Original photo taken by Nicolas J Leclercq on Unsplash
Friday, October 14, 2022
Gus wipes his forehead with his t-shirt nineteen times during our 45-minute walk to the gray brick building with three arched entry fronts—Capitol Parish Union Station. We ride the escalating stairs underground for the GTube’s SouthStation tracks, where a checkered departure platform and several waiting passengers stand below flickering LED lights for a train that’ll eventually arrive and then depart. The air’s cooler, but our ride isn’t long enough to dry Gus’s sweaty armpits and soaked shirt. However, long enough to study the professor at the charging station reading a book with a namesake collage as its cover. The lady next to him is writing—likely musing out the degenerate boy band near the staircase, planting numbers in the heads of impatiently waiting riders as they sing:
“Teachers on strike,
no more school today…
they want more money,
but the board won’t pay.”
First stop, the newly established lounge, Beets of SouthTown—where Nwaka and the Lady-Gal sit at a table for five. Each SpacePad above our gold-shaded table setting lights up as we grab our seats near the revolving belt of drinks. And just past the lone waitress serving the corner wrapping table at the window, an orchestrated happening of new developments, proceeding as so…
Several construction signs and yellow coned barriers surround a giant caterpillar loader full of gravel. A monstrous excavator dumps massive loads of broken-down street concrete beside an unfinished curb. A worker sidesteps a sinkhole as his fellow hard-hatted men yell at cars detouring the site. The block’s sidewalks aren’t done, and the next street over is closed. Whosoever ensures the flaggers signal appropriately is one bad verb from a tragic oops.
“Ahliko, is it Mahan? Is that a township back up north?” Nwaka asks, returning from the drink belt.
Gus responds, “No, not by us. He probably overheard from cattlemen.”
“You sleep loud and crazy,” says Nwaka.
“On the plane? What did I say?”
“Mostly mumble-jumble. But something about my hands, ma’ hams, or ma’ some—.”
“The boy reads,” says Gus.
“Which means he speaks,” Nwaka responds.
But there’s a frog in my throat—ribbiting at the moment awkward becomes my middle name. “I can’t explain Mahan. Why do you care for?” I ask.
Remi plants her eager face above her crossed arms on the tabletop. I lean back—and through my armrest, there’s space to take in. So, I look there.
Remi also gazes through this empty space, making it the moment when a kid must explain his imaginary happy place around big sister.
But it, too, is under construction.
.
.
.
This Is Where BuddWrites 