NINE
I waited until about seven o’clock for Jason and Cory to wake up, and when they still hadn’t, I decided to roll up my sleeping bag, change back into my shorts and t-shirt and return home. I would rather have had my mother make me a real breakfast than sit through another bowl of Mrs. Dayborne’s multicolored, sugar laced cereal any day.
Mom was an early riser. She was out of bed every morning by six and this morning was no different. By the time I reached the front porch, I could smell the bacon she was frying up for my father and sister through the screen door. I let it bang behind me as I entered the house.
“Who is it?” my mother’s sweet voice rang out.
My sister, Susan, was planted about three feet from the television screen in our living room watching Looney Tunes, a clean cloth diaper on her butt and her thumb in the same place it always seemed to be, the first finger resting on the crook of her nose. She glanced up at me briefly and went back to her show.
“It’s me,” I called back to my mother, stopping to watch Elmer Fudd jerk his shotgun back and forth from Bugs Bunny to Daffy Duck, because he couldn’t figure out whether it was duck season or wabbit season.
“Me who?” was what she always said in a sing-song tone when we didn’t give her a specific name.
“Ricky, your loving son,” was my reply every time.
I turned from the TV and walked into the kitchen and gave my mom a hug and she kissed the top of my head and asked if I was hungry. I told her that I was.
She had also asked me why I hadn’t eaten at the Dayborne’s and I explained that no one was up when I woke and had decided to come on back home for one of her delicious morning meals.
I was served fried eggs, buttered toast and three strips of bacon, a meal fit for a king. There was nothing like being allowed to eat in the living room while watching cartoons in the morning, and I chose the coffee table to do my business.
My father went into the kitchen and inhaled his plate of food before giving my sister and me a pat on the head and heading out the garage door to his car, and his summer teaching job at Norco Junior.
It took the good part of three animated shows to off my breakfast; a Tom and Jerry and two Droopy cartoons. The food was spectacular as usual and when I finished mopping up the last of the egg yolk with my toast, I took my dish and glass back into the kitchen and dropped them in the sink.
By eight thirty, Jason had made it back from Cory’s house and we both went to our room to change into work clothes. Soon after, we were back on the side of our house pulling weeds and dead grass from the hill.
It took us until around noon again to get another twenty or so feet of weeding done. Mom had lunch ready for us as usual and after we bagged up the days work and put away the hand tools, we went in for peanut butter and honey sandwiches with dill pickles on the side.
We both showered after lunch. It had probably been a couple days since our last bath (not including our dip in Cory’s pond the day before), and headed back out into the ninety degree day. Like the day before, there were no clouds in the sky and the air all around was as dry as dusty cobwebs.
The two of us had grabbed our mitts and a tennis ball before we left our room. We headed to Steve Hanel’s house-which was next to Cory’s, on the right-to see if he wanted to get into a game of butt’s up, but as we neared his front door it opened up and his brother Jacob stood blocking the doorway.
Jacob Hanel was a total prick. He made Cory look like Little Orphan Annie. As the older brother of Steve and Jackie, he pretty much always had rule of the roost. Their mother worked two jobs to support her three kids and was usually gone most of the day.
“What do you little shits want?” Jacob asked in a tone that meant we’d better have a good excuse for coming to his door.
The kids around the neighborhood dreaded crossing paths with this psycho and we were no exception. We hated him and everything about him with a passion but always tried to stay on his good side-just in case-although now that I think about, I doubt that he even had a good side. Jacob had long brown hair that he kept in a ponytail most times and a thin mustache that looked like a caterpillar had died on his lip and was still rotting. He wore black leather cowboy boots that he thought made him look cool. If you heard them clomping up behind you it usually meant your ass.
“Can Steve play?” Jason asked trying not to show any fear. Because like a dog, we believed Jacob could sense emotion, and would bite for no reason.
“Can Steve play?” he mimicked back in a little girl voice, laughed and spat a loogey off into the planter that ran next to the garage. Even though he was eighteen, an adult by law, I swear he acted like he was nine. He constantly annoyed and harassed children ten years his junior.
He pulled a cigarette from a pack of Marlboros he had tucked in his shirt pocket and lit it with a silver Zippo, walked back inside.
“Stevey-weavey? Your little girlfriends are here,” Jacob called out to his younger brother.
“Who is it?” We heard Steve yell back from somewhere deep in the house, maybe back in his bedroom.
“It’s those two queers from across the street,” the older brother shouted.
