Trees were Breathed, but so were the factories—plenty of factories making everything from clothespins to camping tents. There was a coal mine at the eastern side of town and a rock quarry at the western. Fishing and swimming and baptisms could be had in the wide and deep Breathed River that eventually met up with the Ohio and from there the great Mississippi with all its fine strength and slipping song.
If you drove anywhere or walked anywhere in Breathed, you did so on lanes. Never streets, never roads, but dirt-laid lanes that each had their own story. Paved roads were something other towns did. Breathed hung onto its dirt, in more ways than one. Not even Main Lane, the main artery of the town, had been paved, though it was lined with trees and brick sidewalks that fed into brick buildings.
From Main Lane, the town unfurled into lanes of houses, and eventually lanes of farms, the farther out you got. Breathed was the combination of flower and weed, of the overgrown and the mowed. It was Appalachian country, as only Southern Ohio can be, and it was beautiful as a sunbeam in waist-high grass.
It was a good town for a boy to have come of age in. There was a small movie theater, where I had my first kiss while E.T. flew in front of the moon, and a pizza parlor with arcade games I would play until my eyes hurt from the bright, flashing screens. Most days, though, were spent on the tire swing over the river or tossing a baseball back and forth with my brother. In these moments, the gild receded and life was its most naked bliss.
What I’ve just described is the town of my heart, not necessarily the town itself, which had an underbelly that knew how to be of mood with the mud. Just as in every other small town and big city, the women cried and the men knew how to shout. Dogs were beat, children too. There weren’t always mothers to bloom identical to the rose, and more often than not, there was no picket fence to paint.
Yes, Breathed was the scar of paradise lost, and beneath the flour-and-butter drawl, there was the town’s own sort of sibilant hiss on the wind, which made you quiet and made you sense snakes.
They say I was the first one in all of Breathed to see him. I always wondered about that. If maybe I wasn’t the first one to see him, but just the first one to stop.
As I walked, I could hear the song “Cruel Summer” blaring from a boom box from the open windows of a house that smelled like rhubarb pie and Aqua Net. That was the strange collision of the decade and our small town. A crash of gingham curtains and spandex miniskirts.
Everything seems neon lit when I look back at that time, like the tracksuits that made color exhausting and the parachute pants that gave all the boys who wore them airplane eyes. Sometimes I’ll even remember an old man in greasy coveralls and instead of mechanic’s blue, I see them bright yellow and glowing. That’s the art of the ’80s. It’s also the damage of it.
Perhaps because they belonged to me, I will say that the ’80s were as best as any time to grow up in. I think too they were a good time to meet the devil. Particularly that June day in 1984, when the sky seemed to be made on the kitchen counter, the clouds scattering like spilled flour.
That morning before I left the house, I had glanced at the old thermometer on the side of the garden shed. The mercury was at a comfortable 74 degrees. Added to that was a breeze that made fools of fans.
I was on my way home from Papa Juniper’s Market with a bag of groceries for Mom when I came upon the courthouse and saw him standing under the large tree at the front.
He was so very dark and small in those overalls, like I was looking at him through the opposite end of a telescope.
“Excuse me.” He held his hand out toward me, but did not touch. “Sorry to stop you. Do you have any ice cream in that bag?”
He had yet to look at me.
“Naw, I ain’t got no ice cream.”
I thought he should have asked for a pillow. He looked so tired, like he came from nights spent being jerked from brief moments of sleep.
“You can pick some up from Papa Juniper’s. It’s just back that way.” I turned with my finger pointed back, though we were not on Main Lane, so the store was no longer in view and what I ended up pointing at was a woman walking blistered and barefoot with her red heels in her hand.
“I got some chocolate.” I patted my jeans pocket.
He twisted his mouth off to the side like a blown-off curtain. If I would have let him, he probably would’ve gone days like that.
“C’mon.” I passed the grocery bag from one arm to the other. “You want the chocolate or not? I gotta get home.”
“I really wanted ice cream.” It was then he looked into my eyes for the first time, and it was such an intense stare, I almost overlooked his irises, as certain and green as the leaves. The stare broke only when he turned his attention to the birds above.
I looked at his ribs, which were exposed by the cut-out sides of the overalls. I could almost hear the hunger gnawing on his bones, so I reached into my pocket for the chocolate. “You best eat somethin’. You look all … deflated.”
My fingers sank with the chocolate, like I was holding a small bag of juice.