He left Dal with these words, following his kids out the front door.
Dal stared after Mr. Cecchino, throat tight. He slid the dance clipping into his wallet, understanding just how much emotion rode on the two-by-three inch piece of newspaper.
Outside, Lena and Anton were already in Dal’s VW Beetle. It had taken Dal seven years of delivering newspapers—from sixth grade all the way to his senior year in high school—to save up enough money to buy the blue vehicle with peeling paint on the hood.
It was his most prized possession. It was a reminder that anything—even a twelve-year-old’s dream of owning his own car—could be accomplished with hard work.
One day, he’d have a brand new sports car. One day, he’d have his own morning deejay show. He just had to keep his head down and work his ass off.
Leo and Mr. Cecchino headed into the orchard while Dal slid into the front seat of the Beetle. It was his job to get Lena and Anton to school every day. He’d return to work in the orchard after dropping off the twins.
Lena was in the back seat, pointedly ignoring her brother. In her hands was a Walkman, her portable cassette player. The headphones clamped over her ears drowned out any snide remark that might come her way from Anton.
“She’s listening to those stupid Russian language tapes. Again.” Anton rolled his eyes, tugging at his letterman’s jacket. He said this like it was a surprise. Like Lena didn’t listen to her mother’s old Russian language tapes every day.
Dal ignored the comment and fired up the car. Depeche Mode blared out of the car’s speakers.
This was the real reason Dal loved his Beetle so much. It might not be much to look at, but the previous owner had put in a state-of-the-art sound system. Dal could lose himself in the music every time he drove.
“You ready for the game on Friday?” he asked Anton as he rolled down the driveway of the Cecchino farm.
“Of course.” Anton shifted his shoulders, causing the light to glint off the various sport pins that adorned his letterman’s jacket. “Me and my buddies are going to kick some ass.”
“Too bad your dad is going to have to miss the game.” Mr. Cecchino never missed a game if he could help it. But with the hunting party coming on Friday afternoon, he wouldn’t have a choice.
“There will be other games.” Anton shrugged. “It’s not like he hasn’t seen me play tons of times.”
But it was senior year. There were only a handful of games left, and it didn’t look like Anton was going to get a scholarship like Leo had. His football games were coming to an end, but Dal didn’t say this.
The Beetle rolled off the hard-packed dirt onto the blacktop of the main road. As he accelerated down the two-lane country road, he couldn’t help flicking a glance at the apple farm that bordered the Cecchino farm.
His eyes picked out the small country house with a sagging front porch. The window curtains were back-lit with soft yellow light, a sign that his parents were up. Dal hadn’t spoken to his mom and dad since freshman year of high school.
Even though they were technically neighbors and shared a fence line, they were separated by many acres of apples. That made it possible to co-exist without seeing them. It had almost been exactly a year since Dal had laid eyes on his father.
It had been at the local cider mill. He and Leo had each driven down a truckload of apples to the plant after a harvest. Mr. Granger sold apples to the same mill. He’d driven up while Dal and Leo had been unloading their apple bins.
Mr. Granger had looked at Dal only once. He’d been wearing his favorite black hat, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
Their eyes met over the bins of apples.
And that had been it. Mr. Granger looked away and drove on to unload his truck, never again turning in his son’s direction.
Dal supposed being ignored was better than having the shit kicked out of him. Even so, it still bothered him a year later. Dal could picture the moment perfectly: his dad’s scruffy face framed by the window of his sad brown truck with that damn cigarette.
“Fuck him,” Leo had said. “You don’t need him”
“Yeah, fuck him,” Dal had replied. “Fucking drunk asshole.”
And that had been that. The two boys never spoke of the moment, and Dal hadn’t seen his father since.
“Fuck those guys,” Anton said, echoing Leo’s words from a year ago. “You don’t owe them a thing.” He cranked up the volume on the radio. Depeche Mode transitioned into Level 42.
Dal responded by shifting his gaze from his parent’s farm back to the road.
Anton had answered the door the night Dal had been kicked out of his house. Two cracked ribs had made it impossible to crawl in through Leo’s window like he usually did. The bloody nose and black eye had been enough for Mrs. Cecchino to declare that Dal was moving in with them. He’d been with the Cecchinos ever since.
Dal would never say it, but he loved the fact that Mr. Cecchino never missed a football game if he could help it. He admired the way Mr. Cecchino took care of his family. He was everything Dal’s father wasn’t. He hoped that if he spent enough time studying Mr. Cecchino, he could be like him someday, and not like his father.
“See ya, bro.” Anton slugged him in the side of the arm as Dal pulled into the parking lot of Bastopol High. He jumped out of the car and beelined for a group of teenage boys in matching letterman jackets.
Lena took her time, meticulously rolling the wire around her headphones before tucking them and her Walkman into her backpack. Unlike her brother, Lena didn’t have a group of friends waiting for her. She spent too much time studying Russian on her breaks
