The Summer of Falling Stars

Wednesday, May 30, 1979 Tap! Tap! Tap! Dr. Duncan strikes his baton on his music stand.  “Okay, trumpets, let’s go again, from measure 12,” he says. “1, 2, 3, 4!” Today is the first day of band practice. Because the school district’s elementary band will march in the Cowboy Parade during Sunflower Days, we will rehearse this one song over and over again — “Summertime.” The first line of that song says something about summertime being free and easy. My own summer? Not so much, so far. We’ll see … I look over at Freddy Billings, the saxophone player beside me, and roll my eyes. He snickers. Once again, the horn players are having a hard time getting the rhythm of this song. It’s the fifth or sixth time our director has had them play it. This may take a while. I sit with my sax on my knee and look at it. The brass of the body gleams intensely. The keys pearl iridescently, seeming to change color when I bounce my leg. I silently play a scale. As my fingers run down the instrument, the ...

The shopping trip finally ends, and I go looking for Kendall. He is with the other neighborhood guys. They are all hanging out in Jonathan’s yard, sitting around his giant elm tree. “You missed a helluva game, Shrader!” Jonathan calls. “Yeah?” I respond. “I was throwing passes like you wouldn’t believe! Me and the twins beat the pants off Kendall and Norman and Jeff,” he brags. “Hmm … cool!” I say. “That would have been something to see — all of their butts in the air!” Everyone laughs. Jonathan, two years older than me, thinks he is a gridiron hero. He dreams of being a coach, and he likes to draw up plays that make him look good. When I am drawn into a game — “Come on, Riley! It’ll make the sides even,” he will plead — we play in the empty lot next to his house. He always plays quarterback and assigns us to other positions. Why he passes the ball to me, I don’t know, but I always seem to be the one getting tackled. So, I don’t much like playing football with these guys. Ironically, I...

I turn around, and there is Kendall. He is smirking — but he is also carrying a purse! Mama and his mother, Fran, start chatting. Kendall and I wander down an aisle by ourselves. “None of your bees’ wax,” I reply. “What do you have in yours, ‘Ken-doll’ — your balls?” I guffaw. My friend’s nickname comes from Barbie’s anatomically neutered boyfriend. Guys razz him about his supposed lack of gonads. I join in on the teasing, but he doesn’t really deserve the grief. I know that he has balls. I’ve seen them — we’ve gone skinny-dipping. One time, Dad, who has never seen them, said that Kendall must have “big balls” to act up like he does sometimes. That observation puzzled me because, to me, they looked normal-sized. (By the way, I got my nickname when a kid in first grade couldn’t pronounce his “Rs” when saying my name.)  “Hey, how was your trip to your aunt’s?” Kendall asks, ignoring my question. “Unh,” I reply, shrugging my shoulders. “Sorry,” he says. “Hey, so, are you still sore ab...

Tuesday, May 29, 1979 I get up early and go for my morning run. I go about five miles along the river. After I get home, I peel my clothes off and get in the shower. I let the water pour over my puny, scrawny body. Papa Riley — my grandpa — tried to teach me body positivity. “Love the skin you’re in,” he said. But I am not liking my skin these days. Zits are popping up all over my face. My voice cracks — going from high to low with every word I say. I sweat a helluva a lot more than normal lately. Hair is growing everywhere — under my arms, above my lip, over my wiener and on my balls.  Books have told me to expect “startling changes” when puberty hits. Well, puberty is hitting me. Hard. As in, I get hard all the time. Boners. All the time. What the hell. … My wiener — Oh, that’s a little kid’s name for it. What would be better: my dick? My cock? My pecker? Be proper and call it my penis? I dunno. Hopefully, I’ll never have to talk about it. Anyway, it is getting bigger. My doctor ...

