by Weston Ochse
The property itself was filled with head high weeds and scattered trash that the boys sometimes unearthed. A thin but well-beaten path descended from the street to the dock area. To the left of the dock was open water and half a mile away across the lake, Hixon, Tennessee could be seen with a like number of houses, similar in style and size. To the dock’s right was a partially submerged stone foundation. Water lapped over the edges and filled it with a dark stagnant murk. It was plain that it had once been a fresh-water swimming pool, something that the rich had once installed to allow their children to enjoy the freedom of the lake while safely penned in by concrete walls. One could imagine chairs and tables once sitting on the now abandoned concrete pad overlooking the pool, affluent parents drinking mint juleps or gin and tonics, while citron torches kept the mosquitoes at bay and a hired lifeguard assured their progeny’s continued existence.
The dock was a study in the sturdiness of nineteen fifties construction. Posts, double the size of any telephone pole, carried the structure twenty yards out into the water, the dock blocking half the entrance to the inlet. The boards had grayed over the years, assaulted by thousands of feet, the southern sun and the constant moisture. But the construction was still firm. Except for the occasional nail that worked itself out over the years to pierce the foot of a running child, it was safe. The dock was L-shaped, the longer portion six feet wide and running like a wooden path to the large square that was the primary landing for sunbathers and children. This area was a twenty-by-twenty foot platform boasting two old rusty lifeguard chairs and a single moss-covered metal ladder that allowed the boys to climb up and hurl themselves out and over the water from the precarious fifteen-foot high lifeguard seat.
“Ready or not, here I come you suckers!” yelled Danny, leaping up and out.
He grabbed his knees, hugged them tightly to his chest and hit the water in a perfect cannonball. He sank deep into the green depths, immediately changing his posture, pulling the blackened mask over his eyes. The mask had been Bergen’s idea who was always the first one to get caught. He’d suspected his friends of cheating, so it was on the first day of summer this year that he’d proudly unveiled his creation—an old diving mask, blackened with several coats of waterproof tape, making the Marco man truly blind.
Danny drifted up slowly like a frogman from a movie infiltrating an enemy compound. As he surfaced, he listened for giggles, whispered conversation or any tell-tale splashing, but heard only the lapping of the lake’s small waves as they struck the pilings and the sound of a motorboat somewhere off in the distance.
“Marco.”
“Polo,” came the simultaneous answer from five throats.
He turned a few degrees and dove deep. Like always, they’d answered all at once, confusing his senses and making it hard to locate. He headed towards the nearest piling, knowing that when he’d turned in the water, he’d turned right, which made the nearest the outside shore pole. Chances are no one was hanging onto it, but he’d have to try. Spreading his fingers wide, he pulled himself deeper, then held his arms wide in front of him. Unerringly, he felt the pole to his front. Moving towards the inside of the pole, he let himself float up slowly holding his arms and legs out to touch anyone who might be sliding by.
He rose to the surface slowly again, “Marco.”
“Polo,” came the replies, followed by the sound of sluicing water.
Danny was closer now and knew where they were. The trick was to get to them before they changed places. It was always a game of bluffs and double bluffs, where the Polos tried to anticipate what the Marco would do and vice-versa. He sank deep, hoping they’d think he was pushing off, but held onto the pole with his feet. He felt the stir of water to his left and knew his bluff had worked. He shot up and tagged the boy.
“Ha! I got you, sucker,” he said, looking around to see Bergen, Doug, Clyde and Tony, hanging onto various poles, bobbing up and down beneath the dark shade of the dock.
“Ain’t got me,” replied Doug.
“No shit,” said Tony, his fake drawl getting better. “But he would have in about another minute you slow non-swimming redneck.”
Doug dove at Tony and shoved his head under the water. “Who you calling slow, Yank.”
Danny ignored their wrestling.
Eddie popped out of the water by the far right side pole. He’d pushed off underwater after he was tagged, coming up far away and pretending it had never happened. “Hey, you took your mask off. That’s cheating.”
“No way. I got you, Eddie.”
