I met Michael when my partner, Dorothy, and I moved to a Victorian home in Alameda, an island across the Bay from San Francisco.

R	ollerblades   by Joseph Woodard

He wandered around the street at all hours looking for somebody to hang out with. If children were around and their parents would permit, Michael was allowed in their living rooms to play video games for hours. In good weather, parents chased all the little monsters outside so they could have some peace and quiet. If no other children were around, Michael would play on my lawn, chasing Dorothy's two Maltese, or he would sit in my recliner and watch movies like Shrek or Superman.

I thought Michael was an odd name for a Korean kid, but he had an English name and a Korean one. He was Michael for us, not Mike or Mikey, he explained. He never told us his name in Korean, but I learned by listening to him shout for his cousin, Jimmy, that Jimmy answered to Ong-ah. Jimmy would visit now and then. Some man, his father I suppose, would drop him off and leave. Jimmy was a few years bigger than six-year old Michael.

Jimmy was more reserved, more cautious, around me. He only called Michael out loud by his English name, "Mykael. Mykael, come here."

Michael's parents were much more reserved. Except for nods to us from across the street when they noticed that I noticed them, they never spoke to us in English and we couldn't speak Korean.

Throughout the Summer and Fall, Michael played on the pavement with other neighborhood children, or wobbled around on a small rusty bicycle by himself. Several times a week he dropped by to reinflate its cracked tires with my bicycle pump. He was always happy and polite when he knocked on my door to ask for air. He had learned that charm unlocks doors.

His mother and father rented an illegal apartment in the basement of the house across from ours. Their front door was out of sight in the back. His mother worked as a waitress. I would see her in a white blouse and skirt with a black apron, driving away with two other women dressed in similar uniforms, always exchanging machine gun speech incomprehensible to me. I often saw her leave and come back twice a day, apparently working an afternoon and late evening split shift six and seven days a week.

His father worked as a house painter. He would be gone nearly every day. Late in the evening he would walk slowly up the sidewalk from somewhere, his dirty grey jacket slung over his shoulder, his coveralls and workman boots permanently stained with paint. Michael would run the length of the street to greet him. The father seemed glad to find Michael waiting but never picked him up. Michael would grab his father's arms, patting him, shouting and explaining things. The father would grunt and smile with effort. He would moan if Michael pulled too hard. Always by the time they turned down their driveway and trudged to the rear, Michael would be following instead of leading. The father opened a backyard fence gate, and they disappeared for the night.

One Saturday night in October we decided to dine out with friends who dropped by. The day had been glorious, but the night was chilly. The darkened sky revealed an early moon and a few stars. Clear weather had turned back the clouds and our neighborhood lay uncovered. We bundled ourselves into my car, chattering happily about how lucky we were to be living in an area with such great weather. Back East, the first big winter snowstorms had already trapped people in their houses. I'd seen pictures on the evening news of ice-draped power lines sagging nearly to the ground.

I glided down my driveway and felt the bump as my front wheels touched the street. That's when I caught sight of Michael sitting on the curb. He hung his head. His shoulders slumped. He had sandwiched his arms between his knees. His hands played absently with his untied shoe laces. He wore only a thin shirt, no jacket, not even a sweater.

"Hey," I shouted, stopping and rolling down my window. "Boy, you gonna freeze. Get inside. Where's your jacket?"

He slowly raised his head and muttered, "My parents locked me out. I can't get it."

I laughed. "Go home, man. It's too cold to be playing outside now."

"My parents are never coming home. They locked me out," he repeated, looking at his shoes again. "I have to play."

"Boy, there's a kid who doesn't want to go inside," our friends remarked. None of us believed his explanation. When we returned from the restaurant two hours later we found him in tears sitting on my front steps.

