[Short Fiction] "The Prince Of Kings Island"
Short Story #3 in JB Minton's Project Series "WIGGER: Stories of the 1990s"
This full audio narration is read by the author.
Wigger talks about his grandmother again to the only person who listens to him. Jimmy Prince steers his truck down Mason Montgomery Road in West Chester, Ohio. It’s a beautiful day, but it will be hot on the pavement at Kings Island. The music is bumping from the 12” woofers, the 8” tweeters, and the bazooka bass tube under the seat of the truck. Jimmy is trying to enjoy the ride, but Wigger won’t shut up about his memaw. “She said sensitive people are born suffering, and they never stop.” Jimmy doesn’t respond, just listens and casually gulps from a pocket flask he stole from his father’s closet earlier this school year. The liquor is his dad’s, too. His dad hasn’t missed the flask or the booze because liquor never runs out in the Prince household and because Jimmy’s dad drinks out of the bottle, and the bottles are stacked in the garage until there’s enough to haul them away to the family-owned junkyard. There’s a machine down there in the Prince junkyard that burns hot enough to turn glass into sand, erasing objects like they never existed.
Jimmy grows tired of Wigger’s blather. He enjoys the skinny kid’s company, but Wigger talks about deep things in simple ways that annoy Jimmy, like they are things he should know already, but it’s the first time he’s hearing them. Jimmy doesn’t want to think about deep things right now. His mind is on Kings Island pussy, one of the best things about summer vacation as a teenager in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1991. Maybe Wigger was a little retarded. Jimmy didn’t know, but the immediate remedy lay in finding a song with good bass and interrupting Wigger to say, “Check this shit out. Listen to this bass line.” Wigger loved being moved by the bass under the seat when it got to rolling and tumbling.
As they drive east into Mason, toward Kings Island, DJ Magic Mike’s Vicious Bass fills the truck cabin and the perimeter beyond. When they stop at the intersection of Tylersville and Western Row, the bass from inside Jimmy’s truck makes the pedestrian warning sign rattle on the nearest light pole.
The boys pull into a United Dairy Farmers convenience store. “Gotta fill up the tank,” Jimmy said. He digs in his back pocket for the wallet and fingers out a five. He hands it to Wigger and says two nouns. “Snacks drinks.” Wigger sets off on his mission and enters the modern institution of fuel to the clang of a bell hanging above the doors. He nearly trips over a mop handle sticking out of a bucket with contents that sting his eyes and claw at his throat.
“Watch out, kid!” A pretty fat lady yells at him while remaining posed in a leaned-back position against the pay counter. She smokes a Basic cigarette and ashes in the short trash can at her feet. Alan Jackson’s “Midnight In Montgomery” plays from the portable cassette radio on the counter next to her, with the name GABBY! bedazzled in sparkling stars on the left tape deck of the machine. Wigger sees all of this but says nothing, noting how much his real father loves that song. He played that cassette over and over during board games last summer in the Florida heat. A midnight ride. Eerie. Romantic. Outlaw shit.
Wigger walks to the snacks first. Looking back at the shrew, he notes the mountain of assorted cigarette cartons sprawled on the counter like an accident that already happened in this strange, dirty, but somehow also antiseptic place. The cashier stubs the cigarette out on her shoe, tosses the butt in the trash can, and kicks it to the corner behind the register. She takes up stuffing the cigarette packets from the carton into the clear, spring-loaded shelves sitting above the register like dusty munitions on a naval transport that’s never seen battle.
Waffling between salt and sugar, Wigger weighs his options. He fills his hands while the cashier watches him with disinterested suspicion. She’s seen many thieves in her time, and more than a few lovers, but she’s let most of them go. She still nails the creeps and disrespectfuls; and the jury is out on Wigger if she catches him stealing. He could be a little creep, but he seems only annoying in a wannabe way with his baggy, shuffling clothes hanging on a pin-prick frame. She’d think he was black if it wasn’t for his pale white face. What is it with these little suburban white kids suddenly wanting to seem poor and black? Was there a worse thing to wannabe in America?, she thinks. She watched him move around the small space in the convex mirror up in the corner of the store, passing by the sugar sodas. She had him pegged for a mountain dew kid, but he clinked out two glass bottles of wild cherry clearly canadians. She understands enough about this little kid to abate her minimum wage curiosity. Now, she just wanted to see him gone.
She doesn’t look at Wigger while ringing up his order, but she notes he dropped a small bag of paid for Planter’s Peanuts when he fumbled out the exit door, which pushed back so hard against his little frame that it chattered his teeth and caused the snacks to dislodge from his grip while his awareness was preoccupied by embarrassment. Wigger misses some things he shouldn’t.
After the door lodges back into frame and the bell is silent, the big and pretty cashier walks patiently around the counter, picks up the peanuts, opens the bag, and starts eating, while casually watching the fight about to happen over at pump one, right where that little wigger kid was walking toward.
While Wigger was being surveilled by the cashier, Jimmy was about to brawl with a car of black kids who were parked on the opposite side of the pump. The argument started because the rap music Jimmy was playing in his monster truck sounded like an amphitheater next to the tinny, cheap stereo in the black kid’s ford escort. The two young men in the front seat were seventeen-year-old cousins, and their sisters, younger by one and two years, were in the backseat watching the scene unfold on the other side of their unlocked car doors with rolled-down windows.
“Want you turn that shit down, homie?” The black kid couldn’t stay quiet over his outrage that this country ass white boy had the nerve to play Eric B. and Rakim’s “Follow The Leader” and have it sound so good and loud coming out of this shiny, new country ass truck sitting higher than a ford escort. The passenger leans down and stirs around under the seats of the escort. Jimmy, in his head, did a math equation of violence and waited to apply the formula because suckers move first.
To his credit, Jimmy Prince ignored the kid in the beginning, but the kid keeps talking shit, mistaking Jimmy’s silence for weakness. In the city streets, silence is weakness. But in the country, silence means waiting for the right moment to attack. Where these kids are gassing up the cars right now is a place in between those worlds of experience. The kid keeps running his mouth as Jimmy nozzles the gas gun back into the pump’s cradle. Wigger is on his way back to the truck, and the cashier is still watching the scene from inside the store. She empties the rest of Wigger’s peanuts into her mouth and crumples up the wrapper, but only holds it because she can’t take her eyes off what is happening outside the front window. I can’t believe I get paid to watch crazy shit like this happen every day. This is her favorite show, strangers fighting over nothing, because this is a place they all have to come to and figure out how to live together for a few minutes of shared reality every day. What nobody realizes, at this moment, is that this is Jimmy Prince’s show, but he hasn’t hit the play button yet.
