Corey Smith has an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University. He educates teenagers for a living and, alongside his wife, is raising five kids of his own in Wichita, Kansas. In his spare time, he is a guitar-strumming rock god.
Every time I bounced or kicked a ball outside the complex up came Matt the neighborhood fat kid talking about hey Grace can I play? And my don’t your dog look pretty! Only I didn’t care, because Mister John Friday is the prettiest weenie dog in the world, and Matt’s ugly as hell with his Kool-Aid stained mouth and his teeth cock-eyed every which direction, wringing his hands and pivoting back and forth waiting for my answer.
I wouldn’t give it but only motioned for him to get where he needs so we can play basketball. And of course he didn’t shut his mouth but smiled bigger, pushed up his thick-as-hell-glasses, and got into position. He worked up a good sweat as he told me he got a copy of Peter Pan.
“I got Peter Pan. We could watch it, Grace. We could watch it together!”
He was happy as hell. He wore the same sweatshirt because his mama don’t always do laundry or buy him clothes so he’s always got on the same gray sweatshirt that he’s got to push the sleeves up on.
“We could watch it later on.”
Peter Pan did sound fun, but we had other stuff come up that seemed more important.
So me and Matt got thick as hell and heard about Chris Johnson and his horrible sickness. We were hop scotching in front of Matt’s apartment on his cracked sidewalks, and we heard Miss Donald say, “Chris Johnson can’t go outside on account of he’s deathly allergic to either the air or the sun.”
The grown-ups were only a few yards from us in the middle of the street. We pretended to play. The next morning we heard Miss Holloway telling Mister Morrison how she “didn’t think Chris Johnson would make it. If only they had money….” And Mister Morrison hung his head at this and looked down at the street. I dropped my rock and stopped playing. Matt had heard it too. I asked Matt because he was, after all, ten and quarter and I was just freshly ten.
Chris Johnson seemed the same as the trees and the light poles and all the barking dogs in our neighborhood. What I mean to say is when a kid is always around riding his bike you don’t think about them too much. He was just a kid. We knew he was poor as hell because Daddy told me his dad couldn’t hold a job and his momma is a cracked-head.
Sometimes Matt’s mom would give them their dinner and that meant Matt would go to bed hungry. Chris Johnson still treated us mean. At least he never talked to us. He would just ride by on his old beat-up bike and almost hit us as he went by. I hated him. Not because he was mean to me but mostly because Matt’s mom was so damn nice to him!
“It means he’s dying,” Matt explained.
He pushed his glasses up and his eyes grew wide to show me he meant it.
“It mean’s that kid’s dying.”
Matt’s face turned red, and I stopped breathing for a long while. We called him a kid but he was very much a teenager. He’d pop wheelies down our small-crappy-street talking about how I looked like a boy with all the dirt on my face. Yeah, I thought, and look at you Chris Johnson with your hair so dirty it won’t even blow in the wind, and freckles all over your body the like I never seen before. He was the skinniest kid I ever laid eyes on.
I down right hated the son-of-a-bitch, but I sort of, I don’t know, loved him or something when I found out he wouldn’t make it. I all of a sudden missed his rusty bike and his slack jaw and the way he told me I looked like a dirty boy. I felt like a boy anyhow. It’s hard to explain.
The next day me and Matt took to playing this game where we raised enough money to save Chris Johnson. We pretended to be heroes, and we played right there on the sidewalks. Matt pretended he was Chris Johnson and gave a speech thanking me and him right there leaning up against the back of Mister Thompson’s Oldsmobile. “Thank-you,” he pushed up his glasses and rolled up his sleeves.
“I’d like to come right out and thank God first off, and I would especially like to thank Matt and Grace for saving up all that money and letting me breathe outside and all. I can ride my bike too. Well, I’d just like to say that Matt and Grace are heroes. And I’d like to thank the Lord for them too.”
But just as I started to clap I saw Miss Paterson’s big ass arm in the Oldsmobile’s side mirror. I knew we were in for it. I didn’t meet her eyes and somehow I just knew Matt was looking down at the same piece of street as me. I focused where a frog had died last year cooked to death by the heat.
“You committing blasphemy, mocking God and thanking him and clapping! Chris Johnson is sick. You hear me that boy’s sick. And praise be to God you two are out damning our streets.”
I focused on her thick ankles and the hem of her bright red day dress.
“What were you two doing? And don’t you two start your lyin’ I done heard part of it.”
I wanted to look up and meet her eyes but she started blowing her nose on her cooking apron. I looked down and focused on Matt’s crap gold corduroy shoes. He pivoted back and forth. He had a hole in his shoe. He didn’t have socks on.
