The Tasmanian devil tattoo on George’s right bicep never faded, even as his memory of home did.
Hints of black, red and yellow still graced his leathery skin, making up the same motif seen on Ridgewood’s basketball jerseys — When was that? — 40-some-years-ago. They were the same colors in the shambles of Ridgewood’s basketball court. Though the paintings on the hardwood were no longer legible — overgrown by dried vines and blown flaky by the same windstorms that had scattered the bricks from the school’s ravaged walls — George knew. He could read them. He remembered.
Thursday nights, bleachers packed, the fight song echoing against the walls, now reduced to rubble. The voices of miners, loggers, clerks and maids. Sinners and saints, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. The town glory, the boys’ basketball team, went unbeaten from ’65 to ’72. George was one of the all-American faces that graced national newspapers. A slight boy, but with height and a killer hook-shot, the 17-year-old Idahoan never lost a game in his four years as a Ridgewood Devil.
But the war left no one undefeated.
Now, George was the only sign of movement on the entire premise. His shuffling footsteps did not echo. His eyes caught no birds, not even an insect in flight. The slate grey sky had no texture. George stood at what used to be half court, facing what used to be a hoop — now only a fallen pole with a bent rim propping it at a slight angle. The net had most likely deteriorated in the wind or deemed a good addition for a rat’s nest before all living things had fled Ridgewood.
Beyond the hardwood pieces that lay partially plastered to the concrete and the fallen walls of the school remained only foundations of George’s childhood. The bar, the church — both mere yards from where the school had stood, now only stubs. The pews were incinerated in the attacks, fueled further by the bursting bottles of alcohol next door. Bottles of Jack and Beam had melted, leaving only ash-coated blobs as reminders of roaring karaoke nights and fights over women and patches of timber.
The mountainous bowl in which Ridgewood sat, once lush with pines, was now desolate. Mosquito, Lightening and Strong Creeks all dry. The Ridgewood River but a muddy ravine. Butler’s Saddle, B-Top Mountain — where George had killed his first buck — all crisped, mutilated by weaponry the small town couldn’t have possibly conceived.
Kneeling, George tugged a partially attached portion of the basketball court from its concrete foundation and tucked it in his pocket — definitely against protocol — and smiled weakly to himself.
As he stood, his hazmat suit crinkled and straightened, creating the only noise aside from his even breathing. He couldn’t cry, he thought, or he’d fog up his mask.
In his elderly canter, George hobbled back to the Military Research Vehicle. The roads had crumbled, so the truck limped over the chunks of concrete and out of the electrified and barbed fence that marked Ridgewood’s city limits. With one last glance, Ridgewood’s last devil said goodbye.
Lyndsie Kiebert can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @lyndsie_kiebert