Kiss Jupiter Goodbye
By Ashton Goggans
“Hand me the nine-iron,” Jimmy reached into the blue bag stuffed in the bushes and pulled out the rusty club. “Wait for the light to turn green and we’ll all hit on the count of three, ok,” He threw the club to me and grabbed a handful of tennis balls out of the garbage bag sitting on top of the bench.
Thanksgiving had just passed and the city of Jupiter had put Christmas lights up all over the downtown area; light up candy-canes and Santa Claus statues with a few giant menorahs, for political reasons.
Jimmy worked at the Jupiter Humane Society. He injected kittens and puppies, some whose eyes had not yet opened, with blue liquid. This, painlessly he was told, killed them from the inside out. He hated everyone , for obvious reasons. We had become friends some years ago. In middle school the skateboarders stuck together, we weren’t cool then, not even close. We were broken toy soldiers carrying our dignity, and comic books, in military rucksacks. We spent weekend sleepovers wearing out cassette tapes of Black Flag, watching the same skate videos over, and over, and frothing over stolen Playboy magazines.
Jimmy and I began volunteering at the shelter after we were caught stealing fireworks. Forty hours was enough for me but Jimmy had a fondness for the work--walking and feeding the animals, making sure they didn’t fight, and,
The local tennis clubs would bring their day-old tennis balls to the shelter. They felt philanthropic and slept easier at night knowing that the soon to be blue-juiced dogs had something to chew on. Jimmy said that the balls just sat there because the dogs would “fucking kill each other” if you threw a ball into the pack.
So here we were. Saturday night debauchery was a tradition for us. We would have firework-gang-wars with each other and convince the cops, who always showed up, that we were rival gangs in hopes of getting arrested. Jimmy thought it would give us more street cred. We would place cardboard in the middle of the five-way intersection, wear sweatpants and headbands, and offer free break-dance lessons to the passersby, or bring the water-balloon launcher and shoot anything that was lying around--- rocks, dead birds, day old muffins that the coffee shop I worked at let me take each night--anything. People loved us.
Tonight we were golfing with tennis balls: trying to hit cars stopped at the intersection down the block, and getting really good at it.
My Dad encouraged mischief; he knew the law and the freedoms that being a minor contained. At night Dad and I would sit and discuss most everything but usually came back to his youthful exploits. His eyes would light up as each memory crept through the fog left by three decades of drugs, debt, and fatherhood. He grew up just north of Jupiter, a different time, a different world,—he told me that him and his brothers got to name the street they lived on; Spartacus, they named it Spartacus. He hated video games and cut our T.V. cable with hedge loppers when I was seven. He would rather us be out knocking down mail boxes than inside watching television. He loved Jimmy, and more, somehow, when he got me into stupid shit.
The park bench, our park bench, faced east, and looked directly at the main highway. There was a major intersection there, where the street which ran along the north side of the park ran into the highway. We set up in the middle of the intersection, five deep tonight, and waited for the light facing us to turn red. All at once the five of us would tee off; the sound of brakes screeching meant contact, and sent us running into the bushes for cover.
We had been golfing for about forty minutes and had not even made a dent in the bag. Forty minutes was about the longest we could ever get away with anything on Saturday nights before the cops showed up. We never got in
real trouble; they just wrote our names down and told us to get lost. This was our Jupiter--every weekend the same shit.
Jimmy put the bag back into his truck, a 1982 Chevy pickup aptly named “The Brick” because of its rust color and seemingly immortal nature: we had tried to kill it and it would not die.
As he was walking back, on cue, Officer Wells showed up, lights twinkling, adding to the Christmas warmth. At 23 Wells was a junior deputy and had graduated with some of the older kids who hung out at the park. His dad had been an officer and was killed by a heart attack that occurred while cleaning leaves out of their gutters. The doctors didn’t know if the heart attack or the two story tumble had killed him. Wells parked on the curb of the park, left his lights on, like always, and got out.
“Hey Sherriff” we said in what seemed like unison.
“You boys want to get off that bench and talk to me?”
“Not really man, the bench is really comfortable,” Jimmy said, sitting down.
“I have had some reports of kids hitting golf balls into traffic over here,” He looked at the statue that stood in the middle of the fountain, then back at us. “You guys wouldn’t know anything about that?”
Jimmy hated being patronized more than almost anything, only slightly less than the blue-juice back at the shelter.
“They were tennis balls and no, we don’t know anything,” Jimmy snapped. “And another thing, we aren’t kids; we’re only like four years younger than you.”
Wells looked at Jimmy for far too long, then turned back to his car. He reached inside the passenger window and pulled out a solitary tennis ball, turned back to the group on the bench and dropped it at their feet.
“What’s this?” He asked sarcastically, picking up the tennis ball that now lay between my torn Converse. Jimmy couldn’t hold it down and started laughing hysterically.
“Are you planting a fucking tennis ball on us?” He asked.
“Jimmy, can’t you fuck around at home?”
“Do we look like golfers or tennis players to you?” I asked, feeling courageous after watching Jimmy laugh in his
face. Truth be told I was a good tennis player, I had taught summer camps all through high school, and Dad and I played most weekend mornings.
“Every week I have to come down here and deal with you. I’m sick of people complaining. I want you guys to move this somewhere else. I don’t want to see you guys here again tonight,” He said.
“Well where do you want us, if not in a public park?” Jimmy asked. The other kids had grabbed their skateboards and began to leave. I had my dad’s stories tumbling through my mind. Jimmy had all the misanthropy of a young man forced to kill baby animals boiling inside of him—we weren’t giving an inch.
“Anywhere but here, I’m done dealing with you,” and on that note he picked up the tennis ball and tossed it to Jimmy, turned, walked back to his car. He turned the glorious blinking lights off and as he drove off Jimmy smiled at me, and flicked him off.
“Where do you want to go?” I asked.
“Hold on,” Jimmy said, trotting off to his car. He opened the trunk and pulled out what was left of the first bag of balls and the second full one. He looked down the
The other kids were putting their skateboards back in their cars about to leave when Jimmy handed me the almost-empty bag, smiled again, and began emptying the contents of the second one into the intersection.
“This town is dead, there isn’t a thing left here. I’m gone, I am fucking gone! Kiss Jupiter goodbye!”
He dumped all the tennis balls out and began kicking them into the street. I dumped min and followed suit. The rest of the kids began laughing nervously, acutely aware of the implications of Jimmy’s actions-- Jimmy just smiled. He looked alive, radiant-- a beautiful sight, standing under the sepia light of the street lamp, glowing with indignation.
Sunday morning it looked like a cloud had descended over the intersection and rained down tennis balls. The gutters were filled from one end to the other with barely used fuzzy balls. The coffee shop was buzzing, like only small towns can, with talk of who was responsible for the offense. I smiled, thinking of Jimmy’s face, soaking in youth and hate and beautiful, pointless, defiance.
My dad walked through the door, stopping for the paper and Sunday
