Caps and gowns dotted downtown Kourtland, all three blocks of it, like odd maroon aliens had landed.
It was 4:19pm.
The graduation ceremony was at 5pm.
Bobby Erdkomer leaned over his ashtray on the stone lip of the second floor, above Tellie’s Gifts and Jewelry, because he wasn't allowed to smoke in his apartment. So he leaned over Main Street.
By 4:19am at least five Kourtland High School graduates would be pregnant, Bobby was certain.
Tomorrow would be Bobby Erdkomer 's 37th birthday, not that it mattered.
Ash blew from his cigarette into the Main Street sign.
Kourtland almost renamed Main Street Bobby Torttle Boulevard after the quarterback who brought Kourtland High School their only state championship in anything and then got killed in a bus accident on his way to his Army basic training base.
Bobby Torttle's Jehovah’s Witness parents had vetoed that idea.
That didn't matter either, but Bobby Torttle had made Bobby Erdkomer the “other Bobby” in Kourtland.A damn street sign wasn't gonna make that better or worse.
Bobby Erdkomer lit another cigarette while the current one was still lit,more a function of being scatterheaded than his severe nicotine addiction.
The caps and gowns began to filter toward the football field on the north side of the high school where the ceremony would take place.
Bobby Erdkomer had a handwritten note for one of those caps and gowns.
Most of em would wind up in the pines on Pettibon Hill, drinking and fucking,just like Bobby Erdkomer did.
Bobby Lagathian would walk across that stage tonight.
Bobby Erdkomer would find him, and press a note in his hand, and forty dollars.
The forty might weird the kid out, but whatever.
Jessica Lagathian had tried her gotdamnest to make that kid Bobby Torttle, Junior. But the Torttle’s weren't having it, and apparently the court wasn't either.
But Bobby Torttle was at Pettibon Hill for five minutes that graduation night, 19 years ago.
Duck Meyers guzzled a whole bottle of Tickle Pink and puked it too close to Bobby Torttle's shoes, and he left.
Bobby Erdkomer was near the top of the hill, next to that plaque in honor of the Army Corps of Engineers guys who died plugging up Pettibon Mine, fucking Jessica Lagathian like the world was gonna end.
Bobby Erdkomer didn't know Jessica was pregnant.
She didn't tell anybody till after Bobby Torttle's bus crashed on 53 and him, the bus driver and some Mexican kid from Covington died. Couple more kids got burned.
In a way, Bobby Lagathian got burned, because his mom convinced enough people that he was Bobby Torttle's son, that he had to try to live up to that with Bobby Erdkomer’s genes.
Bobby Erdkomer had tried to convince Jessica to drop the lie and admit Bobby Erdkomer was her kid's real Daddy. That convincing got harder when Bobby Erdkomer was trying to do it via letter from Acton Regional Correctional facility on a Possession with Intent to Deliver.
Bobby stubbed out two cigarettes at once.
He didn't think he had ever done that before, wondered for a second if it mattered, decided it didn't.
Usually his cigarettes burned out on him on the round table next to the pinball machine at Damerow’s, where he was pinball league champ nine years running.
His first trophy had a gold plastic cup on top, and he had used it as an ashtray when he was too lazy to find a real one.
His latest trophy was holding down his handwritten note to his son so the open window wouldn't blow it on the floor.
Just a note of encouragement, with all the money a stranger, just another guy in town could spare.
The note read:
Allways tell the truth, don't let anything get in your way, and if you ever want a pinball lesson
Bobby Erdkomer wadded up the note and lit another cigarette, inside. He walked back to the window and leaned out.
The caps and gowns were gone from Main Street now, all of em in the football field.
Bobby Erdkomer thought about writing: I should've told you this sooner
Bobby Erdkomer thought about writing: I hope you like Star Wars because I swear to God I'm your father
Bobby Erdkomer thought about writing: There’s more to life than being pinball champ at Damerow's but he wasn't sure what.
***
This was great. Those last lines are really gonna stick with me. Thanks for this.
Hi Jimmy, this is re our coversation in notes about the value of criticism, so here goes:
You're a very skillful writer, obviously a pro. In this story, you have a concept (the boy doesn't know who his father is, the father wants to tell him) that engages the reader. As you explain this concept, you reveal the character of Bobby Erdkomer and the nature of the world that he inhabits and depict his dilemma. You do all that well, but you might fail to engage the reader due to the depressing nature of your fictional universe. In the universe of your story, characters have nothing more to aspire to than becoming pinball champion and having illegitimate children. So it isn't clear why it matters whether the boy knows who his father is or not. How will anything change in this dead-end town, how will anyone's life be better if the boy knows the truth? Maybe depicting Erdkommer’s loneliness and longing for connection might give the reader some hope and inject energy into the story.