“You didn’t get no one, I’ve been under here waiting is all.” No one would ever accuse Eddie of being a good actor.
“What, jerking off again?” asked Clyde, reminding everyone of the incident last year.
“No. I wasn’t jerking off. And I told you guys, there was something in it. Like a leech or something.”
“And we told you,” Bergen piped up like a professor lecturing a stubborn student, “There aren’t any leeches in Tennessee.”
“Come on, man. I got you fair and square. You’re it.”
“Fine, I’ll play your game,” said Eddie, “but you never got me.”
Danny tossed him the mask and the boy hauled himself angrily up the ladder, exaggerating each step. Eddie was the true jock of the bunch and the best athlete. His only problem was that he could be bluffed easily, letting smaller boys, even Bergen with his bum leg, catch him in any games requiring guile.
They played for an hour longer, but when the sun finally pierced and drove away the thick blanket of clouds, they climbed out and sunned themselves upon the hot wood. They didn’t have towels. Towels were for girls and grandmas. They merely lay upon the planks, peering through the slats at the water below as the sunfish and crappie returned flitting back and forth to inspect the water dripped from their shorts, thinking each kerplunk of water was a bug.
It was Doug who let go, releasing a small gush of yellow droplets that poured into the water like a tiny spontaneous waterfall. Ten eyes watched as three brown fish snapped over to see if perhaps a cornucopia of bugs had been served for dinner by a benevolent Fish God. When they reached the yellow water, they whipped back, their faces puckered in fishy disgust.
The boys laughed raucously.
“That’s why they’re called crappy, cause they go so well with pee,” said Tony, making the boys laugh even harder.
The laughter faded and the boys closed their eyes, daydreaming about summers past and present. Danny stared at Bergen. The scar was still red and puckered, even after two years. The kid had never lost his fear of dogs and you couldn’t even get him on a bike again. The scar ran the entire length of his leg, a visual mnemonic to the double compound fracture. The main problem was that like all of them, Bergen had grown a few inches…except for the leg. It hadn’t grown at all, making him a perfect target for taunting, words like gimp and mutant the most preferred.
Bergen turned to Danny as if he’d heard the other boy’s thoughts. “How are your folks?” he asked softly, so the other boys couldn’t hear.
“Fine, I guess.”
“Come on.”
“Shit. I don’t know.”
Bergen was silent. He swiped at his blonde hair, pushing it out of his blue eyes.
“My mom is still crying,” said Danny.
“Yeah. But how are you?”
“I don’t know. I mean I don’t know what to think.”
“Any news?”
Danny sighed. Such a simple sentence. What did it mean? Any news of his sister? Had she been found? Any news of the police? Had they decided to arrest his dad yet? His mother had found his sister’s diary after she’d run away. Elaina’s scrawlings were cryptic and never named names, but the truth of the sexual abuse was right there in black and white. The phrase, I want to tell her, but there’s no way she will ever believe that he did this to me, had been hanging over the family’s head for six months.
“The police said she used the credit card in Texas. The
y think she’s heading West. To Hollywood probably.”
“That’s good news.”
“Not really. They didn’t get there in time and still don’t know where she is. It’s dangerous out there…you know?”
“Yeah. All sorts of bad people.”
“I just wish she’d come back and clear everything up. I mean I always picked on her when she was around, but that’s what a younger brother’s supposed to do. Right?”
“Right,” said Bergen softly, turning away and staring out over the water.
Danny turned as well, and saw that Tony had been listening. The boy smiled then closed his eyes. He was a good friend too. Tony’s dad worked construction and had moved the family down from New Jersey two years ago. The small Italian kid had sounded just like a gangster. His accent had only caused him problems. It wasn’t until he’d been beaten by a six foot sixth-grader, a mountain kid who’d been held back three times, that Tony finally began to adjust, trying to talk Southern or not at all.
The sound of a car door slamming and a girl giggling woke the tired boys from their half-slumber. They scooted to the side and slipped into the water, meeting at the far post so they wouldn’t be seen by anyone coming onto the dock. All five boys held on to the piling in anticipation.
