two flash

by Jeanne Burns Kett

Sandy and Her Sister

Sandy Shannon                                  

How could Sandy be so lucky? She had the attention of these two boys, older boys, nearly men, with muscles and patchy mustaches. They were mesmerizing as they joked with Sandy’s younger sister, Carol, and tossed a volleyball back and forth between them. But that was just a ruse to get to Sandy. That much Sandy knew.

Sandy hadn’t planned any of this. Just sat on the front porch, and boom, there they were. Carol didn’t get it, acted just like the twelve-year-old she was. She answered truthfully, innocently, when the boys asked, Hey, what are the lovely Shannon sisters up to? But Sandy was now fourteen. She knew better. She pushed her shoulders back and smiled as her sister showed the Finn cousins how to serve a volleyball overhand properly. Timmy Finn winked at Sandy and held his hand up as Carol instructed. He was cute – they both had that look: fresh-faced with quick smiles. But Huck’s thick hair, cut neat, had one defiant curl that created an enticing swirl that hovered over his left eye. Sandy could not turn away. His real name was Hank, but his cousin called him Huck. He couldn’t look at Sandy. Too shy. His hands rested on the waist of his dark Levi’s as he listened to Carol with an amused grin. When he finally brushed his hair aside and glanced in her direction, Sandy felt a cascade of tingling throughout her body, straightening her posture and creating a smile.

She had daydreamed of such moments arising effortlessly, chance encounters, bumping into Huck, turning a corner, dropping a book, reaching simultaneously, all before her mother came home from work. Her mother, so dour, so anxious, would never understand. She and Carol had given up their quest to ease the angst from their mother’s resting face. That was just how she was.

But here was proof that Sandy’s feelings about Huck Finn weren’t so random after all. Maybe this moment was meant to be. For how was it that Huck just stole a glance at her, and she just happened to be out in front wearing her prairie halter top with the ruffles across her chest?

How odd, though, when Timmy tapped Huck on the shoulder. Let’s go, he said, and to Sandy, Watch this. And they were gone, running as quickly as light to the corner. Sandy suspected that older girls with cigarettes and suede purses were at the corner, though she didn’t see anyone as she casually stepped off the porch for a better view. Disappointed, she sat heavily on the second stair and noticed a black guy across the street. He didn’t look too good, thin and dragging a foot. He had big hair, a shirt open low, and a wide belt. He walked alone. Until Tim and Huck ran up-What the hell just happened? Sandy heard a disturbing sound, a clunk. The man was down. Timmy and Huck must have clocked him. The sisters shot up and exchanged fearful glances. Sandy grasped for understanding and questioned her own eyes. Her sister’s broken expression told Sandy there was definitely a clunk. The black man lay motionless. Was the sound Timmy’s hit? Because it had to be Timmy. Huck would never. Or was it the man’s skull landing hard on the sidewalk? A wave of nausea upturned Sandy’s insides. She had to do something! The boys were gone. We need to call 911 and get an ambulance. But the cops would come too, and they’d ask questions. They’d have to name names. Sandy knew that much.

Neither sister could understand why the other gripped the beige phone handle, tugged it, and elbowed the other’s ribs to take possession. 911 needed to be called, but 911 could not be called. Since Sandy was older, the heavy handle was slammed on the phone’s base with a definitive thud. The sisters ran back to the front porch to see that now the man was moving. Blood dripped from the man’s mouth as he raised himself to all fours. Carol ran back to the phone, but Sandy froze, imprinting the moment —the shame of it retrievable for decades—when belonging superseded virtue, and her little sister knew more than she did.

Hank and His Cousin

Timmy always pushed things too far. Hank knew that. Hank welcomed the male energy at his cousin Timmy’s house, where Walter Payton’s stutter-step, like a deer sighting, momentarily stopped everyone in their tracks. Sweetness. Hank had outgrown his mother and older sisters. The allure of their doting affection was gone, just like his father.

