Friends

“Friends”
By Kevin Shepard

I met Randy on a lazy summer day, sitting atop and straddling his gate.
He was to become my first true friend as the chains rattled from the shifting of his weight.
His parents owned the farm across the street, ten acres of fenced freedom with cows, peacocks, and chickens.
To call him was long distance.
Not because of the vast distance between us, but because the city line parted the red dirt road upon which I sat tossing red dirt clods to pass my time.
We started our friendship playing baseball and swinging clubs in the sandpit on his property.
He was a sports fan, football, soccer, golf, wresting, anything for competition.

I remember one day going to his house to play and his “friends” were over playing football.
As I ran into his barbed wire yard, passing through carefully as to not snag my secondhand clothes or rip my flesh his “friends” looked my way, but he didn’t.
This was the first time I noticed the ones he called “friends” were not mine and neither was Randy when they were around.
I was a piece that didn’t fit the puzzle, a wino at a tea party, a tattered cloth among fine linen.
To be alone seemed to be the sum of all his fears, so when I left to beat the porch light home, he would throw red dirt covered rocks and choke out tears.
I did the same as he did in my mind when he turned me away for his real “friends,” throwing red chunks of bitterness and gushing sadness on the inside for his loneliness and mine.

I went over for a visit one day and to my chagrin
I saw a birthday party about to begin,
“friends” tossing the ball again.
Not wanting to show up without a gift, I ignored the hurtful scratches of the barbed wire fence once again and ran back home to find an offering from my things.
Upon my return I handed him my secondhand gift and he handed me a gift of shame and avoidance.
His mom invited me to go with them to the arcade where I ended up playing games alone
as I did at his home
when his “friends” were around.

Enter Mason, a person who considered me friend and Randy was the other kid.
We played together, Randy included, but now he was the tea man at a wino’s party, the mismatched patch of cloth among fine linen, my “friend.”
I don’t recall how long we included him in our games as he faded out of my thoughts without a single red stone hurled or tear down my cheek.

Many years went by and I do not recall whether Randy was lonely or busy with his “friends.”
As an adult I called him because I still remembered his phone number as I do to this day.
I wanted to know if he found peace and friendship over the years.
My call came nine years after he traded drinking from his teacup for a cup of buckshot from the end of a barrel.
To this day I wonder if his “friends” or his friend, was a part of the concluding chapter of his story, or was there someone or something else hurling red chunks of dirt at him as he tried to beat the porchlight home only to be brought down steps away from freedom
….by a crack to the head.