[Short Story]

In the crowded school bus, one butt cheek hanging over the aisle, I focussed on the regularly paced beads of sweat rolling  from my armpits down my sides. Three in a seat designed for two. I pressed one foot firmly into floor of the swaying bus to prevent being thrust across the aisle against Olga’s body. If my friends saw me touch her, they would tease me for the rest of my life.

After school I did not want to be in my room.

Or in the house. Inside is her kingdom. Hers. Even my room.

I rode my bike through our new subdivision. Twelve houses, most with pools, far south of Miami, surrounded by mango groves and built on cleared pine and palmetto forest.  Other than a few farmhouses spread among the mango groves, there were no other buildings for miles but for a single exception. Kevin King’s family house. Well, not quite a house, but a little better than a shack. Kevin was in the twelfth grade, two years above me. I liked walking part way home from our bus stop with him. He would never tease me. It took me six months until I got used to his smell. His family had no running water. On the gravel road near Kevin’s house, I pedalled harder. Pebbles sprayed from under my fat tire. I looked through the pine scrub at the King shack. Smoke billowed out the chimney. Once I told Kevin it must be really cool to have a wood cooking stove just like the pioneers.

On the way home after school, the bus approached our stop. Olga jumped out of her seat before the bus even stopped, which was against the rules. Kevin and my friends, Alan and Pat got off the bus. I waited in the aisle behind Olga. She looked through her purple briefcase. It was sweltering hot and some students started yelling for Olga to get off the bus and go back to where she came from which would have been Russia, except her professor dad might be arrested if they went back.

When the bus pulled away leaving us on the sidewalk, Olga handed me a card. It was an invitation to her Halloween Party. She asked me to come to her house to help her plan her party. From the corner Pat and Alan stared at us. I told her I had to go home.

At home I rushed through an Algebra assignment. My mother came into my room and told me someone who smelled disgusting was at the door for me. Kevin had never come to my house and I had never gone to his. My mother acted so sweet to him.

We rode our bikes on the gravel road past his house. Kevin pedalled standing. His bike was for an eight-year-old. It had black streamers flowing from the handlebar grips and a king of clubs playing card clicking in the spokes. We had the whole road to ourselves. Cars took the paved road out of our little subdivision.

On one side of us as far as we could see was a grass field. Not like a football field, but a maze of thick bladed grass that towered over our heads. I followed Kevin along a narrow trail. Several trails converged on a clearing. Parked there were two 15-foot-long surface-to-air missiles on their launch trailers aimed upwards at a slight angle above the horizon. No guards. No fences. We looked for wires or control stations for the missiles. Nothing. Just missiles on their launch pads. We climbed the missiles on hands and knees, rode them like horses, and ran up their length balancing carefully. Kevin asked me to promise not to tell anyone about the missiles. 

Late that night I lied awake thinking about the missiles. I also thought about Olga. I felt bad that I hadn’t accepted her offer to help with her Halloween party, but if I had helped her, I never would have seen the missiles. I decided to make it up to her by inviting her to climb on the missiles with me.

On the bus on the way to school I handed Olga a note across the aisle:

Dear Olga,

I found this really neat place. Would you please accompany me on your bicycle after school today?

Yours truly,

D.

Olga slid my note in a small side pocket of her briefcase, smiled, leaned across the aisle very close to me, and whispered, “Yes.”

I couldn’t concentrate during English class. I needed a plan to convince Kevin to allow Olga on the missiles. The teacher asked me to identify the subject of the sentence: “To your own self be true.” I knew the answer. The subject is understood. It is the unwritten you, I told the teacher. Our English teacher was the only teacher following the curriculum this week. The other teachers talked about the missiles in Cuba all the time, but I didn’t really listen because I knew it wouldn’t be on the test. Then it struck me: Kevin might accept the chance to swim in our pool in exchange for his agreement to allow Olga on our missiles.

