Tristan Strong Punches a hole in the Sky

The decision to ship me to Granddad and Nana Strong’s farm down in Alabama had been made without my input. Typical. My parents had talked about it a few times before, but after Eddie’s death, and my third school fight in the final two weeks before summer break, well, I guess the time was right.
At least I’d held my own in those school fights. Unlike in the ring last night.
It was just my luck that my grandfather had been there to
witness my humiliation.
“You outweighed that other kid by seven pounds!” Granddad had said after the match, in his growling rasp of a voice. “Set the family name back by a decade.”
That’s me–Tristan Disappointment.
Son of Alvin “Wreckin’ Ball” Strong, the best middle-weight boxer to come out of Chicago in nearly twenty years. I had Dad’s height and Granddad’s chin, and boxing was sup-
posed to run in my veins. I’d worn Granddad’s old trunks, and Dad had worked my corner. The Strong legacy was expected to take another leap forward during my first match.
Instead, it got knocked flat on its butt. Twice.
“You’ll get him next time” was all Dad said, but I could tell he was let down.
And that hurt almost as much as getting punched.
An early summer heat wave greeted me with a blast of humidity as I left the apartment building with my backpack over my shoulder and my duffel bag in hand. Thick gray clouds
huddled in the distance, and I added that to the list of totally not ominous things. Glowing journal? Yep. Storm on the horizon? You betcha.
Dad and Granddad stood at the curb while Nana (no one ever called her Grandma, not if you wanted to eat) knitted in the car. Dad towered over his father, but you could see the family resemblance. Deep brown skin like mine, a wide jaw, and a proud stance. I got my hair from Mom’s side of the family, thankfully, because both Strong, men had identical bald spots peeking through their short afros.
Get him in the fields, put him to work,” Granddad was saying. “That’ll put some fire in his belly.”
Dad shrugged and said nothing. To be fair, no one did much talking when Granddad was around. That old man
could yak a mile a minute.
Nana saw me coming down the stairs, dropped her knitting, and rushed out of the car. “There he is! How you doin’ today, baby? Are you sore from last night?”
She gave me a hug that muffled any answer, then shooed Granddad to the side. “Get the boy’s bag, Walter. Alvin,” she said, addressing my father, “we’ve got to hit the road before that thunderstorm hits.”
Granddad looked me up and down. “Is that all you kids ever wear?”
I glanced down. Black Chuck Taylors with gray untied laces. Loose khaki cargo shorts, and an even looser gray
hoodie. That hoodie went with me everywhere-it had a picture of a flexed bicep on the back in faded black ink. Call me sentimental, but it’s what I always wore when Eddie and I were hanging out. He called it the Tristan Strong uniform of choice, perfect for all occasions.
So yeah, I wear it a lot.
Nana shushed him and pulled me into another hug.’ “Don’t listen to him, Tristan. I can’t wait to have you back with us on the farm. You were so little last time, but them chickens
you used to chase still haven’t forgotten you! I packed a lunch and even rustled up a new story or two for the ride…”
And so, just like that, with a clap on the shoulder from Dad and a hug from Mom, I was someone else’s problem for a month. Good-bye, Chicago, and all your glorious cable TV, internet, and cell phone service. I hardly knew ye.
One thing became very clear during the twelve-hour car ride to Alabama-I was never going to do this again.
Never ever.
Sitting in an enclosed space with Granddad was like wiping your tears with sandpaper. Painful-excruciating, even-and you wondered why you ever thought it was a good idea.
Oh, think I’m playing?
Ten minutes into the trip: “When I was your age, I had a full-time job and I’d already fought in two title fights.”
Three hours in: “Oh, you’re hungry again? Did you bring some stopping-for-snacks money?”
Six hours in: “Man, I shouldn’t have ate those leftover beans for breakfast.”
Eight hours in: “Can’t believe I drove all this way to see a Strong boy fight so soft. That’s your grandmother’s side of the family. Ain’t no Strong ever look like that in Why, I remember…
Anyway, you get it.
By the time we crossed the Alabama state line, I was ready to claw my way into the trunk. I don’t know how Nana could just sit there and hum and knit for most of a day, but that’s what she did. The Cadillac rumbled downy a two-lane highway. kicking up trails of dust and exhaust, a dented rocket ship blasting through time in reverse from the future to a land that Wi-Fi forgot.