About once or twice a week a seventeen-year-old boy named Ernie arrived with his girlfriend. They’d all seen her, but had never heard her name. All they knew was that she was tall, blonde and had the biggest hooters they’d seen outside of a magazine. Their dream was to finally see them. Them, those mystical mammaries that were suddenly powering their bodies like jet fuel.
The slap of the girl’s feet as she ran upon the dock sent shivers through Danny’s small frame.
“Come on. Let’s go,” Bergen whispered.
Doug wrapped a hand across the younger boy’s mouth and gave him the eye. Doug was a redneck through and through. He biked over from a different neighborhood. His size and strength were his membership to the group.
Above, the girl giggled as she threw down a large towel. They could almost feel her lie on the wood, taking the weight themselves, each boy’s eyes growing larger in anticipation.
“Come on, Kimmy, hold up. You could at least help me.”
Kimmy. The boys stilled, watching closely as the large boy hit the dock, his arms filled with a cooler, a portable radio and a yellow cloth bag that dangled from the crux of his right elbow.
“You can carry it. Here, rub some oil into my back.”
“I don’t know why you couldn’t help me.”
“I got everything ready here, didn’t I?” she replied.
The boys, their vision blocked by the towel, could only imagine. Doug caught his friend’s attention, pointed dramatically at the dock above them, and with a pubescent leer made a circle with one hand and shoved his index finger back and forth through it.
Tony and Eddie smiled and nodded at his wise assumption. Bergen rolled his eyes. Clyde and Danny ignored him. From above, they heard the radio click on to a classic rock station, KZ106. The heavy bass and insane guitar sounds of Def Leppard accosted the silence of the cove as the lead singer screamed out his ballad.
The boys wished they could hear what was going on. The association between boy and girl and anything even coming close to sex was as mysterious as the Bermuda Triangle. The towel was becoming mussed as whatever was happening above them was dislodging it, making it dance. All eyes were waiting for even a glimpse of bronzed skin, anything that would validate what they had seen in Clyde’s collection of Playboy magazines which Danny and Tony still believed were full of fake women.
Then, it was as if God had passed by and heard their tiny voyeuristic prayers. The towel shifted and as one, the boys mouths sagged as they saw flesh through the slats, and like a strange minute acorn, a reddish-brown nipple poked through. A collective sigh was released and the boys held the moment, hoping it would never end. But Bergen, in his own intellectual way, broke it like no one had ever broken a moment before. And until he died, he’d never live down the word, “Momma.”
The boys momentarily turned and stared at each other. When they returned to their nipple vigil, they saw that their Eldorado had been replaced by a green eye that, at first contracted and then widened. All hopes were shattered as the girl’s scream drowned out the drum solo on the radio, sending a large crow flapping into the air.
“Scatter!” yelled Clyde, realizing too late that he was the only one who hadn’t.
The boys shot in five directions, the first half of their journey was underwater, fueled by fear and summers of Marco Polo. When they finally came up for air, they turned to see the teenage boy staring around, confused at which one of them to grab. By the time he decided, it was too late.
They were gone.
They met back at the Rocks, the closest thing to a clubhouse they had. Three huge boulders, their tops poking through the loamy soil of the forest floor. The longest and widest curved for fifteen feet, covering one whole side of the area, four feet at its widest and three feet tall. The other two were roughly the same size, each about five feet long and two feet high. The Rocks were almost dead center of a small patch of forest that was in the middle of several housing sub-divisions.
The Rocks had been used for everything from wargames to campouts to a cache for items that couldn’t be kept in their homes. Eddie was lounging atop the largest of the Rocks, flipping through a December 1989 issue of Playboy magazine.
“What is it with long walks on the beaches?” he asked as Danny and Bergen picked their way through the trees and into the cleared center of The Rocks. “I mean, we have twenty-seven of these damn things and more than half of these women want to walk on the beach for a long time.”
Danny grabbed one for himself and leaned against one of the smaller rocks and shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said turning his magazine sideways, flipping out the centerfold.
