by J. P. Willie
“Where do you want to go to break it?” Jack asked as he picked the bottle up from the ground.
“Let’s go bust the window out of Kyle’s momma’s car. He’s the reason I had to wear that damned cast all year.”
“No way, they’d definitely know it was us.” Jack paused and scratched his head, “How about Mrs. Ansen? That was the bitch who tried to tell my mom we were stealing plants from people’s houses.”
“But we were stealing plants, Jack,” I stated.
“I know, but it’s the fact that she tried to tell on us. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
As we made our way back through the pines to my trailer, we saw a bluebird land on one of the pine branches. Jack and I both looked up and watched as it sat there and chirped its daily melody.
“I’m gonna hit that bastard with this bottle,” Jack said boldly.
“Whatever, Jack. Look how high up it is. There’s no way you can throw a bottle that high.”
“Oh yeah? Watch me.”
Jack walked slowly toward the bird, making sure he didn’t make a sound on his approach.
“Don’t get me in trouble, Jack. You know Memaw will shit a golden egg if she finds out you hurt one of her bluebirds.”
“Be quiet!” Jack hissed.
I watched my friend as he moved a tad bit closer to the bird. Finally he reached his arm back, then accelerated it forwards to release the bottle high into the air. The next thing that happened took me by complete surprise, I still tell the story to this very day. Jack hit that damn bird and knocked it out of the tree, sending it fluttering a good thirty feet to the ground below. When the bird slammed into the ground, blue feathers floated on down behind it like late guests arriving to a dinner party. Jack and I stood there, amazed. I could barely shoot a bird with a BB gun, much less hit one with a bottle. It had to have been one of the most amazing flukes I had ever seen in my life.
As we snapped out of our trance, the bird began to hop away, trying desperately to make a break for it. Jack had undoubtedly injured the poor thing’s wing when he’d scored this hit. We took off running after the bird, but Jack beat me to the damned thing, and before I could reach down to pick it up, Jack leapt into the air, bringing his knees deep into his chest and then brought his feet down hard onto the bird’s body, killing it instantly.
“What the hell?” I gasped.
“What?” Jack asked innocently.
“Why’d you kill it?”
“I don’t know, cause it was hurt, I guess.”
“We could have tried to fix its wing instead of killing it,” I told him.
“Yeah, well – could’ve, should’ve, would’ve, but didn’t.”
“Whatever, Jack. What do we do with it now?”
“Let’s take it to my house and skin it,” Jack suggested.
“Gross! Momma says if you kill an animal, you’re supposed to eat it. If you don’t eat it, God will get mad at you and kill you – or something like that.”
“– really?” Jack sounded nervous.
“Yeah – really.”
“Well, when we skin it, we’ll cook it, and then eat it.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Alright then, let’s go,” Jack said.
At first, I had felt bad about the bird, but knowing that we were going to eat it put me at ease. I was never really cruel to animals, so this whole situation felt weird to me. Jack was a hunter; his dad took him all the time, so killing an animal wasn’t something new to him like it was for me. In the end, I was just glad that Jack put it out of its misery, and I got over the incident pretty quickly too.
When we arrived at Jack’s house, we made our way to his backyard, grabbed a steak knife from off the grill and returned to the edge of the woods behind the dog kennel Mr. Shawn had built. Jack and his father were huge raccoon hunters, and had some of the best tracking dogs that Hammond had to offer – I think they were Redbones, but that didn’t really matter to me, I wasn’t a big coon hunter, nor did I have any interest in becoming one.
I slung the dead bluebird onto the ground and Jack knelt down to begin the skinning. As soon as he jabbed the knife into the bird’s stomach, we heard something shuffling through the woods; twigs and branches breaking as whatever it was moved, and all the dogs in the kennel set to barking and scratching at the back door.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jack said, scanning the area cautiously. “Shut the hell up, you damned mutts!” Jack yelled at the dogs.