Monday, May 28, 1979 I wake up after a back-breaking night. Apparently, Mama has talked to Aunt Eva about whatever was bothering her, so we are leaving after lunch today. Good thing — I don’t know how much more I can take of her. We get in the car, and Aunt Eva comes out with us. Putting her hands on her hips, she has one last thing to say to Mama: “Don’t forget what I told you: just stop!” “Thank you, Eva!” Mama says. “Riley, tell your aunt, ‘thank you.’” “Thank you, Aunt Eva,” I say with little enthusiasm. Through the windshield, I see her standing there, staring at us as we back out of the driveway. We drive down Main Street. It’s Memorial Day, and all of the light poles and storefronts are decked out with American flags. The town looks dead. No stores are open. No one is walking on the sidewalks. No cars are moving. In fact, there’s no one in sight. It’s like a ghost town. We hit the highway, and Mama switches on the radio. She starts humming to the song playing. It’s like a switch...

Sunday, May 27, 1979 Morning comes, and I am amazed that we don’t have to go to church. “We have some things to talk about,” Mama tells me. “Just go into the living room and read.” “Can I go for a run?” I ask. “Oh, no,” Aunt Eva says. “Who knows what you’ll get yourself into out there alone?” “Can I go to the swimming pool?” “No,” Aunt Eva says. “There are too many perverts there.” “Can I go to the library?” “It has many illicit books,” she says. “They should be banned.” I look at Mama, my eyes pleading with her to let me go, to let me do something. Anything! She shakes her head. I go into the living room and plop down on the couch. The women sit at the kitchen table, looking at old family photos and gossiping about people they used to know and old boyfriends. I am mildly interested in the photos, but I don’t want to hear about their lost loves. I open my book and read in relative peace, but I can hear their voices coming from the kitchen. I catch bits and pieces of what they’re saying...

Saturday, May 26, 1979 I jolt awake. Sunbeams are peeking into the tent, so I guess we’ve slept late. I look over at Kendall. He’s awake and watching me. “I just had a very weird dream,” I tell him. “What was it about?” he asks. “Well, you and I were licking an ice cream cone — the same one. Then, Paige — I think it was her — and I were licking it. And then, it was you and me again. Then, it was Paige and me again. It kept going back and forth. The ice cream dripped all over my body, making it sticky. Someone — I don’t know who —  was licking it off me, licking it off my body. Then, dark eyes were staring at me. … And I woke up.” “Wow,” Kendall says. “You were twisting and turning and rolling over.” “Hmm,” I say. “Well, should we go check in with our moms and meet up later at the swing?” “Sounds good to me.” We load up Big Red and head back down the hill. Mama is in the kitchen. She is gritting her teeth and frowning as she scrubs the sink. Great, she’s in one of her moods. “Take o...

Kendall and I head back home and gather our gear. We load it into Big Red, my utility wagon. This isn’t a little kid’s wagon. It’s about 3 feet wide by 5 feet long and rolls on 10-inch rubber wheels. It holds everything we need for camping, and it has a hitch that I can attach to my bike so I can tow it wherever we go. Besides our sleeping bags and the tent, I put my telescope in it. From my back yard, we head up the hill to Riley’s Woods and put up my tent at the edge of the tree line. Mama inherited these woods from Papa Riley. This is where Papa took me camping when I was little, and I still go there from time to time to avoid the world — and to strip down.  We would sit cross-legged on a blanket outside our tent. In the nude, of course. “The human body is amazing, Riley boy,” he said. “Close your eyes. Feel the wind blow across your body. Feel the sun shine on your skin. Sense your body absorbing the energy it needs. Imagine your pores opening to release all the toxins from you...

 I arrive home at the same time as Mama. She must be running late. She usually closes her store at 3:30 so she can be here when I get home. “Must be nice to set your own hours,” Dad teased. In the kitchen, she pours us both a glass of iced tea, and we sit down at the kitchen table for our usual afternoon chat. Practically every day, we sit here and talk about music and movies, friends and family. I tell her about whatever happened at school, and she tells me about her day, or her childhood, or her father (my Papa Riley), or her best friend, Selena — whom I’ve never met. I think something happened to her, but Mama never tells me. I guess it’s a nice way to spend the afternoon, but the thing is, with summer here, I don’t want to spend every day sitting and chatting. I don’t know how to tell her. Mama and I get along okay. Some kids describe their mothers as evil queens who rule the castle with an iron hand. My mother is different. We like to have fun. You could say that she has alway...