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

were still damp, fresh from a morning bath.

“So you’re not Wendell?” Exequiel said, squinting.

Exequiel pretended he could not hide his confusion very well and pinched lightly at the bridge of his nose. The boy sensed this play. He cupped his mouth to keep from showing the wide gaps in his teeth.

“I’m kidding,” the boy said.

“Oh, I see. You’re a jokester.”

The boy nodded quickly, happy to be given this title.

“Where’s your mother?” Exequiel said.

“Making breakfast. Do you like eggs?”

“I love eggs.”

“Well, we don’t have any eggs.”

Exequiel laughed.

“Do you like cereal?” the boy said.

“No,” Exequiel said. “I don’t.”

“Well, that’s too bad. That’s all we have.”

“How long have you been playing?” Exequiel said, sliding the rook across the chessboard.

Wendell took his pawn and moved it five spaces. Exequiel could see rules meant nothing to this boy.

“I haven’t been playing long, just my whole life,” the boy yawned.

“Well, I can tell,” Exequiel said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Without waiting for Exequiel to make a next move, the boy picked up his king and slid the piece five spaces. He placed the king alongside the pawn he had just moved.

“That’s his dad,” Wendell said. “They go everywhere together.”

“Oh,” Exequiel said. He nodded, a serious expression.

The boy told him that the chess set had belonged to his grandfather, who had been a firefighter and had died. He was quick to explain that his grandfather didn’t die being a smoke jumper.

“He was lucky,” the boy said. “He died from being old.”

Exequiel didn’t know what a smoke jumper was, but thought perhaps it had to do with the circus. As the boy spoke, Exequiel’s mind wandered to a time when he had seen one. He had been amazed to watch a woman swallow swords. A bald, heavyset man had danced around the ring and breathed fire. The air in front of the audience filled with white plumes of smoke.

Maybe this man had been a smoke jumper?

“What’s that anyway?” Exequiel said.

“What?”

“Smoke jumper.”

“I don’t really know,” the boy said without looking up. He put his finger on top of another pawn’s helmet and didn’t take it off.

“Maybe your mom knows?” Exequiel said.

“I should hope so,” the boy said. “It was her father after all.”

“We should ask her.”

“Good luck,” the boy said. “She’s secretive.”

“What does that mean? Secretive.”

“I don’t know,” the boy said. “Grandmarsha likes to use that word.”

The boy spoke with a trained solemnity, but then couldn’t hold back any longer. He started laughing, baring his smile. Exequiel could see the teeth were coming in crooked.

“There’s another way you can play this game, but you can’t move the pieces around so much. Did you know that?” Exequiel said.

The boy stopped smiling.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Exequiel said.

“You didn’t offend me,” the boy said.

“I think I did.”

“No.”

Wendell called for his mother, who was in the back of the house. She yelled back, asking him what he wanted. He wanted to tell her this man could leave their house now. How long was he going to stay anyway?

He was angry at his mother and at himself.

Did this man think for one minute he was going to come in here and change the rules of this game? Did he not realize that the chessboard had been a gift from his grandfather?

Was this man, whatever his stupid name meant, so stupid that he didn’t understand how things worked around here? Was he really that stupid?

When Exequiel returned to the house, it was early evening. The day still clung to his clothes. Sweat and sawdust and plaster mix. He could taste the chemical tinge on the back of his tongue. He couldn’t help thinking there was something about this work, after all was said and done, that was bad for the body. He’d give it a few more weeks, tops.

Wendell was in the front yard throwing a baseball in the air. A bat lay on the ground next to him. His grandmother sat in a busted chair on the front porch and leaned over and tapped her ashes into an empty glass. She cut her eyes at Exequiel as he approached.

“Would you like some tea?” she said. “I just made some.”

“Thank you,” he said.

He had almost said it in Spanish. Not that it would have been bad to have done so. Elle’s mother had told him, on numerous occasions, that he reminded her of the actor Ricardo Montalban. He never admitted he didn’t know who that was.

“Wend, would you want some tea?” she said to the boy.

Wendell nodded, watching the ball fall down from the sky. It went through his hands and bounced on the ground. She didn’t say anything else and went inside.

“You want me to throw some to you,” Exequiel said, “so you can hit?”

“Sure,” Wendell said.

Exequiel was surprised.

“Make sure you put some pepper on it,” the boy said as he picked up the ball and tossed it to him.

Exequiel caught the ball and stared at it.

“Where do I put this pepper?” he said.

The boy laughed.

“Are you kidding me?” he said. “Really?”

Exequiel smiled. “I got you.”

“Actually, it’s just gotcha,” the boy said.

“Okay,” Exequiel said. “Gotcha.”

“See?” the boy said. “Doesn’t that just sound right?”

When they fought, Exequiel became silent. He had figured out early that she had been used to men who made a habit of yelling at her and making her feel stupid. Exequiel didn’t want to be that kind of person for her. So he listened. When she got frustrated, she said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, would you please just say something?”

It would be as if he had been waiting his entire life to be told to speak. He would try to fill the spaces of silence with every word in this language that he was still learning. He would try not to think about the boy Wendell in the room down the hall, who was probably pressing his ear to the door so he could hear anything, something, and Exequiel knew that whatever he said would be heard