Reclamation
2021; University of Missouri; Volume: 44; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/mis.2021.0037
ISSN1548-9930
Autores ResumoReclamation Devin Murphy (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Laszlo Ilyes [End Page 48] My whole life I've had this feeling at my core that people wouldn't remember me from one meeting to the next and was surprised, even touched, if they did. Looking back, I kept clear of people because of this and spent much of my youth in solitary endeavors. I hunted fossils and [End Page 49] Iroquois arrowheads along the shores of Lake Erie, framed my own kites from balsa and tarps, and started my own fish tank to breed tropical lionfish. All this to say, I was a lonely boy. So to have had a friend—any friend, when younger—perhaps bound me to give over part of myself and follow wherever they led. At the Boys & Girls Club during a pickup basketball game, Horby, who played with anger and grace, was on my team. He was confident in his movements and thus his body, unafraid to play skins, whereas I hated having to reveal my pudgy belly that would ride me all of my days. During our game, a kid named Kenneth York called me "a bucket of love butter" and slapped my bare stomach so hard it left a deep purple handprint blooming across my navel. Horby for some reason stood up for me, and in the ensuing scuffle, Kenneth lost a bucket of blood from his chin. Horby got suspended from the club for two months but left with my undying gratitude. From then on, I became his willing lackey, a lieutenant in all his headlong, half-cocked efforts to remold his world to the one he felt he was due. After leaving the club, we ended up at Horby's. He lived in a small ranch house outside town on the downslope running to the lake, which is sixty feet deep but churns up thirty-foot swells on foul nights. At the high end of the hill, Interstate 90 made a deep oxbow between Erie, Pennsylvania, and Buffalo, New York. A vineyard surrounded the home. Neat rows of hardy vines clung to the sand-and-gravel soil and grew despite the winds and winters. He and his older brothers, Ronny and Micah, were being raised by his Uncle Jeremy, who lived on VA disability checks and random roofing jobs. He sold rocks he painted in different patterns at a monthly farmers market but once in a while sort of lost his mind and tossed those rocks through neighborhood windows until the police came and arrested him. I never had the courage to ask why they lived with their uncle. Uncle Jeremy barbecued us hamburgers on a rusty grill on my first visit. He opened the screen door and yelled inside, "Boys. Tammy. Dinner." The two brothers and a woman in a long T-shirt covering her underwear came out to join us. It was almost six at night, but she'd been sleeping. There was a scar on her thigh that looked like fire tongs, and she'd had a hot coal tattooed between the prongs. We all sat around the patio on folding chairs and ate as the sunlight pulled back from the vineyard, [End Page 50] which struck me as somehow both wild and tamed. I ate my burger in silence but kept peeking at Tammy's tattoo. We finished eating, and Horby took me to his room and let me in on his scheme to make money selling puppies. I had made some money from my paper route and seeded it to adopt an all-white female boxer he'd seen at the local kennel. The next time I went to the house, a small white female boxer whimpered in a dog cage. Micah drove up with a second dog, another white boxer. This one a male. "We'll mate 'em," Horby said. At first the dogs snarled at each other, but soon, after snipping, the male mounted the female. It was over fast, but they got stuck together and somehow ended up ass to ass with both of them howling, as if one was being birthed from the other. "Is this part...
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