All the People Strange and Kind

Dave’s things were on the lawn. Everyone could see them. The six of us standing there, any neighbors who happened to pass. People wouldn’t look, or sometimes they’d sneak a glance and Badieu would glare and their gaze would skitter away like a scolded dog.

There was a lot of baseball stuff. Gloves, trophies. The little ones for participation, and a larger cup for MVP. His sister’s stuff was mostly clothes, some rolled posters. At least they rolled the posters. A lot of stuff, the kitchen things, looked like they’d been flung. Like whoever was doing the evicting was getting tired, or maybe their arms hurt, or maybe they were pissed these people had so much stuff and couldn’t find the rent.

But people have too many things, almost everyone, unless you’re rich enough to pare down or desperately poor. Not regular working poor, like Dave and his mom and sister.

The bathroom stuff bummed me out the most. Their toothbrushes in the grass and the generic bottles of shampoo. Curlers and his sister’s tampons. His sister was at work and his mom was hiding out. She’d told Dave, get your friends, clean this place up. I think she couldn’t bear it.

I was fourteen, like Dave, like everyone but Badieu who was eighteen and drove the truck. We’d painted it blue and gray for the school colors and then painted the whole thing over black. I wondered if Dave was embarrassed by the baseball trophies now, given who he was. Or if he was more embarrassed to be evicted. A clot of paperbacks lay curling and buckled in the damp grass. The McCaffrey dragon books, Star Wars. I wanted to page through, but that felt wrong.

“Loading,” said Badieu.

Everything wasn’t going to fit. They’d need to make several trips between here and the grandmother’s house. Someone, Miguel I think, brought a gallon of iced tea, and people passed it around, taking swigs. We were a crew. Sure, we were usually building and breaking down sets in the armory, that empty space where we put on plays. I was one of the actors, but I could help fill the pickup.

“Big things first,” said Badieu.

Dave had been kicked out twice. This time made three. They always went to his grandmother’s, though they never stayed. I tried to find something heavy to carry, just to show I could, but the guys had the furniture, so I went for the books. Even though it was a bad time, I wanted to get closer to Dave. If these were his books, we’d have something to talk about. I picked up Dragon’s Kin.

“Fucking dickheads!” He snatched the book from my hands. The water damage was dark now, but later it’d be yellow. It made the pages brittle. Sometimes they even broke.

“I could lend you mine.”

He looked at me for a moment like he wasn’t sure who I was. The actors didn't usually hang out with the techies. I gathered a few of the books, and Dave gave me back the ruined one. “I’ll put them in the truck,” I said.

Someone put the trophies in. Dave smoked one of Badieu’s cigarettes. Badieu told us all not to smoke, but he smoked and the thing wasn’t so much to smoke as it was to bum cigarettes. Or hand them out. Easier to carry around than iced tea, and it bonded you. Like, can I bum a cigarette? Or even, can I share a smoke?

You’d take turns puffing and there was no way to be closer out in the chill air, but I was still putting things in the truck, just the medium-sized things, and kind of watching Dave, who was standing to the side like these weren’t his things at all.

Someone made a run to the grocery store and came back with boxes. Del Monte banana and lettuce boxes with air holes. Badieu was making the first run to the grandmother’s, and the rest of us filled the boxes while Dave smoked. He didn’t want to touch the stuff. I could feel it. But he was proud, too. We were there. His mother and sister didn’t have anyone who would show up like this, with a truck and grocery store boxes, with six pairs of hands. This was bigger than bumming a smoke. It was huge, how it changed you, made you part of everything.