But then Kevin saved my life. In line to get on the bus, he told me he had chores after school and we couldn’t go “you know where.” I knew right away I had to get Olga to keep our secret about the missiles which she agreed to later that day on the gravel road just as we approached Kevin’s house. I saw him between palmettos sawing a log. He looked up. I slowed my bike and positioned myself to shield Olga from his view. We rode close together. I fell slightly behind her to keep the illusion for Kevin that we were just one bike. I liked the curve of her smooth calves half-covered by her black and white vertically striped pedal pushers. On her halter top, cut from the same cloth, the stripes ran horizontally.

We pedalled single file under the towering grasses along the winding path. After every turn, I looked back at her. Once I crashed into a clump of grasses and had to dive off my bike. She didn’t laugh like my friends Alan and Pat would have.

We reached the clearing and leaned our bikes against one of the huge tires on missile launch trailer. The previous day with Kevin, I had practiced running towards the missile, leaping onto the launchpad frame, bouncing off the oversized tire, and landing on the missile. I fell off a thousand times before I found the trick. Let the momentum of your run carry you to the top, which I was able to do for Olga on my first attempt.

Olga and I stood on the launch frame on opposite sides of the missile. She pulled both my hands, and, in a flash, swung one leg over the missile. She took ballet classes four times a week and the benefits were obvious. In Russia, she studied with the world’s greatest ballerina. She straddled the missile and said, “Let’s go up to the tip. Stay close behind me. I’m afraid I might slide back down.”

I crawled slowly behind her up the angled rocket. I smelled the suntan lotion on her calves. It was strange that there were no mosquitoes. No insects at all. Shadows from the grass were just beginning to reach the missile. Near the top, Olga swung  one leg forward over the missile and the other leg back. She faced me. She looked into my eyes and asked. “Have you ever kissed anyone?”

“How do you define anyone?”

She leaned forward. Her eyes were closed. We kissed for only a fraction of a second because an electric charge jolted me away.  Varying levels of acidity on our braces had generated an electric charge. Or perhaps the inner workings of the rocket produced a magnetic field. Olga’s halter-top, black and white stripes pulsated. The wind picked up and swirled giant shadows of grass across the missile, the ground below, and on Olga. I couldn’t tell which way was up. I slid sideways and fell.

From the ground I watched Olga run down length of the missile, glance her pointed foot off the launchpad tire, and leap to the ground near me.

We walked our bikes along the winding path.  It was dark when we reached the gravel road.  Car lights beamed in our eyes. The car pulled over just past us. A man rushed out of the car and ran towards. He shouted at Olga in Russian.

Out of the side of her mouth, she whispered, “It’s my father.” Then she shouted back to him in Russian. 

Olga walked her bike towards the car continuing to speak in Russian. Her father opened the trunk and put her bike in. The trunk wouldn’t quite close. 

“I’m going to leave now with my father. We’re not in trouble. He’s happy we found the missiles.”

In the morning, Olga wasn’t at the bus stop. She wasn’t in school.

On Saturday morning, Kevin knocked on my door. I told my mother I wouldn’t be home for lunch. I didn’t mention why. Kevin and I would have the whole day to play on the missiles.

Riding on the gravel road, I noticed the burlap sack swinging on his bicycle crossbar. “Tools,” he said, “to take the you-know-what apart.”

But when we arrived, an area of the grass had been plowed. A dozen camouflage tents stood in two rows just past the missiles. A barbed wire fence encircled the encampment, and two guards with automatic rifles waited at the gate. We started to ride past them.

“Where do you guys think you’re going?”

“To play on the missiles,” I answered.

I don’t remember what he said, but we never saw the missiles again.

I hadn’t seen Olga for a few weeks, but then one morning at the bus stop I’m going over and over a poem in my head. It would be my turn to recite my original poem in English class. I was experimenting in form too. I combined three Haikus into a limerick.

Olga pulls up in a new car. A red, convertible Mustang. She says, get in.

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David Secunda 2022