31 - Sliders




  
Dave is filling my head with tales about White Castle hamburgers.
He always comes up with new ones each time we sit down to eat. Since we usually buy a bunch to split between us, I suspect he is trying to gross me out sod he can get a bigger share.
Our White Castle sits on the corner of Main and Piaget, directly across the street from the main branch of the public library, which is directly across the highway from the junior high school we attend.
A road runs under the highway from the school to the library. We never take it. The truant officer often hides down under there watching for kids who cut – kids like us.
We run across the highway, dangerous, unexpected, something the truant officer can’t stop, and won’t do himself when we do it.
The Library property is holy ground, a building with a large park in front of it, park benched and enough shrubbery to keep us out of view of the street.
When we buy sliders, we always argue over whether or not to get fries, too.
I want them; Dave doesn’t.
He figures we can get more sliders if we don’t buy fries. He’s right. But I like Fries; so we compromise; I get some; we spend the rest on sliders.
The White Castle marks the part of Main Street where our town’s shopping district starts with strings of stores on both side, a real restaurant, jewelry store, barber shop, even a funeral home – not to mention the pool which opens on Memorial Day so some kids who cut go there in June to swim.
Since this is an easy way for the truant officer to find us, we don’t.
Sliders are Dave’s favorite food – regardless of what jokes he tells. He’s tried to get his mom to order them when they go out for meals, but she won’t drive that far unless she has something else to pick up downtown; so Dave has to buy them when we cut school.
Since we get caught as much as e don’t, we don’t always get a chance to get sliders even when we do – and so often get scared out of going, thinking we’ll find the truant officers in the parking lot, or he’ll spot us through the windows as he drives by.
Maybe because we cut so much, Dave’s failing at school; his mom blames me.
When school tells Dave he won’t pass this year, his mother decides to move back to Paterson where she thinks they never leave anybody back, no matter how bad they are or how often they cut school.
I think he’ll get killed in East Side High the way my grandparents knew – with my big mouth – I would -- and made me move to my grandfather’s house again so I can go to school here.
So when we cut school this time to go to White Castle, I let him have all the sliders. I don’t say anything yucky like how much I’ll miss him. We hardly say anything at all. It’s like we said so much for so long we’ve run out of words when we need them to express something we don’t know how to say, we sit in silence.
We don’t even look up when the truant officers comes in, telling us how much trouble we’re in and all the usual muck we have to put up with before he hauls us back to the office for the usual phone calls home.
We just keep eating our sliders (yes, Dave let me have some) and continue not to talk.
I don’t know what I’ll do without Dave; I’ve known him that long. How am I going to get him into trouble if he’s living a whole town away? Who will get him out of trouble if I’m not there?
Paterson isn’t the moon, I know, and I pass his new home as often as I go downtown, yet it seems remote after living practically on the same block as him, and far out of range of the cheap walkie-talkies we use to talk to each other in the middle of the night when he’s cared about something or I can’t sleep, or when we’re both grounded for some stupid stunt we pulled and got caught over.
Dave seems to think the same thing and mumbles with his mouth full that I should get a better CB radio, and I tell him I don’t know if I can steal enough money to get one.
The truant officer orders us to come with him; we don’t move, can’t move, glued to this place by sliders and the belief nothing will be like this again once we get up; Dave will go home which won’t be his home any more.
So we sit and eat.
Dave tells me the old tale about maggots found in sliders; I just keep on chewing.
I want him to say something neither of us will ever say, we only look out at the landscape that has become the landscape of our lives, filled with a mythology no one else but the two of us will ever know, or care about, or remember – these streets filled with bits of unimportant memories even we will lose over time, as our lives move on, once our heads get filled with images of other places, other people, other friends we might or might not call our best.
I want these sliders to mean more than they do, more than an excuse to cut school, more than just a last meal we share before the world changes and we find ourselves separated more than by a mere bus ride.
But we simply eat, and when we’re done, we rise and follow the truant officer back to his car for the short ride back to the school, and the much, much longer ride home.






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