Jimmy opens up the truck door and steps up on the custom foot rail he installed with his little brother holding the bolts in place while their dad sat in a waffle lawn chair, laughing and flicking lit cigarette butts to try and break Jimmy’s concentration. Jimmy reaches behind the driver’s seat and pulls out a nearly empty glass bottle of gatorade. He uncaps it and pours it out while walking around the pump. He moves here like he moves on the football field, toward a place in space with a goal that he will make happen or die trying. He smashes the bottle on the escort’s bumper, and the glass explodes around the back left tire. The girls scream and the kid’s cousin opens the door and gets out while staying low to the ground, because the wise bow down when shit pops off. Get low and stay alive longer when the weapons come out. Both city and country rough kids know this lesson, but everyone here except James Prince is too late to respond and Jimmy is already at the kid, holding the broken bottle dangerously close to his neck, but still far enough away to maintain control through terror, which is the Prince family method of owning a tight situation. Jimmy learned the effectiveness of this technique early in life because he was a victim long before he started working to become the choice. And now it is time to give a little back. Time to choose.
Wisely, the kid isn’t fighting back, and he doesn’t say a word. Jimmy teaches a lesson here, also without saying a word. After a tense forty-five seconds of Jimmy and this bug-eyed black kid staring at each other in silence with a jagged-edged convenience store weapon of death between them, Jimmy watches the rage and terror drain from the kid’s eyeballs, and the kid goes limp with resignation. He’s ready for it, and Jimmy feels a shift in the weight of his opponent soul’s composure. This fight is no longer fun, and this soul is no longer an opponent. So Jimmy lightens up his grip and takes the bottleneck away. They stare at each other like two strangers who just ended a hot and sweaty dance together. Jimmy releases the kid by shoving him back with minimal force that is not unkind, the kind of push that says, “Now you know where you are and who runs this part of the world.”
It would have ended there if the cousin had stood up from where he was crouched down and shown he wasn’t a threat. But Wigger sees the kid and thinks he’s lunging for Jimmy, so he drops the snacks and bottles to get out the flea market stun gun Jimmy gave him to hold in case they needed it today. The stunner was in the front pouch pocket of the baja shirt Jimmy also gave Wigger to wear like a pack mule. Jimmy’s chapstick is in there as well as five dollars of pocket change for the games.
By the time Wigger gets the stun gun in his hand, Jimmy has already dealt with the situation. Unfortunately, Wigger’s baggy jeans were already sliding down off his ass when he accidentally stuns himself in the stomach, through the baja shirt. The pants fall, taking his underwear and now this skinny little boob was on the ground, stunned with his dick out. Wigger’s big flaccid dick and long balls are exposed to the gas station and the cashier started choking from laughing so hard. The baggy pants balloon around his ankles from the blowing wind, and everyone is laughing, even Jimmy. One of the girls looks down at this oddity of miniature (but also massive) humanity, and elbows the other girl, then puts her first fingers up together in an estimated measuring of length. They nod, affirmatively, each laughing and leaning out further to get a better look. Roller coasters suddenly seem like faraway entertainment compared to this scene.
Jimmy holds up both palms in resignation at the cousin, letting him know the danger has passed. He claps the driver kid lightly on the back twice, then gently pushes him forward again; it is time to move on. Jimmy is still laughing, walking toward Wigger as the escort drives off, wheels squealing, passing feet from Wigger’s aching head. Wigger stirs to the recognition that his thighs and balls are breezy. Jimmy helps him up, and Wigger quickly pulls his pants up. Jimmy took off his belt and handed it to his companion. Matter-of-factly, Jimmy says, “Christ, Bud, you need to get pants that fit you.”
He smiles at Wigger, who smiles back, adjusts the belt, and flinches at its constraint. “You can’t keep pulling your dick out to get out of fighting, little man. Eventually, you’re going to have to throw a punch or something.” They both laugh, but Wigger doesn’t explain to his big friend that he stunned himself trying to save him. It is too pathetic to admit the failure to show up for Jimmy when he needed him most.
“Come on, bud. Let’s ride a roller coaster.” Wigger protests and reaches down to start gathering the snacks, but Jimmy cuts it by saying, “Fuck that shit. Leave it for fat Nancy to clean up.” The pump speaks in the big lady’s compressed voice. “I fucking heard that, Jimmy Prince. You little shit. And I’m going to tell Kathleen what you said about her best friend.” Jimmy holds a middle finger up in the air, aimed at the cashier’s window, while they both climb back up into the truck. Wigger hands Jimmy the clearly canadian that didn’t break, and he opens it, takes a long swig, and passes it back to Wigger, telling him to drink the rest. They pull out of the convenience store, rolling slowly while Jimmy places his sunglasses on his face and looks back to the convenience store, where he sees Nancy Crawley flipping him off. Pulling out, he shows her his middle finger again. The he leans over and says to Wigger, “You wouldn’t believe it, but fat Nancy was a piece of ass back in her high school days.” Wigger’s eyes go wide in wonder. He looks over at the big lady waving her arms in fury behind the cashier’s window. Jimmy laughs and tells him, “My mom said if she had as many coming out of her as went in, she’d look like one of those Japanese blowfish.” They were still laughing when Jimmy drove through a clean red light to get to Kings Island faster.
Walking away from the parked truck in the Kings Island parking lot, Jimmy tells Wigger to remember they parked in Huckleberry Hound Five. Jimmy always parks in Huckleberry Hound Five at Kings Island. Jimmy does things consistently, so he doesn’t have to think about them anymore. Wigger makes a mental note that will never be erased. To the day he dies, he will remember that they park in Huckleberry Hound Five when they come to Kings Island. At the gate, they flash season passes, the closest thing Wigger has to an ID card, where he can show somebody his name is what he says it is, and the fuzzy picture goes along with his face. Every year, the background of these passes is a new color and there is a date at the top along with the bearer’s age.
Kids in high school are supposed to stay where they are when they get there. Dorks are dorks. Jocks are jocks. Pretty girls aren’t friends with ugly ones outside school. And nearly everyone is trying to get laid. But what Wigger is doing with Jimmy Prince is an abuse of the system of rules that confine the small and weak to the shadows of high school. Jimmy has opened a door for this strange little person to come through and mingle with his betters. Some kids will come to see this act as a betrayal of social grace and a vote for chaos. They will come for revenge one day, but not this day.
