Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing

by Patrick F. McManus

  Next letter: “We have ways of dealing with deadbeats! Pay up! We know where you live, Patrick. Don’t make us come get you!”

  I cornered Lester at school and told him about the letters from the Stamp People.

  “No problem,” he said. “Just send back their stamps.”

  “I can’t! I pasted them in my stamp album!”

  “You pasted them in? You shouldn’t have! There are special little sticky tabs you’re supposed to use so the stamps can be removed without damaging them.”

  Sticky tabs? So now he tells me!

  “How would it be if I sent them my album with the stamps pasted in, Lester?”

  “I don’t think they’d like it.”

  A lot of help Lester was. He’d lured me into a life of crime and then had no idea how to get me out of it.

  I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I checked my hair every morning in the mirror to see if it was turning white from worry.

  “What on earth is wrong with you?” Mom said at dinner one evening. “You hardly touch your food anymore.”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Really?” she said. “Then why is it I see you peeking out through the curtains of the front windows all the time? Are you expecting someone?”

  “No,” I said. It was a lie. I was expecting the dreaded Stamp People.

  I thought maybe I should go into hiding. But where? Under my bed? That would surely arouse my mother’s suspicion that her son the criminal was on the lam. Besides, under a bed was probably the first place the Stamp People looked for people who owed them money. I wondered if maybe a disguise wouldn’t be better. On the other hand, a fourth-grader in a mustache and dark glasses might only call attention to himself.

  As I was peeking out through the curtains one day, a dark van pulled up and stopped in front of our place. Two men got out. One of them carried a large net with a long handle on it, perfect for dragging a kid out from under a bed!

  “It’s the Stamp People!” I yelled at my mother. “They’ve come for me! Don’t open the door!”

  “Hush!” Mom said, opening the door. “It’s only the dog catchers. I reported that stray dog that’s been running around biting people.”

  After she had told the dog catchers where they might find the mean dog, Mom turned her attention on me. “Now, what’s this about stamp people coming for you?”

  There was nothing to do but confess my crime.

  “Why on earth did you order stamps you don’t have money to pay for?” Mom yelled. She was not taking this well. I began to sense I might be better off in the hands of the Stamp People.

  “I didn’t order them! They just came and I pasted them in my album, so I can’t return them! I thought they were free! And now the Stamp People are out to get me!”

  “You didn’t order the stamps?” Mom said. “They just came? And now the Stamp People have the nerve to threaten my son? In that case, I’ll handle this.”

  She then sat down and wrote the Stamp People a letter. I never heard from them again. They may have been tough, but they were no match for an angry mother. As for me, I found another hobby. My nerves just weren’t up to the high-stress world of stamp collecting.

  Big Ben

  I had just settled into a chair on the patio and was unwrapping a cigar when I glanced up and saw Eldon advancing across the backyard. Eldon is the annoying little rich kid who lives next door. He had obviously managed to climb over the board fence that separates our two yards.

  “Eldon,” I yelled at him. “Why do you think I cemented broken glass to the top of that fence?”

  “To keep out burglars. Well, it won’t work. I just toss a folded blanket on the glass and climb on over. Burglars could do the same thing. They’re not dumb, you know.”

  “Is that right? Well, maybe I’ll have to install coils of razor wire along the top of the fence. Now go home. I’m busy.”

  “How can you be busy? You don’t have a job.”

  “I do have a job. I write. At this very moment, I’m busy writing, or at least I would be, if a little boy wasn’t yakking at me. What do you want, anyway?”

  “I was just wondering if you had any sand I could use for my dump truck.”

  “No, I don’t have any sand for your dump truck. What does this look like, a beach? Oh, I suppose you could take some out of the little box over there on the back porch. The box next to the cat’s dish.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Since you’re being so nice to me, Pat, you can come over to our yard and watch me do sparklers on the Fourth of July if you want.”

  “Watch you do sparklers? Well, that’s some excitement to look forward to.”

  “Yes, it is quite exciting. Did you get to do sparklers on the Fourth when you were a boy?”

