tried frantically to kick the heavy legs off the brake and accelerator pedals. He screamed when he realized the truck was describing a slow arc with the front of the hood falling. He tried to remember the position of the wheel, but it didn’t matter. The truck, in a solid bounce, crammed into the ditch on the left side of the road. Lyle’s forehead sent a shower of broken glass into the air. His head popped through the pre-safety-plate glass windshield and snapped off on the bottom of the jagged hole. His head bounced once on the fender near the left headlight, right next to the spot wiped clean by the jeans of the girl he thought he loved, and had just seen in his rearview mirror for the second time this morning.
The girl paused as she noticed an abrupt end to the brown cloud of dust leading diagonally across the field to her left.
She wondered what the boys in the truck were stopping for. She shrugged and kept stumbling down the road.
BOY IN THE AIR 2
You would have to have been in that stadium, and heard the echo every time the gun went off. You’d have to have been in the bottom, on the black asphalt with the white lines setting the limits of the lanes and the beginnings and the ends. You’d have to have been sensitive to the irony of the black surface and the ruled white lines — and somehow linked it all with an appreciation and awe of the threat to you, and the promise to all of black athletic talent.
You’d have to have been there twenty-five years ago when cities ignited, fists were clenched in love and in hate, and at the same goddamn time. You’d have to have red hair, be thin with milk-white skin tinted orange from the hot spring sun of this border town in the southwestern corner between the Mexican border and the blue Pacific.
You’d have to be thirteen years old and dreaming of a national record in the running broad jump as they called it in those days. You’d have to be consumed with the knowledge that some kid in New Jersey had jumped 19 feet 3 inches. You’d have to accept that you were the unchallenged best jumper out of thousands of kids, except black ones, by jumping just over 17 feet. You’d listen to Keith Richards, or some other Delta blues imitator, and understand as you heard “King Bee,” that the line could be crossed in expression, but the mystery of color would never change. You’d have heard of another white rocker who just had to be named Tripp. Arnold Tripp who had been king of it all just ten years ago. Tripp the fastest boy in San Diego whose career was dumped at the state meet, when the coaches raced him on a torn hamstring — because they wanted someone to beat the niggers. They had their Tarzan. You’d have to hate both of the words, Tarzan as much as nigger. You’d still have to bring your white skin with you to the starting line, and snort in contempt at the attitudes of both colors when the resentment came from the blacks, and racist encouragement was offered from the whites.
You’d have to be in a stadium that echoed not only with the sound of pistol shots, but also with the sound of girls’ voices high and wild with humor and sexual anticipation as they waited for Louis Rey to take his next jump. You’d have to be sitting on the grass in the blazing sun at ten o’clock on a May morning looking indirectly at and listening intently to the conversation directed at a boy your own age, who came from a world with ten times the life and death of your own. Sitting there on the grass listening to the most beautiful girls in the world, gleaming white teeth, almond eyes, dark tanned deep black skin, tight skirts, white angel blouses that had heavy breasts bursting light and perfect under buttons that split and revealed black skin — and those shoes.
You’d see Louis Rey (no one ever called him just Rey, or just Louis, because he was Louis Rey). Thin and muscular with large bugging eyes and a snarl for a mouth when he wasn’t smiling and hair that was becoming an Afro, skin oiled to a shine and every bit the urban Masai warrior walking proud and defiant, dominant and beautiful, and better than you at what you wanted to be best at more than anything in the world. You’d watch him intently because you had enough of it yourself to know what a genius looked like, but not what one acted like, as you waited for your next jump. You’d watch the girls in the stands who were at one moment on the coolest nonchalant trip, unconcerned and casual, and the next instant spreading their legs right in the twentieth row laughing and telling Louis Rey they had something for him. Louis Rey was smiling and promising all of them a ride in his brother’s car. Sharing the laugh when one of the girls asked which brother’s car it would be this time since he had taken them for at least ten rides this spring in different cars and he only had three brothers. The laugh peaked when it was noted that one of his brothers was only six. Louis Rey just smiled and took his place at the end of the runway, as the entire stadium watched him. He raised his hand lightly and told the official at the take-off board, “Scratch,” and jogged off across the field to talk to some older guys in trench coats with James Brown conks who seemed certain to be packing revolvers.
You’d take the lead hitting 18'10" on your next jump and there would be a spattering of applause coming from the white section high in the shade of the stadium. The announcer would declare that with one jump to go you were less than 6" from the long-standing national record. You’d be wishing he never said that. You would steal a look at Louis Rey who never flinched at the announcement, but looked at the knot of white spectators as they called encouragement down to you. Ten minutes later Louis Rey would accelerate to the board, hitting an approach speed that was simply faster than you could ever hope to run. He’d transfer that black velocity into a neat thud and plant into a vertical lift that suspended Louis Rey in the air for a beat and another beat, and your own internal timing would be feeling your body drop because any other boy in the world would have to be dropping by now. But Louis Rey would be holding his apex because he had come in with such speed and power that he was still hovering. The stadium full of people began to sense that something was happening, but not KNOWING like you did, and the energy would cause the universal turning of a few hundred heads focusing on the boy in the air who for this instant was stopping time. Sailing above the sand, freezing your reality, taking your breath away and pissing you off in the highest sense of compliment imaginable. Gradually he wound downward and blasted the sand in a spray that surged from under his body, which bounced silently with heavy impact at a distance that was just weird. Plain weird.
“Foul,” the official yelled as the red flag snapped into the air. You’d say under your breath, “Yeah, he did foul,” as you jogged lightly and with more speed and spring in your legs than you ever felt before toward the hole out in the sand. It was sad, it was just the slightest foul. You’d hear your voice demanding of the official to “Measure it anyway,” because you had to know. The official didn’t need much prompting. Louis Rey was on the grass holding his head with tears streaming down his face, the stadium silent. Just you and the official moving in slow motion, and your voice still echoing “Measure it anyway.” As they did, Louis Rey’s body started shaking like he was expecting to endure a beating, and he did when he heard the official, “Jesus Christ, 22 feet, 3 inches.” Louis Rey stood up and looked at you. You said, “You’ll have other days Louis.” Louis Rey thinking you were being mean said, “Shut up, you white motherfucker.” You just stood there and said, “Nice jump anyway.” He stared at you, and the girls started yelling, “Fuck him up Louis,” because if they couldn’t see a record they could at least hope for a fight. Louis Rey said quietly only to me, “I already did.” And I smiled. And he smiled.
SPHINX
If you were roasting in the desert, twenty-five miles from the nearest gas station, standing under the sun, shielding your eyes and watching a little dot making its way toward you, you would be struck by a major and a minor element. The major element would be the heat, and the fact that the solitary dot out there in the shimmering horizon is a junior high school boy. The minor element, the question: Why?
Pulling focus on the long lens of your imagination, you see him sweating in his shorts and T-shirt, crunching over the decomposed granite under his boots. Facing the blasting sun hanging low on the horizon, his three canteens riding the small of his back in the shade.
His