Wigger and Jimmy Prince walk into Kings Island full of swagger that Jimmy conjures up like uncapped gasoline fumes. The pavement steams from the heat and hose water. Wigger walks in the wake of Jimmy’s self-confidence and finds himself lifted by Jimmy’s presence. This small kid is thinking bigger thoughts these days. They move past the park gates and step through the front gate gifts store, where all the baby toys and chatchkees are displayed for appeal to the undecided. Wigger is back on the subject of his grandmother, and it’s annoying Jimmy, who finally turns around and snaps at him, “Shut the fuck up dude, and pay attention! There’s bitches all around here! Some of them might be watching you, but you won’t know it if you run your fucking mouth all the time.” Wigger wasn’t insulted. He was corrected and grateful for the lesson. He stayed quiet for a few minutes.
They leave front gate gifts and arrive at the main forum, two humans in a seething crowd of human energy that made them both feel small, even Jimmy, who quickly finds a circle of confidence to defend by shouldering his way through the crowd; and Wigger follows in his draft like a cyclist in dead heat. Jimmy bears left to part the crowd, and they head towards oktoberfest and the flying pirate ship careening back and forth thousands of times every day, while passengers still scream and squeal no matter how many times they’ve ridden the ship, or one like it somewhere else like this.
Walking by the spinning barrels over a two-foot pond, Jimmy’s pussy radar goes off, and he spots two girls laughing and being unironically beautiful and generous with their joy in public. They were the black girls from the back of the escort at the gas station, gorgeous. Jimmy comments on the breasts of the older girl, while noting her shape, her neck and ears, the way her long fingers grip the edge of the barrel in slow spin. She is exotic to Jimmy’s eyes, beautiful and strange, but her skin is not a mystery to Wigger. He spent his childhood looking up into black faces, smiling at most of them, brothers and sisters in poverty, running the streets of Decatur, Illinois. Complaining about hunger never does a thing.
“Those are the girls from earlier,” Jimmy says. Wigger says, “Yeah.” Jimmy says, “That means those other kids are here, too.” Wigger says, “Yeah.” Jimmy says, “Keep your guard up, bud.” Wigger asks why. Jimmy says, “Because I’m getting that girl’s phone number today.”
They turn around to walk away and find themselves surrounded by more black faces. Many more. Wigger immediately picks out the kids from the escort. Jimmy finds the eyes of the biggest black man he’s ever seen. This is no kid, and he didn’t look like a man to be fucked with at any time. “There go that motherfucker, right here, Dee. This big white bitch.”
No word is said while the crowd passes around them to the rhythms of kaleidoscope music, injecting a surreal aura into this moment. The enormous black man steps forward in one smooth leap, like he is sliding onto a dance floor, and he’s up in Jimmy’s face, eyeballing him and pushing his massive pectorals into Jimmy’s big ones. But Jimmy neither backs down nor gets aggressive. This is a dance, two lions sizing each other up at the watering hole of this man-made pond with its ridiculous spinning barrels filled with people amusing themselves halfway to death.
Now the black guy (Dee is his name), Dee starts flexing his chest muscles against Jimmy’s, bouncing them, and it’s almost like they are making out. It’s nearly sexual. Wigger has hung with Jimmy long enough to know when he’s calculating to attack, and Wigger steels himself to be kicked, punched, bitten, spit on, and screamed at because that’s how these scenes have always gone down for him as the only skinny white kid in a sea of black and brown faces. This is normal for Wigger, but not for Jimmy.
In Jimmy’s world, black people are called ████ as a reference, nearly void of the intensity of hatred. It’s simply the word his daddy has used to call black people what he thought they were, and Jimmy learned it like learning the word ball for the round objects that bounce off hard surfaces. Black faces are not seen in groups like this in the suburbs and farm towns of Cincinnati, not in 1991. Downtown, sure, but not at the United Dairy Farmers, where actual farmers fill their tractors at sunrise on Saturday mornings. But Jimmy didn’t have to act because a radio crackle, followed by a commanding voice, broke the silence of a pending war without dialogue.
“YOU KIDS SIMMER DOWN RIGHT HERE AND NOW!” A Kings Island park security guard forces his way into the crowd and separates Jimmy and Dee. Five other security guards run up and create a perimeter around the two biggest kids. Billy clubs come out. Cincinnati PD has stations all around the park with at least five officers on site every day, rotating between these stations. There is a near-military coordination of law enforcement here that these kids will never defeat with their anger alone. “99 - respond at Oktoberfest.” The answer comes back fast, “99-this is PD. Go ahead.” “Seven youth in a conflict. Five guards are on scene. Requesting two officers.” The answer is automatic, “Dispatched 99.” The guard ends communication with “Roger.”
The Cincinnati Police arrive to break up the scene, but none of them wants the paperwork of arresting Dee or Jimmy, so they tell them to walk separate ways, and they do. Wigger and Jimmy walk towards coney island while Dee and the others move back towards international main street. But at Kings Island, all roads lead to the same place.
Maurice is the name of the kid who drove the escort. His cousin is Durrell. Maurice calls back towards the spinning barrels. “Sharonda! SHARONDA!” Jimmy and Wigger are walking past the barrel ride exit and run into the girls. Sharonda is nearly as tall as Jimmy, and her body makes Wigger blush in lust. Sharonda stops to look at Jimmy staring at her, smiling sweetly like a suitor. “What you looking at, white boy?” Jimmy didn’t hesitate or posture. What he says to her isn’t a pickup line. “One of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen.” The little girl next to her is taller than Wigger but much smaller than Sharonda, and she laughs at the audacity of this big country white boy, trying to pick up her cousin at Kings Island. Who do these white people think they are? They think they own it all, don’t they? But all she says is, “Come on, Ronnie. We got to go.” Jimmy nods at her and says, “I’ll see you around, Ronnie.” Walking away backwards, unable to take her eyes off Jimmy, Sharonda smiles back at him and says, “You just might, white boy.” She turns around and runs to her crowd. Maurice asks her in a huff when she reaches the group, “Fuck you talking to that asshole for?”
Wigger and Jimmy Prince enter the arcade to the sounds of ear-splitting, clanging bells and sirens, with the screams and yells of little children in various states of agony and ecstasy. Parents yell at each other. Children yell at other children, and some yell back at their parents, while the employees working these games yell at everyone because that’s their job. A clown shows a little girl a magic ball disappearing, and she slaps her face with both hands in joy, her eyes rolling up to find her mother beaming down on her child like god surveying a good sixth day of work. In the next aisle of games, a father hunches down to wipe ice cream from his little son’s face, who smiles with big white teeth to validate the routine and effort. Wigger sees, hears, and notes all these things at once, like a mental flood he’s learned to control. He does not speak of these recognitions to Jimmy, who quietly prowls the aisles, looking for young women to engage in the labor of flirtation.
