The winter sun, poor dim-ghost of itself, hung reddish and washed-out behind layers of haze above the old highway. The thick, damp air engulfed him with heat and humidity, though he did not feel uncomfortable. He stared at the sun and at the same time sketched. The performance had just ended and school had let out.
Hands was late for their after-school walk. Tony cried miserably as he drew, thinking he would not come.
“Ah, there you are at last, Hands,” said Tony Kruger. He had been waiting a long time on the highway and went up with a smile to the friend he saw coming out of the gate talking with other boys and about to go off with them.
“What?” said Hands, and looked at Tony. Tony closed his sketchbook.
“Right! We'll take a little walk, then,” said Hands Hansen. Tony said nothing and his eyes were clouded. Did Hands forget—had he just remembered that they were to take a walk together today on the abandoned highway? And Tony had looked forward to it with incessant joy.
“Well, good-bye,” said Hands Hansen to his comrades.
Feeling a bit short of breath, Tony Kruger felt released.
He didn’t so much feel the oppressiveness of the end of the world, but the oppressiveness of his love for Hands.
Often he confused the end of the world (if we can say the end of the world is an event), with causes and effects, and really, he knew nothing, nothing about this world, and where it had come from, where it was going, if he should have hope or not.
Tony did not speak. He suffered in silence. His slanted thin brows were drawn together in a frown, his sensual lips were rounded to whistle, and he gazed into space with his head on one side. Both his posture and manner were habitual.
Hands played with his Cat’s Cradle string, making patterns and shapes, constructing buildings.
Suddenly Hands shoved his arm into Tony's, with a sideways look—he knew very well what the trouble was. And Tony, though he remained silent for the next few steps, felt his heart soften.
“I hadn't forgotten, you see, Tony,” said Hands, gazing at the asphalt, “I just thought it wouldn't come off today because it was so hot and that it might rain. But I don't mind that at all, and it's great of you to have waited. I thought you had gone home, and I was mad....”
He put away his string. Everything in Tony leaped and jumped for joy at the words.
The two chattering teenagers walked on the rubbish laden asphalt near the old Mill Valley/Highway One exit. The old freeway was abandoned and wrecked. Unreachable Old Frisco across the acrid red bay smoked and spurt fire like a kiln. The collapsed ruins of the two major bridges were like severed arteries. The flaccid red water was empty of objects, like a desert.
After the afternoon’s squashing tempest of rain, the excruciating heat and humidity made the two sweat slightly, even pleasantly; they were comfortable in their Tsuits. The Tsuits made the conditions bearable, even pleasant, no matter the sultry tropical-like Bay Area weather.
They were both fourteen year old teenagers; with limited vocabularies, boundless useless hope, with no kind of intelligible future. Hands was absolutely Tony’s physical and intellectual opposite. Hands had wavy blond hair, was athletically built, with narrow hips and thin lips, and blue-eyed; Tony was nearly a bag of bones, Asian and dark, with a “mongoloid” face, including single-lidded eyes, black straight hair.
The interests of the two boys differed as well, as Tony was well aware. Tony liked to doodle and draw and already had the ineffable artistic drive, which made him feel different from others
Hands had utterly no interest in imagination or unreal sad nostalgia—he lived in the moment.
Tony already felt a strong sense of isolation and loss, and saw himself as a romantic figure, the disillusioned artist who did not have any feelings for humanity, which he understood to be “normal” feelings. He felt
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