Unexpected Dismounts by Nancy Rue Page A

Chief put his fingers in his mouth and gave the Desmond whistle. Desmond turned like a drill bit in the sand and lunged toward us. I should have that kind of influence on the boy.
    Or the man.

    I managed to stay vertical all the way home, and then spent the first ten minutes after Chief left getting the sand out of Desmond’s and my leathers, although Desmond had enough in the rolled-up cuffs of his jeans to make the whole kitchen floor look like Crescent Beach itself. That was helped along by the fact that he was all over the room. I hadn’t seen him that agitated since the last time I took away his helmet.
    “What’s going on?” I said.
    “Nothin’,” he said.
    And then proceeded to open the snack drawer, paw through the options, and shut it—which made me want to check him for fever. He went from there to the phone I’d had disconnected months before, listened like he was expecting a dial tone, and abandoned it for the basket of apples on the bistro table, fruit being a food group he’d never shown the slightest interest in, and didn’t now either. The whole time, his long fingers traveled arachnid-like across the counters, and his eyes glanced off of everything and landed on none of it.
    I considered telling him to light someplace, but wedging a word in was impossible, the way he was muttering under his breath. I folded my arms and leaned against the counter until he finally hiked himself up on one of the stools, lanky legs dangling, and said, “Here’s the deal, Al. I keep gettin’ this thing in here.” He jabbed at his temple. “It’s tellin’ me this ain’t gon’ work out, you adoptin’ me.”
    “Des—”
    “It makes me wanna use the D-word and the S-word, which I ain’t gonna do ’cause I done give that up. Also the B-word—”
    “Got it—”
    “But I got to just chill, ’cause it is gon’ happen. I got you and Mr. Chief.” He stopped again to flash me a grin and tapped his palm, “and I think I got that Liz lady right here.”
    I opened my mouth to say, “Undoubtedly,” but I wasn’t quick enough.
    “I gotta tell you somethin’, Big Al,” Desmond went on, eyes wise.
    “What?” I said.
    “You a real good listener.”
    He held out his fist to bump mine and then crossed the kitchen with a new lease on the snack drawer.
    For a good listener, I didn’t feel all that relieved at what he’d just talked himself into.

CHAPTER THREE
    When Desmond was in bed, I retreated to my second-best place to let God in. The red chair-and-a-half in the living room had been the site of Nudges and whispers in the past, so I curled up there with my Bible and an afghan and tried to close the gap that seemed to be widening between God and my growing list of questions. Zelda. All of Sacrament House, for that matter. Chief. Now Desmond, who apparently had a gap of his own that he was trying to fill by drawing threatening creatures with eye patches and ramming around the kitchen having conversations with himself.
    But at first, I just stared at the wall of Desmond art that now hung above the couch. The house on Palm Row was in its third evolution of decor, at least in my lifetime. Who knew what had hung on these walls from the 1800s until my parents bought it before I was born? Since then, it had gone from my mother’s dreadful reproduction of a golden age that never existed, to the bright, overstuffed comfort zone Sylvia had transformed it into when they left it to her. Its current look was Essential Big Al and Desmond.
    His drawings in the bright-colored frames that HOG friend Stan had made for us. My favorite, the one that sort of looked like Chief but was Desmond’s vision of God.
    A red and black Harley-Davidson throw Chief had given Desmond, which the boy insisted needed to be spread on the green striped chair.
    Plants Jasmine was growing for me, in pots Sherry made in the class her NA sponsor took her to weekly, placed in front of the long windows facing Palm Row and the side of Owen’s