But what Timmy did today, Hank did not see coming. He didn’t even know why they were talking to the Shannon girls. The older one was cute, busty. Sure. But the younger one was still a kid. Hank was used to coasting while Timmy fought the social headwinds. It was not such a raw deal. After a rough pick-up game of softball, a near-miss with a stray dog, a scuffle with some jag, Hank went home to the safety of his mother and sisters. Timmy went home to Uncle Tim for more of the same. Hank and Timmy saw their fathers as two sides of the same coin, heads or tails, tough or wuss, good or bad.

When Timmy insisted on circling the block again, Hank was game. He knew Timmy had it bad for some chick who lived over there on Wallace. They ran into the Shannon girls by chance, and goofy Timmy settled in on their porch. Man, that guy could talk to a brick wall! And the girls are all smiles and shit. Then out of nowhere, he says Let’s go. Next thing I know, I’m following Timmy as he runs up behind some old Black guy and nails him in the back of the head! What a fucking nut job! I wanna help the guy, but I just stare at his glistening afro and the side of his face all scrunched up in pain. He was hurting bad. But Timmy is shouting at me, and we gotta get out of there. We run fast. Down the alley on 43rd, back to Parnell and up to 46th, and down his alley to his basement, to his bedroom.

“What’s your problem?” He says. He could tell I was pissed. “You’re okay with those fucking druggies hanging in our neighborhood, asshole?”

“Fuck you,” I say. “You could’ve warned me. Shit! That was fucked up. He was just an old guy.”-

“Oh, so now I’m the asshole? These fuckers ruin their own neighborhood, and now they come for ours. With those girls right there? Who knows what that perv would do.”

“I gotta go,” I say. And I mean it, man. I think I’m gonna be sick. And that asshole is all in my face. Don’t say nothing to nobody, and whatever. I just get out of there as fast as I can.

“Just like your old man, you fucking wuss,” Timmy called through the basement window as Hank moved through the gangway. Everything looked the same, but Hank was different. He passed by low chain-link fences, uneven sidewalks, and thick trees. On his block, the O’Reilly kids played next door; the boys bounced a rubber ball off the porch, and their little sister drew rainbows with chalk. Once in his house, Hank ran to the bathroom off the kitchen. The first splash of vomit, chunky and brown from two PBJs and a chocolate milk, caught the toilet lid that Hank failed to lift in time. He fell to his knees and grasped the cold rim with both hands and endured the shock as his body reacted without his consent.

Hank’s sister, Margie, knocked relentlessly. I’m okay, he managed to mumble, using toilet paper to clean the rim. Eventually, he left the mess for Margie. He cried and punched his unmade bed until the fitted sheet released from the mattress and shifted, disappearing under the blankets. He pictured the black man’s sagging, wide-leg pants. His afro, like his gait, was lopsided. Off. Like a nocturnal animal in daylight. Maybe he was drunk. Hank had paused, saw the man’s face crushed into the cement. Fuck! He also felt bad for those Shannon girls; they were too young for all this. Maybe they called an ambulance. Maybe the guy got some help. Maybe he was dead. Fuck!

One of his father's monthly letters had warned him: Some people are afraid, and it presents as racism, he wrote. At first, Hank would not touch the letters. His sisters assured him their dad was a good man, and he would someday understand. For almost two years, his mother lined them all vertically in a Buster Brown shoebox, and eventually, his curiosity took over. He never told Timmy, and now, at seventeen, Hank found it thrilling to discover commonalities with his distant father. They liked to write about humans, both good and flawed, and about life and its purpose. There was a chance he might meet his dad in California someday and possibly go to school there. He kept that idea on the down-low, partly because San Francisco seemed too far away, too hip.

Today provided further evidence, definitive proof of what Hank suspected all along. He was not meant for California. Or his father. Even though Hank spent hours reading Lord of the Rings, first with his sisters and then alone, today he saw the clear difference between good and evil, hero and villain, and the difference between him and his father. Now he knew. He dropped his forehead on the edge of his yellowed mattress. He knew his father never would have kept running.

Photo of Jeanne Burns Kett

BIO: Jeanne Burns Kett is a writer and therapist completing her first novel. Her writing celebrates how we manage to thrive and falter within relationships. She works in private practice and, like generations before her, remains in the Chicago area with her husband, grown children, aging parents, and sprawling extended family.