I said, “We were playing that we raised enough money so that Chris Johnson could come outside and ride his bike again. That’s all.” “We didn’t mean nothing—”
“Let’s have enough of that or I’ll wear out both your little asses.”
She bent down eye level with us and her breath smelled like chewing tobacco, and her eyes showed deep lines.
“Chris Johnson is sick. You little punks aren’t, and you both aren’t thankful. This isn’t a game to be playing and you should both pray for forgiveness. You should say a prayer of thanks that you are able to be out here and breathing up God’s fresh air while Chris is shut up in that apartment. You shouldn’t be making fun. If I catch wind of this happening again you’ll wish I hadn’t. You both are too dumb to have anything to do with money or raising it. You need to just go somewhere safe in your make believe world and let people who care make a difference.”
She left us glued to the street. That’s when we decided to really raise the money and learned that we already had seven bucks between us from birthdays and such. Matt kept the money. We’d raise the rest with a lemonade stand. We aimed to show that nose blowin’ so-and-so we weren’t dumb. We aimed to save Chris Johnson.
The next morning Matt comes up in his sweatshirt and shorts, and I motioned for him to get into position for basketball before we set up our lemonade stand, but he only looked at me—scared like—pivoting back and forth. My dog John Friday started to fussing with soft yaps, so I smacked him. I pushed his stroller to and fro till he shut it.
“Why you standing? Let’s play!” I said.
And now I’m as frustrated as hell, huffing and puffing and crossing my arms. We didn’t have much time, see. We had money to raise.
“I’ve been to Wanda’s tunnel,” he said and wrung his hands.
“God dang! You know your mama’s just gonna beat the shit out of you.”
My mama’s in a mean way herself, coming into my room screaming for no good reason, but Matt’s mama beats him but good. And he’s dumb as shit and tells on himself when he’s done bad.
“I lost my money in the tunnel. My mom allowed me two dollars—” he holds up two fingers to make positive I understand, “to get a muscle shirt for the weather. I must have dropped it.” He looked away from me. “I put it with the other money. I lost it all.”
His eyes welled up.
I get half a mind not to wait for his mama but to bust him myself. I let my ball drop and raised my hand like I aimed to, and all of a sudden he looked scared like he was going to cry. So I came to, and I realized I was about to have Matt boo-hooing and snottin’ and the whole nine in front of my apartment. I lowered my hand to show I wasn’t gonna, but he still hung his mouth wide and was probably holding his breath. I started thinking of kind words to say, but then the S.O.B really started crying. Even though he’s taller, I managed an arm around him and hurried him to the side of my complex where it’s mostly dirt and weeds.
“Stop it,” and I gave him a gentle slap but hard enough to let him know I meant it. “Stop it, or you’ll have a grown-up come out and tell both our mamas!” He wiped his tears the best he could, and I made him all sorts of promises to shut him up. I hate crying.
“We’ll get our money. We’ll make a big donation for Chris Johnson.” Then I wanted to know “How far’d you get?”
“Past the second.” We measured the tunnel by the gutters that let the sunlight in. No kid ever made it past the third one.
“You went alone?”
He put his hands on his hips proudly and said, “I wanted to make the third gutter.” He bowed his chubby head. “I wanted to be the first and only.”
We called it Wanda’s tunnel on account of Wanda had made it the farthest—nearly to the third gutter. I guess back then kids had a tough time making it to the second. Wanda’s grown and gone but it’s still her tunnel. Both of us knew about Wanda and her story. We learned long ago that Wanda’s mom beat her. The tunnel was the only place she could hide from her mom’s beatings.
“I think Wanda’s my hero,” I told Matt on that third day. “She knew what she had to do, go into the tunnel and get away from that mom, and she just did it. She had courage.”
I passed the ball to Matt, a bounce pass, but he caught it and held it. He didn’t speak. He pushed his glasses up. “I’ve stood at the opening and felt it. Wanda’s courage is real,” Matt finally said.
I grabbed the ball. “I wished I had the courage, you know, to do something real like Wanda. She had the courage to go deep enough to hide. I heard Wanda had all the comforts in that tunnel. She had a chair and a bunch of comics and a slingshot in case someone bad showed up.”
Matt took the ball and gazed down our street. He then looked in the direction of Wanda’s tunnel. I could tell Matt was trying not to cry about our money, because his fat was a tremblin. I couldn’t stand it. I can’t stand to see people boo-hooing. Then I got upset on account of him making me think about Chris Johnson and how he couldn’t ever ride his bike again, so I give him another slap. “Buck up, you baby!” I can’t stand to see a ten year old cry, since I’m whole months younger and nothing makes me cry.