As soon as Jack yelled, the barking ceased and we heard the noise in the woods once more. Rising from his knees, Jack threw the bird and the knife down to the ground. Something big was in the woods behind the dog kennel, and it wasn’t an animal.
“Hello,” Jack called out, “who’s there?”
There was no answer, just more movement. Whatever it was, it was scurrying along the fence adjacent to Jack’s next-door neighbors. I never did know their names, but they had the tallest wooden fence on our road.
“I have a gun, ya know!” Jack yelled his false bravado into the woods.
I watched the trees shimmy and shake along the fence as whoever – whatever – it was retreated to the other side of the woods. I strained my eyes to see if I could make out what was in there, but I couldn’t see a damned thing.
“Jack,” I whispered, “let’s get on your trampoline and see if we can get a good look over the fence.”
Jack said nothing, but nodded his head in agreement.
So, we ran over to Jack’s run-down trampoline and began jumping on it until we could see over the fence and into the neighbor’s backyard. I caught a good double bounce from Jack after a few jumps and went soaring into the air, legs flailing and all. When I got to the peak of my bounce, I caught a glimpse of a man looking over the fence right back at me. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but I could tell that he was white, and was wearing dark clothes. On my way back down to the trampoline, a surge of fear pulsed through my entire body. Once my feet touched down, I stopped myself from bouncing and grabbed Jack by the arm.
“It’s a guy!” I said.
“What?”
“It’s a guy– and he’s looking over your neighbor’s fence at us.”
“Well, who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think he wants?”
“I don’t know, Jack!” I yelled. “All I know is that he’s watching us.”
We both fell silent and stood perfectly still on the trampoline, listening and gathering our thoughts.
“I can go tell my Mom that we treed a squirrel, and she’ll let me get my twenty-two out of the gun case,” Jack said with fear in his voice.
“Then what? We go back there in the woods and hunt the guy out?” I asked.
“I guess,” Jack said, “you got any better ideas?”
Jack glanced over his right shoulder at his neighbor’s fence, as if he was expecting some hideous monster to come smashing through it at any second.
“Yeah, I do. We can call the cops and get him arrested for trespassing.”
“But he’s not on my property. You said he’s over there on the neighbor’s property,” Jack muttered.
“Okay, but just give me another good double bounce, and if he’s still spying on us, we’ll go get your gun.”
“Alright,” Jack said, and began jumping once more on the trampoline.
I caught a good bounce from Jack a few jumps later and went soaring into the air once more. This time when I reached the peak of my jump, the strange man wasn’t there. I landed back on the trampoline and looked over to Jack. “He’s gone, man,” I reported. So, we both stood there for a moment, listening intently to the silence that surrounded us.
“Who the hell was that, Jack? Why was he watching us?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But if he comes back again, I’ll get my Dad to put a bullet in his nosey ass.”
CHAPTER TH
IRTEEN
THE MAN IN THE MALL: 1991
“Remember when we wanted to start a gang?” I asked my blood brother. Jack and I were walking down Rhine Road toward my trailer, bullshitting as usual. The black pavement under our bare feet blazed with heat; to any other kid, walking barefooted on this asphalt was nearly impossible. The scorching sun heated up the road and could seriously sear the skin clean off the bottom of your feet of you weren’t used to it, but Jack and I were immune to the fire that stirred beneath us.
“Yeah I remember, but we never came up with a name,” Jack said.
“What about the Rhine Road Boys?” I asked.
“Yeah – sounds good to me.”
“Sweet,” I exclaimed, “now all we need is a theme song.”
“A theme song?” Jack grinned at me.
“Yeah. You know, like all the ones they have in the movies.”
“Only blacks have theme songs,” Jack said.
“Well,” I paused and thought for a bit, “we can be the first white boys to have one.”
“Cool, but I suck at making songs up,” Jack replied.
