INTERSECTIONS: Horton @ Delevan

THE WARRIOR

By Luanne diBernardo

There were five of them running and darting, one boy small, the other boys taller, one fat.  Two screamed Antoine, and nobody’s mother was anywhere in sight.  Almost, it was dusk. 

The boy who turned when a voice screamed Antoine was straddled to a bike stripped pipe to peddle, his bony arms stretched to each bend of pitted chrome.  Behind him a house of shattered glass, where a screen door missing its screen floats open then closed, though nobody comes or goes. Behind him a side street, both narrow and short, with cars more permanent than trees.   

On the other side, and separated by ancient gates asked to separate the dead from the living, and separated again by a busy convenience for cars traveling into or out of the city, stood I.  Chains looped and locked through and around the great tall spires, where inside rested Red Jacket’s tribesmen, burials topped by worn cement slabs scratched with names like “Destroyer of Cities”, and where loomed above them: Red Jacket himself.  Could also be seen were the Ogilvys, the Fassbinders, and the Spoonleys; the marbled mauseleums of the close-knit Brunis, Schoelkopfs, and Knoxes; manicured greens and reflecting ponds. cloud-grazing statues, the grand gifted bronzes and granites, families discontinued, some remembered, most forgotten, and a strong columned structure where maps could be borrowed in order to find who laid where. 

Antoine’s name screamed from one of the boys.  I turned and watched the fat one shorten the distance between them, Antoine poised until barely too late before one foot slams the pedal of his barren bike, his wild-pitched cry claiming the air, even my air, victorious as he forcefully pumps the short turn of pedal, a circumference so slight that it barely caused his legs to move as they sailed the bike across the street, the busy street, horns and screams before slamming the concrete curb, then grass, his eyes wet with thrill, his small chest heaving, his head turned back towards the fat and tall boys who flickered between frenzied cars. 

With a force that erupted the budding wings of his delicate shoulders, Antoine jerked up the front of his good-enough bike, his front wheel now skyward and paused mid-air before slamming the street, his body hunched forward, his focus aimed back through the threat of road.  The fat and tall boys called him forward, then not, until Antoine slammed foot to pedal, a movement that blasted him towards them, through them, then past them to where finally he braked, the tail of his bike whipping sideways and causing the boy full circle, back where he started.  

Flanked by vehicles to his left and right, his breath beat against his taut-skinned belly.  Then with nobody moving or laughing or calling, and beneath a sky growing darker than truth, the boy named Antoine slipped from his bike and fearlessly walked to the broken house.