NINETEEN
The next morning Jason woke me up around seven-thirty and the moment I opened my eyes I remembered what had happened, remembered the thing in the corner with the dreadlocks. I said nothing to Jason about it though. I said nothing to anyone.
We got dressed and headed for the construction site up the street to retrieve the bottles that Rod, the bearded foreman, had promised to set out for us.
I pulled my squeaky wagon behind me to the top of Cottonwood and we stayed clear of the Miller’s house, fearing that Donald’s mother still had it out for us for sneaking up to Donald’s window. We were also careful to cross the street at the corner, before we came to Mr. Gagner's front gates. We’d had just about enough of Ben for one week and weren’t about to tangle with him again.
When we finally reached the construction site, we were pleased to find that Rod had been true to his word. There was a box sitting out next to the brick wall by the sign at the entrance. Fourteen bottles of various shapes and brands were inside. Not a bad haul for having to do absolutely nothing but walk a block to get them.
Rod was no where in sight and we had promised him that we wouldn’t go tromping through the houses while they worked, so we decided we’d thank him later.
We returned back home with no plans to take the bottles down to 7-Eleven that afternoon. Instead, we decided to start saving them up for a few days, place them in boxes on the side of our house for one big haul. Sure we wouldn’t have much money for a while from the lack of deposits, but that’s what parents were for. Mom and dad were always good for a dollar or two when we needed it.
After stockpiling our cache we grabbed the gardening tools and a couple of plastic bags and began more work on the side hill, clearing out more dead vegetation and weeds.
Jason and I were curious about what Steve and Cory had done over at the Maherrin’s house with Mark. Once we saw them later on in the afternoon, we’d have to ask them. They probably had chores to do themselves.
Jason took the bottom part of the hill and I started at the top. We pulled and picked and yanked weeds and grass out until we had small angry blisters on our hands. At about the time we reached the halfway point, a clod of dirt hit me in the small of my back. I immediately popped up from my crouched position and looked back down at my brother who was whistling and picking weeds of his own. But once I saw him look up at me and crack a smile, I knew the fight was on.
Bending back over I found my own good sized chunk of earth, and making a high pitched whistle, like an incoming mortar round, I hooked it like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar going for three. It landed short of Jason’s feet on the sidewalk with a sound like a hammer hitting a pillow. Dirt fanned out in every direction.
Jason, looking up at me startled, grabbed another hunk of dirt and yelled, “You’re a dead man!” He then winged it at me with a pitchers grace. Although it missed me by mere inches, I was still able to enjoy the taste of it as it exploded on the wooden fence next to my head, covering me in dust.
For the next few minutes we abandoned our chores and engaged in a little playtime, a dirt clod fight to break up the monotony of working and sweating our butts off in the hot morning sun. It was all in good fun though. Neither one of us was mad at the other, we were just messing around the way kids do when they need a break. We laughed and chucked clods of dried soil at one other, mostly missing and missing on purpose. Neither one of us wanted to hurt the other, but it made for a fun game when you had to dodge an incoming projectile and scramble to find one to throw back. Yeah, it was all just fun and games.
Until someone got hurt.
And of course that someone just happened to be me.
It was an accident, of course. I knew then and I know now that Jason wouldn’t have ever purposely meant me any harm. Just like I wouldn’t him. But that’s the downfall of rock fighting. Someone’s going to take one to the temple or the throat. Or God forbid the groin-which is where the one that stopped the fight hit me, right at the tip of my penis. It felt like someone had flicked me with their middle finger on the most sensitive part of my body. Like a bee sting to the pecker.
I gave out a high pitched yelp. And not a boy yelp either. This was a little girlie yelp.
I held up my hands in an ‘Okay, I give’ gesture, which Jason understood and he dropped his ammo at once. He knew I was hurt, but I think a part of him was holding back a chuckle for the nice crotch shot he had landed.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked after holding back his laughter a few seconds longer.
And oddly enough, after a few moments of rubbing my pee-pee back to life, I was. But I made some dramatics about it. I had to. I was a kid.
Holding the front of my pants with one hand and holding a clump of dead ivy with the other, I said, “You… you got me… partner.” Then I slowly let go of the vine and dropped onto my side, rolling down the hill, once, twice, three times.
Splat!
I landed on the sidewalk a little harder than I had expected, but didn’t lose any skin. I let my tongue hang out in a comical cartoon fashion. If only I had X’s in my eyes, it would have been a perfect Loony Tunes death.
Jason came over and started clapping. “Man that was great. That really looked like I shot you down in some old western or something. The way you came tumbling down that hill, that was cool. Man, I give you a round-of-applause.” He clapped for a few moments as I continued my imitation of a fresh corpse. “Oh and by the way, I’ve got one more thing for you as well.”
I kept playing dead, not knowing what he was talking about, but found out soon enough as he bent over my head and farted in my face.
Smartass.
I hooked an arm around his legs as he started to rise after breaking wind and squeezed with all my might. The move made him fall back over on his rump in a fit of laughter. We wrestled on the dead lawn at our parkway for a couple of minutes until Jamie showed up.
Sweaty and red form the sun, with blades of yellow grass hanging in his hair, Jason said, “Okay, okay. Enough.”
I rolled off him, breathing hard and itching. Facing him, I was ready for another attack just in case he was bluffing.
Instead he pointed over my shoulder and said, “Look. Your girlfriend’s here.”
I turned around I saw right away who he meant.
