Friday night, Zach was shooting hoops out at the old middle school. The season was over, and school was just about out for the year. He practiced his foul shots for half an hour, then he tried some jump shots along the wings. Made a few spin moves, to lay some buckets in. Dribbled in figure eights and stood in the middle of the court spinning the ball on his fingertip. Thought it a good night and at dusk, 8:30, headed for home the long way, up and down every street dribbling, waving to a few old folks on their porch smoking cigarettes, to some little kids playing flashlight tag, to a man just back from the war who rocked on his porch and would nod when you walked past, staring off into the distance at who knew what. The house was dark by the time he reached the steps, no porch light, no downstairs light, but he could hear a radio playing somewhere nearby, something country, twangy. He stepped inside and, immediately, his mother called down to him to not turn on the light and to come up the stairs, she needed his help. He let his eyes adjust to the blackness. Put his ball on the chair by the door, took a deep breath, then another. Then he walked up the stairs, which creaked, it was an old, old house. \u201cIn here,\u201d Sue said, and he hesitated and thought maybe he should ask what she wanted, but he took a chance and walked into this mother\u2019s bedroom and saw her outline at the window, just to the side. \u201cDon\u2019t turn on that light. Come on in. I want you to sit in the chair right there and listen.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did as she said. He sat and listened. He could see her window was up, the half-screen in at the bottom. He had one in his bedroom too, it got so hot by the time May rolled around.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou been at the ball court?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah. Why?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust wondering. Do you hear it?\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the radio she meant, whoever it was playing country. It wasn\u2019t loud, exactly, but it was clearly audible, and the lyrics floated right into his mother\u2019s bedroom.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs that Cowboy?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYep.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cowboy was a man his mother had been dating. Zach had met him only a couple of weeks before, a short man, not too articulate, balding. He wore a cowboy hat anywhere except inside a house or church. He wasn\u2019t too bright, but he was about the only man around who wasn\u2019t tied up by marriage or a crazy girlfriend. He had a good job\u2014that was the thing his mother most noticed about him, the job. That it had come to this a year after his father had died left Zach sad and a little bit wrecked. That Cowboy could become his stepfather was completely unacceptable. He hadn\u2019t gone to college, and he couldn\u2019t work much these days because his heart had gone bad. He was drawing worker\u2019s comp, which to Zach was no different than welfare, and he despised that, government handouts. \u201cWhy in the hell are you dating this man?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not. We broke up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zach could see his car now out there at the edge of the yard, in the very patch of gravel where his father used to park.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe neighbors called to complain.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t curse. But I need you go out there and ask him to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t do it yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe won\u2019t listen to me. It has to be a man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sixteen years old.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re six feet tall. You tower over him. Just go out there and be polite and tell him the neighbors called, he has to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zach didn\u2019t argue it. He wished Teddy hadn\u2019t moved away\u2014he\u2019d be much better in a situation like this. He wished, for that matter, that his father were still alive, and that his mother hadn\u2019t started up drinking again and running out to the bars. He was a year away from college, so he could take his mother\u2019s drunkenness and sloppy conversations, but what he didn\u2019t want before he got out was a stepfather, especially one like Cowboy. He stood up and told his mother he\u2019d take care of it.<\/p>\n
He stopped off in the kitchen and slipped a steak knife in the hip pocket of his cutoffs, just in case things got physical. He\u2019d never been in a fight in his life, he was always bigger than his friends and somehow he managed to avoid all the bullies who tormented them. He opened the kitchen door and stepped onto the porch and turned to see if the car was still there. Hank Williams was still crooning, if that\u2019s what he did. Hank was okay, maybe the only country star Zach liked. That he was long dead made it a kind of plus, you could master the songs of someone like that, play them again and again and know that that\u2019s all there would ever be.<\/p>\n
It was quite dark, and the grass was wet, he could feel it on his ankles and thought he should mow it soon. He got to the gravel and walked up to Cowboy\u2019s car window and saw that he had nodded off, his head tilting forward. He wore the hat.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Stringer,\u201d Zach said.<\/p>\n
The man didn\u2019t move.<\/p>\n
Zach said his name a little more loudly, and Cowboy started and pulled a pistol up and pointed it at Zach.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s me, Mr. Stringer. Zach. Sue\u2019s son. You can put that away.\u201d<\/p>\n
He put the gun down and rubbed his eyes. \u201cSorry, son,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCould you turn that music off, please? The neighbors called us to complain.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLord,\u201d Cowboy said. The music cut off. Zach saw it was an eight-track, not a radio. That explained why all the songs were Hank Williams.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe wants you to leave, too. I\u2019m sorry. But you need to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou the man now?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cExcuse me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMan of the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I\u2019m the only male living inside it, if that\u2019s what you mean.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew your father.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThought he was a good man. But I couldn\u2019t understand the queer part.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zach didn\u2019t retort. Didn\u2019t address the rumors about his father. He\u2019d learned to live with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you think about him being queer?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you should go, is what I think.\u201d Zach could feel the knife in his pants\u2019 pocket. He didn\u2019t think he\u2019d need it, but he was glad it was there.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll right. Tell Sue to call me if she changes her mind and decides she needs a man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cowboy turned over the engine and backed away. Zach watched him drive down the alley and then stop right between the two houses. Hank Williams came up loud all of a sudden, and next door, the kitchen window slammed shut. The lights were off, so Zach guessed Mrs. Gladwell must\u2019ve been eavesdropping from her kitchen all this time. He\u2019d probably hear about it the next day when he would try to mow the grass. She\u2019d wave to him and he\u2019d have to walk over to her kitchen window and be polite and explain what Mr. Stringer was doing playing Hank Williams in the dark. The serenade shut off, finally, and Cowboy drove away.<\/p>\n
Back in the kitchen he drank a glass of milk and ate some chips. This was dinner. He found an apple for dessert and stood there in the kitchen eating it. After a while his mother came downstairs and asked him what had happened outside. He was eating a banana by then. He told her to call Cowboy if she ever needed a man, that that was the message he was supposed to convey. Zach didn\u2019t tell the part where Cowboy called her husband and his father a queer. She asked him why he had a steak knife in his hip pocket, and he thanked her for pointing it out, he\u2019d forgotten all about it. He tossed it in the dirty dishwater and figured if they were still undone by morning it would be the first chore of the day he would tackle. Next would be the lawn and Mrs. Gladwell. After that, he\u2019d look through college catalogs and dream of getting out of this place. He locked his bedroom door when he went to bed that night, something he\u2019d been doing for a while now.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The house was dark by the time he reached the steps, no porch light, no downstairs light, but he could hear a radio playing somewhere nearby, something country, twangy. He stepped inside and, immediately, his mother called down to him to not turn on the light and to come up the stairs, she needed his help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19605,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1322,3254,3255,1395,3256],"class_list":["post-18884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-basketball","tag-booze","tag-cowboy-hats","tag-pistols","tag-stepfathers","writer-michael-w-cox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18884"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19606,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18884\/revisions\/19606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}