Jimmy spots two girls toward the exit on the other side of the arcade. One is tall by her long legs and skinny, while her friend is short, squat, and hyper-aware. The small one is pretty, but the tall one is gorgeous and young, unspoiled by time and disappointment, but this will change fast soon.
Jimmy walks up and introduces himself like it’s the most natural act in the world. The girls are surprised and jump when he speaks to them because his voice is so deep, like a man’s, but his face isn’t quite a man’s face yet. The tall girl leans in to hear Jimmy better, and he puts his arm gently on her upper back and pulls her closer to talk into her ear over the loud clangs. The short one looks at Wigger and doesn’t smile. He returns the sentiment. An amused look passes between the girls, and they allow Jimmy to continue his sales pitch. Jessica is the tall girl’s name, and Shelly is the shortie. They are from Hamilton High School and both have season passes to Kings Island.
Jimmy explained earlier to Wigger that finding girls with season passes here is important because this place has a lot of shadows and nooks, where make outs happen, an entire underground of saliva swapping and finger fucking under the waistbands of dozens of teenage underpants every day. So many sticky and bloody panties are left behind in these liminal teenage spaces that they are swept up by the Kings Island janitorial staff and kept in black lawn garbage bags that fill up fast and are marked as human waste.
Jimmy gets Jessica’s number and nudges Wigger toward Shelly. They smile, and she puts out her hand to shake, but Wigger awkwardly grabs her first two fingers and shakes them around like an alien who just dropped down on earth. He almost leans in to kiss her hand like the old movies, but she pulls it back rapidly with a bewildered, nearly disgusted look. After a few more minutes of Jimmy’s monologue of flirting, the pairs part with an agreement to meet up at 6 for some early dinner and a couple of rides. It’s 4 PM now, what Jimmy told Wigger was “the hunting hour” at Kings Island. Walking away, Jimmy explains his plan to convince Jessica to let them drive her and Shelly home tonight. Hamilton is only ten miles from the Prince farm, and they can stop at one of a hundred make-out spots in the woods and valleys where Butler and Hamilton counties merge.
The boys mill around for a while, hanging outside the potato works to scan the crowd for other young females looking around for young males. The smell of vinegar and fried potatoes is intoxicating, and Wigger nearly swoons from hunger. They walk down to the la rosa’s pizza near the vortex roller coaster. The sweet, hot la rosa’s smell is worse for Wigger’s rumbling stomach than the potatoes. Jimmy Prince takes a break from scanning the crowd and monitors his little accomplice. “Are you hungry, bud?” Wigger nods. “Let’s get some fries.”
After eating, they wipe their mouths and leave a mess on the table for someone else to clean up. They get in line to ride the vortex. It’s a long wait as the line slowly moves, and the temperature rises in the convex oven of the sky above their heads and the concrete below their feet. Wigger stares into the ride exit courtyard, watching the people coming off the roller coaster. A little boy hugs his daddy’s leg and says, “Please don’t ever take me on that ride again!” And the Dad laughs, swings the boy up into his arms, and says, “I’ll bet next year you’ll be begging me to go on it!” They laugh together and walk off into the crowd. That’s when all hell breaks loose.
The metal gates that served as the barrier between the people waiting to get on the ride and those getting off the ride crash down, and the people leaning on them collapse on their backs and sides. A collective moan erupts from the ground at their feet.
Wigger didn’t know that this is what happened: Remember Dee? He was the muscle-bound adult black man who hung out with teenagers from his neighborhood because they worshiped him, and a few of them did things for him from time to time in exchange for money, his protection, and counsel. Dee is kind of big shit in his neighborhood. Well, Dee wants to get with Sharonda, who is seven years younger than him. Her older brother went off to college on a basketball scholarship, and he and Dee have been down since they were little. But when Sharonda hit puberty, Dee fell in love with the girl he once of thought of as a little sister, and he saw it as his duty to watch over and protect her, especially in public.
Well, on the way from the altercation with the cops (I cannot get arrested again. Three strikes. In George Bush America, that’s it for me), Dee overheard Ronnie talking to her little cousin about that handsome white boy he was about to make look ugly back there. Ronnie was trying to play it off, but she was clearly interested in that white boy, and this set Dee’s heart on fire. He steamed about it while they waited in line at the racer rollercoaster.
All he wanted out of this day at Kings Island was three minutes with her. He paid for all these little asshole kids from the street outside his grandma’s house to come to the amusement park. He even drove most of them here in his uncle’s van. He didn’t want their money, and he didn’t need thanks. He knew what he did was boss baller, giving these neighborhood kids a little vacation on a hot summer day. Parents ain’t got the time or money for this shit. I do it. All Dee wanted was to sit with Sharonda between his legs on the skylab for three minutes. He wanted her to feel how he felt about her, how big his love was for her, and how much he wanted to give it to her as something special between them, intimate, and forever. But then those white boys showed up and put a pin in that balloon of hope, crossed a line through the name of the plan.
The skylab was a rotating wheel with twenty spokes coming out, and at the end of those spokes were human cages fitting two people comfortably or three in a clutch. Riders got into the cage cars like laboratory animals, sliding the moving gates into their latched positions, where every cage was checked twice by two separate safety employees, giving thumbs up to the ride operator, confirming all the cages were sealed. The ride starts spinning flat and raises itself up ninety degrees while still spinning, bopping up and down from there. The second and third passengers sit between the legs of the passenger before them. The centrifugal force pushes humans into an intense three minutes and twenty seconds of physical intimacy, enforced by physics. The Skylab was responsible for more romance and drama than any other ride at Kings Island. These little human cages incubate and birth love stories or become minor assaults every eight minutes the ride is operational. Dee wanted the love story. He wanted Sharonda between his legs today so he could start working to get between hers, maybe tomorrow or the next day. Dee had all summer to work on Ronnie, or so he believed when they all gaggled into the park today as a motley crew with dark skins and presupposed sins in the eyes of these white people and their park security.