Jamie Manning stood on the sidewalk at the far end of the hill staring at us, a blank expression on her face. She had short shorts and tennis shoes on; a plain white t-shirt covered her frail chest. Her hair was done up in pig-tails and thick glasses sat on the bridge of her nose, a black band ran around the back of her head to keep them from falling off of her face. And as if there were an invisible ice cream cone just in front of her, she pushed her tongue in and out of her mouth over her swollen, bottom lip with the heir of some Down’s syndrome children.
Jamie lived down Cottonwood, about ten houses. The last time we had seen her was at Lincoln Elementary playing in a sandbox while her father and mother did landscaping. She wondered the streets in our neighborhood by herself sometimes, looking for other children to play with, even though none ever seemed interested. She was eight or nine years old but had the mental capacity of a toddler. We were never sure if her parents just didn’t care that she was out and about by herself or if maybe she snuck out when they weren’t looking and had time to miss her. Rumor had it that her dad had backed his car over her head when she was just two years old, mentally crippling her for life. We never really believed it to be anything other than that, a rumor.
“She’s not my girlfriend!” I shouted at Jason.
In turn, he jumped up, hopping around like a lunatic, taunting me. “Ricky and Jamie sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.”
“Knock it off,” I told him. “She ain’t my girlfriend.”
But he just kept on with that childish rhyme we all learn as kids and use to humiliate each other with.
“First comes love, then comes marriage…”
And instead of yelling at him more or going over to try and shut him up
myself, I decided to take my frustration out on Jamie.
“Go home!” I told her in a rough tone to which she probably couldn’t comprehend. Instead she remained there, looking at us with that hollow stare. “Get lost!” I tried again.
Nothing. She didn’t budge.
“See,” Jason said, “She wants you. Go give her a kiss.”
Turning back to Jason, I said, “Shut up! Quit teasing me!”
Then he started making kissing sounds which just infuriated me more. I took a step forward and stomped my foot at her as if she where a stray dog digging through a trashcan. “Heeyaah!”
Nothing.
And as Jason kept up with his charade I decided to really take action.
“That’s it. I’m telling mom.”
And as I started toward the front of the house Jason grabbed me by the shoulders. “Okay. Okay. I’ll stop. I was just messing around. Besides, she…” He stopped and gave a nod over to where Jamie was and said, “Holy shit. Check it out.”
I turned back around and watched as she pulled down her shorts and squatted on the sidewalk and let a stream of yellow pee splatter the concrete beneath her.
Jason and I lost it and as she looked over at the commotion we were making, she stood and pulled her shorts back up.
Simple as that. This young girl had just taken a leak in front of us in broad daylight.
Between fits of laughter, Jason was able to say, “Hey, did everything come out alright?”
She just stood there, looking, her tongue darting in and out of her mouth, clueless.
So we did what any curious kids would do in a situation like that. We went over to examine the mess she had made. The puddle was in the shape of a giant spider, the hot sun already beginning to evaporate it, the smell sour and musky as it faded from the cement.
A car pulled up along side of the curb with a screech and a deep voice boomed.
“What the hell is going on here?” George Manning said as he got out of the driver’s side door, clearly agitated. “Did you kids do something to my daughter? Jamie, are you okay?”
George Manning was an average sized man and had one of those bodies that made him look as though he’d never had a break from work in his life. He was just shy of being six feet and had strong, ropey arms and hands with sausage like fingers attached to them; the kinds that have seen too much oil and too many engines. He was a laborer and his thick leathery skin spoke more of outside work than inside. His normally slicked back, dark hair hung in strands on his sweaty brow as if he’d just been at a grueling task, probably looking for his daughter.
Jamie stared quietly at her father, the glasses on her face making her eyes look like hard boiled eggs with black, cancerous pits.
We quickly stepped back a few feet; Jason took up the front to protect me as he had done with Rod at the construction site.
“You tell me right now. Did you do something to her?” George Manning said pointing a work callused finger at us.
We quickly shook our heads in unison and Jason said, “No. We were just pulling weeds and she came up here. We didn’t touch her.”
“You better damn well not have. I ought to go tell your mother on you two. Harassing a child like that. ‘Specially the way she is.”
“We didn’t. We swear,” Jason explained. “We were just doing our chores and she walked up here. Isn’t that right, Ricky?”
I nodded, mouth open, though nothing came out.
Jason added, “I think she had an accident, though,” and pointed to the ground where Jamie had peed.
Mr. Manning stared at us for a moment longer shaking his head, and added, “Just quit messing with my daughter.” He turned to Jamie and said, “Get in the car.”
He opened the back door and waited for Jamie to get in which she did a moment later, but not before waving good bye to us.
After belting her in and closing the door he walked around to his side and got in behind the wheel. We hadn’t noticed in the short time since her father pulled up that Jamie’s mother was in the car as well.
Emily Manning sat in the passenger seat, watching the confrontation between us and her husband, her mouth drawn down, her eyes blank. Her hair was brown and hung in separate strands as if it hadn’t seen a bottle of shampoo or a comb in quite some time.
When we saw Jamie roaming the neighborhood she was usually being made fun of by the other kids. Her father would usually have to stop what he was working on in his garage to go and retrieve her. She never wandered off too much, maybe once or twice a month. And she never said ‘hi’ to anyone. We weren’t even sure she could talk and were lucky to even get that wave from her.
In the car she kept her head down and didn’t look at us even after Mr. Manning took off with a chirp of the tires and shot up and around the corner away from our house.
“Well, did you get a good look at your girlfriends butt?” Jason asked and started chuckling once more.
“Shut up, Jay” I said, under my breath.
We went back to our work on the hill. Soon it would be time for lunch and when we went in for our break at noon, we would be done for the day. But until then, we let the sun beat the back of our necks and draw the moisture from our pores as we pulled and pulled and yanked and yanked.