Home Opener

By Tyler Lee

All six of your uncles sitting in that hospital waiting room with those goddamn watermelons stuck to their heads. You staring back at them, noggins lined up across that bench, looking like a half-carton of dinosaur eggs or something. It's a ritual, the watermelon helmet – they do it every Riders home opener, whether they got tickets or not. Green is the colour, and all that. It goes like this: you chop a watermelon in half, scoop all that sweet, sticky flesh out, then let the hollow shell dry in the sun a little bit. Not too much. Not long enough for the rind to go soft, start to rot – you don't want a mushy watermelon on your head, decomposing all day. Just long enough for the air to suck the juice out, so you're not trotting around Mosaic with pink Kool-Aid trickling down your neck, inviting every horsefly in southern Sask to sniff out the sugar, dig under the cap, buzz razor-wings against your scalp, burrow into your eardrums, eat your brains from the outside in. That's what you imagine might happen, at least. You've never done it yourself. Your head is still too small for a watermelon shell. 

The melons get left out to dry just long enough. Long enough for you to sneak out to the backyard while everyone else crowds around Uncle Kevin's new Cadillac convertible – brushing their hands across the upholstery, kicking the tires, flashing screwfaces into the mirror-clean hubcabs, asking him how many horses, what he pays, if that's bi-weekly or twice-monthly. Just long enough to pop into Uncle Garrett's rusty tin storage shed, fish out a can of 3M aerosol glue – same stuff you used for set-building at theater camp last summer – and hose the absolute hell out the inside of all six of those husks. Spray 'em down like Halloween eggs on vinyl siding, wildfire embers, like trying to piss stains off the toilet bowl. One of the uncles hollers "almost pre-game" from the other side of the fence, so you spiral-pass the can up onto the roof and watch it roll and rattle down the shingles, breathe a sigh of thank-fucking-God when it gets caught in the rain gutter. The latch rattles, gate swings in; six big, balding bastards with green paint on their beer bellies – R-I-D-E-R-S, one letter per belly – and your mom's same brown-gold eyes sunk deep into their faces. They all pile their way into the backyard, scoop up their watermelon rinds, and plant them on their domes, like Vikings preparing for battle.

For a minute, you just wait. Observe. Anticipate. Uncle Elmer pops the grill lid, clicks the steel tongs in the air a few times, then starts flipping dogs over saying things like "just another minute" and "not quite" while Uncle Jerry fishes five Pilsners out a Coleman cooler – one for everyone, except you and Uncle Kevin – and then cracks each open with a bic lighter, flicking the caps off the side of the shed into a trashcan on the ground, metal pinging metal like BING-BING-BING, sounding like one of those weather alert bulletins. Uncle Garrett drags the TV out to the deck – a giant flatscreen on rollers, like the ones they wheel in for movie days at school – then tinkers with the settings. He dials the brightness up, sets the contrast, tweaks the sound EQ. You stitch your mouth shut. You barely even breathe. But your body shakes like the ground around a geyser. Like you're full of bubbling gas that needs somewhere to go before you explode.

Then it happens. Uncle Kevin's phone rings – that doorbell-meets-music-box default jingle that no real-life human except one of your uncles would ever use, cranked up to an ungodly volume. He pulls his phone out of his pocket with one hand and tries to lift the watermelon off his head with the other, but it sticks like a statue.

"What the absolute fuck?" He drops his phone on the patio table, and it crawls across the tempered glass top like a drunken slug, inching forward with every shake of the motor. Uncle Kevin plants both hands on the watermelon, tries to lift it off, but the boulder doesn't budge. Uncle Scott notices and cracks the first laugh. You feel the geyser explode from your own chest. The tremor cascades through the yard, everyone pulling and clawing at the hunks of vegetation on their heads, booming laughter swallows the yard. Uncle Kevin picks his phone back up and taps the screen, then shouts "hold on, I'm stuck in a watermelon" in the broad direction of the receiver, half-drowned out by the cumulative noise of the yard. Your body shakes, water streams from your eyes as you watch Uncle Kevin try to wedge his phone in between the watermelon rind and his ear, prying the helmet away from his head with one hand, angling and shoving the phone into just a few millimeters of space with the other.

Uncle Kevin yells into his phone: "Yes, this is him."

Uncle Scott and Uncle Taylor headbutt their helmets together like playful mountain goats. Uncle Jerry taps out a bongo rhythm on his own.    

Uncle Kevin yells into his phone: "Yeah, she's my sister."

Uncle Garrett and Uncle Elmer take turns swatting one another's watermelon helmets with the stainless-steel barbecue spatula, making exaggerated Conan the Barbarian war grunts with each swing delt out, wails of pain and death gurgles with each one received.

Uncle Kevin yells into his phone: "Pasqua or General?"

It all happens so fast, after that. Uncle Elmer douses the grill without even taking the food off. Uncle Jerry drains all five Pils into the lawn. Uncle Garrett rips the TV out of the outlet, drags it into the sunroom, locks the house doors. Everyone puts their t-shirts back on, neck-holes stretching, stitches tearing as they pull them down over the bulging watermelons, fabric sticking to the still-wet body paint. Everyone piles like clowns into Uncle Kevin's new Cadillac convertible, because he's the only one both sober enough and old enough to drive right now. Three uncles shoulder-to-shoulder in the front seat, three in the back, you lying sideways across their laps like a five-foot party sub. Cadillac weighed down to damn-near pavement, scrapes along the driveway, crawls through game-day gridlock, watermeloned heads crack together every time Uncle Kevin rounds a corner a bit too fast. Passing cars honk, hoot, cheer at the sight of six striped-green crowns, all bobbing around in the same convertible. Folks chant "Go Riders" out unrolled windows, flashing thirty-two-tooth smiles that bend back sour when no one in the Caddy responds with the appropriate verve and passion.

And before you know it, all six of your uncles are sitting in a line in that hospital waiting room with those goddamn watermelons on their heads. Shadows and outlines of green paint under their shirts – R-I-D-E-R-S, one letter per belly – melted like wax in the June sun and sweaty closeness of the drive, then frozen back to crystal by the clinical-cold hospital A/C. A few eyes wet, more red. A doctor in a mask and green scrubs waves over your Uncle Kevin. They stand facing away from you – you see his watermeloned head lean in to the doctor, lean back out, shift side-to-side as he nods, listens, absorbs. Big, green, Muppet fucking head finding out about your mom before you do. Big, green, watermelon head bobbling back to the bench, looking up and down the line at the five other big, green, bobbling, watermelon heads, then right across at you, and saying "no news yet" like that's even worth saying. Like that even means anything.  

Then the hospital floor quivers, and rapturous cheers burst out of every open patient door. The sounds huddle together and press their way down the hallway, getting larger, louder, fiercer with each yard gained. The mass of noise collides with your body, smashes the air from your chest, whips dizzy around your head, squeezes juice out of your eyeballs.
​
Sounds like the Riders scored a touchdown.                                                

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​Tyler Lee is a writer, poet, and hip-hop artist. His short fiction has been accepted for publication in Grain Magazine, Radon Journal, Neon & Smoke, and foofaraw. Tyler lives in Saskatoon, where he owns a completely normal amount of sneakers, and definitely isn't on a first-name basis with the staff of his neighbourhood burrito spot.