I used to walk back and forth on top of this old stone wall in Jerry’s backyard. I can’t remember if I was old enough but I remember wanting his mom to notice me. See the careful stride? Expertly dodging thorns and tiptoeing over vines? She’d float in and out of the kitchen window, cordless phone on her shoulder. Jerry sat in the living room.
“Why do you always come over?” He used to ask me at the front door.
“Think I could hit the wall for a minute, Jer?”
He’d sigh and say, “whatever.”
Eventually I just started skipping Jerry altogether and going around back to the gate.
The Walzter’s back yard was also accessible via a large wooden gate on the south side of the property. The gate itself drooped further and further after each rain. Mr. Waltzer always complained about having to pay out the ass to fix it so much that he just didn’t do it.
Once through the mangled entrance I’d stumble in, dragging cowboy boots and kicking mud. The wall was a sanctuary for me. Mom always said to never stay longer than an hour at the Waltzers. I listened to her at first.
There was a big hole in the backyard. They were building a swimming pool. The wall wrapped around the south end of it. Mrs. Waltzer sucked a Virginia slim and yelled from the window.
“Put the knee pads on, Fido. The scorpions.”
It had been six months since they started digging for the pool. The brackish lake at the center of the ten foot hole had begun to attract scorpions. No one knew why. They darted around the edges of the canyon that had been created. The knee pads were on the glass patio table. I sat down and put them on. Crows settled in the trees above me.
Fido. Always hated that nickname. Jerry gave it to me sometime when I wasn’t around. Probably after that time I had to bug the Waltzers after ten. I asked for some dinner because mom and Sal were down at the boats. They gave me some canned green beans. Guess I was a little like a dog though.
The wall stood between the backyard and the hole. Three feet tall and the perfect width for balance training. I had described it to The Owl and he loved it. Told me it was perfect.
I’d start on the west end and begin with a series of somersaults and jabs.
Jerry used to briefly heckle me from the living room every time I would start my routine. He would call me a faggot and ask when I was going to be on Dancing with the Stars.
“They’d love you, fag!”
The balance required for the routine was minimal on the training wall, but this was only because I had trained so hard. All summer. When I first started, the six inch beam seemed much too thin.
There had been falls. I once tumbled so badly that I ripped a knee cap open. Ms. Waltzer saw the streak of blood and that’s when Cece’s old volleyball knee pads came out.
The Owl said that the routine needed to be flawless. He would always be there waiting for me. He’d whisper from behind the fence boards, watching through the holes in the wood.
“Bend and press. Don’t forget the twist at the end. There!”
He would chant as I danced and hiss if I made a mistake. The Owl smoked constantly. Plumes of fog rose from behind the fence.
I tried my best to just ignore him but the hissing became too loud. Every misstep was accented by exclamation points of terror. I’d wanted to put an axe in his head many times, but this day in particular was becoming quite wrought with potential for violence. After a few seconds, without even counting, I let the axe fly straight over the side of the fence. It landed right where The Owl had been standing, chanting about tighter form, and landed with a crunchy squish. The smoke turned into white fog.
“Fido,” Ms. Waltzer called “did you just kill the pedo?”