Subtitle

A CONFLUENCE OF DAYS, WEEKS AND YEARS

by Jonathan Vold

Tuesday, August 2

One Summer : A Song

  She rode on a beautiful horse, rode up the hill and across my lawn.  Roxanne!  She smiled bold and shy, beaming the bold-shy age of thirteen years.  Roxanne, 1979: there was a Top 40 hit that year, but she was a different tune.  Beyond the pure, but in the days before mature, she was not so grown up as a red light song, and none of us were as old as we pretended.
 
  We used to laugh at her: she had what Matt used to call a “cute duck butt,” and what Jim called a “ski-jump nose.”  We drank beer in the dark —she never drank, but she stayed out late with us; she teased us all, and she smoked Salem cigarettes and she swore.
 
  And one day she rode that beautiful horse up the hill of my lawn and smiled, and said, “Hey, Sol, want to go for a ride?”  I looked up at her on her big beautiful horse and smiled back, and Sugar took the opportunity to munch on my lawn.
 
  “Ro-o-0-OX! Anne! —that was another tune, by the Police, and Sting sounded like a reggae rooster on the radio.  We crowed that song all summer, thinking we liked it before we knew what it was about, knowing only that we too knew a girl named Roxanne.  Then we learned, learned to understand every word, and for a while that summer we sang it louder, and then in the fall we didn’t sing it anymore.
 
  She rode Sugar up to me —bold and shy —and asked if I wanted to ride with her.  And I smiled, not ready to answer, giving Sugar time to chew the grass.  Nights later, in the fall, I’d try to write a better song for her: “Roxanne, sweet thirteen, before she knew the world was mean...”    “Those days are over,” I might have added.  Nights later, we would turn the radio off.
 
  She smiled, bold and shy.  Sure, I said.  Great, she said, jump on.  We rode down the street and into a field, Roxanne and Sugar and I —we broke from a trot to a gallop, and I, sitting in back, clung on to Roxanne, held her near me, felt her warm and sweaty against me and felt safe in the saddle.  We were still closer to pure than mature, and I still remember Sugar munching quietly on the grass.  But then we were both well aware of where we were, on this beautiful horse galloping swiftly across the field.
 
  Another tune began playing on the radio, and we turned the volume higher.

  One night we all went to a party at Adam’s.  His parents weren’t home.  We drank beer in the dark, but Roxy still wouldn’t drink.  “Ro-o-0-OX! Anne,” squawked Adam.  She never did like that  song.  Adam took out a gun and started playing with it, as if it were a Saturday afternoon and he was shooting at beer cans on fence posts.  Wait, said Matt, let me set them up again.

  Sugar munched quietly on the grass —a big horse, with a big saddle.  Come on, said Roxanne, there’s room for both of us.  And I jumped on, fitting snugly into the saddle behind her, and we trotted off my lawn and down the hill, down a country road and across a field.
 
  She lit up a cigarette, while Adam started playing with his shotgun, shooting it into the air.   Come on, said Adam, Come on, bitch, or I’ll kill you.  He laughed.  We drank more beer.  She never did like that song.  And Adam started fooling around with his shotgun, holding it up to her throat.  Wait, said Matt, let me check the chamber.

  We used to laugh at her, and she teased us all, and she swore.  And she rode on a beautiful horse, up the hill and across the lawn, and she asked if I wanted to go for a ride.
 
  I held her near me.  She was warm and sweaty, and I clung to her.
 
  And we turned the radio off.
 
  Adam started playing with his shotgun, pulling the trigger, and the shot went into her head.
 
  Wait, said Matt, it was supposed to be empty.  Someone called the police, and we turned the radio off.
 
  We had been singing another tune, beyond the pure, before the mature.  And Sugar broke to a gallop from a trot.

No comments:

Post a Comment