The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall from Trespass into Grace by Martin Moran

imagined him reaching toward me as I handed it over. I could see his green eyes lit with gratitude, his hand tousling my hair. I could hear his warmest voice saying: “Thanks, kiddo.”
    I zipped up my jacket and stepped outside. There was a frail mist over the meadow. The sun hadn’t appeared but was sending the idea of light, blue and unreal. Instead of standing in an actual place, in real time, it seemed as though I’d entered into a hallucination of a Saturday morning somewhere. The air was mountain-immaculate and rushed, frigid, into my lungs. I sank to the porch to tie my boots.
    Patches of old snow dotted the clearing and glowed in the dim light. George was kicking at one, sending shaves of muddy ice every which way.
    “My fingers are freezing,” he muttered. I saw he was missing a glove.
    Bob or whoever or whatever he might be, for at that moment he was registering as some strange mammal in Levis and red jacket, was bent over the tractor working with a wrench, yanking at wires. Occasionally he—it—cupped a hand to his mouth to blow on fingers.
    “The fucking thing won’t start,” George informed me, rolling his eyes.
    I fiddled with my boots and kept glancing toward the man in the jeans on the tractor, wondering when, if, he’d look my way. Wondering if his eyes would tell me that I was actual, there, or if this was a dream and I was as unreal to him as he was to me. I pulled at my red laces until I had two perfect bows.
    “Let’s just walk to the dining hall,” George growled.
    “Nah . . . this should do it,” declared the figure in the faded jeans. He smiled—
why this grin?
—as he tossed his wrench into a toolbox. “All fixed.” There was a clatter of metal as the wrench landed, a pealing clank across the valley, and just then, almost as if Bob planned it, cued it; a slice of light peeked over Twin Sisters—the peaks to our east. The meadow caught fire and everything, except for the pointed shadows of the conifer trees, turned golden. The rays were like trumpets, pure and glad. Glad, I thought, because the day was new and didn’t yet know. Once the sun climbed high enough to see, surely there’d be thunder.
    Bob jumped into the driver’s seat, the only seat, and, after a few tries, the engine came to life.
    “C’mon, fellas.”
    I stood unsteadily and took one step toward the tractor. The smell of diesel cut across the thin air. Acrid. A wave of nausea. I stopped like a stone, feet stuck in the dirt, fear gripping my ribs.
    “Earth to Martian,” said George. I looked into his pink, pudgy face, wondering what he could know of any of this. He’d never let himself be the girl.
    “Come on,” said the guy on the tractor.
    There was an empty, crumpled can of Coke near my foot.
His trash
. My eyes were stuck on the red and white, on the twisted cursive of
Coca-Cola
. It reminded me of the world: McDonald’s—Saturday with dad, cheeseburgers and grass clippings in the back of the Plymouth. Field Day, when Father Jack provided soda pop. I could still run the three-legged with Mark Groshek . . . couldn’t I?
    “Hey, are you coming?”
    My feet obeyed, jumped onto the axle of the tractor and found balance next to George. I stood not five inches behind our counselor, staring at the frayed rubber band that dug its way around the back of his skull. This, God knows why, remains the sharpest image from the fog of that morning: standing on the red tractor, staring at the back of his head. At strands of his fine, filthy hair tangled into the band, which was attached over his ears, holding his nerdy glasses in place. Hair that trembled on account of the engine. I studied his bald patch, the flaky skin on the crown of his head, as if I could see inside, find the answer to the question repeating in my own brain:
Who is he? Who is he?
    His long legs worked the pedals, his right arm struggled with the gearshift as George and I perched between the giant tires. My eyes drifted to the bulging black tread,