Shattered Ring

Shattered Ring

Donavan slowed his bike at Roni's house. It was his third pass and he still didn't see Roni's mother. He leaned the bike into the driveway and coasted to the garage. Careful not to make a sound, he laid the bike on its side.

At the stockade fence, he heard nothing from the backyard, only sassafras leaves scraping their way down the empty street leaving nothing but their root beer smell.

He threw three pebbles at Roni's window and dove behind the hedges where sometimes they hunted for faeries and pixie dust and bits of elven gold. Roni bolted from the front door, fizzing with an exuberance that bubbled in every direction, setting all a-glitter around him. His orange pants whispered corduroy folk music around his lanky legs and groovy suede Earth Shoes.

“Donovan, me lad!” Roni said. He slathered on his best Irish accent.

Donovan rolled his eyes, but Roni had tickled something deep inside his chest. His heart pumped that living fizz of Roni's, the essence of Roni somehow in his veins. He did not tell Roni that his accent could have been east Canadian.
They were just kids, but already Roni had smile lines around his coco colored eyes. In the soft evening sunlight, his purple and gold yarmulke capped his curly brown hair. He finished a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and sported chocolate teeth behind an impish grin. He tried to hand Donovan the wrapper.

“Every one's a comedian...” Donovan said. He used Roni's mother's voice, drenched with New York and matzo ball soup. The voice scratched at his throat and its vibrations felt harsh in his nose.

Roni smiled. The ground rushed from his smile, and Donovan felt small and cozy.

Donovan tried to hold on to that happy feeling, but the cardboard scraping sound of the window curtains brought him back to this world. Like hanged men swinging on gallows, the curtains swung rigidly on their rods, starched to death, bleached to the texture of Communion wafers. Their house smelled like a swimming pool. The floors were wall-to-wall white shag, white furniture and white walls. The only color resided in his mother's collection of perfect little porcelain children. She hadn't permitted Donovan to enter their house in over a year because he once dared to pick up her precious Mark 2, 1 42 Hummel Umbrella Boy figurine. He seemed to tick her off like that every time he visited.

“Is she still mad?” Donovan asked.

The week before Donovan had eaten too many of his mother's hot dogs and had gotten sick on her sidewalk and flower bed. She had her garden hose out almost before her sharp lips had started yelling beneath that screeching orange hair of hers. Trembling, he had watched her jet bits of hot dog across the lawn and into the gutter. “You should leave.” She had said.

“She wasn't mad at you.” Roni said.

“She hates me. Why does she hate me?” Donovan didn't have the words to say it, but he knew: she knew the unspeakable truth. She saw it in the way he moved, heard it in the way he talked, sensed it in the way he looked at Roni. There was no hiding it.

“She doesn't hate you. Stop worrying about it, you'll make yourself sick again.” Roni said.

Roni's eyes twinkled, and Donovan felt that root beer fizz in his heart again.
Faster than Donovan could see Roni pinned him to the ground. Roni's face lean but big as the harvest moon under the pale October sky, teeth too big for his head, his temple locks, payos he called them, brushed Donovan's cheek. His breath, warm and sweet on Donovan's lips smelled of peanut butter and chocolate and mingled with the cool sassafras spiced air. Donovan inhaled it all in a deep shuddering gasp.

Roni tickled Donovan's ribs. They rolled wrestling and giggling; Donovan didn't feel the harsh concrete sidewalk skin his elbow. The world swirled blue, purple and gold, only Roni's face stayed clear. They rolled encircled in each other's arms, ever gaining speed on the grassy hill down to the road. Faster and faster until they flew through a world of nothing but autumn fire and each other. Embraced, a rolling ring, melded together, one.

The tumble stopped at the bottom of the hill with Donovan on top. Roni could have so easily pushed Donovan off, but he didn't. Donovan followed the peanut butter and chocolate scent, and his mouth found Roni's.

Donovan's fingers raced through Roni's soft mist of hair. His yarmulke landed in the grass. His hair smelled of Pert shampoo and his cheek smelled of Zest soap and under it all the musk of his humanity. Donovan inhaled him, consumed him.

“Roni!” His mother screeched. “Ohmygawd, Roni!”

A jet of cold water from the old bat's garden hose drenched them. She sprayed them like they were a couple of tied dogs. Water up Donovan's nose, numbing, stinging, cold. Roni's floating hair matted to his head. Her hair a raging firestorm, burned without warmth.

Roni's face contorted. Donovan kissed it again, but he could not make the shame go away. Cold chlorinated wetness blasted down his spine, sterilizing, bleaching all that was spice and color, to the pallid non-color of a grub.
Donovan rolled half a turn off Roni and into the gutter.

She dragged Roni kicking and screaming into her whitewashed tomb of a house with its white drapes that hung like condemned men. His face popped out from between the curtains for a moment, tearful eyes searching. Then as if pulled by a rip current, he disappeared.

In the gutter, Donovan watched the watery sky turn to pewter than coal. He imagined Roni's mother dusting him off and setting him on a shelf to sit forever among her perfect little Hummels. Donovan closed his salty lashes and, hugging his chilled shoulders, dreamed of cool sassafras breezes and warm chocolate kisses.

The End