I’d put my earbuds in somewhere back in Kentucky, but the battery on my phone had long since run out. I just kept them in so no one would bother me. Nana kept knitting in the passenger seat, and Granddad tapped a finger on the steering wheel, humming along to a song only he could hear.
Things seemed more or less calm, except for one thing:
Eddie’s journal sat on the seat next to me.
Now, I could’ve sworn I’d stuffed the book under the clothes in my duffel bag. Which Grandad had put in the
trunk. And yet here it was, waiting on me to do something I’d put off since the funeral. The late afternoon sun, occasionally peeking out from behind the storm clouds, made the journal look normal, ordinary. But every so often I’d shade the cover
with my hands and peek at it while holding my breath. Yep, still glowing.
Why not open it, you might ask, and see what’s inside?
Well, believe me, it wasn’t that simple. Before Eddie’s death, the cover of his brown leather journal had always been blank. Now a weird symbol appeared to be stitched
into it, like a sun with rays that stretched out to infinity, or a flower with long petals. The same symbol was embossed on a carved wooden charm that dangled from a cord attached to the journal’s spine. I’d seen the tassel before–Eddie had
used it to mark his spot, or to flick me in the back of the head–but the charm was new.
And, even more weirdly, the trinket pulsed with green light, too. I’d been staring at that book every day for minutes on end, but the glow always stopped me from opening it.
I mean, I knew what was in there anyway. The stories Eddie had jotted down in his goofy, blocky handwriting, from his own silly creations to the fables Nana used to tell us when we were younger, when she’d come up to visit. John Henry, Anansi the Spider, Brer Rabbit’s adventures–I’d read them all. Our end-of-semester English project was supposed to be a giant collection of stories from our childhood. Eddie was doing the writing, and I was going to give the oral presentation. Then the accident happened. The counselor Mom
took me to every Wednesday had said I should try to finish the writing part, even though school was now over for the year, as a part of healing and other stuff.
(Before you say something slick you might regret, Mr. Richardson is pretty cool for a counselor, you get me? We play Madden while we talk, which means I can focus on running up the score on his raggedy Eagles squad and not on being embarrassed about answering questions. It helps…some. If it gets too tough, he knows when to back off, too. So you can keep your sensitive and man up comments to yourself. Chumps.)
To avoid thinking about the haunted journal, I watched the weather outside the car window. The clouds had never let up, even once we were in the Deep South. They just switched from hurling lightning bolts at us to hurling fat drops of rain that splattered across the windshield like bugs. Everything everywhere was miserable, and that pretty much summed up my life at the moment.
I took off my earbuds and sighed. Nana heard and turned around in her seat to look at me.
“You hungry, sweetie?” she asked.
“No, not really.”
“No, ma’am.” Granddad’s deep voice rolled back from the driver’s seat.
“You answer No, ma’am’ to your grandmother, understand?”
“Yeah.”
Granddad looked at me in the rearview mirror.
“I mean, yes, sir.”
He held my eyes a moment longer, then went back to looking at the road.
“Well,” Nana continued, turning around and picking up her knitting, “despite what your granddad said earlier”-she gave him a glare-“let me know when you are. Your mama told me you ain’t been eating much, and we’re gonna fix that. And don’t you have some writing to do? That’s what your
counselor wants you to focus on.”
“Boy don’t need no counselor,” Granddad rumbled. “He needs to work. Ain’t no time for moping when horses need feeding and fences need mending.”
“Walter!” Nana scolded. “He needs to-
“I know what he needs-”
I shook my head and stopped paying attention. After spending a day in the car with them, Id realized that this was what they did. They argued, they laughed, they sang, they argued again, and they knitted. Well, Nana knitted. But they were two sides of the same old coin.
With Granddad, everything was about work. Work, work, work.
Bored? Here’s some work.
Finished working? Here’s more work.
Need someone to talk to? Obviously, that meant you didn’t work hard enough, so you know what? Have a little bit more work.
Nana, on the other hand, sang and hummed when she wasn’t talking, which almost never happened, because she
always had a new story to share. “Do you know why the owl can’t sleep?” she’d say, and off the story would go, and you’d sit there and listen, just being polite at first, but by the end, you’d be on the edge of your seat.
I smiled. Eddie had loved listening to my grandmother. When she’s come to visit earlier this year, he’d practically followed her around, his journal in hand.
