The Day was Ours

A Chapter by ZackOfBridge

Two friends ditch class

“Yes I love women, you f****t,” Billy said with his pecker (that hadn’t pecked yet) in hand and his piss hissing in the urinal, “Why do you think I’ve got this thing? As a paperweight? Hell, Donnie.”

I wetted my palms with sink water and perused my hair in front of the mirror. Class was in session, but our asses were soar sitting in those plastic seats and carving the desk wasn’t doing it for me anymore. “If you love ‘em so much, why don’t you marry them?”

Billy shook off his last drop, zipped his pants, hocked some spit in the pisser, and joined me at the sinks. He washed his hands with his head down, he wasn’t one for watching himself in the mirror. I figure it’s the only way to know I’m still there, but Billy just knows. He must see it in his hands. Billy pushed the faucet handle with his elbow, it dripped and dripped and echoed off the tile floors and tiled walls. “S**t, Hell, I’m not marrying, Donnie. Not unless you mean Bailey Forrest. My God, Donnie. The Wolf of West Lake, you know I’d marry her.”

They called her the Wolf of West Lake for the way she made all the guys howl. We howled and howled, the kind of snow lonely howl of a fenced dog, my God. I rolled my pencil from the desks edge to go low and catch some sight of those legs in the classroom. I must’ve dropped my pencil more than I’d write with the damned thing, especially on those days after spring break when she’d wear those skirts. Jesus God, spirits in heaven and temptations from Hell. Its one of those divine mysteries of who puts girls with legs like that on this Earth. I dried my hands before I fingered in my pocket, “Well Billy Boy, I’ve got a joint and you’ve got a lighter. How about we leave towards the field?”

Billy scored his crumpled paper-towel into the trashcan, “Sounds fine, but I haven’t got a lighter in my backpack.”

“Sure you do,” I said and watched myself smirk it in the mirror, “I put it there in first period.”

“F****r.” He said and swung his backpack around and fumbled through a pocket.

“I can’t be carrying the joint and the lighter,” I said, “other pocket, bud.”

“What difference would it make?” Billy snapped; he was tense. He needed a good smoke. He’s lucky to have a real pal like me who looks out for him like that. He pulled the lighter from the pocket and sparked it at me. Oh Billy, my friend, it would take much more than fire to kill Donnie Cortez, I’ve already got a fire burning in me.

Billy Boy and I slipped from the restroom and out to the open campus. The sun burned something like eleven o’clock, class still in session and the day belonged to us now. We rolled our soles on the pavement around the back of the restrooms building. I liked a swaggered step, but Billy gripped his backpack straps and kept his knees locked when he cut class. On our way out to the field free, we passed the special students building. I flew up a high wave, but Billy shot it down like an expert trap shooter.

“D****t Donnie, quit making a show of this.”

“Life’s a show, Pallo. Besides those kids love me, call me Donnie Cortie. Isn’t that cute?”

“Just precious.”

“Sure it is, I wonder how they would do with a couple puffs of this.” I said and stuck the rolled paper between my lips.

“Sophisticated.” Billy said and nudged me with the lighter, right in my side-gut like he was thinking about sending a dagger through my belly. Burn me, stab me, but never get any ideas that Donnie Cortez can be up and killed, those would be funny ideas.

I waited for our shoes to rub the field before I sparked it. The twisted end withered and gave way to flame, conquered the end burned hot in shame and smoke. I passed it along to Billy, he took it to his face and cupped it with his hands. Smoke lifted from the dome of his hands from the separations in his fingers. With his hands so pale white they reminded me of a burning igloo. Billy Boy, the walking talking cigarette with his red hair alit and throwing glows of sun glare, breathe deep, let the smoke marinate behind your eyes. The day is ours for as long as the sun will tolerate. “Alright smoky--whoa there, only you can prevent forest fires. Pass the torch, wont you?”

“I say bring on the Forrest fire--woohoo woohoo!” Billy howled to the sky, and stretched the joint my way. “You know what I mean, Donnie?”

“You know I do.” I said and the idea struck me in the lung. Yes, we were ready. “Chicks, Billy. Lets go get ‘em.”

“Donnie,” Billy started, his mouth was dry. I could hear the smacking, inner workings of his speech, “we left the chicks. They’re all back at the school.”

