SUMMER                                    

Charles Armstrong

       My friends get nervous when Alby shows up. They really don’t know him as I do. There’s always an undercurrent of fear and speculation. “Waddaya think he’ll do?” For me, Alby is a guilty pleasure. To be forcibly wrapped in the phlegmy, goose-like honking of his voice, to look at his featureless creampie of a face as it works through his emetic rap- these give me a comfortably dizzy feeling, as if  I’m trapped in warm pudding.

       We were lazily discussing what we did this past summer. The door whammed open, crashing against the wall and rebounding in Alby’s face. He ignored the door, allowing it to wobble out of his way.

       “Whatcha doin’ ?” Nobody thought he expected an answer.

       “Talkin’ ‘bout what we did this summer.”

       “I didn’t do nothin’ this summer-absolutely nothin’!” Alby almost crowed with pride at this admission.

       I said,”That’s just about what I expected.”

       “I don’t hafta do anything in the summer, ‘cause I did so much as a kid in Lime Kiln. My summer-doin’s karma is pure and clean.”

       The girls stirred and began to collect their coats. I felt like a deer caught in the headlights of the semi-truck of Alby. He sat down, closed his eyes and began…

       “The driveway is paved in soda bottle caps instead of gravel. Out by the two lane highway, there’s a clump of weeds. Rising from the rank bouquet is a crusty red Texaco sign. The merciless Alabama sun is torturing the asphalt. The air hangs in humid festoons between the dusty oaks. A grasshopper’s buzz cuts through the thick silence. Not even a dog barks. They’re all sleeping in cool holes they’ve dug under the porches of the unpainted shacks nearby. Dogs of every kind, escaping the the noontime’s oven blast.

       Alby cracks one eye open, to see if  I’m listening. I am. Trapped-like a fly in glue.

       “There’s a Coca-Cola machine under the rusty awning of  the gas station. When the flat silver top is opened, all the bottles are presented, standing in rows separated by steel bars meant to prevent them from being taken before six cents is deposited. Cold water swirls around the colorful bottles. There’s Nehi: six colors. RC Cola. Orange Crush. Coca-Cola. Small bottles. On Lime Kiln Road, ALL soda is Co-Cola. My favorite is the Nehi colored blue. It has no identifiable flavor-nothing found in nature-it’s just blue Co-cola.”

       “We- the kids, the unemployed, the dim-witted, can’t do as the dogs do- hide under the porch. It’s too undignified. So, we do the best we can. We hang out under the awning of the Texaco station.”

       “Sitting on upright wooden Coke crates, stupefied with heat and Co-cola, we reel in time to the impact of solar photons as they smack into the red clay earth. No conversation is possible. No thought. The brain and vocal cords are paralysed beneath the stress of heat. We are welded into a solid container of sweltering silence- waiting out the sun.”

       “Far away, a sound. Automobile tires plowing through melted pavement. Each tread sinking into the ooze of tar for a tiny split second, then breaking loose again-all at sixty miles an hour.”

       “Not one face turns as the sound grows louder. The bottle cap gravel clinks and skitters as a big Buick station wagon slides to a stop by the sun faded gas pumps. The dust covered license plates read: Michigan. For a moment, silence fills the hole made by the arrival of; The Yankees.”

       “Then, every door on the car opens and a boiling horde of humanity belches forth. The screaming kids kick up dust around OUR Co-cola machine, clinking and pulling at wet bottles. The mother, in pedal pushers and straw hat, heads quickly for the noisome stench of the toilet, screeching over her shoulder to her mate to,”Watch the kids!”

       “Hubby, international in Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts with black nylon socks and sandals, calls for gas and “Check under th’ hood, willya?” The alien accents whack and spang against our Southern ears like hot bits of shrapnel.”

       “Whap of out house door, expansive clang of Buick hood, slam, slam, slam, slam of heavy doors. Engine roar, slither of bottle caps- engine winding through the gears as the big Yankee car plows off through the slushy highway toward Florida.”

       “Buzz of grasshopper. We blink in the silence.”

       Alby travels back from his oh-so-active childhood and opens his eyes.