Apology by Jon Pineda (books to read this summer .txt) 📕

Tom if he had considered rushing a fraternity, and when Tom just shrugged, not wanting to appear one way or the other, Chase grinned and said he understood and handed Tom a slip of paper with a scrawled address. Tom had just read a chapter on the whaling vessels of the Northeast, could still picture the inset of a piece of scrimshaw.

“A couple of guys are meeting up to watch the Skins,” Chase said. “You and Landon should stop by. But just you two, okay? Is that cool?”

“Cool,” Tom said, and with that, Chase tipped his hat and blended in with the others milling about the crowded corridor.

That evening, Tom went alone. All of the guys there wore similar baseball hats, the same Greek letters. Rather than turning around and leaving, Tom ended up staying and drinking with them, cheering mindlessly whenever Riggins plowed into the end zone. Later in the week, there were more events, more opportunities to get wasted, as Chase liked to scream and the other brothers would holler back in response.

When Tom was given a bid to pledge the fraternity, it was not a surprise. He had expected it. Chase himself delivered the bid in the same spot, outside his Introduction to American History class, the only class so far that Tom was beginning to like.

At the chapter house on Rugby Road, he stood with his new pledge brothers. He couldn’t help thinking about the other guys he had seen during rush events. Those who had tried their hardest to please, it turned out they were the ones who didn’t get a bid. Tom knew it was a game, but he didn’t care.

A kid who announced himself as the pledge master pinned a star on Tom’s T-shirt. Tom wished then he had worn something a little more formal. The other pledges all seemed to have taken note of the same memo explaining the dress code: buttoned-up blue Oxford shirt, woven leather belt, khakis, a frayed UVA baseball hat. When Tom raised his hand like the others and recited the same words, he could feel his voice falling away.

At the first real pledging activity, Tom balanced on top of a metal folding chair. There were his other pledge brothers doing the same thing; the sound of creaking filled the room. Tom then covered his face while the brothers in the fraternity began to shout obscenities and hurl old food at him.

The night before, he had been in the same corner making out with a girl whose hair, even in the smoky atmosphere, smelled like strawberries. Now he was covered in cold oatmeal and pea soup. One of his pledge brothers was smeared with a concoction of cottage cheese and kidney beans, another with mustard and slices of lunchmeat. More food flew past him. It made no sense, which was the point.

“You suck!” the brothers screamed. “You’re worthless!”

Tom began to flinch with each hit.

“You’ll never be a brother!” they said.

And so he never was.

four

Prior offenses? It was not said this way. Those who spoke to him sometimes asked, and Shoe could not list them. Or would not list them. He suffered heavily for not speaking, for not finding the words.

Everywhere he looked there were words.

Scratched on the walls, inside the rims of sinks and steel commodes. Even on the arms of men. Smeared words. Colorful scripts. There was no shortage of language and the bodies of men that carried all forms of phrases, chants, and prayers blended with glistening skin.

He began to read poems in the prison library. He committed one to memory.

At any one time the yard was alive with language carried on backs widening with splayed lats, tattooed knuckles tightening over bars wrapped in worn cloth tape. Someone straining to lift the weight, a word there in their hands. A word like his nephew’s name scrawled in the air. It moved from neck to neck, arm to arm, until it landed in Shoe’s mouth and he whispered it to himself before crossing the yard.

Sometimes he made it across without anyone noticing his slow walk, his foot dragging behind him. Sometimes he pretended to be normal, untouched by his circumstances, and in those moments, he was the most scared. It would not last, and he could feel it, this life fading in and out. His prior life.

And sometimes he thought about Elle in Taos, the last time they had spoken, and what had become of her son. He thought about this boy and Mario and himself. And what of his own childhood? Had he done the right thing, ever?

She had not been his first choice, though in the crowded setting he could already tell she was taller than he was and blonde, two features he had discovered he liked in particular, and when she wandered off from the other women in her corner booth and disappeared to the back of the bar, Exequiel left the torn cushioned stool where he had been watching her and slipped among the other stragglers, all red and blue flannel shirts and jeans, bodies shadowy as open water, and went in search of her.

The cigarette machine, with its colorful labels and worn plastic pull levers, resembled a thrown-together robot, angled as it was with its mirrored-finish metal trim catching blue and green lights splashing from the stage where a band was struggling through a cover of The Eagles’ “Take It Easy.” Every so often one of the waitresses would join in on the chorus.

He passed the pool table. Off to the side were two men dressed in the similar stamped country-western attire, flannel and jeans, but with rigid bolo ties and clean cowboy hats as accents. They were sipping on beers and nodding at nothing in particular, pushing around the cue ball like it was bothering them.

The ball zigzagged across the field of scuffed felt and then returned only to be shoved