Speaking of which…
My left hand rested on top of it in the seat next to me, and I traced the symbol stitched into the front cover.
“What’s that, sweetie?”
I looked up to see Nana peeking back over the seat.
“Hm? I mean, uh, yes…. ma’am?”
Granddad nodded, and I let out a sigh of relief.
Nana smiled. “Is that for your writing?”
I hesitated. ” Yes, ma’am.” I held up the book so she could see it, and her eyes widened at the symbol on the cover.
“Where’d you get that?” she asked. Granddad turned to see what she was looking at, but Nana flapped a hand at him. “Watch the road, Walter.”
“From Eddie…..” I began, then paused.
“I mean, his mom gave it to me. It is…… was for us. For our school project. Why? What’s wrong?”
Could she see it? Could she tell that the book was glowing, even in the daylight?
Nana pursed her lips. “That symbol. I just haven’t seen it in a long time.”
“You know what it is?”
“Well…” She glanced at Granddad, who’d tuned us out as soon as we started talking about writing. “It’s the spider’s web, an old African symbol for creativity and wisdom. It
shows how tangled and complicated life can be. But with a little imaginative thinking, we can solve most of our problems and those of others.”
“Do you notice anything else about the journal?” I asked her.
Nana laughed, a bright, joyous sound that infected anyone listening. “Is this a test?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I don’t see nothing but procrastination. Go ‘head and give it a try.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I frowned. So Nana could see the symbol, this spiderweb, but not that it was glowing. Well, that didn’t make me feel any better.
Granddad smacked the steering wheel. “Y’all need to stop filling his head with that mess about symbols. He needs to stay in the real world, think about what he did wrong last night. The boy need to focus! Boxing ain’t gonna just happen-you got to train your body and your mind.”
“Granddad, I don’t want-”
“I don’t want to hear it. You’re not a kid anymore. You’re a Strong, and- “Walter” Mana interrupted, don’t be so hard on the boy.”
“He needs some toughening up-y’all being too soft on him!”
“Now look-” Nana started whisper- lecturing Granddad, who shook his head and grumbled beneath his breath.
I slid down in my seat and tried to block out the argument. I let my thumb trace the cover of the journal, and before my brain could tell me not to, I yanked it into my lap and flipped to a random page. So what if it glowed? It was still a book and reading it would be better than listening to any more of Granddad’s insults disguised as life lessons. Or reliving that bus accident.
I mean, really, what could go wrong?
2
The Bottle Trees
TWO FIGURES CROUCHED NEAR THE BASE OF A GIANT OAK TREE. Huge knotted roots sprawled in the center of twisting, creeping shadows. The first figure-a large Black man with arms of mahogany, fists like rocks, and shoulders broader than mountains- went down on one knee in the soft, damp earth. He rested his hand on a smooth log beside him.
“You sure this is necessary, BR?” His voice rumbled like a thousand trains all heading to the same place.
The second figure–a rabbit as big as a kindergartener-twitched nervously and snapped, “Of course I’m sure, John! Hurry up! We need to get this over with.” Something clanked in the distance and the rabbit jumped. Now!”
“Okay, BR, okay,” John said. He straightened up…and up… and up, until his silhouette seemed larger than the old tree. “But you need to lend this ole tool some power. I can’t do it alone.”
“Whatever, just get on with it!
John picked up the log, except it… wasn’t a log. It was a handle – the smooth shaft of a massive hammer. Carvings were etched up and down the wood, and it hummed as giant hands found familiar grooves.
John, With a hammer. No way…I knew that name. Those characters. John Henry, and BR…..BR….Brer Rabbit? But-
Brer Rabbit put his paws on the huge iron head of the hammer and began to speak in a low tone. His whispers
swirled and grew until they sounded like shouts and drumming and stomping feet. The hammer’s head–a thick metal block marred with pits and scrapes-began to glow with blazing, red-hot light, and John pressed it against a tangle of roots.
A yawning black hole opened in the ground at the base of the tree.
John bent over and picked a small object off the ground. I couldn’t make out what it was.
“Go,” he said to it, setting it
gently into the hole. “Go now and find it. Find it. FIND IT»

Click click click
I yanked my hands off the journal with a gasp. Sweat poured down my face, and I was pressed against the back seat of the Cadillac as we motored along. The storm clouds had finally dissolved, and the sun was almost at the horizon, its orange and red rays pouring through the window.
