Read Online I Can Hear the Mourning Dove by James Bennett - Free Book Online Page A

homeroom. Does she sit with me because it’s an assignment, or does she do it of her own free will? It seems demeaning but also comforting not to be alone. Maybe I’ve had so much institutional support I expect to be sponsored everywhere I go.
    My head hurts but I tell DeeDee about the Surly People and the IGA parking lot.
    â€œThat’s just Brenda Chitwood and the hoods that hang around her. Don’t pay any attention to them, they’re not worth it.”
    She has minor static. It’s easy for her to say, her life is so sound she probably has no cavities when she goes to the dentist.
    Two other girls join us, named Maureen and Diane. They start talking about cheerleader tryouts, and it will make me very happy if they simply ignore me altogether. For a while they do, but then Maureen wants to know why I’m spooning gazpacho from a mason jar instead of eating school lunch.
    â€œI’m vegetarian,” I say quietly. I don’t look up. I really hope the conversation will go back to cheerleading or some other subject.
    â€œYou mean you never eat any meat?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    There is a little static in her voice but I answer the best I can, “I believe in animal rights. I don’t think we have the right to butcher animals just because we have the power.”
    Diane says, “But you have to have protein. Meat is one of the basic food groups.”
    â€œThere are better sources of protein, sources that don’t include animal fats.” I sound like such a prude. A prune, I mean. I don’t mean to, but I’m so afraid when I talk to strangers. How can you hope to make friends if you behave like a prune? My dad was so good at this sort of thing—he could speak his mind and be warm and natural at the same time.
    Maureen says, “You mean you never eat a Big Mac or anything?”
    I don’t have an answer. Mercifully, a cafeteria monitor asks us to move to make room for other people.
    It is the next day, I think. I’m getting pretty sound on my days, maybe the medicine is helping me establish basic orientation. I lock the apartment and walk to the curb but there are beer bottles on the ground. I face the end of the street, clear to MacArthur. There is the IGA lot and I freeze; my heart starts to pound and my eyes are popping like flashbulbs. I need to get more sleep at night.
    I look again to MacArthur Street. The clouds have swirled a deadly canopy over 14th Street. A tunnel. I can’t walk that way. I just can’t, I just can’t.
    I walk up the parking lot past the dumpster, where I find a break in the chain link fence I can squeeze through. On the other side of the fence is a huge field of overgrown weeds and trash. With deep, deep breathing I start walking across the field, in the direction of the tract houses on the far side.
    The clouds are flung around and I hear the noisy sky chatter. Sometimes words come and sometimes sentences. I have found an alternate route; it will take me at least three blocks out of my way, but there will be no Surly People.
    This doesn’t change a thing. The Surly People will not go away .
    But I will go away from them; I won’t have to endure their cruelty.
    It is a mistake to think so. There are legions of them. The forces of darkness are everywhere .
    The sky persists; it follows me on my walk across the field. The sun is the eye in the sky; it sees into every corner. I feel like a character in a Greek tragedy, and the sky is the chorus. But my life is too pitiful to be tragic. DeeDee will wait for me in front of her house, but I won’t come.
    â€œWhat do you want from me?” I ask the sky.
    The forces of darkness are everywhere. Someone has to stand with the forces of light .
    It is my father’s voice the sky is using. I’m positive that he died. But other people don’t hear it. It only shows how crazy wild I truly am. I would hate for people to see me talking to