  When I was a boy, on the Fourth, my friends and I were sparklers. If a kid was caught smoking, it was probably because he had just stopped flaming. The Fourth wasn’t considered a success unless you ended up looking like an elongated cinder.

  I was well into my teens before I realized the Fourth wasn’t a season but only a single day. What kind of Fourth is that, one measly day? No, our Fourth stretched from the middle of June, when the fireworks stands opened up, until the entire supply of fireworks in the county was exhausted. And fireworks were really fireworks back then. Some of the rockets could have stopped tanks. There were firecrackers big enough to blast out stumps. The people who sold the fireworks, however, were very careful about selling dangerous fireworks to just any kid who happened to stop by. They had safety standards. A kid had to be old enough to pronounce the word “fireworks.” After he’d passed the security check, he’d say, “Now gimme two antitank rockets and a flamethrower.”

  Even if you ran out of money for fireworks, you could stand in your yard at night and watch flaming projectiles shoot up into the air from around the neighborhood. “Oooo,” you’d say. “That was a nice one!” Or, “Ahhhh! I liked that one best. What was it?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think it was the Mahoney kid.”

  I didn’t mention any of this to Eldon, but I myself was rather timid around fireworks. It was my older cousin Buck who tried to teach me how to throw firecrackers.

  “See, it’s easy,” Buck said. “Here’s how you do it. One, grasp firecracker between your fingers. Two, light the cracker. Three, cock your arm. Four, throw the cracker.” Buck threw the firecracker. “See, it’s easy. Just go through the steps, one through four, in a nice smooth motion.”

  “Great, Buck! I’ll try it.” I went through the steps. One … two BANG!

  “People who aren’t that good at counting shouldn’t throw firecrackers,” Buck said.

  “I can’t feel my hand!” I yelled. “I can’t feel my hand!”

  “Don’t be such a sissy. Your hand’s fine, unless, of course, you might want to use it sometime.”

  My hand didn’t look fine, although some of the little blackened twigs bore a slight resemblance to fingers.

  Mom was sympathetic. “That’ll teach you to throw firecrackers. Now go back outside and stand under the sprinkler. How many times do I have to tell you, no smoking in the house!”

  Eldon came back with his little bucket full of sand. “If you didn’t do sparklers on the Fourth, what did you do?”

  “Well, actually, Eldon, our Fourth was pretty quiet when I was a kid.” And it was, too. Most of the guys took the day off to recover from their injuries. There was the parade through town to watch, and the picnic afterwards. My stepfather, Hank, and I had a tradition of getting up early the morning of the Fourth to go fishing. We never caught any fish, but Hank said he just enjoyed getting away to the mountains and having a wilderness experience.

  One Fourth of July fishing trip, we stopped to eat our lunch on a gravel beach. Hank had a really fine fishing outfit, including the first pair of chest waders in our part of the country. I still had a few firecrackers left, and while we were eating our sandwiches and Han
k was enjoying the tranquillity of the moment, I decided to set a few of them off, just to break up the monotonous tranquillity.

  “I wish you’d stop that,” Hank said. “I hate firecrackers. You’re ruining my wilderness experience!”

  “I only have one left,” I said. “Look at this baby, Hank.”

  “Holy cow! What is that ugly thing?”

  “This fat little devil here is what’s called your Big Ben! Cost me a whole dollar. Now, get ready, because I’m gonna light it and toss it.”

  “You sure it’s your last one? I really hate this.” Hank put his hands over his ears and turned his head away.

  I’d lied. I actually had two Big Bens! Hank loved a good practical joke, and he couldn’t help but get a big kick out of this one. My timing had to be perfect. “Get ready, Hank. I’m lighting it now.” I held both firecrackers in one hand, lit one, dropped it, and tossed the unlit one down the front of Hank’s chest waders.

  “Sorry, Hank!” I said. “The wind blew the Big Ben down your waders.”

  There was no wind, but a person doesn’t pay a lot of attention to meteorological conditions when he has a Big Ben down the front of his waders.