What was that? A dream? Had I fallen asleep while reading?
Then why had it felt so real? And why was the journal closed on the seat next to me?
You okay, baby?” Nana asked without turning around.
Click click click
Her knitting needles moved furiously. Was it my imagination or was she sweating, too?
“Tristan?”
Click click click
But the pressure of that… whatever it was still sat on my chest and locked my mouth. It felt hot and cramped and
smothering in the car, like I’d been tucked in with a giant itchy wool blanket, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I somehow managed to lurch over to the door and open the window
to try to get some fresh air.
“Tristan!”
“Boy, put that window up!” Granddad barked from the front. “Lettin’ all the dust get in here. Is you out your mind?”
One breath. Two breaths.
“TRISTAN!”
Granddad twisted around, but it was Nana who placed a hand on my knee, and suddenly the pressure was gone. I
reluctantly shut the window, then took a deep breath. The feelings of something pressing down on me had faded to a lurking presence. I could handle that, though it made my neck itch. Nana removed her hand but kept peering at me, a worried look on her face.
“You okay, baby?”
I nodded.
“Answer your grandmother when she-
“Hush, Walter,” Nana scolded. “Mind the road.”
I shook my head. “Just… got a litle carsick, I think.”
Nana watched me as if she suspected that wasn’t true, but she didn’t pry any further: “Why don’t you try to take a nap, dear. Only another hour or so and then we’ll be at the farm,
and you and Granddad have some work to do before supper.” She turned back around, but, just for a second, I could’ve sworn her eyes glanced at the journal.
Chick click click
Nana continued knitting, and I looked at the journal on the other end of the seat. After a moment’s hesitation, I reached over and shaded it with my hands, already knowing
what would happen but checking anyway.
The journal pulsed quicker and stronger, with a bright green glow.
Sometime later, Granddad slowed down and turned onto a bumpy gravel road that climbed up a long hill. “We’re here,” he said.
I jerked out of a daze. I slipped Eddie’s journal into my backpack, then stretched and looked warily out the window. Everything looked… well, it looked like the country.
Yay.
“We are? Where?” I asked.
“Home, sweetie,” Nana said, packing up her knitting and turning to smile at me again. “Just in time for me to get dinner started.”
“Still about an hour left of sun,” Granddad said. “Can at least get part of that old fence fixed.”
The car chugged to the top of the hill, and I sat up as the Strong family farm sprawled out to the horizon. A patchwork quilt of green and brown fields surrounded a huge barn and a slightly smaller house. Rows of corn stood at attention as the Cadillac ambled past, like a chariot returning with the land’s
king and queen. And Nana and Granddad did seem to sit up straighter as we got closer to the house. Even I could feel it, a tug from something that had been in my family for genera-tions. This was our duchy, our territory. The Strong domain.
My nose pressed against the window, breath fogging the glass, I spotted a stand of trees at the far corner of the farm. They were old, like a section of forest that time had forgotten. Their twisted, giant trunks were bunched together like
some sort of crowd… or guards. As I stared at them, the pressure on my chest came back–the feeling from before.
Someone… or something was out there searching.
Searching for me.
A flash between the branches caught my eye as we drove past.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“What’s what, sweetie?”
“In those trees over there. Something’s shining.”
Granddad shook his head. “More foolishness, that’s what it is.”
*Hush, Walter,” Nana said. “That’s just the Bottle Tree forest, baby.”
The what?” What sort of trees were those – and there was another one! Something flashed again, like light on a mirror or glass.
“Bottle Trees. Oh now, would you look at that? I skipped a stitch. What was I saying? Oh, the Bottle Trees. I could’ve sworn I’ve talked up one wall and down the other about this
before.” She turned around in her seat. “Slaves carried the
practice over with them from Africa as a way to capture and dispose of any haints wandering around.”
“Haints?” I pressed my nose against the glass and squinted.
“Evil spirits, baby. Lord knows, plenty of those ramblin’ about, what with… Well, anyway, don’t you worry about it none,” Nana continued. “I don’t want you messing around over there. Them old trees aren’t for playing on. You liable to hurt yourself.”
“Need to cut ’em down,” Granddad grumbled, but Nana just shooed the words away with her hand.
“Hush, Walter. Now look, Tristan, over there..” She started playing tour guide as we drove up to the house, and I settled back, unable to shake the tingling feeling that some
thing weird was going on.