Afternoon, Night
by S.F. Wright

The bell rings, and Ryan stands up with the rest of his classmates. Other kids move together in groups or pairs in the hallway, but Ryan walks alone. His sneakers are dirty white, his jeans frayed, and his sweater is one size too small for him, so that his wrists stick out. He opens his locker and takes out his worn green coat, which is stained and smells of mold.  Most of the students at Thomas Jefferson Junior High get on the school bus, climb onto their bikes, or get picked up by their mothers. Ryan’s house is more than a thirty-minute walk away, but he doesn’t like riding the bus with the other kids. He’s never owned a bike. No mother is here to pick him up.
 
He crosses the street, his backpack over his shoulder. He walks to the 7/11 on the next corner and goes inside.
           
The man behind the counter, a bald guy in his forties, eyes him as soon as he walks in.
The bell over the door jingles. Ryan walks toward the back, past refrigerators with dozens of different colored Gatorades, Cokes, Sprites, and Mountain Dews, whole milk, skim milk. He can feel the man’s eyes on him, and goes down the aisle with the candy and glances at the counter.
Sure enough, the man is watching him. Ryan walks slowly, pretending to study the candy.
           
The door opens. The bell jingles. Two older kids from the eighth grade come in. The man keeps his eyes fixed on Ryan. The two boys go to the Slurpee machine. One draws cherry flavored and the other kid gets cola. Ryan watches them with envy. He wishes he could have a
Slurpee, but they are too large to steal.

The two kids carry their Slurpees over to the counter. The man has to ring them up, and he looks down at the register. Ryan grabs a handful of candy bars. He shoves them into his pocket and casually walks out the door.  Outside he crosses the parking lot and turns down Pine Street. He walks so quickly his legs and shins hurt, and looks over his shoulder after a minute or two. No one is coming after him.
           
He turns down McDougal Street and passes houses with two garages and green freshly mowed lawns. Kids play on some of them. Ryan takes a Mounds bar out of his pocket. He opens it, drops the wrapper on the street, and eats as he walks.
           
He turns onto the main road and walks slowly on the sidewalk. He eats the other candy bars. Cars whiz by. A yellow school bus passes with kids from his grade on board. One kid in the back of the bus looks at Ryan and gives him the finger. Ryan makes the same gesture and mouths “fuck you.” The kid smiles and shakes his middle finger at him.
           
Ryan reaches a corner with a traffic light. A bank is on his side of the street, and a
Catholic school is on the other. The crossing guard watches him as he approaches. She’s an old woman, dressed in a bright orange jacket. She wears a hat adorned with multiple pins, with a feather sticking out of it.
           
“How are you, hon?” she says. She smiles and wrinkles form on her cheeks and forehead.
           
“Okay.”
           
She watches the light. When it changes to green, she holds her hand up and walks ahead, stops in the middle of the road, and signals for Ryan to cross.
           
“So long, hon,” she says as he passes.
          
He walks past the Catholic high school. It’s deserted, having gotten out over an hour ago.
He passes many houses, beige ones, green ones, whites ones, and then a deli, and then more houses. He reaches another traffic light. No crossing guard waits at this corner, and he goes across the road himself. He passes an empty lot with weeds growing between the cracks of the pavement. An abandoned gas station comes up next. He walks past the gutted pumps and deserted garage and turns down Winslow Place.
           
All of the houses on this block are small. None are well kept. Ryan’s house, though, the third one on the right, is by far the worst. Half of the white paint is flaked off. The bottom of the front door is badly dented from when his father kicked it in a couple of years ago. That had happened when his mother still lived there and she had locked his father outside. The front yard consists of patches of dead brown grass and dirt. His father’s old truck is parked in the driveway. A black tarp covers the camper, covering his father’s paint equipment, which hasn’t been used in months.
           
Ryan turns the knob and opens the door. The inside smells of dirty laundry and cigarette smoke. He walks into the living room. His father sits on the sofa, holding a can of Budwesier that rests against his stomach. Dozens of empty cans litter the floor. A poker tournament is playing on the TV. His father glances at Ryan and then looks back at the screen.
           
