baseball cap backwards when he noticed me staring at him.

“What happened to your face?” I asked.

“A fight with a buddy. You want to smoke another one?” He handed me a new joint.

I nodded. “Why not? I can’t sleep anyway.”

“His name is Brian, if you should know.”

“Brian the Slugger?”

He shrugged. “We had a disagreement over a game of pool.”

“I didn’t realize you played pool?”

He held out a hand, admonishing me. “Let me finish.”

“What did the two of you argue about?”

“A girl.”

I rolled my eyes. “Original.”

“Why else would I get a shiner?”

“Is anyone really worth a black eye?”

“Can we stop talking about it? I wanna get high.”

“How’s work?” I asked.

“Just as frustrating.”

“Why?”

He sighed. “It’s the reason I’m late getting here.”

I checked my watch: 11:45.

“I had to stay and close the diner by myself because dickhead Dean Harold watched me from his motorcycle in the parking lot. It pissed me off.”

“I thought nothing happened at work today?”

He shrugged, snubbing my question.

“Why do you still work for him?” I asked.

“He works around my school schedule,” Rocco said, adding, “but tonight he told me that I was keeping him from his friends.”

“He’s got friends?”

“A bike gang called—get this—Skull Riders.”

“Stupid,” I said, shaking my head.

“A bunch of middle aged bald men pick Dean up at the diner every Thursday night and they go biking around town.” He paused, rolling a joint, licking the edges of the paper and folding it closed. “He told me his friends don’t like it when he’s late. They give him a hard time. Dean blamed me tonight.”

“You’ve been at the diner for almost three months now.”

“Four months,” he corrected.

“All you do when we’re together is complain about how awful Dean Harold is.”

“I know. Jesus. I didn’t come here to get a f*****g lecture.”

“For your peace of mind, you need to find another job.”

I thought from his steely gaze that he was going to lambast me. “I heard you the first time,” he said.

“Just trying to help.”

“You can help by getting off my back.”

“Fine. I won’t mention your boss again.”

A prickly silence ensued.

“How do you want to be remembered?” Rocco asked a few minutes later.

Hesitation filled the void between us and I turned to him, crestfallen. “Where’s this coming from?”

“How do you want to be remembered?” he asked again, his voice taking on a darker tone, as if I hadn’t heard him the first time.

“I see now why you’re still single.”

He reached for the joint and I jerked away, taking a long drawl.

Holding. Holding. Holding.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to answer him. I wanted to be anywhere but here. Somewhere else, away from the pain of the small upstate New York town of Milton, a dead-end journey to nowhere, and the day to day theatrics of seeing my Grams dying.

“I want to be remembered as a caring young dude,” I said.

“Boring.” He cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone and rang the night with his recycled verbiage.

“How do you want to be remembered?” I asked, handing him the joint, our fingers touching.

“Hands down, the best lay this side of town.”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the seriousness of his answer. He f*****g meant it. “You’re an idiot.”

“You still love me,” he said. “Don’t deny it. Nobody can resist The Roc.” He flexed his arms, a small ripple of muscles bulging beneath his Imagine Dragons T-shirt.

“Moron.” I snickered.

He laughed at his own mundane stupidity.

“When was the last time you were in a serious relationship?” I asked.

“I have never been in a serious relationship.”

“Exactly,” I said, ripping the joint from his spindly fingers. “You go through girls like Kleenex. It’s disgusting.”

“I would’ve liked it if you compared the chicks I date to their undies.”

“I’m afraid to ask,” I whispered under my breath, taking a hit.

“Dirty girls are reusable,” he said, smirking.

“Tell me again why we’re still friends?”

“You and I are connected like a f*****g tumor.”

“You’re malignant and I’m benign.”

The gluey heat of summer clung to the back of my neck. I felt sweat drip from my forehead. I wiped the perspiration off with the back of my hand, squirmed in my T-shirt and shorts and pulled my knees up to my chest.

“Have you ever imagined flying to the moon?” Rocco asked after we finished the last joint.

“I’m afraid of heights.”

“You’d be inside a space shuttle. Protected from the elements.”

I shook my head and dabbed my damp hands on my shorts. “Just thinking about it makes me sweat. I’m afraid of flying.”

“You’re a pussy.”

“At least I own it.”

He sighed. “Whatever happened to your sense of adventure and curiosity? You used to be a really rad dude.”

“What am I now?”

“Dull…as a doornail.”

“My idea of adventure is climbing on a rooftop thirty feet from the ground. I want to know that if I fall there’s going to be a net to catch me.”

“You used to be so inquisitive about everything,” he said. “It’s like you’ve died already.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I think I know when everything changed.”

I waited for him to respond, eyeing him steadfastly.

“Since you hooked up with that newspaper delivery guy from history class,” he said.

“Elliot?”

“Is that his name? Goofy, lanky dude who digs comic books and chick-flick romances.”

“Elliot was the best thing that happened to me.”

“I always pegged you as a jock type. During our football games, I caught you staring at the tight ends most of the time.”

“You really don’t know me.”

“What happened to you and Elliot?”

“Like I said, you really don’t know me.”

“I know you and Big E liked to make out in his parents’ BMW in the school parking lot during lunch break.”

“You watched us?”

“I peeked.”

I smirked. “Did you enjoy what you saw?”

“Dudes aren’t my thing.”

“However, it’s been rumored—” I started to say, but he cut me off.

“Rumored?”

“That you pitch for both teams.”

“Who said that?” Defensive, his eyes squinted into question.

I felt myself starting to laugh and turned away, gazing up at the full moon, a ready smile tugging the corners of my mouth.

“I’ve never touched another dude, let alone f****d one,” he said. “Don’t plan on it either.” He was getting riled, his voice escalating to an annoying level, spit flying.

I was getting a b***r from it, I admitted to myself. Payback was a b***h.

“Are you serious?” he asked. “I want to know who’s spreading rumors about me. When I find out, that’ll be the last thing they say.”

“Why are you getting so defensive?”

“Because I’m not gay. I’ve got nothing wrong with gay people, but I dig girls.”

“If you’re not gay, then don’t worry about what people say.”

“I’m just annoyed that you won’t tell me who said it.”

“Jesus, Rocco. Nobody said it. I made it up.”

He paused, arms outspread, and breathing hard. “Why would you do that?”

“To see if you still have your sense of humor. I guess not.”

He gathered the joint stubs and stuffed them into his pocket. Stood. “I got to get home. My folks will be worried.” He turned to me. “Don’t forget to check on your Grams.”

“I won’t. Walk safely. Call me when you get home.”

“I’m three blocks from here, man.”

“I’d feel better if I knew you got there safely.”

“You worry too much.”

“One of us has to.”

“Later, man.” He held out his hand for me to slap, grind and shake—our hello and goodbye greeting.

“Talk to you soon.” I watched him jump off the roof onto a pile of compost the landscape crew had left in a heap by the fence. Rocco landed with a thud on the debris below.

Then, a few passing seconds later, he said. “I’m fine. Nothing’s broken. No worries. Night, Jay.”

I shook my head, rolled my eyes, and stared up at the starry sky, making a wish that my Grams would get better.

No such luck.