Friday, May 16, 2008

A Kid and a Rock

This story is about a kid and a rock.  The kid was about six years old, one of the strays wandering up and down the porches of my inner city street.  His name was DeVonte and he lived with his siblings in the drab rental next door with a disinterested woman he said was his mom.  Devonte’s upper lip seemed always smeared with snot.  Last November he showed up on my porch with the usual stained t-shirt and bare feet but this time the snot was thick and green with a rattling cough.  I marched him back over to his house and banged on the door.  A slack-faced woman shuffled up behind the plastic but all I’m seeing is her stained t-shirt and the green snot on her upper lip.  “He’s cold,” I say.  She jerks him inside screaming “What the f*** did I tell you about goin’ outside now git your motherf***’in a** upstairs!” That was the kid.

The rock was a concrete footing from an old clothesline post I’d dug out.  Not the usual cement plug but a monstrous thing that had heaved up out of the ground on a chain behind my car.  It was as big as poverty, ugly as racism, and way too big to move.  The guy must have had extra concrete lying around that day.  I studied it, got my 8 pound sledge and gave a mighty swing.  A tiny chip just clicked off the side of the house.

Then a little voice behind me said, “Whatcha’ doin?” It was the kid, looking through my gate.  “Nothing,” I said.  “I help?” the kid said, already inside.  He picked up the sledge and nearly fell over backwards.  I came back with a hammer, “What dat?” he said.  “A hammer,” I said.  He lifted it with both hands, and dropped it on the rock.  Clink.  OK, I give up.  But he picked it up again.  Clink.  And again.  By dusk, he had a little handful of concrete chips.

Next evening I came home and there’s the kid, squatting on the rock and whacking it with the hammer.  A speck flew up and hit him right in the eye.  He rubbed it and I got out the safety glasses.  “Wear these,” I said.  He put them on and grinned, just as that woman’s voice came shrieking from next door.  “Devonte!  Get the f*** back over here before I kick your motherf***’in a**!” “Are you okay over there?” I said.  He just handed me the hammer and shuffled off.

But every night I come home, the kid is hammering on the rock.  He’s like a little John Henry.  Small stones dislodged and fell to the dirt but then larger ones emerged, and eventually the worst one of all: a granite field stone the size of a pumpkin embedded in there till the end of the world.  “This is hard,” he said.  “Yeah, it is,” I said, watching the woman glare at me from hell.

I left town for vacation.  Two weeks.  I was carrying an armload of sleeping bags back around the house when I stopped.  The concrete monster was gone.  Just a circle of rock dust in its place, littered with stones and in the center, the big granite pumpkin.  I smiled.  He did it.  Dang.  I’m going to go hug that kid.  Buy them both a pizza or something.

I went over but the door was open and the house was vacant.  Just a filthy mattress, Burger King trash, and a big flatscreen rental TV.  They’d disappeared.  Off the grid of the school corporation, child protective services, church youth groups.

I think about that kid every time I see the big pumpkin-sized granite stone now sitting in the center of my garden.  I don’t know if he’s ok.  But I know one thing.  I’d hate to be whatever big thing gets in his way.  Because that kid’s got a hammer swingin’ in his heart that would make Sonny Liston run and hide.

Broadcast by Jeff Nixa on May 16, 2008
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