Eddie glanced at Bergen who had squatted Indian style in the center and seemed about to say something, then evidently decided not to and went back to reading.
They heard the sound of moving brush and all turned to watch Clyde, Doug and Tony enter, each sucking on a Popsicle. Tony passed three orange ones to the other boys and sat across from Bergen, the laugh begging to escape. Clyde and Doug also grabbed a magazine and pretended to read it.
The boys waited for Bergen to explode, his embarrassment sending him into one of his famous temper-tantrums. The only sound was the sucking on the popsicles and the occasional clearing of throats. The fake coughing got louder and more frequent as the boys watched its effects on Bergen, who was staring at the ground and glowering. When the coughs became one long fit, each of the boys hacking and doubling over as if they were about to die, Bergen exploded.
“Shut up!” He twisted around and glared at all the boys who seemed to be innocently reading their magazines.
“Look at this,” said Clyde holding out a page for Tony to admire. “Now, these are some serious hooters. Says here she works as an aerobics instructor and is the mother of two.”
“Damn,” said Tony. “She don’t look like a momma.”
Bergen spun upon the two and grabbed the magazine. He stood still as he read it to make sure they weren’t making fun of him then tossed it back.
“My brother told me about this new website they got called Boobscan.com. It has like a whole bunch of tits that were scanned in. He showed it to me and it was pretty gross. I mean, all them women had to flatten them out. I thought they looked like pancakes with cherries, myself,” said Tony.
“Boobscan. What’ll they think of next,” said Danny. “Speaking of, how’s your Momma doing, Tony?”
“Oh, she’s fine. Went to the hospital last week to get her boobs checked for cancer. And thank you for your care and concern over my Momma’s boobs and I’m happy to say they are cancer free.”
“You’re welcome, Tony. After all, what are friends for?” he replied with a smile and a solicitous bow.
“All
right. All right. Enough about Boobland and Boobscan.com and any other boob thing you guys want to talk about. I don’t know why I said it, it was stupid and it’s over. Enough.”
The boys broke down, unable to contain themselves over Bergen’s outburst. Eddie fell off his rock and Danny and Clyde joined him on the ground, their laughter ringing in the trees. Tony and Doug were doubled over, tears coming out of their eyes, their guffaws rebounding off the rocks. Bergen stood amidst the storm of hilarity, hands on his hips.
When the laughter died down, it was Eddie who spoke first.
“Oh no. It ain’t over. It ain’t ever gonna be over. As long as there are no leeches in Tennessee, it will never be over.”
“But there are no leeches in Tennessee,” said Bergen with an impossibly straight face.
The laughter increased until everyone was left rolling, each holding their sore stomachs.
“Momma,” said Clyde in his best Bergen voice.
* * *
Paradise Valley, Arizona
Agent Emilio Ortega pulled his white Ford Explorer into the gravel drive and scanned the area carefully. The large black letters on his door said BORDER PATROL and had a tendency to send people scampering, especially this close to the border.
He’d received a few leads, more like rumors saying that there were some illegals in the compound, so he’d decided to check it out on the way home from his shift at the I-90 roadblock. The day had been rather productive. It was amazing, really. They’d set the roadblock where they always set it up—five miles south of Benson. Part of the reason for the roadblock was a presence, showing the wetbacks that you meant business. Yet with all the advanced warning, and with their fifth day in a row in the same spot, they’d still captured two busloads—eighty illegals who were now unhappily on their way back to Mexico via Nogales.
Then, of course, there was the aerostat—or the blimp as most of the locals called it—which was the DEA’s secret weapon. The aerostat was an immense balloon tethered to the ground by a thousand-foot long metal cable. Inside the aerostat was an extremely sophisticated ground surveillance radar that scanned the entire length of the US-Mexican border for sixty miles. At one time, more than eighty percent of the drugs that entered the United States from Mexico came through Cochise County. Now it was down to a manageable five percent and to keep the radar operators honest, they deigned to cooperate with the Border Patrol alerting the local shop of border-crossers.