  Hank yelled out a really bad word and frantically tried to shake the Big Ben down one leg of the waders, his objective clearly one of damage control. If a game warden had come by, he might have arrested Hank for obscene dancing on a trout stream. Then the firecracker on the ground went off. KaBOOOOM!

  Hank shot straight up in the air. His sudden and significant gain in altitude startled me. For a second, I wondered if maybe I had tossed the wrong firecracker down Hank’s waders, but, no, there was the smoldering debris on the rocks.

  “I can’t feel anything!” Hank shouted. “I can’t feel anything!”

  It took me a while to explain the practical joke to Hank, but eventually he got a big laugh out of it. About five years later, as I recall.

  The only damage to Hank was emotional, mostly psychosomatic, and that faded after a few days. When we got home, Hank still wasn’t speaking to me, and before he stomped off to his den, all he said to my mother was, “Firecrackers! Firecrackers! I hate firecrackers!”

  “Well!” Mom said. “Why’s he acting so strange?”

  “Oh, you know Hank,” I said. “He always gets a little grumpy when we don’t catch many fish.”

  “No, I mean why is he walking so funny and talking in that high, piping voice?”

  Eldon set his pail of sand on the table and made himself comfortable in a chair.

  “Don’t bother making yourself comfortable, Eldon,” I said. “I told you, I’ve got work to do.”

  “Okay. I just wanted to know if you’re going to come over and watch me do sparklers on the Fourth. It’s pretty scary.”

  “I’m sure it is. And I definitely will be over to see you do sparklers, unless, of course, I have an extremely contagious disease at the time and am running a high fever.” Cough cough.

  “Great! Well, I’d better get this sand back over to my dump truck.”

  “Good. By the way, Eldon, don’t worry about the little lumps in the sand. You can crumple them up with your fingers.”

  Roast Beef

  My family was so poor that when the Great Depression came along, it was an improvement. “Let the good times roll!” my mother shouted.

  Some of our neighbors were even worse off than we were. One whole summer my friend Ronnie Figg didn’t have shoes to wear. He didn’t mind, because he thought going barefoot would exempt him from church. But then Mrs. Figg, who was much more religious than Ronnie, came up with a solution. Before church on Sunday, she had Mr. Figg paint a nice pair of black oxfords on Ronnie’s feet. They looked really elegant, too, unless it rained. The paint job, of course, had to be renewed every Sunday, and the oxfords never turned out quite the same. As a result, it appeared to the congregation at their church that Ronnie had a whole closet full of new shoes, and there was some talk around the church about the Figg family putting on airs. So Mrs. Figg told her husband to paint a regular old pair of tennis shoes on Ronnie’s feet and let it go at that. As any artist would be, Mr. Figg was disappointed, because he had spent a great deal of time mastering wing tips.

  I don’t know if all that’s true, about the painted-on shoes. It’s just what Ronnie told me one day years later, when we were comparing our childhood hardships. Still, I can’t imagine Ronnie would lie about something like that.

  After my father died, it sometimes seemed as if we ate nothing but gruel. My mother was a great believer in “Let’s pretend.” She had a theory that ugly reality could be improved upon by a mere act of imagination.

  “Tonight, let’s pretend the gruel is roast beef!” she’d exclaim cheerfully. “Oh, this is excellent ‘roast beef,’ children. Now, don’t just sit there staring at your ‘roast beef.’ Eat your ‘roast beef.’ Didn’t you hear me? I said, eat your roast beef!”

  “How come we always have to have ‘roast beef?” I’d complain. “Why can’t we ever have ‘hot dogs’?”

  “Oh, we can, we can. Tomorrow night we’ll have ‘hot dogs,’ just for you, Patrick. And ‘chocolate sundaes’ for dessert! Yum! Doesn’t that sound good?”

  One evening while my sister, Troll, and I waited for Mom to bring a steaming bowl of gruel out from the kitchen, I called out hopefully, “What’s for supper, Mom?”

  “Venison steaks and pancakes!” she called back cheerfully. “Doesn’t that sound good? Yum!”

