"Gardening"

So here we are, my mom, my pop, my kid brother and me, thirteen, pullin' weeds and digging holes. I was thrilled. It was a windy spring afternoon towards the end of May. I'm on my hands and knees pulling prickers and dandelions and becoming quite close with bugs of all sorts when Mom finally says, "That's enough, kids-- you did a good job." I jump up and throw that last handful of hated roots into the grocery bag.

I hastened inside to wash up. When I came back out, Mom was leaning over a shrub, apparently sizing it up.

"Should I cut a couple of inches off the top?" She asked, to me I assumed, as she touched the leaves.

"Sure. Heck, while you're at it, give it a mo-hawk." I joked. "They're in this year, ya know." She looked up at me and frowned.

"Funny, darling." And she concentrated again on the hedge.

"I'm gonna go for a bike ride, kay?" I said, heading for the garage.

"It's too windy," she announced. Windy? What did that matter?

"I'll be fine." She looked up and gave me another one of her puckered frowns.

"Don't go too far, then." And I was off, riding up the remaining fifty feet of the hill we lived on. Going up was a pain in the rear, but speeding down was always a rush.

I pumped the blue 12-speed my parents got me free from American TV by buying a couch. What a deal. I can just hear that TV Lenny guy now screaming in his commercials: "Get a bike, get a bike, get a bike!" I always feel like running him over with his stupid bike every time I hear his obnoxious voice.

I made it to the top, and rested my butt back on the seat, preparing myself for the journey down. I smiled with anticipation.

And down I went, watching the sidewalk rapidly go by underneath me. Mom always told me to ride on the sidewalk because the street was much too dangerous.

Then I saw it, well, I think I saw it... the hole-- a big chunk taken out of the sidewalk at the bottom of the hill. There was nothing I could do. I'm sure I tried to swerve. Perhaps it was too windy for me to swerve. From here on, I rely mostly on a series of hazy illusions.

I don't know how long I was lying there unconscious, but by luck, the people whose house I fell in front of came back home from shopping-- or wherever it is that people who live at bottom of hills go. They saw me lying there and I must have told them my name somehow, for they called my parents, and my parents, in turn, came bounding down the hill. Now that I wish I could have seen!

What I do remember clearly, though, was Dad's heavy rhythmic breathing as he hoofed me back up that hill in his arms. I'm pretty sure that I felt sorry for him, but then again, who knows.

We got into the station wagon, me all spread out in the back, with Mom trying not to let me fall asleep cuz of what she heard once on TV. We drove over to my brother's friend's house where he was playing, to get him, then took off for the emergency room.

The next thing I remember is feeling a tremendous pain in my left arm as the doctors poked and prodded at me and molded me like bad art as they took x-rays.

I also remember the awful feeling that encompassed me as they wheeled me here and there and all over the danged hospital it seemed, on a stretcher. I just knew I was going to puke... don't know if I did or not because I blacked out again.

Finally they let us go. I remember constantly waking up in the middle of the night, having to get sick. Thank God for the bucket Mom had the sense to put next to my bed.

In the morning I noticed my arm was all bandaged up and oh, it throbbed hellishly! I slowly stood up wondering what was going on, when I noticed my face in the mirror. My mouth fell open. There were cuts and scratches covering my face, mostly on my forehead. "Holy crap... what happened to me?" The scene then came back-- that awful gaping cavity in the sidewalk stampeding up on me.

"I fell," I said to myself. Oh, brilliant deduction, I thought, and rolled my eyes. That was a mistake, for my headache came rushing back to me.

"Mom!"

She came running into the room and began fussing over me.

"Lie back down. You shouldn't be up..." she rambled on. I cooperated as she sat me back down on the bed.

"What a day it musta been , huh?" I asked. And once again came that familiar frown. I decided not to say another word.

I felt sleep creeping up on me again, and I let it take me.