It sounded to Dee like Ronnie’s cousin had gotten into a pissing match at the gas station with some hillbilly boy in a big truck and a little skinny boy he was rolling with. It sounded like a stage act to Dee. White people are a mystery. They built and run this fucked up world where he was born with a deficit he couldn’t even buy his way out of if he had the money. Dee said something to call attention to himself when Ronnie’s little cousin (what’s his name?) finished his story where they got out of there with a little dignity intact, and said that little wigger had the biggest dick he’d ever seen on a white boy. One of the other little kids, way too young to be so funny, said, “You know cause you be sucking them white boy dicks.” Everyone laughed and Ronnie’s cousin got mad and threw a rock at the little smart ass boy. Then Dee said what he said, because he wanted Ronnie to know that shit wouldn’t happen when he’s around. He said, “I wished I’dda been nare. Knock that muhfucker out and wait till he wakes up an do it aggin.”
In the vortex line, Dee overheard Ronnie and her girl cousin again talking about that big white boy. And look who just showed up. And there’s that little wigger boy supposedly with the big dick. Thinking of a small white boy with a big dick made Dee angry. He didn’t know why that made him angry, and not knowing why added fuel to the anger. It was growing like a fast cancer in his head. And he knew by Ronnie’s smile and the way she was looking at the big white boy that she wasn’t going to be sitting between his legs on the skylab today. He could now read the future of today like a map of a park. Soon, Ronnie and her girl cousin would go off on their own. They would agree to meet by the eiffel tower before the park closes. They going to find them white boys... Dee looks over at Jimmy and Wigger, who are laughing and joking with the older couple in front of them, like they didn’t just about get their asses whipped and their day ruined. Laughing. And Dee is here, scowling, getting angrier by the second. The sun is hot and Dee’s best nikes are sticking to this nasty ass concrete. These white people around him stink and are talking about bullshit that doesn’t matter in Dee’s world.
An intense roar emerges from the depths of his heart and rips through his amygdala, firing neurons so ancient that when their behavioral patterns activate, the creature who takes the following action is not the one who paid for all these ungrateful little kids to come to this forsaken theme park and witness what was about to go down. Each child and every stranger present for this disaster will remember it until the depths of their old age or the demise of their early deaths.
Dee rushes into the metal gate with all the force in his young, strong body. All the anger he’s been saving up since he was a baby boy, soaked up rage, soggy in his cellular matrix, boiling red bubbles explode outward without reason or target. This intense rage will simmer and hiss hours from now, when Dee’s sitting in a cold, dark place, going through the short list of people who can help him and then starting over again at the top. On some lists, the top is still the bottom.
Dee hit the metal gate like a linebacker. These pipe metal gates, linked together in a set of twenty, usually kept the vortex line in a neat two-by-two queue. The gates jolted forward in a fanned motion and fell over like dominoes chained together, and all the people leaning against the gate fell over after it, tumbling to the ground with the crowd’s collective groan. Purses and bags spill out like a coordinated movie stunt. Screams everywhere, followed by scrambling, and then the fighting started.
Jimmy Prince was sitting on the low concrete wall opposite the gates, which were now lying on the ground. Dee regained his balance and was already zeroed in on the big white boy he was about to rush and attack. Jimmy had also clocked Dee when the heads of the people between them were removed from blocking the view because they were either collapsed to the ground trying to figure what just happened, or they were leaning down to help others get back to their feet and pick up their shit before pickpockets descended to feed like pigeons in a park.
Jimmy and Dee stared each other down and reached a moment of violent intimacy with their eyes probing as deeply as possible before the inevitable happened. Jimmy leaped over Wigger, who had fallen from leaning on a gate that suddenly wasn’t there anymore. “Fuck it, let’s do this!” “Jimmy Prince’s famous last words,” as his mom called them. Fuck it! Let’s do this! Any time she heard Jimmy and his cadre of little criminals playing in the yard get to fighting one another, this was the line Jimmy spoke out loud to everyone when he’d had enough and was about to become violent. That’s usually when she got involved to settle the situation, because the last thing the Prince family needed was the county sheriff poking around on a disturbance complaint.
Jimmy grew up farm fighting in the fields around West Chester and the junkyard his family ran that ate and processed the trash of the township. But junkyard and cornfield fighting, as rough as it could get, still didn’t match what Dee came up with in his neighborhood. When you threw down on the streets of Bond Hill, it was either to get a rep or keep one. The stakes were higher in the streets than the fields and that is a little story of America.
Their two bodies collided in air and knocked the wind out of both of them. They landed and the kicking started. Both of these young men had good fighting forms. They each clearly understood the importance of covering up with a solid guard. Their arms were mainly weapons of defense, and their legs mostly offense, though a good fighter knows to switch these up once they have broken their opponent’s guard and are inside the punishment zone. That’s when a street conflict becomes combat jazz.
Both landed good shots on the face. Both were already bleeding. Dee’s knee was scraped up and Jimmy may have sprained his ankle when they fell to the ground. It hurt, but this situation ran on adrenaline. They were semi-evolved animals in a concrete jungle fighting over a space neither would stay long afterward to occupy.
Jimmy caught Dee in the head with a knee when Dee tried to rush him to the ground. Unfortunately, for Dee, Jimmy was an excellent wrestler. He could have gone to state finals if he’d stuck with it past freshman year. But he loved football more. Jimmy easily tied Dee up with a turnaround, and suddenly they were both on the ground, but Jimmy was on top of Dee’s back, and Dee’s face was on the concrete. The fight could have been over, but two of the young boys Dee paid for their tickets weren’t about to see their sponsor get beaten up in a white man’s theme park by a white boy while all these white people stood around watching and some of them cheering it on.
Fuck that!
Yeah, fuck that!
The two kids ran in with leg stomps to both sides of Jimmy’s head. He released Dee and fell over, palms reflexively cupping both sides of his damaged head, and different shoe prints muddied both sides of his face like blurry tattoos. Blood poured from Jimmy’s mouth and nose. He was fucked up and Dee was on his feet now, snorting like a bull. “MOTHERFUCKER! MOTHERFUCKER!” Dee ran at Jimmy and stomped his back, his neck, then started kicking at his ribs. The two kids also started stomping and kicking at Jimmy, who was limp on the ground, covering his head and taking the blows like a man. That’s what Jimmy’s dad would have said to him if he’d witnessed this scene. “You took it like a man, Jim.” But then, his dad would have flipped the metaphorical cup over to reveal the knife of harsh words he used to cut away his son’s manhood before it could sprout to challenge his own. “But you should have gotten back up and beaten that ████ to the ground, or stayed down. Man who loses his pride in a fight, Jimmy, may as well lose his life.” His father never offered a compliment without a weightier insult to immediately erase it.