I couldn’t tell if it was the heat from the sun or the insult, but Jason seemed to turn a shade of red at being called a queer. I knew what it meant, but at that age I took no offence to it.
“Tell them to hold on,” he said, exasperated, possibly embarrassed for his brother’s juvenile behavior, knowing he probably wouldn’t ever change.
Steve emerged a few minutes later and sat on the front step to tie the laces on his dark blue Vans, a folded section of newspaper under one arm. He was sort of the leader of our little group when we all hung together-which was a lot-and at twelve-years-old we all looked up to him. He wore the coolest clothes: t-shirts with rock bands on them and Hang Ten shorts, two small feet stitched over the lower right pocket. His blonde, shoulder length hair was feathered and he always wore a red bandana around his forehead. We tried to copy him in every way possible except for the hair which our mother refused to let us grow long.
“I’m glad you guys came over. You didn’t happen to see the article in yesterday’s paper did you?” he asked.
My brother and I had no interest in newspapers and our parents didn’t have one delivered at home. Instead they chose to have their news fed to them via television.
“What article’s that?” I asked Steve.
He finished with his shoes and stood. “Let’s go get Cory and see if we can use his playhouse. I’ll read the article to you guys there.”
The three of us headed next door to Cory’s and were walking up the driveway just as Cory’s father came out of the house.
“Hello, boys,” Guy said, seeming distracted with something in a work folder. He must have been heading to work and got into his car and started it up just as Steve knocked on the front door.
Janeal answered after half a minute of waiting and all at once the three of us said, “Can Cory come out to play?”
With hands on her hips and a wry smile on her face, cold cool air seething through the open door, she said, “I think he was just about to come out and look for you guys.”
Cory slipped past his mother, and without a look back at her, headed out with us into the day.
“Bye son. Be good,” Cory’s mom hollered after him. “Ricky, you feeling better now than you did this morning?”
I turned back and nodded, smiled.
Jason and Cory looked at me as we followed Steve across the lawn. “What was that about, Ricky?” my brother asked. “You sick this morning?”
“A little,” I lied again not wanting to reveal what had happened in Cory’s bathroom. “I just had a little diarrhea.”
Cory immediately stuck his palms to his mouth and proceeded to make farting noises. I looked down at my feet as we walked, saying nothing.
“Where we going?” Cory finally asked as Steve led us to Cory’s back gate.
“To your playhouse. I need to sho
w you guys something,” Steve replied. He flicked the latch over and pushed through, the gate squeaked like a mouse dying a slow death.
We climbed up the slanted wooden ladder in order of oldest to youngest, holding onto the railing the whole way up. The playhouse sat on top and to the left of the ladder. After climbing up, you could either go straight and slide down the slide, or head into the small, wooden fort, which we did. There was a four-foot doorway that led inside and the other three walls had sliding wooden panels that served as windows. You could pretty much see in every direction from up there.
There was just enough room in the playhouse to accommodate the four of us with a little space left over in the middle when we all sat with our backs against the walls. Jason and I used our mitts as cushions to sit on.
“What’s so important we all needed to come up her for?” Jason asked, turning to Steve. He tossed the tennis ball up and Cory shot his arm out and grabbed it.
“Okay, my brother wouldn’t let me out of the house yesterday, because he had a bug up his ass about me not mowing the lawns. So, I pretty much told him to eat shit and he locked me in my room. Fucking dick,” he said looking down and shaking his head. “Anyway, the newspaper form yesterday was sitting on my bed with some other magazines and stuff. I don’t read the paper much, but since I was going to be in there a while I decided to pick it up to pass the time with.”
“Where are you going with this, Steve?” Cory said in a smart-ass tone.
Steve turned to him and said, “Shut up, asswipe. I’m getting to it.”
Cory looked a little startled at this, and said, “Sorry.” He then flipped the ball in my direction. It bounced of my chest and landed in my lap.
Steve and Cory unlocked their gaze from each other and Steve went on. “I turned to the sports section first, to see how our Angels are doing. Sorry bastards. Then I checked the front section. Bunch of crap I could care less about. Wars, religion, some damn guy won a Pulitzer Prize or something. Like I said, crap I could care less about.” He stopped a moment; maybe to add emphasis and suspense to whatever news he had to share with us. He stared into our eyes, going from one to the other and continued. “Then, I turn to the local section. Check this article out.”
I passed the ball over to Jason with a flick of the wrist.
Steve picked up the folded section of newspaper that had been sitting in his lap since we sat down to conference and this is what he read to us: