Dog Park Summer
I walk out of my room scratching the side of my face and blinking into the sun as it rises over Hellgate High School. I stroll up to the decrepit railing that runs along the front of the deck and lean against it as I sip on my coffee.
It’s noon in Missoula, Montana and I’m happy that I was able to get up at such an early part of the day. The summers are nice in that way. You can walk out in your boxer-briefs and don’t have to worry about the high school kids catching sight of you. Not to mention, with it being noon on a Wednesday, I didn’t have to worry about much of anybody seeing me on account of it being a work day.
Isaac Noble is my name and I am officially unemployed as of three days ago on account of a false accusation of sexual harassment in the work place. I had made a couple of off-color comments to one of the men that I worked with and had been overheard by Katie, the female with whom I had worked. Well, she went to the boss that was in charge of the whole operation and claimed that she no longer felt safe working with me. It wasn’t even a comment regarding any sort of a threat; I just mentioned that women had smaller bladders than men (which, as it turns out, is false). After getting a full day’s work out of me, the boss called me in as I was going to clock out and fired me. “Isaac, I just can’t trust you not to say these types of things, you’re too unpredictable.” “I understand.” I didn’t.
“Hey, Isaac!” I turned from my basking place in the sun to see who had hailed. Marty Wagner was walking down the deck from his apartment with his signature bowlegged stride. He had a cigarette dangling from his mouth and one eye squeezed shut against the smoke. For some reason he never removed his cigarettes from his mouth so his eyes were always red and irritated. He was carrying a Mountain Dew in one hand and a book in the other. He was clad, as was typical, in nothing but a ratted pair of his high school basketball shorts stating that he had once been a Saginaw High Knight. He was from Saginaw, Michigan. “What happened to you last night man?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well one minute we were all hanging out at the ‘Rose, and the next, you had disappeared,” he stopped walking to ash his cigarette over the deck, “everybody figured that you had just been picked up by the cops or something.”
“Well, I don’t really remember much from last night, but I got home.”
“Yep, I guess that’s all that really matters in the end,” he held the book out to me. It was my copy of, Of Mice and Men, “thanks for lettin me borrow this man, it was great; let’s read some poems later,” that was our afternoon routine.
“Yep, anytime man; I’ll be over later.”
We both looked up as Shawn Borgman’s door opened and he came out clad in the same outfit as Mark except his shorts were from Vermont. He was twisting a lock of hair with his finger and stretching, “hey, Isaac, what the fuck happened to you last night?”
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A couple of hours later I was stretched out in one of the many foldable chairs that we have scattered about the apartment complex, the only inanimate objects that there are more abundant are crushed beer cans, reading The Sun Also Rises and wondering just how hot it could get. It said on the news earlier that we were scheduled to peak out in the high 90’s for the day, which signified a trip to the river.
I glanced off to my left at the sound of a thud as Shawn dropped one of the dumbbells that he had been lifting with. He stood up and slathered himself with tanning oil, or man-tan as he called it, and stood flexing to the street and bobbing his head to the Lil Wayne that was blasting in his ears. That was what he listened to, well, that or Johnny Cash. He had a makeshift weight bench set up that consisted of a stained Igloo cooler and a stool for propping his legs on as he did “L-sits” against the railing. At one time he had a membership at a gym, but the money had dried up and his unemployment checks weren’t coming as frequently as they had been. All, living in our complex, were watching our bank accounts diminish as the summer dragged on and each of us tested the limits of our drinking problems on a nightly basis.
I looked up as I heard the tell-tale thud, drag, thud of Mike Shelton clomping up the stairs in his army issue boots. He, as is the same with Shawn and his brother Nick, is an army veteran and he still continues to wear his tall black boots everywhere. I glance down at my watch, 2:00, it’s about time he decided to get up.
“How’s it going man?”
“Michael!” Boom! A dropping dumbbell.
“Hey, gents, how’s it going?” He walked by, clad in his ARMY brand sweatshirt and black slacks holding a Chelada in his left hand. A Chelada is something that the beer company put out that is a mixture between tomato juice and beer. I find it mortifying, but Mike comes up with one in hand every morning, “are we still going out to the dog park today?”
“Does the pope shit in the woods?” We all chuckle at Shawn’s new saying that he has been using; it’ll still be a couple of months before everyone agrees that he needs to come up with a new catchphrase. He steps into his room and comes out with two sixteen ounce Hamm’s and tosses one to my outstretched hand. It’s been decided that no one will buy anything but this to drink until some money gets into circulation around the complex. It really is hard to find anything cheaper than a six-pack of “pounders” for four dollars.
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An hour or so passed and we finally saw Chance, one of our downstairs neighbors, come riding up on his bike. He was one of two of the people from our complex that was employed and our day really didn’t start until he got home from work. He’s a fairly tall guy with black hair that always curves up and slightly to the left from the top of his head. I don’t even think that he styles it, I think it just stretches upward on it’s own. Like a flower toward the sun.
Shawn and I rushed down to his apartment to help him get ready and we almost ran right into him. He was sitting at his patio table and sprinkling a small amount of ground marijuana over a “rollie” cigarette that he had laid out on the table-top.
“Whoa, suckas, take it easy,” He cracked open his Hamm’s, he was the one that first discovered the wonderful deal, and finished rolling his cigarette, “are we ready to head to the park?”
“Yeah, now get your swimsuit on, grab some cash, and let’s go.”
“Alright, let me see your phone so I can call Kristy and let her know,” Kristy was his girlfriend, she worked too now that I think about it. I tossed him my cell phone and trotted up the stairs to get myself ready to go.
I turned and said hello to Marty, he was sitting down and letting Kaleigh, his girlfriend who was also from Michigan, rub sunscreen on his back. They’ll be gone in a couple of months and it will break every one of our hearts.
I pop my head in on Nick, Shawn’s brother, on my way to see if he’s ready to go. The air smells thick with sunscreen and he sits draped across the couch with a chew in his mouth watching the news.
“You ready to go?”
He gestures down to his swim trunks, “‘course I’m ready to go, you fuck, you and Shawn have been screaming about it all morning.” Nick loves to “bust your balls;” apparently it’s a New England thing. The brothers are more proud of their home state than anything.
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About fifteen minutes later we are all on our bikes, save for Mike he doesn’t have a bike so he drives, and heading down the river trail. There are about five backpacks between us, every one of them filled to the brim with beer. I glanced around at all of the people sunbathing and swimming in the river and feel a pride for the town that I live in.
Marty raced by me trailing a bit of smoke from his cigarette and laughing, ski poles strapped to his back pack swing precariously toward any passerby, and Shawn races behind him with a inter-tube held under his arm and two Frisbees poking out of the large pocket of his backpack.
The clank of the gate to the entrance of the dog park announces the beginning to a very strange experience.
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