“I’m not talking about those chicks, Billy.” Those were not the girls we wanted, not today, not when the day was ours. We wanted maturity, I could speak for Billy, he could howl and howl for Bailey Forrest, but even under the Summer sun it would be the same snow lonely howl of a fenced dog, and today we were free in the field, free to sniff snatch and piss on posts and urinals alike. “College girls Billy. They like pot too, and their asses must be just as soar as ours, probably even soarer, if you know what I mean, Billy.”

Billy’s eyes drooped, but his horizontal mouth lifted with recognition. He reached for my hand and pinched the joint from my roachy fingers. He tucked the stub between his lips, his right eye twitched, his lashes batted at the rising smoke, “You know I do.”

The college was around some corners and down some streets. We hopped the steps of a city bus, limp dollars in hand. We fed them into the machine and the bus driver figure knocked us a glance. Schools out early, huh? He said and Billy said to him ‘Oh don’t worry about us, we’re off to college’. Take a seat, he said to my red-eyed friend. We didn’t sit though, no, we stood and swayed. We swayed like sails in an ocean of public transportation stereotypes. In the seat in front of me sat the straight-visioned maid, her two hands set atop her blouse, a mother Teresa of dusting she must have been. Across, a man with a head composed like a fleshy human beak mumbled without sound with lips too moist. They sat like free-riding city props, a part of the blue linoleum seats, each of their faces cracking and their coat of paint withering with each bell of stop-wire pulling.

“Hey, Donnie.” Billy said, the faces neither turned nor breathed. “Donnie, we smoked your joint.”

“Yes we did.”

“So how will we offer to smoke out the college girls when we get to them?”

The bell rang and the bus slowed in a revolving murmur of engine. I let go of the pole. “This is our stop then.”

Billy the badger, the red coated badger, he must’ve badgered me a quarter of a mile. Donnie, he said, its at least five blocks from sycamore drive, Donnie, the college girls are on sycamore drive. What about the college girls, Donnie? You’re walking the complete opposite way of the college, of the girls, Donnie. He caught me when I stopped my pace at a bus stop, the smell of burning tobacco found invisible solace in my nose. A homeless fellow held to his basket of things as though someone would up and roll it away from him. He had a cat on a leash, I’d never seen a cat on a leash. He smoked his cigarette in long pulls and watched the traffic behind me.

“Can I bum one of those off you?” I asked. I crossed my hands in front of me so not to present my eager, fiendish need for a smoke to this humbled streetlight dreamer.

“How was that, kid?” He looked to me, his eyes swimming from the restless bags underneath.

“Can I bum---“ I started, my voice croaked a weak pinch. “Oh, s**t. I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean it like that. A figure of speech, you know? I was just wondering whether you could spare me one of your smokes.”

The bum laughed bursts of smoke. I felt Billy, stoned behind me. The man unclenched his hand from the shopping cart, stroked his leashed cat and reached into his military jacket. “Sure kid, don’t worry nothing ‘bout it. I am a bum, can’t even ‘ford my way onto the bus thass comin’.”

“That’s no good,” I said watching the hand hidden inside his jacket pocket, camouflaged in army greens. “What do you need? Will a five do it? I know it’s only a buck, but you and the cat got to eat, so here’s ten.”

“That would do real fine, thank you, God bless. Here’s that cigarette, looks like your hand wants it more than you do.” He said and presented the open pack to me. A lone cigarette clung to the corner behind the aluminum paper.

“Its your last one.”

“Take it, kid. There’ll be more. Smoking kills anyhow.”

“So does living.” Billy said with the purr of the arriving bus. I took the cigarette to my side. The man stepped to his feet and tossed the empty box into the garbage. The bus door automated open like an urban play start and the bum stepped up on set.

“Thank you for your service.” I called to him and saluted the cigarette to my forehead.

He side-turned from the top step, “I stole this jacket from some bum below an underpass. You boys take good care of Colonel Kreschovik.”

He pointed at the leashed cat and the bus doors closed and the tires rolled it down the street.

“That bum just left his cat,” Billy said, he scratched the cat under the neck and played with its collar. “I’ve never seen a cat on a leash, Donnie.”

I lit my cigarette and watched the traffic behind smoke. The day was ours, and so was the cat, Colonel Kreschovik.

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