Read Unexpected Dismounts for Free Online

for signs that he might be planning to leave the platform and work the crowd like David Letterman. As soon as the other eight students, none of whom gave an acceptance speech, were in possession of their ribbons and we were free to browse through the “gallery” set up on the gym floor, I made a beeline for the kid. But by the time I reached him, he was surrounded by what he called his “women,” a bevy of pubescent girls who followed him around like he was Edward Cullen. So I made instead for the aisle of portable walls where his work was displayed.
    Some of it I’d seen in progress, since at home, when he wasn’t wheedling for a ride with me on the Harley or finding ways to empty the snack drawer, he was drawing. Pen and ink was his current medium and caricature his style. I chortled at the faces that blossomed like comic strips on steroids from the wall before me.
    He had informed me back in January, when he’d started this series, that as “a artist,” he knew what features of a person’s face to “blow up all big.” When I’d asked if he meant “exaggerate,” he’d said, yeah, that was the word, adding, “You got you a kick-butt vocabulary, Big Al.”
    We were still working on his.
    His drawings, however, said far more than verbiage could, in my view. He had a gift for overstating the right facial features until the final portrait was fully loaded with the person’s essence. At least as he saw it. Gazing at the drawings was like climbing right into Desmond’s head.
    Each of the Sacrament Sisters had her own piece in a four-paned panel. He’d managed to capture the sarcastic twist in Sherry’s mouth and the constant pout in Zelda’s. Jasmine’s eyes took up most of her face and drooled oversize tears. Mercedes was all lips and in-charge eyes and held a gigantic sponge in her hand. I loved that there wasn’t a trace of their pasts in sight.
    When Owen caught up with me, I’d just moved on to a squatty likeness of Hank, on which everything about her, including her shiny bob of hair, was square except her mouth. Desmond had caught it midway into an overblown twitch that made me want to twitch back.
    “I’m s’proud of our boy I’m about to pop my buttons,” Owen said at my elbow. “I’m like a peacock strutting through here. I mean, didn’t he just hang the moon?”
    I didn’t even try to sort through Owen’s usual mishmash of metaphors. I got his drift, which essentially matched mine.
    “This is pretty incredible,” I said.
    “It’s pure genius.” He waved an age-spotted hand toward a likeness of a wizened man with a toothy grin the size of a watermelon slice. “Now, this one’s new to me. I know I’ve seen this character, though.”
    “You have, Owen,” I said. “In the mirror.”
    “Well, I’ll be.”
    “Okay, check this out.” I pointed to one of an ancient woman engulfed in her own wrinkles, with one huge ear straining for the side of the page. There was no mistaking my neighbor on the other side, whose current career was making sure I didn’t turn our tiny Palm Row street into a red-light district.
    “That’s Miz Vernell all over, isn’t it?” Owen said. “He’s got her looking like an old crow. Exactly like the biddy she is.”
    Crow. Biddy. Next she’d be a—
    “Looks like she’s going to fly right out of there like a honkin’ goose.”
    At least this time he’d kept all the similes in the same genus. Or was it class?
    Owen turned to a parent who had the misfortune to stroll down our aisle and began to extol the virtues of Desmond’s undeniable brilliance. I continued to soak in the drawings. One depicted Bonner in swollen sunglasses that made him cute in that preppy kind of way. Another grouped some of the members of our Harley Owners Group, each HOG resplendent with gigantic leather shoulders or a Darth Vader–sized helmet. “Mr. Chief,” of course, had his own piece, bigger than most of the others because Desmond had portrayed him as larger than