Being kicked and beaten while covering up and not screaming is a lesson Jimmy’s dad taught him early. This is natural. This is the order of the world. Words were high hopes, because this is how life is lived by most people, kicked without mercy or measure and expected to shut up about it.
No one saw Wigger coming or expected what was about to happen to upset this already upsetting situation. This little white kid jumped on the big black man and stuck what looked like a VHS camera battery into the soft tissue of the man’s neck. Immediately, the big man straightened up and looked up to the sky, his muscles flexed like he was in a bodybuilding competition. Dee fell to his knees and planted his face into the sticky, hot pavement. He will have a pavement burn on his nose and right cheek that will take weeks to heal and leave a noticeable scar for the rest of his life. At one point, his nickname will be “ScarrDee.”
Wigger hops off the fallen man and descends on one of the kids, catching him in the lower back with the stun gun. Electricity snaps into the boy’s skin, but it only provides fuel for his kinetic motion, as he and his friends run from the ride, scattering in different directions. This is a defensive tactic of urban survival, where splitting up a group of people who run in multiple directions forces a dispersion of police resources and therefore minimizes the likelihood of more arrests. The strategic principle is that police can’t arrest a group if they aren’t all together. Poor kids of all colors call this getnahfuckout!
Wigger’s MeMaw once told him, “Groups of people are hard to control, but people alone are harder to control. And people working in pairs can upset the world. That’s how Jesus sent the disciples out, in pairs. Remember that.”
Wigger runs to help Jimmy get to his feet, and they’ve got to get the fuck out of here.
But Sharonda got to Jimmy before Wigger could. She was helping him to his feet, while Dee, the man who paid for her ticket, lay unconscious feet away from them. Someone handed her three napkins that they had taken from the ice cream stand across the plaza. She mops motherly at Jimmy’s face blood. The fight had gone out of Jimmy when he was getting kicked, but seeing this angel appear over him and offer solace in the form of a flimsy paper napkin made this whole day worth it.
“Damn, white boy, you sure know how to thow a party.” He laughed, but didn’t get cute. He said the following in a straightforward manner, like someone who sees a west coast sunset for the first time. “You are one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.” Sharonda chose to react as if this were a cheap pickup line instead of a confession of love, but she will think about this moment obsessively for months. “Shit, your head is fucked up, white boy.” And then suddenly Jimmy got pulled to his feet by Wigger, who screamed at him, “We got to get the fuck out of here, Jimmy.” Police descended on the area after an embarrassing six and a half minutes of unassisted madness in the crowd. Anything could have happened.
Jimmy looks at Wigger, calculating his priorities along with resources and constraints because this is how his brain works in a crisis. Jimmy turns to look at Sharonda and says matter-of-factly, “You and me. I’ll find you.” This makes her smile, though she quickly hides it, turning her attention to Dee, who stirs under her touch and from her voice. Jimmy and Wigger are gone by the time Dee’s awake and starting to lean up.
The police arrive and yank Dee from the ground, slamming him back down. Then he is cuffed and dragged from the area, taken to the incarceration cells managed by the Cincinnati Police Department. The only personal witnesses from the young posse he paid for to get into these cursed white people’s theme park were Sharonda and her cousin, who both felt sorry for Dee, but neither of whom would stand up for him during his trial. Their parents won’t let them. But Ronnie quickly turns her thoughts to that beefy white boy and getting a ride home tonight in that big truck.
Jimmy and Wigger made it out of the plaza just before the Cincinnati Police and park security arrived to arrest Dee. Wigger stopped to stash the stun gun under a trash barrel behind the snow cone stand, near the bridge by the Amazon Falls ride, where people stood to watch the descending crafts full of people with scrunched up faces preparing to get soaked. It was known that if you wanted to get wet on a hot day, you could either sit in the front or back row of one of these twenty-person crafts, or you could stand on the bridge and wait for a wave of water to eject from the crafts’ impact. Everyone who wants can get wet here for free, and often those who don’t want to also get soaked.
Crossing the bridge, between raft ride touchdowns, they encountered the two girls from the arcade. The tall girl, Jessica, ran to Jimmy and took the napkin from his hand that he was using to mop up what remained of his face blood. He had a big gash on his nose, where one of the kids had booted his head into the concrete and his face scraped against a small shard of glass the park janitorial staff had yet to get to with their brooms and dustpans.
“Oh, you poor thing. Sticking your fingers where they shouldn’t go again, I see.” She was smirking at him, and Jimmy suddenly felt much better. He was back on the flirt. “And where would you like me to stick my fingers, Jessica?” Her smirk ended, and her face got serious. She leaned in closely to his ear and whispered something Wigger couldn’t hear. Whatever she said made Jimmy smile, and he smacked her ass playfully, then said for Wigger and Shelly to hear, “You’re a bad girl, Jessica.” The tall girl handed Jimmy back the bloody napkin and said, “Try me.” Wigger’s eyes went wide, and her friend Shelly shook her head, mildly dismissive. Jessica did this all the time. Tall people, both she and Wigger were thinking at the same time; they do what they want. Shelly and Wigger looked at each other, and a knowing shared experience passed between them; they are sidekicks looking for their own main stories.
The four of them spend the next few hours together, riding rides, talking, and flirting. Shelly and Wigger are developing a silent shorthand of eye rolling reactions and facial ticks that might pass as amusement but never laughter. They built up an arsenal of pleasant moments while walking behind their much taller companions who never seemed to shut up.
After they stopped to retrieve the ditched stun gun, the conversation quickly turned sexual as Jessica and Jimmy used their words (and a little performance art on both sides) to determine how sexually compatible they’d be together. The answer was they would be fucking right now if this was a bedroom and not a theme park.
Wigger and Jimmy learned a lot about Jessica’s sexual history, which she bragged about at a level on par with Jimmy’s ego when it got to exercising and flexing. Inevitably, the size of Wigger’s dick came up when Jimmy told the story of the morning’s antics at the gas station, which lead to the fight he had just barely survived. The story Jimmy told was a hero’s journey with Wigger as the foolish hero. Jimmy was conscious enough to know he had already scored a spot between Jessica’s legs. All he needed now were circumstances and opportunity to align, and that would likely be days, not weeks. Now that his future fucking with Jessica was secured, Jimmy is trying to help Wigger out with Shelly.