I could hardly accept that what he told us was true. He played outside every day because, once out, he couldn't go back inside until one of his parents returned to open their apartment. If he chose in, they would lock him inside, trapping him. After the first time they'd done that, Michael had panicked and screamed himself into exhaustion. No one had let him out until his mother returned during her mid-shift break. She found him sobbing on the couch like a wet rag doll. After that, Michael had always chosen out. His parents never trusted him with a key. For some reason, they were terrified that he would expose the house to terrible threat by forgetting to lock up or by losing the key.

We took Michael inside and gave him hot cider and wrapped him with a blanket in my armchair. I put on a cartoon movie which diverted him. Gradually he warmed and stopped muttering about his father never coming home. Occasionally he would ask to use my phone and call his home. His mother didn't answer until eleven PM. As soon as he hung up, he put on his shoes and ran out the door calling goodbye.

----- 2 -----

Whenever he visited me, he made up stories about he and his father on fantastic voyages, steaming to America on their pirate ship, rocketing to the moon. He invented fantastic aliens they fought together. He told me how they battled robot trees, pointing out the face on the tree in my front yard pretending to be immobile.

His father would do one thing with his son. He would drive him to an ice rink in Oakland when other cousins would go there to skate. He would drop Michael off and leave. Michael would paddle his way around the rink on rented skates. He'd suffer scrapes and bumps for a few hours until Jimmy's father would retrieve them. Michael's father would stay home on those days.

The big fad was roller blading. Other kids on the streets owned skates. So did Jimmy. Jimmy raced up and down the street with other children in mock sprints or hockey games improvised with a small rubber ball, bamboo poles, and brooms. Michael clattered after the mob on his creaking bicycle. The happy confusion usually ended long after sundown. Michael and Jimmy disappeared only after all other children had gone home.

I knew Michael envied the speeders. He told me a story, about himself as a roller blade champion. This when he came by for a bandaid. He had skinned his knee the week before on the ice and never told his parents. The scrape had infected. While I cleaned him up I asked why he didn't roller blade if he knew how to ice skate. No roller skates, he shrugged, and you can rent ice skates at the rink. He began a story about him and his father fighting off bad people by sneaking bombs into enemy tanks, then escaping on rollerblades, too fast to see. Did he ever ask for rollerblades, I wondered? No, he said. Maybe on his birthday which would be next week. Maybe not. His father was never around. Last year, for his birthday, his parents had promised a party as soon as they had some money, but they forgot the promise and he never had a party. That's sad, I said. Why don't you ask if they can buy you roller skates and forget the party this year, I suggested. Then you and your father can be Ninja bladers. I stood up and pretended to stroke my legs on imaginary skates, waving a pretend sword at bad guys. Michael got up and swished around on his own imaginary skates. Then he deliberately ran into me and tried to knock me down. "You die, Mr. bad guy. The Ninja sword has killed you. Now I fly. Fly." He propelled himself out my front door and ran down the steps, killing bad guys as he went. "Die. Die."

----- 3 -----

Dorothy and I organized a block party for our new neighborhood on Labor Day weekend. Roller racers were a big event. Helpers drew lanes on the pavement with chalk. Start and Finish lines were marked across the asphalt from curb to curb where power poles were planted at regular intervals in the walkway. The oldest children raced the distance separating four poles. The finish line was moved closer to the start for each younger group by the distance of one pole. Parents lined up contestants by age and flagged them on. A throng of adults and children screamed from the sidewalk as racers thrust passed. Adults waited at the finish line with plastic bags filled with dollar toys and awarded them as prizes to screaming contestants whooping to each other, "I won. I won."

In mid-afternoon, Michael rolled onto the street, a little unsteadily, brand new roller blades strapped on. He wore a blue, aerodynamically shaped helmet. His father watched from their driveway, pleased. Michael half-stepped, half-coasted, pawing his way from person to person in the mass on the street. He found his place in line among the youngest skaters waiting to race. Parents shouted encouragement. At the cry of Go, Michael and the Kindergarten mob lurched away from the starting line and clambered toward a finish mercifully moved closer, a raceway only the space separating two power poles. As Michael pounded down his lane, he grinned and waved goodbye to his father who slung his coat over his shoulder and walked away to a job.

