Sons of the Mesa.

[Soapy]

They Hopi, cuh?

#nooticer

single Dad with a bunch of kids in the dessert, eh?

what i did cuh

you'll see

See you in valhalla.

Aight aight, he writing writing. I even like the layout.

Make me a banner, brudda

what you need brother?

[Soapy]

Season 1, Episode 2
“You’re not even listening to me.”

“I’m listening,” Micah said.

“You’re not, fool because if you was your ass would have been joined."

“I heard you."

Kele walked backward in front of him, hands out, like he was making a case to a jury. “Not just track coaches, bro. Football coaches come through too. Len said there was a guy from NAU at the meet last week."

“Watching you?"

“Watching everybody."

Micah laughed. “Man, the only reason you’re on that team is to look at girls.”

Kele shrugged his shoulders. “Why not both?”

Micah shook his head and kept walking. The rest of the group was twenty feet ahead, clustered around the water fountain.

"What you fools laughing about?" Ahote turned around to face them.

“Micah’s scared to join track,” Kele scoffed.

"What else is new?" Sik cackled, "Motherfucker is scared they’ll make him run a mile and he’ll be the slowest kid in school. Slower than Tawa."

"That’s fucked up," Micah shook his head, "Didn’t your mom make you hang out with that kid freshman year?"

"You guys can take turns on the wheelchair," Ahote placed his hand on Micah’s shoulder, "Going around the track."

"That doesn’t even make any fucking sense," Micah held both hands up.

They all laughed. Micah laughed too.

“So what’s up this weekend?” Sik asked.

“Not shit.”

“We should do something.”

“You always say that.”

“So let’s do some shit."

Micah’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn’t check it. “I’m down. After I drop my sister off tonight. I’ll have the truck, I can pick y’all up.”

“Bet.”

“Bet.”

They reached the locker room entrance. The door was propped open with a wedge of folded cardboard. Kele peeled off first, then Sik, then Ahote, a headnod each.

Micah kept walking.

He pulled his headphones out of his pocket, untangled them with his thumb, and put them in. The school was behind him now, the parking lot thinning out, the last of the buses pulling away from the curb.

He turned the volume up.

Delvin had the chair by the window, the one with the cushion that had gone flat in the seat but still held up in the back. He had a beer in his hand, his second one, and his feet were up on the ottoman. The house was full in the way it got full on Saturdays, the way it had been getting full on Saturdays since he was a kid, people drifting in and out of rooms without anybody having called them.

Arianna was on Kelvin’s lap on the couch across from him. She had her head against his chest and one hand in his shirt pocket, playing with the edge of something in there, a receipt or a pack of gum. Kelvin had his arm around her and his chin on top of her head and he was watching whatever was on the television without really watching it. He looked a lot like Delvin. A few years younger, a few pounds lighter, the same jaw, the same way of sitting with one leg tucked under him.

Delvin took a pull from the beer and let his head rest against the back of the chair.

His mother moved past the doorway with a dish towel over her shoulder, said something to somebody in the kitchen he couldn’t make out. His aunt’s voice answered from in there, and then a laugh, and then the sound of a cabinet closing. One of the cousins, it sounded like Cedric but Delvin couldn’t tell from where he was sitting, came through the living room and went out the front door, the screen door slapping shut behind him.

Arianna said something to Kelvin, too quiet to catch. Kelvin laughed and squeezed her shoulder and she pressed her face into his shirt.

Delvin’s grandmother came through from the kitchen carrying a plate with a piece of cornbread on it, and she set it on the arm of Kelvin’s couch without stopping, and kept going into the back room. Kelvin picked it up and broke a piece off and held it down where Arianna could reach it.

“Where you headed next?” Delvin said.

“Flagstaff Monday. Then up to Page, maybe. Depends on the load.”

“How long you in town?”

“Back out Monday morning.”

Delvin nodded. He took another drink. The beer was going warm in his hand, but he didn’t mind.

The television was on some game, basketball from the sound of it, though he hadn’t been much attention it. Somebody in the kitchen dropped something metal and there was a clatter and then his mother’s voice saying something sharp and then his aunt laughing.

Kelvin shifted on the couch and Arianna adjusted, settling back into the new shape of him.

The front door opened again and Cedric came back in, or whoever it was, and went past them into the kitchen. The screen door slapped shut again. Somebody’s car started outside, idled for a minute, and then pulled away.

Delvin finished the beer and set the bottle on the floor next to the chair. He didn’t get up for another one.

Delvin let his eyes close for a second. The sounds of the house moved around him, the television, the kitchen, the screen door, his mother’s voice from somewhere, and he didn’t have to do anything about any of it. Not right now. Not for a while.

The door hit the wall when he pushed it open.

"Quiet."

He grinned.

"I thought you said you were good to drive."

