Hopper - Chapter 1
A young giant, haunted by his mother, trying to break free.
Hopper
Chapter 1
by Ruth Apolonia Zamoyta
Hopper’s marshmallow bubbled up to a crust. He pulled it from the fire and slid it from the whittled twig with his teeth. Inside his mouth, so big he could fit his fist, his glands sucked the crust from the cream, so hot it numbed the roof. He scooped water from a tin bucket with a leaky cup of fingers and dunked it in his mouth. The crust flaked off and the water carried it down his throat like a dead woman’s dress, along with the white-hot lava of marshmallow. Hopper gasped as it burned its way down. He smacked his lips in the sticky residue and smeared stray droplets of water into his chin bristles.
“Hey, Hop!” Chuck chucked the second bottle of Beam into Hopper’s lap. He pinched his knees together in time to catch it, dug his skewer in the scalp of St. Jude, and lifted the whiskey to read its label. He knew what it said, but didn’t want to drink ’cause the sting that would cling to the burning roof of his mouth.
“What’s up, Hop?” Chuck derided from the other side of the fire. “See the old lady peerin’ and squirmin’ inside, like a worm in the bottle?”
Bitty and Ohm leaned back, snickered, and swigged.
“Is she naggin’ ya? ‘Hahhhh-per! Hahhhh-per!’” Chuck mimed how Hop’s mom used to croon his name from their porch at dinnertime when they were young and playing on the tracks. Then he changed his tone and shrieked, “‘Hopper! Hopper! Hopper!’” squawking like a crow that’s been shot in the wing. “‘Whiskey’s the dick of the devil! Don’t you go suckin’ on that bottle, boy!’”
Chuck hunched over Hop, pointed at his face, joined his brows in a frown, and kept squawking: “‘Hopper! Hopper! Hopper!’” Hop dropped his enormous jaw, squinted his eyes, and loosed from his mouth (the shape of a plow and as deep as a grave) a low, uncertain wheeze. “Haw!” Another “Haw!” followed, and soon the shrieks were smothered by the buzz of three mocking macaws and a happy giant.
Chuck tucked himself into his sleeping bag and plunged his hands down his jeans in search of his dip. “Go on, Hop. Seriously. A bit o’ Beam won’t hurt. You don’t need to listen to your mother anymore.” Chuck found his dip, twisted the tin, and tucked a pinch in the pouch behind his lip.
“Gotta break them chains,” said Bitty. Ohm sat quiet, his lip dripping wet brown dip onto St. Jude.
Bitty pitched the first bottle of Beam—now empty—into the fire and arose and sauntered down St. Jude bow-legged to the water’s edge. The Lake slept still while bats fluttered in and out of brush along its banks, catching flies. Bitty stripped, eased into the chill, leaned back, and breathed-in the sky. The moon lay white, her waters spread open, a silver membrane of clouds smoothing her over, shimmering her skin. The stars pulsed slow and brilliant, and Venus seemed bridled, about to bloom.
It had been Hopper’s first day pumping at Mobil, so the guys decided to take him for a fire and sour mash out on St. Jude. They were born in the same and only hospital in the same year, went through the same school together, graduated somehow, but Bitty, Chuck and Ohm had, over the years, moved up from the pumps to carburetors, while Hop was just starting up.
“Remember Malone, Hop?” Ohm asked.
“Open the bottle, Hop,” Chuck kept on.
“High scorer,” said Ohm.
“You owe it to yourself, Hop,” Chuck said. “Drink up.”
Awkward in his unnatural frame, Hop was more or less forced by Coach to play basketball in high school ’cause of his height, though he couldn’t get past the chest pass and instead of dashing at breakaways, he would clomp down the court in giant strides, making it quake. Coach taught him lay-ups for two weeks straight during lunch, till he couldn’t miss. Indeed, he only needed to lift six inches for his fingers to tip the rim.
Hop would head home after practice without showering, so the rest would get undressed, turn the water on, stomp around the communal shower and “haw!” and try to stuff their fists in their mouths like Hopper would do when goaded. Meanwhile, Hop would be clopping snow off his boots on his porch, refilling the wood stove, spraying his crotch and pits with the Right Guard he bought behind his mother’s back, and scanning the sports pictures in the Enterprise before his mom got home from St. Lucy’s Swap Shop. She didn’t even know he was playing basketball.
With Hop, the team won their first game in five years. But it was a late game in Malone, forty miles from home. Russ the bus driver left him off first at his driveway, but everyone knew it was too late. As Hop stomped in, he could already smell the stew and see his mother with her long dress and thin gray hair curled in a bun, hands on her hips, brow crossed, asking where he’d been and railing on him something fierce, saying sports led to sinful mischief, and they move your heart farther from God. Sure enough, next day Hop’s mom accompanied him to school and sat in the main office with her white pocketbook in her lap, kids passing left and right looking at her between the bells. When Coach showed up, she took him into the vice principal’s, scolded him, and took Hopper off the team. The team was crushed. On the bus home with Hopper the day they beat Malone, they laughed and smoked and ate cake and chanted “Hop-per! Hop-per!” and cursed and wrestled all in fun, but now they just sighed in the red bus glow, bit their lips, spit dip or ate chips, or just slept because they lost again.
Four boring high-school years disappeared at graduation, like they were never meant to be. Hopper evaded his mother who remained standing in the stands while five hundred sweating relatives followed the recession into the gym lobby. Amidst tears, hugs, camera flashes, and the unzipping of gowns, returning them to the bin for next year, whispers traveled from lips to ears of the seniors that there was a party at St. Jude and that there was an elbow of a dirt road blazed sixty years ago by bootleggers along an Indian trail that circumvented the drivers’ checkpoint.
“Old lady lettin’ you go to the lake, Hop?” Chuck whispered as he tucked his robe into a baggy.
“I won’t ever ask her.”
“Aw, c’mon, Hop. You’re the man of the house, ain’t ya?”
Hop thought about it, then said, “What they hay? Haw! Haw!”
“There’s room in my truck. I’ll meet you there.”
Hopper tingled with guilt. His cheeks grew pale and prickled with heat as he wove through the crowd in the lobby. He squinted so he couldn’t see to his right, where the bleachers were, inside the gym, supporting the weight of one old, small, frowning woman. Hopper, his jaw hung low, as though with the weight of a dead fist, finally reached the exit, descended the stairs, walked through the cigarette screen to the parking lot, his ears tuned to the oinking behind, “Hopper! Hopper! Hopper!” Chuck’s truck was chugging before him. Hop jumped in the back and grasped its steel handles as it hopped over the speed bumps and sped away.
Clouds moved in and the night stayed warm. Hopper looked up in vain for the moon as Chuck trucked toward Tupper. He looked down at the only thing he could see—the pavement in the glow of the taillights—as a breeze ran up his neck and through his crew. Then a girl flew onto his lap.
~ ~ ~
Who’s the girl? What will happen at St. Jude? And will Hopper’s mom find out? Make sure you free-subscribe, and check your email on Monday for Chapter 2!
