the Glowing chapter 4

Chapter 4

summer 2013

The bus comes to a stop, Austin gets off. There is construction all around him. This place where he had been born and raised is slowly changing. In another few years, everything that he had know might be gone.

The last stop on the line is Knollwood and 7th. This is the spot farthest south that he had known. Once this was the spot where 'Big K' stood, that was the biggest clothing store this side of town. 'Showtime Movies' was once on the other side of the street, that was the video store with the black room in it. He and Randi once spent some time trying to push each-other in there to see what was in the 'Black Room' in the end neither of them made it most of the time they went to 'Mr. Movies' anyway. It was closer to the apartment.

Two blocks west once was 'Gold Mine' it was the local Arcade, there were two others, but this was the one they were talking about whenever they said 'The Arcade.' Kitty-corner from 'Gold Mine' was 'Max 12' that was the theater Austin and his friends sometimes went to. The rules there were pretty relaxed. It was easy to walk in with a fast food bag, a few drinks and buy tickets to see a show they were all too young to see. 'Tomthumb' shared a parking lot with 'Max 12' that was the place in town with the best fresh fruit.

Not one of those things are around anymore. 'Taco City' is still on the other side of 7th, Austin remembers that was his mother's favorite drive through. 'Big K' is now called 'Big Sam,' 'Gold Mine' has been torn down and a place called 'The Rake' is where it once was. 'Showtime' is 'D&D Automotive,' 'Tomthumb' is now 'Trader Joe.' Hardly a landmark Austin knows is in sight from this stop.

"If this was 'Big K' then that would mean 'The Green Way' is that way." Austen turns to point east, "then Aquila Apartment's would be straight north of the school." He turns to face west "Gold Mine is that way so is 'Dreamers Games' then my Uncles house is seven blocks northeast, Texas, and 28th." Austin struggles to remember what everything once looked like.

12 square blocks, for Austen and his friends that was once all as big as the world was. Everything they knew could be found within a box created by four freeway overpasses: 394 to the north, 100 to the east, 7th to the south and 169 to the west.

This city has always had great parks. Westwood was the most prominent park, it was run by the national parks service, Shady Oak's / Oak Hills was the best, they had a public barbeque and a water park, Victoria Park, which was also called Bishop's Park, was right off the Greenway and was a beautiful place to stop and rest if you were doing some long biking, then there was Ainsworth that was the most important park.

Fourth grade was a hard year for Austin, a once beloved friend, Steven Carlson, Died in the middle of the school year, some kind of accident. No one told Austin how it happened. Not long after that Steven's family left the area. Austin took it hard, Not till he and Phil met would he start to heal. That was why Ainsworth was important.

Austin jumps on the greenway walking around the perimeter of the town, he takes in the sights. The greenway is a forested path, it follows the highways, but it is a footpath. The route was lead somewhere around the end of the 80's, Austen and his friends had loved this path. They would race along it from time to time, us it to go from park to park…

Something Austin had forgotten starts to come back to him as he walks. Once he has gone under the Aquila bridge and bypassed the elementary school, he is standing face to face with Victoria Lake. Just up the hill from there is Ainsworth, but he can't help but stop and look into the water.

A once calming place, something horrible beckons to him from the cloudy green water. Voices scream at him from the distant past, a flash of light, for a few short seconds Austen can see himself on a homemade boat out on the water, Bobby was with him, and Randy, Bobby, and Austin fall off the boat. There is a third person in the water with them, Austin can't see who it is. Randy cries out for Austin.

The flash ends. Austin is standing at the edge of the water looking in, he imagines someone in the water looking up at him. Austin races off running up the hill towards Ainsworth. 'A girl in the water.' He thinks to himself as he runs. 'who, why?' even as somethings are coming clearer the ice of the forgotten melts into the water of the unknown.

Ainsworth is a sunken park, a playground set at the base of a fissure. There is a steep hill that wraps most of the way around the park, it is at least 60 feet down from the top of the hill to the park, the incline is sharp enough that it is hard to walk up. As kids Austin and his friends joked about the idea that someone should build a stairwell from the park to the road at the top of the hill. Even to this day as Austin looks down into the pit, he thinks the same.

The past again melts into the present, saturating the cloth of years so that a dream of a memory may feel almost palpable. Austin as in aging man can see himself as a child sitting halfway down the hill. It is a sunny day, the air is warm, but there is a cold southbound wind. Spring break starts next week. There are at least fifty kids at the park. The school had approved a barbeque here at Ainsworth Park. It seems laughable that the school would want to spend money in this way, but in the 90's sometimes they did.

Austin hasn't spoken in days maybe even a month. When he got off the school bus, he walked up the hill, reached into his backpack and pulled out a sketchbook. Austin had taken an interest in drawing a comic book. His sketchbook has no heroes in it. Only nightmares brought to life with the highest detail an 8-year old's mind can muster.

This day too would have ended in that same silence if not for Phil Walker. Young and husky, dressed in an outfit that is half grunge-rocker and half clown as he has a Harlequin cap on as he slides over. Walker brings a hand down and slaps Austen pointing with the other hand. Phil shouts "Look! That is my house!" from the park is visible an apartment complex, nine buildings in a circle around each other all perfectly symmetrical.

Austin didn't understand this at the time, but that was a neighborhood called "The Courts" a halfway house owned by the Hennepin County Woman's Correctional Facility, And Phil lived there with his mother. Her name was Mercedes she was a 'Madam' (female pimp as is would be) Phil had been born in prison, Phil, of course, had no recollection of this. After all, no one talked about things like that. Another thing that no one talked about was the idea that Austen and Phil's mothers knew each other, and indeed, no one talked about how.

Old Austin walks down the hill to the spot that his younger-self sits, Austin takes a set on the slope beside young Phil. In a trance, he tips his head back and continues the conversation he and Phil had that cold afternoon. They would come back to this spot many times throughout their lives. This moment, this memory sacrosanct.

"Hay," Phil speaks "Do you know Gorge Carlin?"

Austin shakes his head "Never met him."

"he is a comedian," Phil explains "I have one of his concerts on tape if you want to check it out."

"Seven dirty words?" Austin whispers to himself "I think my dad told me about him once. He and my dad spent a weekend together in the drunk tank after a fight at some club."

Phil looks down "you play video games?"

Austin nods "I am playing 'Final Fantasy' right now."

"Which one?" Phil asks "there are six games in the series, one three of them are for sale in the states right now."

"the first one, I think." This conversation had snapped Austin out of his first deadly grip of depression. Young Austin would go home that night and struggle to find out the name of the kid that he had spoken to at the park as they had failed to interduce themselves. Austin may never understand what had happened that day, but he would remember that it was something fundamental in his life, something that would shape him for decades to come. Why that day, why those words, that conversation, why should it have been incalculably significant to him?

A murder of crows takes to the air, scattering from the park. This snaps Austen from his trance. He looks around remembering where he is and what he is doing. He looks left then right bringing a hand up folding three fingers in as if to snap as he recalibrates himself. "that is the Courts, that means Louisiana is that way. I am only a block from Phil's house."