I saw Michael on the street the day after the block party, part of the skating crowd. Always in pursuit, he was never abandoned by the older children who flew around him in circles.

Like so many other days, Michael went to Andrew's house to play Nintendo. He left the new skate shoes and helmet on the concrete driveway leading to Andrew's garage. A tire track passed over the crushed helmet.

Michael's father spotted Michael's neglected rollerblades and destroyed helmet as he walked home. He shouted. He marched up and down the block shouting. Finally he banged on Andrew's front door. When the door opened and Michael appeared, his father grabbed him by the scruff of his jacket and dragged him home. The abandoned skates lay in Andrew's driveway.

That night a freak rain storm pelted the Bay Area. Lightening rarely torments San Francisco or the opposite East Bay hills, but that night we heard thunder. At midnight when the wind howled and threatened to rip off tree branches in the downpour, I raised my shades to look out. The whole length of the street was illuminated by a blue glow along the power lines. As I watched the flash bulb sky make odd, snapshot shadows, a blue and white ball of light dropped from the swaying lines near Andrew's house. It descended slowly until it touch the grass, then accelerated toward his driveway, onto the pavement, and then whizzed down the length of the street, evaporating as it went. I ran to my front door and threw it open to see if more action followed. The street was dark by comparison with the incendiary object that had just hurtled by. A bitter sweet smell of hot metal blew past. Something unusual caught my eye. Vapor rose from the plastic roller boots Michael had forgotten in Andrew's driveway. Behind me, wind sucked my front door shut with a bang. I grabbed the handle, pushed it open, and retreated from the blast. Inside I found a towel to wipe my face. I realized I had to still my breathing.

The next day, the weather cleared as if the island had passed through a galactic car wash and emerged new and clean.

When I returned from work, I noticed that Michael's roller blades had vanished. On the weekend, I learned what happened to them.

Saturday morning Michael hammered up my front steps in his rollerblades. When I answered, he didn't say hello. He announced, "Wanna see something?" and clogged back down the steps to the street. "Watch this," he called. He braced himself by looking down and folding both hands on one bended knee in a kind of starting position. "Go!" he yelled to himself. He launched forward and sailed away like a schooner in full sail, hands up, yelling "Here I come." He hadn't stroked more than a few steps, I'd swear, but he was out of sight before I could understand what happened. A minute later, he skated casually back on a serpentine line that halted in front of my house. "How 'bout that?" he called.

"Michael, how did you do that?" I asked as I skipped down my steps and strode toward him.

"Can't catch me," he giggled. He turned and rowed off again, vanishing in a streak, a few leaves on the street stirred by his velocity. This time he didn't return. I didn't know quite what to do. No one else was on the street. Should I tell someone? Call Michael's parents? Drive around and look for him? I passed my hand through my hair and returned to my living room. How was such an improvement possible?

The next week Michael's father bought a used pickup truck. He piled paint tarps and paint rollers in the back. In the mornings, if I left for work later than my usual crack of dawn commute, I might see Michael and his father walk to the truck parked somewhere on the street and drive away. Michael seldom visited me anymore.

----- 4 -----

In the Spring, the island newspaper printed a picture of Michael and his beaming father holding a trophy cup. Michael wore his rollerblades and a brand new red helmet. It was the first time I had ever seen his father in slacks and sport coat. The headline read, Sprinter Wins the Day. Michael won a roller race that only admitted him after time trials showed he could easily keep up with boys twice his age. Second place actually went to a teenager, a high school sophomore. The sports article quoted Michael who thanked his father for helping him. They had practiced every day after school for the race. Right in the victory circle, a business sponsor who'd thrust the gold-colored cup into Michael's hands had offered his father a crew foreman's position because, "He was an inspiration to fathers." Michael had explained he won because his boots were magic. When the reporter asked him what sort, Michael explained they were magic because they brought his father home from work every day.

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