  Troll shot me a look that said, “Give me a break!”

  Then Mom bustled out of the kitchen, carrying in one hand a big platter of pancakes and in the other a platter of venison steaks!

  “It is venison steaks!” Troll yelped. “Where did you get those, Mom?”

  “Someone left them on the back porch last night. They were all wrapped up in a newspaper.”

  “I wonder why he sneaked them onto the porch in the middle of night,” I said. “Why didn’t he just give them to us?”

  “Well, it’s not exactly deer season, you know,” Mom replied. “Some kind soul is just trying to help us out in hard times.”

  “I don’t think he’s so kind if he poaches deer,” Troll said.

  “There’s still leftover ‘roast beef,’” Mom said.

  “Pass the venison, please.”

  Every so often, our secret benefactor would strike again. Always the venison was left wrapped up in newspaper on our back porch in the dark of night. Neighbors reported receiving the same nocturnal gifts. The mystery of the secret benefactor’s identity was almost as delicious as the venison he distributed. Still, there was the knowledge that we had a poacher among us, and poachers were held in contempt by our law-abiding, game-warden-fearing neighbors. So it was generally thought best to allow the mystery to remain a mystery.

  Although no one wanted actually to say it, there was some suspicion that the poacher might be the odorous old woodsman Rancid Crabtree. It was well known that Rancid lived pretty much off the land, his aversion to work possibly even surpassing his aversion to water. Still, it was hard to imagine Rancid stooping so low as to poach deer.

  One night Ronnie Figg and I decided to sleep out in the woods behind his house. I wasn’t too keen on sleeping out, but Ronnie was depressed because his dog, Sparky, had been missing for several days. I thought sleeping out with him might cheer Ronnie up. It was one of my first sleep-outs away from home, however, and I was a little worried that it might be too scary, overload my circuitry and short it out, with the result that I would flee camp in the middle of the night. News of a guy’s fleeing camp in the middle of the night usually spread like wildfire around the neighborhood, where it would be remembered for the next forty years and worked into conversations at every opportunity:

  “Boy, the nights are starting to get warm, aren’t they, Mr. Jones?”

  “Yes, indeed they are, Patrick. Very much like that night forty years ago when you fled home from that sleep-out. Ha!”

  It was the kind
of embarrassment one did not want attached to one’s reputation for the rest of one’s life.

  Fortunately, the sleep-out with Ronnie was great fun, and I wasn’t the least bit nervous, even though Ronnie and I were exchanging some really hideous ghost stories. Much to my relief, I learned that I was a lot braver than I thought. Quite possibly I possessed nerves of steel, as I had long suspected.

  Then it got dark.

  The ghost stories tapered off rather abruptly after the onset of darkness. As I say, Ronnie never seemed particularly religious, but the dark shadows converging on our little camp seemed first to touch and then ignite a deep devotion in him. He casually mentioned to no one in particular that he had grown quite fond of attending church, and only wished services were held more often, maybe three or four times a week. I myself had always been religious, and now became fervently so, but I thought it might be well to mention aloud that I only passed through the ladies’ underwear section in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue on my way to the sporting goods, just in case there might be some misunderstanding about impure thoughts and all that.

  “Me too,” said Ronnie. “Man, I flip right through the ladies’ underwear section fast as I can.”

  It’s quite possible that if we had remained in our little camp much longer, both Ronnie and I might easily have qualified for sainthood by no later than midnight. I could tell, however, that the darkness had started to stretch Ronnie’s faith pretty thin. He was winding up his internal spring and settling his feet into the starting blocks. Then, without so much as a good-bye, he released the spring and shot himself toward home, leaving our blankets snapping up in the air like window shades.

  Never had I seen such a disgusting display of sheer cowardice in one of my friends. Well, that was just something Ronnie would have to live with for the next forty years. Now, of course, there was no point in my remaining in camp alone, and so I reluctantly got up and calmly headed off toward home, my steady, woodsmanlike pace interrupted only by an occasional ricochet off the odd tree.