Monday, February 21, 2011

Another Orange Slice

Somewhere between One-Hundred and Eighty and One-Hundred and Ninety-Two moons, Boy Evergreen and Boy Blackberry got their first jobs. Each would go to a golf course’s restaurant, with their shirts tucked in, pick up people’s dirty dishes, throw out their half-eaten hamburgers, wash pots and pans, sweep and mop floors, and take plastic bags full of their work out of cans, and then throw them into bigger more distant cans. Normally, they would have a great time doing all of this. Best of all, at the end of the night, someone would come over to the boys and give them their own green money.

The work at the golf course sometimes made the pinecones in the boys’ heads feel funny, but the green money would distract them from that funny feeling.

With their own green money, Boy Blackberry and Boy Evergreen began to make different choices on how they would spend it. Up until this point, their parents chose how their money was spent. And since they already had food, clothes, roofs to live below, water, and the occasional trip to the movie theater, the boys realized there was an uncharted world of things to buy.

Boy Evergreen bought gasoline for his white car, clothes, water that stings your skin but smells good to girls, music, and many other things. Boy Blackberry bought computer parts, cameras, gasoline for his parents’ car, Taco Bell, and funny green pinecones that sometimes smelled like sprite, and sometimes like a skunk’s scent. Somehow, Boy Blackberry learned that he could light these funny green pinecones on fire, breathe in their smoke, and then breathe it out. He liked to do this with other friends and also by himself. These green pinecones made Boy Blackberry laugh, think deep thoughts, and develop a taste for Mexican food that lasts unto this day.

One day at the new school that held inside all the kids from two towns, some people other than those Boy Blackberry and Boy Evergreen had known from church, but knew from the blue gown school, asked Boy Blackberry if he wanted to play his piece of twisted metal with three fingers in their after-school band. Boy Blackberry was thrilled by this invitation. He had always wanted to play hollow wood instruments with strings drawn across with Boy Evergreen, but he didn’t know where to put his fingers. Boy Blackberry started to play music with only three fingers with these new people.

Boy Blackberry became friends with these new people, as well as with the friends the new friends were already friends with. When they began play music together, Boy Blackberry once again heard the sound of playing with Legos. This filled his body with the color of Sunlight. Not only was Boy Blackberry hearing these sounds once more, but he was making them himself. Boy Blackberry had never imagined before that he could make the sound of playing with Legos, just as Boy Evergreen had done many, many moons before.

Around this time, Boy Blackberry and Boy Evergreen started to spend less and less time together. Regardless, whenever they would see each other, they would laugh and remember that they were friends, maybe best friends. Boy Evergreen went on driving his white car to distant Suns, and Boy Blackberry would breathe in the smoke of funny green pinecones and go sledding. Though sometimes, Boy Blackberry would be filled with blue feelings when he went sledding. He would remember that Boy Evergreen’s house was very warm, and the best place to be in the winter.

Boy Evergreen’s house had the best Legos, and a secret room where his wizard father would draw strings across hollow pieces of wood. Boy Evergreen really enjoyed sledding, breathing in green pinecone smoke, and eating Mexican food. But it was cold during the winter.