The cacophony of voices pushing and
shoving, everyone seemed to be taller

than I was and they all seemed to know
what to do. The teacher showed impatience

with my tiny body, frozen in fear by the
giant circular stone apparatus where

twenty children washed their hands. It was
clear that she liked the kids whose last

names were Johnson and whose parents
owned farms on Highway 15. They all went

to the Methodist Church in Town. I wished
I was blonde with a raspy voice like Doreen.

I showed my plaid cotton tennis shoes and
sang “Old **** Tucker” while dancing my

best country jig for show-and-tell. This was
when I learned that it was “Dan Tucker”

and that “****” was a bad word. My daddy
said ****, and he wore work boots with

stiff golden laces that crisscrossed onto
metal fasteners twelve inches up his calves.

The boots kept time when he played guitar;
his eyes and lips smiling and laughing over

some absurd thought he had the temerity
to speak out loud. Daddy was the most

interesting person I knew. He quit school
after 8th grade, but understood humanity

more than most. He wore cowboy boots
when he played the fiddle, and if he said

****, then it must be okay. I still felt good
about singing my song and proud of myself

for having mustered up the courage. I did
not have fancy toys or artifacts from family

vacations like the other kids. I had never
heard kids call each other names before

I made the acquaintance of the school
playground. It was strange how they

ganged up on the boy they said was hyper
and had ***** eyes. I did not know what

either of those things meant, but I knew it
made him sad and made me afraid to talk

to him. They said I looked like a ghost, I
did not know if that was good or bad.

Doreen was not afraid of the ball, and that
made her okay. My Mom decided to pick a

friend for me, but I did not like Linda. She
did not know how to play with dolls; she

did not make up stories about their lives
or pretend to be their mommy, she just

looked at them. Linda was tedious. The
boy with ***** eyes made more sense

to me. He lived in the yellow house that
had a dog who would bite and scare

the nice people away. I finally talked to
him in 6th grade on the hour long bus rides

home. Once, an older boy named John
snapped a rubber band on his eye over

and over until it swelled completely shut,
my friend just sat and took it until the

bus driver intervened. John’s older brother
played with guns, and John was scared of

him, and older brother was scared of father.
We hated when the brothers rode the bus.

I decided that most boys were mean and
that to be a boy must be terrifying. One

year, ***** eyes almost drowned during
gym class, the other kids said he tried to

**** himself. They thought it was funny.
Girls will never know the horrors of the

8th grade boy’s locker room. When he
was 15 he crossed in front of a semi on

his moped, they found his foot half a mile
away from his body.  I wonder if the kids

thought that was funny too. I was too
afraid of my emotions to go to the funeral.

Ghost to ***** Eyes: I am sorry that they
hurt you Vincent, and sorry that I am

scared to see your innocence reduced
to road **** in a coffin.