My cousin has recently begun to read the stories I write on this blog. He is a few years younger than me. Craig, you will like this one.
I spent a lot of time during my youth on his farm. My Uncle Carlor (his father) ran one of the largest bamboo businesses in America. My Aunt Ester (his mother) made the best drop biscuits I have ever sopped in Yellow Label. When we were kids, my older cousin, Paul and I (he lived on the adjacent farm), tortured my younger cousin Craig to no end. We shot at him with fireworks and told him to do things we knew would get him in trouble. He endured pranks and stupid comments from us as if we had an elevated view of the world that he couldn’t possibly know (we did not, but that was irrelevant). Often, our efforts at causing him grief were thinly veiled, yet he took it in stoic stride. Then one Christmas, Craig got a go-cart. Revenge was swift.
The three of us drove that go-cart up and down the dirt roads around Babbie, Alabama until we had burned up enough of our own energy and my uncle’s gas to leave a carbon footprint the size of Pensacola at a time when no one even knew what a carbon footprint was. Craig practically lived in the little seat between the metal roll-bar. He showed a special talent for maneuvering that rigid machine. He could fly down the road, trailing a V of dust and execute a 90º turn that would put most necks in a brace. Naturally, I wanted to take a ride with him since my own go-carting skills were not as polished. Maybe pick up a few pointers.
This was the moment he had been waiting for.
Years of insults funneled down to this ride. I sat down next to him and he yelled, “Hold on!”
That was my general intent. He gunned the accelerator down a straight stretch of road I had seen him maneuver like Dale Earnhardt hundreds of time. He knew every dip and rock in the road. I didn’t notice the slight jerk he gave the steering wheel when he reached top speed – perhaps because I was already in the air next to the go-cart, upside down.
I looked over wondering how I was keeping pace with the tiny vehicle while being technically out of the vehicle. I learned more physics at that moment than in any class.
An object in motion tends to stay in motion until acted upon by another object. Got it. A quick primer in gravity came next. The last thing I saw before the red, Alabama clay was a smile on his face. I saw it even though I was spinning. There is probably a rule in physics about spinning but by that point, pain had replaced learning in today’s lesson.
I hit the road like a mackerel, flopping and slapping the rocks and dirt with body parts that had never slapped anything before. He drove on, looking back at me like an armadillo on its way to being roadkill. I rolled around on the ground feeling around to see if everything was still in place. Then I heard the Briggs & Stratton grumbling back toward me.
Later he said he was returning to see if I was okay. I saw him above the steering wheel and was about to wave when when the go-cart hit me broadsided. I was a speed bump in jeans. I am not so sure concern for my welfare was in his thoughts as the knobby tires mounted me and curled me under the frame of the go-cart like rolling dough. I lay face down in the dirt, stunned. He turned around again and came back. This time he slid to a stop next to my head so I would know with absolute certainty that he was capable of squishing my head like a melon on the next pass if he so wished.
“Hey, you okay?” he yelled above the garbled engine. “I figured you wanted off and jumped. Hellava thing. You were flying, you know that?”
He feigned compassion. I was hurting too bad to feign anything except dirty pain.
“Why did you run over me?” I said.
I lay cheek to earth, my mouth full of dirt. I coughed a tiny plume of plaintive dust.
“Sorry about that,” he said patting the side of the idling cart. “These things can be tricky sometimes.”
Uh huh.
I can’t remember picking on Craig after that episode. When Paul would suggest doing something that might cause Craign grief, I ignored it. I don’t know what he eventually did to my older cousin to balance the sheet with him, but for me, getting run over was all it took.
He still lives on the same farm. He walks the old places we used to play every day. The last time I mentioned the co-cart a year or so ago, a slight smile creased his face.
“You remember that, do you?” he said, wryly.
Yes I do.