"I was. I am. We made it, didn’t we?"

She grabbed him by the collar and pulled him in and the door shut behind them with her foot, and he was already kissing her before the latch caught, one hand on the small of her back, the other finding the wall behind her for balance. She kissed him back for a second, then pulled away just enough to check the door, then kissed him again.

They hit the bed together. She laughed into his shoulder, the sound muffled against his shirt, and he could feel her trying to hold it in, her ribs shaking against his. He didn’t bother being quiet. He laughed right back, low and easy, and she pressed her hand over his mouth.

“Shut up. I’m serious. They don’t like me bringing people over."

He kissed her palm. She pulled her hand away and sat up on top of him, still laughing, still trying to keep it down, and she looked down at him for a second with her hair falling across her face.

“Give me a minute,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

She slid off him and crossed the room and the bathroom door clicked shut behind her. The light came on under it, a thin yellow line along the floor.

Jace lay there on his back. The ceiling was white. Plain white. No fan, just a bare bulb. He turned his head to the side. The room was small. Dresser against the far wall, cluttered with things he couldn’t make out in the dark. A lamp on the nightstand. A glass of water half full. A phone charger coiled next to it.

He tried to remember her name.

He looked at the dresser again. No mail sitting out. No envelope with a name on it. No monogram on anything he could see from the bed. The lamp had a plain shade. The glass was plain. Nothing.

He turned his head the other way. The pillow next to him had a dent in it. By the closet, a pair of boots. The kind with the steel toe, scuffed at the front, laces loose.

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He flipped it open and found the condom in the billfold, tucked behind a twenty-dollar he’d forgotten was there because it had no business being there instead of Tony’s wallet. He peeled the wrapper off with his thumb. The wrapper came apart in his fingers. He smiled up at the ceiling.

The truck idled in the gas station lot, the engine ticking under the hood, the AC blowing warm. Micah had the window down on his side anyway.

From the back seat, the tinny sound of YouTube Shorts cycled every few seconds. A woman’s voice, fast, explaining how to fold a tortilla. Then a man’s voiceover about something Micah couldn’t catch. Then a dog doing a trick, the sound of a crowd laughing. Then a sound effect, something metallic and sharp. Then another voiceover, a different one, about a car or a game or something. The algorithm churning.

Kayla didn’t look up.

His phone buzzed on the passenger seat. He picked it up, read it, and turned the phone face-down on the seat.

A white sedan pulled into the lot from the other direction. He watched it in the rearview. It parked two spaces over.

He cut the engine.

Kayla was already unbuckling before he’d opened his door. She climbed out with the tablet still in her hand, half-watching something, the audio still going, tinny and fast.

“Make sure you got everything,” he said. “I’m not driving over there."

She grunted.

A woman got out of the white sedan. Walmart vest, blue, the name tag still clipped to the front. Valerie. She had her keys in one hand and her phone in the other, and she looked at him across the hood of the truck.

He nodded.

She nodded back.

Kayla moved past him, around the back of the truck, toward the sedan. She opened the back door and slid in, tablet still going, the sound of it muffled now behind the glass. She didn’t look at either of them.

“She have homework?” Valerie said.

“Ask her.”

“I’m asking you.”

“She does. Make sure she does it herself, in front of you."

She looked over him once.

"Seems like you grow an inch every time I see you," she let out a short laugh, "You’re already bigger than Loma was at your age."

He grunted.

She held it a beat longer than it wanted to stay, the almost-smile, and then it was gone.

“Bye,” she said.

He grunted again.

She got in the car. The engine started. The sedan pulled out of the lot and turned onto the road, and then it was just taillights, and then it was nothing.

[Caesar]

Valerie must be they mama. Deadbeat mama?

Wouldn't be a Soapy production without questionable morals. @Jace

[redsox907]

Jace already knocking boots with a married woman

Valerie Micha's step-mom, not his real mama. That's my guess

Micah doesn't even have the cajones to join track? lol

[Captain Canada]

Jace taking a page out of [redacted]'s book already huh?

Micah getting called out of his name from the jump huh.

[The JZA]

In before it gets too deep

[Soapy]

Valerie must be they mama. Deadbeat mama?

Wouldn't be a Soapy production without questionable morals. @Jace

she's literally picking up her child in her first scene how is she a deadbeat lmao

As far as Jace is concerned:

Jace already knocking boots with a married woman

Valerie Micha's step-mom, not his real mama. That's my guess

Micah doesn't even have the cajones to join track? lol

Small word innit @ Jace



all will be revealed in due time

Jace taking a page out of [redacted]'s book already huh?

Micah getting called out of his name from the jump huh.

No comment.

some light friendly banter between friends

In before it gets too deep

welcome back, brudda

[Soapy]

spent all morning outlining

[Soapy]

we're ready

[Soapy]