Ryan walks down the hall and goes into his room. His bed is unmade, the sheets and covers oily and rank. They have not been washed in months. The floor is covered with dirty clothes, a few empty potato chip bags, some dog-eared comic books. He puts his backpack down and picks up a Spiderman comic he’s read before at least a half dozen times. He lies on his bed on the bunched up sheets, his back against the wall.
           
He reads for hours. The front door slams shut at one point and then he hears his father’s truck starting. He reads one comic after another, although he has already read every single one, multiple times. His stomach begins to growl. He keeps reading. Only when the hunger becomes almost painful does he put his comic down and go into the kitchen.
           
The table is covered with dirty dishes, newspapers, and empty beer cans. The sink overflows with unwashed glasses, pots, and dishes. Dirt and crumbs and sand-like debris crunch under Ryan’s sneakers against the tile floor.

He opens the refrigerator. There is an open bottle of ketchup, a dozen or so cans of
Budweiser, a white container from a Chinese restaurant, and a bottle of mustard that’s almost empty.
           
Ryan opens the white container. It’s a third full of brown fried rice. Bluish gray mold furs the surface of the rice. He closes the container and puts it back.
           
He opens the cabinets, and finds a half package of Ritz crackers, and a jar of peanut butter nearly a quarter full.
           
He finds a knife and a glass and a plate in the sink and washes them, then fills the glass with tap water and takes everything to the kitchen table.
           
He eats all the crackers in the package with the peanut butter. Sometimes he eats the crackers open-faced, or two of them together with peanut butter in between, like little sandwiches. He takes long sips of water and gets up once to refill his glass.
           
He feels full when he finishes, though he knows he will be hungry shortly again, having had peanut butter and crackers for dinner many times in the past. He goes into the living room, pushes the curtain aside, and looks out the window. His father’s truck is still gone. He wonders when the truck will be back, if his father will return at all tonight, and how drunk he will be if he does.
           
Ryan sits down on the couch and turns on the TV. He changes channels until he finds the end of a Cheers rerun. A Family Ties episode comes on when Cheers finishes. Ryan watches one sitcom after the other. He never laughs, but what he watches enthralls him. He wishes he knew these people in real life, that he was part of their families and their lives, which seem so much better than his own.
His eyelids feel heavy. He knows he shouldn’t risk falling asleep on the couch in case his father does come home, but he continues to watch. Soon he nods off, and then suddenly wakes a couple minutes later. Ryan gets up to turn off the TV, but then a rerun of Mr. Belvedere, a personal favorite, begins. He tells himself half an hour more and sits back down. He watches, transfixed, as George Owens talks to his son about a bully at school, feeling more love for this TV character than for his own father, until a commercial comes on. Then he nods off for the final time and falls asleep.
           
The sound of the front door wakes him. He opens his eyes and sees his father. His face is ruddy, his eyes glassy and bloodshot. Ryan doesn’t know what time it is. A Different Strokes episode plays on the TV. Arnold is smiling sheepishly, and the audience is laughing.
           
His father looks at him, breathing heavily, sneering. Ryan wishes he had gone to bed earlier. His stomach lurches. He grips the fabric of the couch.
           
His father lunges at him. Ryan moves away quickly, but his father manages to grab the back of his shirt. Ryan heads for the hall, the back of his shirt stretching. Then suddenly his shirt is free and he hears a loud thud. “Motherfucker,” his father says. Ryan turns to see that his father has tripped and fallen to the floor. He runs down the hall and goes into his room, shuts the door, and locks it. Then, quickly, he pushes the bureau against the door. Now he sits on the bed and waits. The banging begins a few seconds later. The doorknob shakes. The door trembles, punched and kicked. His father swears. Ryan sits on the bed, cringing at each blow.
           
Finally it stops. A few seconds pass. A final loud kick shakes the door. His father curses Ryan once more, and then, silence. Ryan hears another door in the house open and close.
           
He’s suddenly not tired anymore, but he has to go to the bathroom very badly. He finds an empty can of Coke on the floor and urinates into it. He opens the window when he finishes, and dumps the contents outside. The piss sizzles against the ground.
           
He lies on his bed and curls up. A door opens and closes somewhere in the house, but after that it is quiet. Ryan closes his eyes, but he can’t fall asleep. He lies there and breathes slowly through his nose. He thinks of his Spiderman comics. He thinks of the Gatorade bottles in the 7/11. He thinks of the feather on the crossing guard’s hat.