Flea Market item acquired and featured for display: Writing for Joy publication
Refer here for character list/backstory (but totally not necessary)
Kevin told me I couldn’t fit a playground inside the back of my 1991 Ford Ranger. Doubt charms the dormant pettiness out of me. I had no choice but to kidnap him.
I did not use any rope or tape or ski masks or VHS tapes in the stealing of Kevin. I did not even employ my kiln chest or my oak thighs. I’m in a losing war against clichés. I have to avoid them at every straightaway. They use gorilla tactics, attacking me from hidden traps and often in disguise. But I still show up to fight, dammit, or else I’d be letting all previous efforts die in Maine (Maine is basically useless, right?).
Plus, comedy lasts.
This is how I kidnapped Kevin: I pickpocketed him and took his phone and locked myself into the bathroom. And in an extra loud voice, loud enough to drown out his droning protests, I called his work and told them that he had been hit by a car, by a car driven by me. And that he needed to be taken to a hospital. In a car. Driven by me.
Giggles endure.
We missed every green light on our way toward Bonsall. My words, just a pal’s knot, bound Kevin loosely. He took the sluggish drive as an opportunity to try to attack my claims.
It all started last week when we were trying to describe the playground at our Elementary school. We hadn’t seen it since we were ten, so our conviction was our only proof. We drew up the mulch and the exposed bald spot of granite dirt below the slide. We agreed on the placement of the perforated platform that led to the monkey bars and on the placement of the swaying bridge and c-shaped ladder. What we couldn’t agree on, though, was the location of our Excalibur, where Manny heroically drew out the lips, and eventually the tongue, from the regal and much older face of Heidi Stadelli.
I remember it happening underneath the platform that held up the slide. Kevin claims it was under the bridge and said he could remember Heidi having to duck underneath it.
I said to Kevin that seeing the playground in flesh could jog his memory. I told him that we could swing by Bonsall Elementary together to pick it up. If doubt is my petty charmer, zaniness is Kevin’s. It comes in the form of much blabbering. It was the same last week as it was in the truck. He gave me irrelevant accounts about the school’s massive reconstruction, describing blueprints and all, and kept hammering on about how our disputed playground no longer existed.
In my war against cliches, I have become a bit cryptic. But Kevin—even a spoon turns heavy after a hundred scoops.
Just as another yellow light almost intercepted us, I pulled out a puffy jacket from behind the seat and handed it to Kevin. It was 70 degrees out and sunny just like it always was. He rolled his eyes as he obligingly pulled the jacket over his shoulders while I rolled up my window. The hole in the muffler always seems to fix itself when the truck does its little magic thing. It gets quieter. Kevin grabs onto the handle. And, just as his buggy eyes had expected, the 1991 Ford Ranger lifted into the air. Above the sun-crusted North County hills, the truck flew, sputtering slowly and distantly into the clouds.
Kevin took the trip on the chin as we quietly let the magic of the 1991 Ford Ranger take us away. After an unimportant amount of time, we descended through a grey, enduring fog. We found ourselves landing somewhere in England, probably, where everything seemed made up, where every street sign, alley, and moss-covered roof acted as a caricature of a gnome-y fairytale.
Not long after landing, we drove into the driveway of a cottage. The smell of beans emanated out and we could hear a faint fluttering of lame R’s
I told Kevin to wait in the truck. I walked over to the side of the cottage. There was a single light on. I saw a hand drift and slide off of a desk. I continued making my way over to a narrow stoop, where on the top step a small publication called Writing for Joy sat in a basket. I took it, placed it under my arm and slowly walked back towards the truck.
As we sat in the driveway, I let Kevin read through two stories, “Defending the Arts” and “Sleepover.”
After Kevin finished reading them, he placed the publication on the bench seat and stared at the cottage for a substantial amount of time.
Without warning, he started telling me about a memory. He brought up how we all used to wait by the slide and form a human chain with arms and hands interlocked. Because we knew, if we touched somebody just as they exited the slide, we’d receive a strong shock. And, if we were interlocked, a shock would travel through our bodies and reach, depending on the length of our chain and the length of our friendships, an innocent playground goer, or if we were really lucky, Miss Turley, the noon duty teacher.
I asked him if he thought testosterone did us well, or if he found it corrosive to our wit (I thought to myself clichés probably deployed it as chemical warfare).
He ducked that question and instead, after a pause, said he thought Wright for Joy might do well displayed right next to the book nook in my booth.
I agreed. I told him how, when I read the stories, it reached into our coarse playground sand and poured it down my shirt. And the moss on the cottage roof grew. The hand lifted itself back onto the desk.
As I pressed in the clutch, I reached and opened the back-split window, and tossed the publication into the back of the 1991 Ford Ranger.