When Jimmy got to the penultimate moment of the gas station story, the one where Wigger dropped his pants and passed out, Shelly looked at Wigger’s cute but young-looking face, and then down at his crotch. She thought, How big could it be? Wigger looked embarrassed and tried to change the subject by asking who was hungry, even though he had no money to buy himself food. He’s actually really cute when he’s embarrassed, Shelly thinks. Maybe there’s something more to this scrawny little guy.
The four of them eat dinner at la rosa’s pizza. Like a teenage boss, Jimmy pays for everything. He has the money, the truck with the tunes, and Jimmy has the plan, so Jimmy gets the pussy. But what the King has earned, the King can also give freely to friends and lovers. The talk turns from sex to movies and music. Shelly is a horror movie fan, a Nightmare on Elm Street obsessive. She loves Freddy Krueger, and she gives the group a brief but convincing lecture on how the original Nightmare was an allegory about alcoholism and abuse passed down by passive parents to curious and restless children. Shelly tells them about something called generational trauma, and it’s been happening as long as there’ve been people. Jimmy winces when he understands what she’s saying, but Wigger is entranced by how smart she talks. He swoons inside. Suddenly, Shelly here is the most beautiful girl in a world that just grew smaller and narrower.
When Shelly talked about movies, she became prettier to Wigger. When he first met her earlier in the arcade, he thought she had a pushed-up, piggish face, but her perky, curly blonde hair looked different in the golden light of the sinking sun, which was going down over this Ohio theme park, one of the most synthetic places in modern civilization.
With the sun setting, it would be cold soon. The four of them journeyed to the front gate lockers, where Jessica stored her day and night gear, consisting of two windbreakers for her and Shelly, and a large beach bag containing bikinis, towels, and suntan lotion, in case they decided to hit the water park, which they hadn’t after hooking up with Jimmy and Wigger. The girls tied the windbreakers around their waists, to Jimmy’s complaint that he couldn’t stare at Jessica’s beautiful ass now. “Aw, poor baby!” she teased, then tormented Jimmy by saying, “I hope you can see in the dark.”
They head to the skylab, which has its multi-colored lights on now and whizzes and whirs with blurry lines of color that light up the Ohio sky like a flaming pinwheel cast through a prism. The line is long, and they have a lot of time to snuggle up together as the cold air settles over what was once a quiet forest northeast of Cincinnati. At night, bats will come to roost in the trellises of the roller coasters, while raccoons and other varmints take over the surfaces of this concrete world. An occasional mountain lion will make its way into the theme park at night, feeding on a spectrum of nature that feeds on the refuse of humanity. In the morning, the arrogant and awful sounds of humans will drive the mountain lions back east, where they feel safer, though their stomachs will be full of risky meats.
Shelly puts her hand in Wigger’s and is pleased to find it warm. She remarks to him how warm his hands are, and she leans into him with her breasts, finding the heat radiating from his flesh as welcoming as a blanket on her couch on a cold winter’s day. Something about this little man is inviting and feels safe to her now. Wigger seizes the opportunity for intimacy and hugs Shelly almost innocently, transferring more of his warmth into her cold, grateful flesh. Their outer thighs meet, and Wigger looks down to notice the goose flesh popped out all over her tanned, shaved legs. She looks at him, nods, and laughs. She says, “I always get goose pimples at night. It could be a hundred degrees out here, and I’d still get them.” Wigger shows her his hand and asks, “May I?” She nods, and he places his hand on her bare thigh above the knee. His warmth feels good to her, and her cold feels good to him.
Jessica reminds them that there are two other people here when she says, “Would you two just fuck already?” Shelly pushes at her friend and says, “Stop it.” Wigger blushes and removes his hand from Shelly’s leg. Jimmy smiles at his little buddy, who is doing a good job of making out. They both are. Most of the teenage girls standing in front and behind this foursome are jealous because one of the boys is big and gorgeous, and the small one is okay, good enough to make out with, but these two sluts got to them first. That’s what most of the young girls think. Most of the teenage boys would like to fight Jimmy for Jessica, but think twice when they see his size and the wounds on his face, marking him as a fighter and a survivor. The boys don’t register that Ronnie and her cousin are standing several people behind them in line. They don’t know that Ronnie has desperately been looking for Jimmy for two hours, in the hopes that he can give them a ride home. Dee has already been incarcerated in the Butler county jail, and he won’t be released until tomorrow.
It was finally their turn on the skylab and the foursome broke into natural pairs. Both boys sit in the back of their respective cars and the girls sit between the boys’ legs, as unspoken ritual requires in this place at this time. The ride attendant comes by to slide the entry gates into place and checks the latches. Double thumbs up. Nervous bellies anticipate the ride to come. Wigger hugs Shelly around the stomach. Jimmy places his hands on Jessica’s upper inner thighs, and she leans back hard into his strong body. Jimmy’s erection grows thick, and Jessica hums and nuzzles further into him when she feels it through their pants and the thin windbreaker.
As the ride begins, the couples melt into one another. To Wigger’s surprise, Shelly grabs his hands on her belly and moves them up to her breasts, teaching him how to stimulate her. He cups them, and his fingers quickly find her nipples because she’s wearing a t-shirt and a thin bra.
These things are easy to learn.
She leans back and exposes her neck for kissing. Wigger takes the hint and obeys. She tilts her mouth up, and they fall into a kinetic tongue kiss while holding firm under the massive force of this ride’s physics. Their teeth knock painfully, but their tongues find each other, and they play in each other’s mouths for several seconds. There are two minutes left in this ride. Shelly breaks the kiss and nestles into Wigger’s small frame. The sun has nearly set, and the ride spins faster. Wigger’s hands explore Shelly’s breasts, squeezing and probing for purpose, meaning, and response. He smiles as the wind whips her hair against him in measurable patterns, careening with this spinning wheel of kinetic motion and the potential for sex. This is the greatest day of Wigger’s life so far. He has titties in his hands and a girl put them there for him to squeeze. He has a big friend with power, influence, and money. The whole world waits for him after this ride is over.
Pairs of people stumble off the skylab, and a young boy rushes to the trash can by the exit to throw up. His parents run to his aid and console him, shepherding him away to sit on a bench together outside the ride exit, where they work through this small crisis as a family. Jessica helps Jimmy get his big body out of the skylab car, and they wait by the exit for Wigger and Shelly to arrive. Jimmy makes a big show of smelling his finger and nodding at Jessica, who laughs and pushes him away playfully. The four walk to the park’s exit, and it’s dark and cold outside now. The nightlife on international main street is in high gear. A jazz band plays on the corner by the candy shop, and further down the street, a barber shop quartet serenades an old couple, the wife in a park wheelchair. The wind blows the old bittie’s hair towards the exit like it’s trying to escape this life.
