Sprout

lengthening shadows. A few ants gnawed at the memory of marrow in its seams.
    After nearly an hour of walking, my throat felt coated with dust, and I regretted abandoning that plum. I didn’t have enough saliva to spit, instead swallowed what seemed like a mouthful of grit.
    “So, uh”—I had to swallow again—“you never mention your mom.”
    “I got one.” Ty didn’t bother turning around.
    “Got,” I said, “or had?” Thinking of his doesn’t -not- didn’t of the day before.
    “Don’t know.” Ty kicked a tumbleweed off its stalk, sent it on its endless rolling way. “Don’t care.” His back was ramrod straight, and he forged ahead like a periscope rising out of sandy soil, purposeful, directed, the very opposite of the tumbleweed, which rolled lopsidedly heels over head down the hill.
    I finally managed to spit, a big brown lugie that landed on the ground with an audible splat, then immediately disappeared as the dry soil sucked up the moisture.
    “My mom died.”
    “Everyone knows that.”
    Something about his voice. All I could say was: “Huh.”
    “Everyone knows Sprout Bradford’s mom died of cancer,” Ty went on before I could think of something else to say, “and Sprout Bradford’s dad is a drunk, and Sprout Bradford dyes his hair green because he thinks he’s special, and Sprout Bradford gets drunk with Mrs. Miller because she don’t got no kids and he don’t got a mom cuz she died of cancer. Tell me something I don’t know.”
    Ty rattled off his list, but all I could hear was Ruthie’s voice. It’s not like everyone doesn’t know already.
    Ty whirled around. “Not all of us like to talk about it, okay? Not all of us like to share every last endless detail of our lives like we’re a character in a book, or—or a writer , Mr. State Essay Contest.”
    For a moment I just stared. Then:
    “You’d be surprised what you don’t know about me.”
    “Yeah, I bet I wouldn’t.”
    “People see this,” I said, running my fingers through my green hair, not smoothly like Ian Abernathy, but making it stick out in every direction like a tumbleweed. “They think they know me. But they don’t know me. They just know I have green hair, cuz that’s all I want them to know. But I have secrets. I have secrets ,” I repeated, as if repeating it might make it true.
    “Yeah? Then how come everyone knows you’re—”
    I felt the blood drain from my cheeks, felt the wind blow its grit against my pale face as though it would flay skin from bone. I waited for him to say it. Waited for him to say what he knew, then waited for him to tell me to get the hell off his land and never bother him again. But, well, it wasn’t his land, and all he said was:
    “It’s not so easy for some of us, Daniel. It’s not, Oh, my mom died, feel sorry for me. It’s, My mom took off cuz maybe she didn’t give a crap about her kids or maybe her husband punched her in the face one too many times, or maybe, you know, maybe she was just a whore, and not no Julia Roberts kind of whore neither, but the kind of whore who sneaks out in the middle of the night and climbs in the cabs of truckers who park their rigs down at the end of the driveway. Listen ,” he cut me off when I opened my mouth. “Don’t talk. Listen . Don’t try to make sense of it, cuz it’s not something you can make sense of. It’s not something you can tell . It’s just something you got to live with. She’s gone, okay. My mom’s gone, and my brothers’re gone, Holly’s dead and L.D.’s working full time and my sister went and married the first goombah who’d get her out of our house, but my jerkwad of a dad is still here, and so am I. Me , Daniel. Ty . I’m—still— here .”
    There was a moment then, just the wind blowing grit in our faces and some movement on the horizon I was hoping was a distant stand of trees or the smoke from a burning field and not an army of ostriches come to rip the guts from our bodies. The idea that we might be set upon at any time by a troop of eight-foot-tall, five-hundred-pound birds added a slightly surreal edge to what Ty was saying. A comic edge, I want to say, despite the desperation in his voice. Or, I don’t know, maybe it was just the smile that cracked his dust-ringed lips, the cough that barked out of his mouth.
    “Ow,” he said. He rubbed his sternum gently. “My ribs.”
    “Let’s see,” I said, and he unbuttoned his shirt, showed me how the bruise was spreading across his