“Don’t worry; I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”
And no shit – by the time we got down to my front yard, we’d come up with a song that defined us perfectly and was so damn catchy I can still remember it to this very day.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Jack responded.
So we started up the tune, a take on 90’s rap grouping the style of Snap.
“At least we go out and get what’s coming! The Rhine Road Boys ain’t known for running! We’ll egg your house and toilet paper your trees!
So you better get down on your knees and lick a couple of deez...
Balls that is! Fuck all of ya’ll – whores, that is!”
“Awesome!” I yelled out loud.
Jack had a huge, dumbass smile on his face, and he raised his hand in the air to give me a high five. I raised mine too, but then quickly brought it down and punched Jack in the ribs. I took off running and laughing as Jack chased me into my front yard.
***
It was about a week before I started sixth grade when things took a turn for the worse in my family. I was playing Super Mario World on my new Super Nintendo that I’d received that last Christmas, when Momma came into my room.
“Jody, I need to talk to you.”
“What for?” I asked, mashing buttons together and popping Koopas back into their shells.
“Pepaw’s been diagnosed with cancer,” Momma told me, very straightforward; never had she been that blunt with me.
I paused the game, put the controller down and stared up at Momma.
“What’s cancer?” I asked hesitantly.
“It’s a disease people get sometimes, and sometimes it’s something doctors can’t cure.”
“So is Pepaw going to be okay?”
“I don’t know, Bubba. It doesn’t look good,” Momma said and her eyes slowly filled with tears, which I knew that wasn’t a good sign.
“Is he going to die or something?” I asked her, my voice trembling.
“Yes, Bubba,” again, painfully to the point. “The doctors have no idea how much longer Pepaw has left to live. Some say a year, others say six months, but it doesn’t really matter how much longer Pepaw has left; we all know what the outcome is going to be.”
Suddenly, my mind felt like the whole world just stopped turning around me; I simply couldn’t imagine my life without Pepaw, he was the only real father figure I had. The thought of him dying made my stomach queasy, and I reached out to Momma and began to cry. Momma wrapped her arms around me and wept as well.
We cried like that for God knows how long, but somehow it didn’t really seem to be long enough, not for Pepaw. My heart still ached with sadness when Momma unlatched her arms from around me, and I couldn’t stop the tears from falling from my face.
But eventually my eyes did stop crying, and I sat in my room in front of my Super Nintendo wiping snot from my nose. Momma was sitting behind me on the bed rubbing the back of my neck, trying to calm me down as much as she could.
“What do I say to him when I see him?” I asked.
“Just talk to him like you do any other time.”
“But he’s dying now, Momma. If I go talk to him I’ll probably start crying.”
“Well, how about this,” Momma suggested. “How about you wait for him to talk to you instead? That way, you have some time to get yourself together and possibly think of what you want to say when you see him next time.”
I didn’t respond, I just nodded sadly and thought about Pepaw. I wanted to know what he was going to do with the rest of his time here on earth. I also wanted to know how he felt about the whole situation, but I wasn’t really ready to ask about any of that just yet; there was no way I would be able to keep my composure, and I didn’t want to come off as a sissy or, even worse, send Pepaw on an emotional rollercoaster because I broke down in front of him. I didn’t want to do that to him, so I took Momma’s advice about staying away until he approached me.
I came to the conclusion for the first time in my short life, sitting down in front of my small TV with the video game on pause, that death is the only thing that’s certain in life. I hypothesized that from the moment we are born, we begin to die and yet on the other hand, we never know what life has in store for us. One could wind up married with eight beautiful kids, a millionaire, a single parent, a serial killer, or even the President of The United States, the possibilities are endless; there’s only one thing that is certain in this so-called life – you will die.
And the life that you choose to live is up to you, and you alone.