Jimmy and Jessica kiss long and hard in the shadows by the front gate exit. They broke away from Wigger and Shelly to let them say their goodbyes. Wigger’s kiss with Shelly is shorter than Jimmy’s and Jessica’s, but it’s full of tongue and passion. Shelly has to know. She reaches down and feels for the proof of Jimmy’s story. She has no idea if that is Wigger’s leg or if Jimmy’s story was understated, but her hand is filled. Suddenly, she feels tired and young, too young for this. Wigger, sensing an emotional shift inside Shelly, breaks the kiss and looks into her eyes, finding the quiet truth of her youth. Neither of them has any clue what they are doing, and neither wants to do it anymore right now. Neither says anything, but Shelly grabs and squeezes his hand as a sign of truce, and they walk to rejoin their partners.
The group journeys toward the passenger pickup, where Shelly’s dad will drive up and sit, car idling in a long line of other impatient parents to whom time and money matter more than their children. “My dad’s kind of strict,” Shelly tells them. “So, it’d be best if you two weren’t there when he picks us up.” The boys understand, and phone numbers are exchanged. And they are off on their next adventure by the time these girls pile into Shelly’s dad’s truck and drive off into the cold Ohio night.
“Where’d we park, bud?” Jimmy is testing him, but Wigger remembers everything.
“Huckleberry Hound Five.”
“Fuck yeah, it is!” Jimmy smiles at him. “Gimee five! You pulled that Shelly chick!” They five. “I’m proud of you.” It is the first time anyone has said that phrase to Wigger and not meant it as an insult. No one had ever been proud of him before because no one had ever really noticed him. Jimmy Prince was the first person to see the man this little boy could become. Jimmy Prince was the first person to invest in Wigger. At this moment, their brotherly love for one another transcends a typical friendship as lived by those who swim only on the surface of life’s ocean. What is happening here is more than an emotion. Rather, it’s a congruent, shared experience of the highest mental order, beyond opposites and attachments, involving two souls rotating around one another in a defined time and a place in space. Be here now.
Wigger startled when Sharonda came out of the shadows of the parking lot, followed by the small gang of dark-skinned children, two of whom were kicking Jimmy only a few hours ago. The group had been tailing Jimmy and Wigger since they left the park with two white girls. For an agonizing ten minutes, Ronnie convinced herself they were going to have to beg a stranger for a ride back home. Damn, Dee! Fuck you have to get arrested for? And for what? Why can’t you let it go with this white boy? Ronnie could ask herself the same question.
Her cousin, walking next to her, is thinking similar thoughts, but also knows this situation is going nowhere good. Ronnie and this white boy are going to cause trouble if they end up together. The world is filled with so much trouble. Why add more? But what happens between the logic center of the brain and the hormones of teenagers is less a disappearing act and more like a massacre of best intentions. Jimmy shifts seamlessly into flirting with Sharonda, and she is selfishly a satellite in his orbit for a seemingly unselfish cause, getting these poor kids home before their curfews at ten-thirty. Nothing good happens in their neighborhood after eleven, which is the time their parents would start worrying and making phone calls. There is a clock on this.
Of course, they’d give them a ride home. Jimmy even high-fived the two boys who kicked him. He knew who they were, and he showed them what his father would call “white man’s mercy.” But like Dee, Jimmy understands the way into Sharonda’s heart (and then her pants) is to get in good with these kids. He will slip into the spot that Dee prepared, and Jimmy, not Dee, will be the savior of these kids’ day. The youngest ones pile into the back of Jimmy’s truck. Wigger gets into the rear cab and folds down the side seats, the other for Ronnie’s cousin, who is definitely attractive to Wigger. Two girls in one day. Is that even possible? But this girl wants nothing to do with Wigger right now; she’s barely hanging on.
Ronnie hops up into the cab, and she and Jimmy buckle their seats and look at each other and smile. Something electric passes between them, but nothing is said. Wigger slides open the back window, and three attractive and smiling black faces immediately appear like a stage show. The kids in the truck bed are acting up, giddy with the freeway ride to come. Jimmy yells out, “ALRIGHT EVERYONE BACK THERE, SIT THE FUCK DOWN AND DO NOT STAND UP WHILE WE ARE IN MOTION! YOU WILL FLY OUT OF THIS TRUCK ON THE HIGHWAY AND THEY WILL HAVE TO SCRAPE YOU UP WITH A SHOVEL! DO NOT FUCK AROUND IN MY TRUCK! DO YOU ALL UNDERSTAND?”
Gruff replies confirm consent, and the kids all sit down, their backs to the bedsides of the truck. Jimmy calls out to them, asking what they want to hear. One calls back, “DOC!” Thirty seconds later, Mindblowin is playing loud, and the bass rumbles all their asses and insides. On the way home, the kids in the back are laughing and farting while the bass drum thumps the truck and the surrounding environment as free passengers cruise across Butler county, hit 275 and take it to 75 south, nearly all the way down to the river.
When the kids get dropped off, they scatter to various houses like birds leaning into magnetic flights home. Ronnie leans over and kisses Jimmy on the cheek, and he accepts it like a gift. She hands him the wadded-up slip of paper that she’s been carrying around since before the last skylab ride. It’s her phone number. “Call me,” she says, while opening the heavy truck door and sliding out backwards, her eyes not leaving Jimmy’s. So much emotion hangs in the air. Ronnie’s cousin grows impatient and reaches around to the seat latch, which springs forward violently and loud, breaking this moment and their staring.
“THANK YOU!” her cousin shouts out like a complaint.
In the rearview mirror, Jimmy watches the girls watching him pull away. The little cousin says something to her bigger cousin, and they turn around to walk away, their backs to the fleeing truck. If Sharonda listened to what her cousin told her at that moment, it would have changed the course of her life. But water goes where it will.
Wigger and Jimmy drive back up to West Chester, listening to DJ Magic Mike. Halfway back, Jimmy changes the CD to Bell Biv DeVoe. By the time Jimmy pulls up to Wigger’s house, the kid is asleep, leaning up against the truck window. Jimmy lets the truck idle a couple of minutes before waking his buddy up and dropping him off at his driveway. Jimmy Prince leaves off into the summer night with a day’s work well done.
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Transcript of Interview Number 1 with Judy Boody: On The Genesis and Meaning of this Story
Transcript of Interview Number 2 with Judy Boody: On Race and The Prince of Kings Island
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