Jerry Maybe

There’s a hole in my memory the size and shape of a ten-year-old boy. No idea who he was or what he looked like, just the memory of that time he blocked our toilet with a mess that would’ve kept me home from school, and the afternoon he convinced me to play by the tracks and how, sliding down the embankment, he somehow caught the branch of a prickle bush in his butt and made me look to see if he was bleeding. 

     Bad things happened to him . . . little things, sure, but just enough to warn me off. 

     Sorry, man.

Inspired by In search of Sheryl Hickory, 1961-1993. Illustration by the author, with a big leg up from Google Gemini.