So, I avoided Pepaw like the plague, diving behind anything and everything that would hide me every time I saw him. I felt like a complete asshole most of the time, but I still didn’t know what to say to him. I felt terrible knowing he was dying, and I thought about how he must be feeling too. When I watched him from a distance, usually from under my trailer or up in a tree, I remember him appearing to be just fine. He would be out in his shop, sawing and sanding like he did every other day, and I began to believe at the back of my mind that it couldn’t be as bad as Momma had made it out to be. And I thought to myself, maybe this cancer thing would take his life quickly and painlessly.
A week after Momma told me the dreadful news about Pepaw, I started sixth grade at a new school located in Tickfaw, a small town seven miles away from where we lived, a town mostly made up of white trash folk with a few poor black families here and there. I was so excited about being in a bigger school, but at the same time Pepaw’s situation was dragging me down. Momma told me not to think about it too much, and be happy that I was now attending Nelson Middle School.
In Tickfaw, middle school consisted of grades six through eight, and all students had seven teachers, each one teaching a different curriculum. I thought this was cool, but some kids were absolutely terrified. Despite all the nervous kids who were throwing up in the bathrooms, afraid that an eighth grader was going to beat their asses on the first day, going to Nelson Middle School made me feel kind of like an adult, although if I’m honest, it did make me kinda nervous, just not like the kids who were barricading themselves in the lavatories.
My first-period teacher, Mrs. Phillips, warned us the very first day of school about what the teachers were expecting of us now that we were in middle school. She closed the door to the classroom as soon as the bell rang and walked to the front of the class. “This is not the fifth grade, boys and girls. You are not in elementary anymore. Your teachers are not going to tell you what books to bring to class, what day your homework is due, what week your first spelling test is and so on and so forth. You must take notes – and pay attention. If you can do this, your time here in Nelson Middle School will be a very easy one. Sixth grade is not hard, boys and girls, but it can be if you make it that way,” Mrs. Phillips informed us with a smile on her face.
I
glanced around the room to see if I knew anybody from last year, and the first person to catch my eye was none other than Angela. She was sitting a row over from me, and she was looking around the classroom too. I hadn’t seen her all summer, even though she lived right down the street, and she looked different to how I remembered her. She had grown at least two to three inches over the summer, and had gotten her hair cut shoulder-length – and she was still the most beautiful creature I think I’d ever seen. Once our eyes met, Angela shot me a small grin, and butterflies invaded my stomach. I cut her a small grin as well, and then planted my blushing face back into my English book.
The bell rang shortly after, and I gathered my things from up off my desk, stuffed them in my book-sack and exited towards the door. I entered the hallway and it was filled with swarms of kids herding in all directions like cattle to the slaughter. I couldn’t walk but two feet without bumping into someone and quickly I found the whole thing a bit overwhelming. Before I could get the strap from my book-sack over my shoulder, I felt someone tap me on the back. I turned around briskly.
“Hey, Jody,” Angela said.
“Hey, Angela,” I replied, quickly swallowing the lump of nerves that shot up into my throat.
“How was your summer?” she asked me.
“It’s was okay, how was yours?”
“Well, we went to Disney World, and that was pretty fun. Then we went to visit some of my cousins in Mississippi. I didn’t have much fun at my cousins’ though. My dad stayed drunk with my uncle the whole time, and we hardly ever left the house to do anything. We mainly just watched movies and stuff.”
“Aw, that sucks.”
“Yeah, it sucked,” she agreed.
Then there came an odd silence between us. I didn’t know if we had just run out of things to say to each other, or if my breath was so bad it was making her not want to talk to me. I reached back, scratched the nape of my neck and looked at the faces of the other kids in the hall. I wanted to say something, but I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t want the conversation to end, but I wasn’t going to be the one to strike it back up again.
“So, I heard that two summers ago there was some interesting stuff that happened across the street from my house while we were away.” Mercifully for me, it was Angela who broke the awkward silence. “My Aunt Carol stopped by the house the other day and I overheard her talking to my mom about it. She said cops and big trucks hauled a disgusting old trailer out of the woods. Did you hear anything about that?”
