Chapter Four
Just before the doors slid shut I managed to throw a quick look back at the big emptiness that had been my life over the last six years. Not that I would have had any remorse for leaving Midville. But still, deep down inside, I felt a little unsure. The days were killing me. School, every day a xerox of the previous one. But at least that pathetic regularity had provided me with a safety net, something to hold on to. No surprises, no mistakes. Suddenly this life was over.
My not-as-nouveau-riche-as-she-thought-she-would-be sister was about to plunge into the big unknown, tearing me with her. I was sure I couldn’t count on her to get me out of any shit she had us stumbling into. So for the first time I felt like being in charge and completely responsible for my own stupidity.
There was no turning back as the closing doors pushed me in. With an enormous rattle and amidst huge clouds of dust Louis set his bus in motion. Because I didn’t want to keep staring at Lucy and Mark getting stuck to each other I took a seat up front. Louis humming one of his tunes always made me feel good.
I watched the landscape slide by. All the sand, those few hills and the dry riverbed which I’d used to call home. It didn’t really feel sad. After all I could always return. With the minutes sliding away I started feeling better. I could feel the first tingle of excitement start creeping up my belly. The breaking up to new shores made me curious. It felt as if we’d be making a change at exactly the right time. Like being stung by the magical mosquito.
Meanwhile Lucy was being stung by the love-bug. She squealed and giggled to such an extent that I feared the guy was stone-deaf. But maybe he just didn’t object because he had his face buried to his ears in her soft boobs and didn’t really care about the bullshit escaping her mouth.
In hard times Mom often quoted my Italian Grandma - whom I luckily only met twice. “She smelled like rotten garlic,” Dad used to say, to keep my mother’s praise of Grandma at a moderate level. She’d always warned Mom that after every ‘up’ God would send us a ‘down’ so that we learn to appreciate the finer things in life.
So when Lucy’s giggles suddenly turned into a ear shattering scream I guessed she must have hit the down stride. I hit the metal barre in front of my nose as Louis tested the old brakes - they still did quite a good job.
“What’s going on here?” Louis asked, slowly rising from his seat.
I had a bulge popping from my forehead while Lucy yelled: “You miss one leg!!!!”
We were just gone for 20 minutes and everything was like never before. Well, not quite. Because the damn thing had come to a standstill and Lucy had been so stupid as to open her window to cool off, dust and burning heat had reentered our miserable lives.
But as I said, I had a bump right in the middle of my forehead and my sister looked like she just met a mummy.
“Look at this,” she said, holding up a yellowish plastic leg.
“Take it easy Lucy. Mark wearing a prosthesis doesn’t turn him into the plastic man just yet,” Louis said, while tapping her on the shoulder.
I walked over to see what the fuzz was all about. Well, Mark did miss a leg. The right leg of his jeans looked like the torn condom from under the neighbor’s window the day the two newlyweds had more or less planned to create another Midvillian. While the left one showed off his bulging calf and his other bone probably awakened by Lucy’s loving care, the right one ended just below his knee.
I felt sorry for him - and for Lucy. But Mark obviously was used to shocked faces.
“Lucy, please calm down,” he said. “I’m used to the thing. It was an accident, some years ago. One day, as I was riding one of them huge waves, I suddenly lost control. Not that it was as big as Hawaiian jaws or anything. It simply was too strong for me and at the time I didn’t have the experience.”
While talking he calmly put back on his leg.
“Anyway, it pulled me under and I got slammed against a rock. The board then hit my leg full force and in doing so shattered it below the knee. I was lucky, you know. It could have ended far worse. After all I just lost part of my leg. It took me about a year or so before I tried surfing again. The healing and training and all. You know how they say, you need to go back to where it happened, otherwise you’d be scared for all your life? Well that’s just what I did. I went back to the same spot. But this time I didn’t let it pull me under. That’s how I became the first one-legged surfer in the world.”
His tale had Lucy gasping in awe, Louis’s ears pointing skywards with anticipation and I ….. What can I say, besides being nice, this guy had guts and he was my sister’s boyfriend.
“Let’s get it on folks, these things are all in the past. More important is what lies ahead of me: the chance to ride the waves with some old friends.”
He wanted to catch a plane that would get him to the beach south of L.A. where he had lost his leg and where in two days a lot of the local surfers would be holding their annual competition.
“You heard the man,” Louis said. „Let’s get it on.“ And with that he started the huge engine’s familiar rattling and rumbling which took us far from there.