Dedication
To Nora
for faith from the beginning
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
A Rail Trail
Our House Is Sick
Our Yard Has Junk
Here Is a (Partial) List
It’s Utter Dark
Jimmy and Me
Mostly Jimmy’s Sad
My Mother Left
Rusty Gold
It Was the Fourth
I Never Was
Plus
But I See
The Teachers Stopped
I Never Joined
Father Percy Talked One Day
When There Is
I Went Up There Once
He Preached Another Time
Jimmy Listens
At School You Learn
Yeah Teachers Sure
So After School
A Thousand Million
Every Day I Stop
It Was Dinnertime
On the Other Hand
I Never Take
The Art Room Door
I Started Taping Art
After a While
That Peach
I Hate to Talk
There Was a Girl Once
Which Is All Fine
Except There’s Always
One Hundred and Twelve Minutes
Friday Came
I Didn’t Want to Think
Final Period
Her
Again That Thing
So That Day
The First Thing
It Was Cold Among the Trees
Church Bells
What the Hell Are You Doing?
He Was at the Table
I Passed the Church
Wednesday
The School Assembly
I Thought Okay
Jimmy Didn’t Care
Onboard She Told Me
My Face
Her Father
Lunch Was Quiet
It Was Five Blocks
Out of the Tangle
Friend Come with Me
It All Exploded
I Never Knew I Could
Red Clouds
I Don’t Know Why
In My Mind
Robert Lang? Bobby?
His Little House
I Know This Girl
I Wired the Doors Shut
The Picture from the Train
I Was Too Tired to Run
Your Mother
I Unplugged
Some Mornings
Except It Wasn’t All Right
Then Rachel Asked Me
As If They Doubled
She Stopped Dead on the Stairs
I Had to Be Alone
I Stripped the Picture
How Long I Was There
The Shriek
I Don’t Know Why
His Little House
Then Not Just Him
She Ran Away
It’s Over Now
She Fell
I Trippedrolleddivedtoppleddown
A Wail
Then I Carried Her
Mom’s Camper
Banging Brought Me Out
They Drove Us
So I Said No Way
The Art School Said
It Stormed
Jimmy Didn’t Speak
It Hurt How Many
I Thought
I Thought I Was
The First Thing I Saw
That’s All He Said
I Almost Cried
Behind the Church
Author’s Note
About the Author
Back Ad
Books by Tony Abbott
Copyright
About the Publisher
A Rail Trail
winds far from
any normal street
into the woods
it used to be a flat path
for a train to run on
now it’s for people to
the green house there
the dark green house
down
off the end
three miles by foot
from every human road
is where I live
Our House Is Sick
all hours with mice
their little bone claws
scratching on the floor or
in the ceiling
and
their furry up-your-nose smell
when they die
into thumb-sized
little husks
not just inside
outside too
our front steps are cracked
so you have to take
the top two
two at once
I jump them quick
I always have
our house has propane heat
a big tank in the back
but my dad Jimmy’s so cheap
sometimes he won’t
turn it up because of bills
and since he gives me
almost no money to buy food
we don’t have tons around
that plus the mice
get to it first anyway
and eat it in the ceiling
and die and dry up
when it runs out
so
good for them
but
being thin
and cold
and quick to move
all make
me
hard to see
so
good for me
Our Yard Has Junk
moldering all over it
(moldering’s from a song
my father listens too much to)
it is
the junk of some life
or bunch of lives
(not mine)
you honestly
could live outside
with all the trash
dumped in the yard out here
from who knows who or when
which (living outside)
because of everything
going and not going
on with me
is something I think
a lot about
Here Is a (Partial) List
stacks of half-chopped wood
planks ripped from
some home improvement
that didn’t get improved
five busted chairs, no, six
one overturned washer
two picnic umbrellas
with broken spokes
a kitchen table
whose three remaining legs
jerk up into the air
like some dead cow’s
after an accident
with a truck
a plastic baby pool cracked
down the side and filled
with muck and leaves
a battlefield
of empty gallon cans
of paint I never saw
on any wall
three lawn mowers (one push)
piles of sodden blankets
critters and their families
have made a
bathroom of
remains of what might
have been coffee makers
or radios or bomb-makings
(just kidding)
and clocks and busted
farm tools
but from what farm
I sure don’t know
a ton of broken blinds and shades
an arsenal of curtain rods
endless end-less
extension cords
the arm of a lounge chair
(just the arm)
a hundred shattered plates
that maybe date
from when my mother
threw them at him
(which might explain
why we have only two
plates left
one for me
and one for him)
parts of three (or more) old cars
a rusted pickup truck
that mostly runs but is so rusted
you could poke a hole
just with your fingertip
through its flaky skin
and a camper
from my mother
an old round-ended
hard-top flat-nose
V-dub camper bus
parked up on cinder blocks
from nineteen sixty-seven
two-tone cream
and powder blue
(that haven’t been
cream or blue for years)
that Jimmy says was hers
that someday
I swear
I will make into my room
to sleep in when it rains
because along
with every other reason
to get out of here
the ceiling in my real room
leaks
It’s Utter Dark
at the end
of the trail
where the trees are thick
and tall and close
and the sun gets stuck
in the branches
and ripped apart
and dies
before it hits my roof
utter is from a song
Jimmy’s got to think is about
his life
because he plays it like a theme
She cut my heart
She stole my breath
I knew she’d be
The utter death
Of me . . .
my father
is the only one
who lives with me
and he’s so funny
Get your butt downstairs!
and when I get there
What are you staring at?
plus he can yell
as loud
as anything
at the end of the trail
and no one hears
Don’t stand there
Like a slug, Slug!
Open a freaking can of soup.
Do that at least!
that’s funny
right?
Jimmy and Me
are like two sticks
that came down in a storm
you see them on the ground
the morning after
not touching
just near each other
I mean two things
that happen
to be in the same place
at the same time
this green house
right now
but in a year
if I make it
I might get out of here
I’ll be sixteen
I’ll be . . .
I’ll be . . .
I don’t know what
Mostly Jimmy’s Sad
and crying in his chest
about stuff he maybe had
once in the past
also he hurts bad
from his leg
and spine which
he busted up (he says)
when I was small
I think he
mostly doesn’t see me
living there with him
like I’m some fly
that buzzes in
and buzzes out
while he’s at home
and who he knows
will finally fly out
and stay out
like my mother did
that’s not a joke
she really did
My Mother Left
just after I was born
a year
and a month or two
it’s like she said
Nine months for this?
No thanks.
or maybe not
take this morning in the schoolyard
parking lot
the mothers (and one grandfather)
dropped their kids
then chatted loud like a television scene
of normal life
but that’s not us
Jimmy and me
he says she died
my mother died
but he doesn’t tell me how
and talks instead
about Utah
or Idaho or Colorado or
one of those states
out there
he says she was from
Jimmy never says
the same state twice
if he talks about her
(which isn’t much)
but I look up
each place
