I’m Bill, he says and he puts his hand out and the boy shakes it briefly. This is Nat.
You nod, wondering if you and the boy should shake hands as well but the boy only nods and says, Cool, and then turns his attention back to the bike.
Bill has pulled the chain loose and squats there upon the dry earth, staring at where the links have broken free.
Hey, uh, Bill, Rick says, can I bum a smoke?
Bill looks up at him, squinting at the new kid through a tousle of thick brown hair bleached almost blond by the summer sun. Heck, no, you cannot bum a smoke, he says.
Come on, man, Rick says. I’m out.
How old are you?
Thirteen.
Bill looks at him. No way.
Am too.
What year were you born?
Nineteen …
Bill waits, smiling, and then says, Yeah that’s what I thought. How old are you?
Twelve.
Twelve?
Almost twelve.
How old are you now, Champaign? Bill says.
Same, Nat says. Almost twelve.
Bill chuckles.
Oh come on, the new boy says. When’d you start smoking?
Maybe I never started smoking, Bill says. That shit’ll kill you.
Life’ll kill you.
Where’d you hear that?
Just made it up.
Sure you did. Bill makes a sound, an exhalation that is like a tire losing air. No sale, kid, he says.
Shoot. I had to try.
And you did. Bill swivels around to look at you. This is gonna take a while. You might as well go find something to do.
The disappointment shows on your face. We were gonna go to the gravel ponds, you say.
Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna happen, he says. Maybe tomorrow. I gotta figure out how to fix this thing.
Dang, you say.
Maybe you can show this guy the sights. Take him on back to Lemaire’s and get a Coke or something.
Can I have a dollar? you say.
Jesus, it’s like the mob, Bill says, but he reaches into his pocket and hands over a dollar.
OK. You turn to Rick now: You wanna come?
Heck yeah I wanna come, Rick says. Then, to Bill, Nice to meet you. He extends his hand again.
Yeah sure, nice to meet you too, kid, Bill says. He wipes his hand on his jeans and they shake. Bill is smiling as if the whole thing is completely absurd. Stay out of trouble, he says as you turn to walk away, the new boy, Rick, at your side.
All right, you call back.
I wasn’t talking to you, Bill says.
You half turn and wave the dollar. Rick continues to walk, as if he already knows the way, stumping through the weeds and thistle that gap the asphalt and concrete as if it represents some forgotten and unused path. Occasionally he kicks a can or a bottle into the air, an action that seems somehow miraculous. Metal shining in the sun. The sparkle of green glass. Things made free.
IT HAD been, for four years, just you and Bill, fatherless, sharing the bedroom at the back of the trailer, sleeping next to each other in the twin beds, a scant aisle of floor space between you, your mother sleeping most often in the old green recliner in the equally tiny living room where, on Sunday nights, you and her and Bill would watch Marlin Perkins wrestle with wildlife on Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.
But now there is Rick and it is different somehow: not an older brother or a father figure but a friend, a real friend. The two of you are inseparable from that first moment in the dust by the broken bicycle, crisscrossing town every day, exploring its edges, its interstices, sometimes walking far out into the sagebrush wilderness that lines the settlement on all sides, Rick taking you farther than you ever would have gone on your own. Out there in the flats, you see coyotes, rabbits, kangaroo rats. Sometimes you bring along the book you were given by your uncle, Wildlife of the Intermountain West, and use it to give names to the thistle and scrub, all the while Rick in motion, his engine miraculous, so full of energy it can hardly be believed. Even during that first year you wonder how he keeps going and you wonder why. He is everywhere at once. Later you will realize that his motion had been that of an animal probing a fence for weakness.
At night you will sometimes hear Rick’s father’s voice through the walls of their trailer, your window cracked open, your child’s ear listening to the roar. Close the window, Champaign, your brother will call from his thin mattress across the room. That’s Rick’s dad? you will ask. Yeah, Bill will say, but you don’t need to listen to that. Trust me. It’s better to not have a dad at all if that’s what he’s going to do. And you will wonder if such a statement can be true. Your own father was a truck driver and was gone more often than he was home. It has only been four years but you sometimes have difficulty remembering much about him at all.