I grabbed Matt’s hand. Miss Paterson started banging her blankets outside of her window a few stories up at my apartment complex. We could only see her hands, but we knew it was her. I said, “Wipe your tears before Miss Paterson comes down and whips our asses.” You don’t even need to belong to Miss Paterson, when she gets it in her mind to whip her some ass she just grabs a kid, becomes their mama, and whips herself some ass. Matt was still breathing hard and working his shoulders up and down. “I’m sorry. I’m—”
“Let’s get our money.” I rub his back. I didn’t want to waste time with his I’m sorry business. So I said “Let’s get.” I started pushing Mister John Friday. I dug my pack of cigarettes out of the front of my overalls and lit one up with my strike-anywhere matches. I’d been stealin’ cigarettes from my mama ever since the first day we heard about Chris Johnson. The whole situation of having to go into the tunnel stressed me good. I took a drag and held the cigarette low so Miss Paterson didn’t see me, and beat us.
“And my you look cool,” Matt says like he might want one too, so I give him a look that tells him the answer to that question. He smiled too big and showed all his teeth. Some people can’t take a hint, so … I gave him one. “Thanks.” But he puts it in his pocket and pats it over and over. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Hurry up,” I snap, “I have a flashlight in my room. We’ll need a flashlight.”
By the time Matt gets his husky self up my fire-escape and into my apartment, I was already looking around for my flashlight.
“I really love your room,” he says in his hoarse, out of breath voice. “Gosh, you must really be smart what with all these papers everywhere.” My daddy’s papers were everywhere, and I wouldn’t touch them on account of his being out of town. He’d want them just the way he left them. My daddy was always gone. Either he works a lot or he is good for nothing like I hear the neighborhood women say. Matt pivoted back and forth and I knew he’s about to ask for something. He was looking at a picture on the wall I had painted of John Friday. I had painted it with magic markers I got from school. I picked up my slingshot from a pile of papers and tucked it in the front of my overalls. I nearly asked him what he wanted and to just have out with it. “I always see you with cold sodas,” said Matt.
“I only got a tea pot,” I tell him. “Chris Johnson might not make it! How could you think about soda?”
Matt pushed his glasses up and looked at the floor and softly kicked at some of the papers. He started a big stir-up without words about wanting a soda. And then he talked. “I guess … I don’t know … I just want one.”
Then, I put a finger over my lips. “Don’t talk. My mom’s in a mean way. The flashlight must be in the kitchen. I’ll snag a soda too if I feel good about my mom not waking up.” She was always sleeping. I slowly creaked open my door and tiptoed into the hallway holding Matt’s hand. If my mama explodes it’s better if I have Matt with me. She’d go easier. I mostly spend my time in my room and use the fire escape to come and go, so I hadn’t seen the hallway in some time. A bunch of my toys and soda cans lay everywhere like someone had fooled-up the place ora hog had been over. We had to be careful around the cans. The hallway is wood, and it’d be loud if we kicked one.
Matt was doing his best to tiptoe, but his husky ass is all upper body and no feet when he tiptoes. He kept his arms out like it helped him balance and screwed his mouth just so, so it was even uglier than normal, and he tried to whisper but it came out in a normal volume.
“What flavor of—”
And with all the stir-up we heard banging coming from my mamma’s room at the end of the hall. We froze and looked at each other with our mouths open, and then I didn’t waste any time but tugged Matt’s hand to tell him to get a move on. The flashlight was in a mess of garbage near the end of the hall, so I ran like hell for it. I grabbed it fast and said, “Let’s go,” in a loud whisper. I took his hand. We hurried with flat feet back to my room, and I tossed an arm around Matt and guided him under my bed. We hid.
Sure enough my mom came in slapping her big bare feet all over the place and making the most God awful noises with her mouth—more like growls than words. Now, Matt took to shivering and Mom was kicking my daddy’s papers all about the room. I got to rubbing Matt, gentle like, on his back. I didn’t want him to start up blubbering. Matt nuzzled close to me and closed his eyes and tightened his lips. His messy blonde hair plastered to his forehead with sweat making it as dark as mine. And finally, I don’t give a hell and I nuzzled back because I was scared too. Either he saw her or he didn’t, but I told him to look the other way because I didn’t want him to get scared.
“Turn your head. I don’t want this keeping you up at night.”
I just didn’t want him to see my mom that way.
To be continued…
Next week: Part 2 of Wanda’s Tunnel