Outskirts Press, INC.

So sad. So funny. Ridiculous but true!

How could it be that a boy who spent every waking hour of his life celebrating the wonders along his twisted path, spent every night thinking of painless ways to end it before someone else did? Oddly enough, humor became the papery shield that accompanied him to the park, the playground, the campground and the classroom. It was all he had until summers would take him away to sanctified places described in rich detail. Set in the 1960s and 70s, this story grabs you by your inner child and won’t let go. It is written from that precious place where forgiveness takes hold and laughter is born.

A new boy, Lenny, came to the third grade class of Ms. Barton a short time after Halloween. He was an outsider, so naturally we became friends. He lived in a house that had intercoms, which was really good for playing secret agent games.

Lenny had a craving for eating crayons and had more to say about sex than the average eight-year-old. He always had three or four crayons in his pocket and was sucking on a red one when he told me this: "If a naked boy gets on top of a naked girl and does a bunch of push-ups and puts his hand over the girl's right titty, she gets pregnant." He said he knew because he had an older sister and was positive that's how it was done.

"Does it have to be her right boob? Why can't you do it on her other one?" I asked.

"You can, but only if you're left-handed," he said. "But you're not really supposed to. It makes ‘em mad." Apparently he had taken the secret agent thing one step too far and become a spy. Anyway, it sounded right to me, but it was hard to take him seriously when his mouth was a different color every day, from whatever crayon he was into. I remained his friend to learn more about sex and to see some of the cut-out pictures he would bring to school. I always wondered where he got those, until I found my dad's stash of similar artwork.

His other friends were a mean bunch of boys. They were three brothers that all looked alike. I didn't know their names, but I had seen them around. I went with him once to their house to get some pop bottles. We figured there were enough to return for thirty pieces of penny candy each, at the Adams Street Grocery. These boys didn't know me. They thought I was cutting into their share of profits. The only reason Lenny and I were going to the store for them was because their father told them not to leave until they stacked a cord of wood in the alley.

They were getting the job done sooner than they thought they would and told me I couldn't come along, even though I had found six bottles on the way there, and was happy to just cash in my own. I was about to be betrayed for thirty pieces of penny candy. They stole my bottles and held me down on the ground and started stacking the remaining wood on my back so I couldn't tell.

Lenny seemed nervous and pulled a black crayon from his pocket and started to gnaw on it. "Are you sure about putting those logs on top of him?" he said. "I think you're gonna kill him." That made the other boys laugh.

"Shut up or you'll be next," one of them said.

"Alright then, let's hurry up," Lenny said. They worked themselves into the normal bully frenzy.

"This is great," one boy said.

"It's perfect," said his brother. They thought they were geniuses for devising such a plan.

"Knock it off you guys. It hurts," I said. That just made them laugh harder.

I pleaded with them. "Let me up, I promise I won't tell. You can take my bottles if you want to."

"Don't worry we're taking your bottles alright," the oldest brother said as he took his turn with another piece of wood.

There I was laying face-first in the alley with a pile of split firewood stacked up on my back. The pile was only a couple feet high, but I was wedged in next to the larger pile they had already stacked, and I couldn't move. Surely they wouldn't leave me like that, but they did.

They left with a wagon full of bottles for about half an hour, but it seemed like days. I could barely breathe, spiders and bugs of all kinds were crawling all over my face and up my pant legs. It was starting to get dark. After awhile I began to fall asleep, when suddenly I heard laughter and the sound of an empty wagon bouncing down the alley. The next thing I heard was a loud crunch followed by many more. Lenny and friends were kicking and pushing the wood off of me a log or two at a time, before their Dad got home. Every time they moved the pile I got slivers in my back through my shirt. When I was loose, I wanted to yell at them but was afraid to. It was hard to get up because I was stiff. As soon as I got to my feet, I started to run away. As hard as I tried not to I started to cry.

One of the boys yelled at me as I ran off. "Boohoo. Run home you little cry baby and don't tell or we'll get you worse next time." I ran even faster. I wasn't going to tell on them, but I would need an explanation for the condition I was in. My glasses were bent, my clothes dirty and torn. I composed myself just before I got to the kitchen door. This time when asked what happened to me I had a story ready.

"We were playing football in the alley down on Cascade Street."

"What were you doing clear down there?" my mom wanted to know.

"Hush Verna, I want to hear this," my dad said.

"He knows better," Mom said, thrusting her finger into the air.

"Anyway, I ran out and caught the winning pass and scraped against the fence as I scored the winning touchdown."

I went on to tell my dad that Lenny, the kid who tried to tackle me, was black-and-blue in his mouth. I didn't tell him it was from eating crayons. Dad was really proud of me—Mom was pissed off about my clothes. Suspicious about my story. I would tell my father of many heroic sporting highlights in the coming years. Most of them were lies.

The last day of school arrived right on time, and the dreams of my perfect summer were alive again. I learned how to play at the park with caution and come home when I saw certain faces, specific body language. I had learned how to run, starting with a desperate sprint, and then pacing myself so I could get away from anyone over a quarter-mile or so. My legs were short, but when running for your life or fighting for it, there's an advantage over anyone who does it for sport alone.

I keenly anticipated the weekends. Quite often on Friday, my dad would call my mom from work just before lunch. "I think I can take off a little early. How bouts we pitch a tent and wet a fly?" Mom, Carol, Jeff, and I knew this drill. We abruptly abandoned games and toys, housework and television. We each had a new task at hand and communication was precise. In less than a couple of hours there would be a large pile on the kitchen floor that spilled out onto the porch. The camping pile. It was a beautiful sight that made my heart race. All we had to do was buy ice for the ice chests, and we did that while Dad filled the car with gas, complaining about the price at thirty-six cents per gallon. I didn't care what it cost. It smelled good while it filled the tank. The smell of going somewhere. Mom's organizational skills were her claim-to-fame. She was always ready. We weren't going up to the woods with the bare essentials, we were leaving with some version of everything we had at home. We never needed it all, but Mom made sure we had it. "Just in case." Dad would pull into the driveway, and survey the conspicuous pile. A reasonable person would tell you, even with our car top carrier this stuff was never going to fit into our Oldsmobile—not to mention the five of us. Abracadabra, my dad performed his magic packing tricks, and Mom stuffed every nook and cranny. A long zipping sound came from the canvas car top carrier, the trunk closed on the second try, and poof—we were down the road with fishing poles sticking out of both back windows. Before we could reach the city limits, Mom would pour Dad a drink—straight gin on ice. He would have several as we traveled seventy miles up the winding and narrow Icicle Creek road. We felt safe as he crossed the center line on purpose to straighten out the corners. It's not like we wore seatbelts in those days. I would stand on the transmission hump and watch for deer, or put my arm outside the window and move my hand up and down like a sail in the wind. My mom would remind me of the boy who lost his arm that way. It's funny, what she thought was dangerous and what was not.

Soon, Dad would lay claim to one of our legendary campsites. We would all put up the large, old, green army-style tent, then Dad would disappear to the creek for a while, just a little before sundown. Carol and my mom would set up our elaborate camp and begin to prepare dinner. Jeff and I were off to gather wood with a distracted determination. While Dad was wading the ice-cold rapids looking for the perfect pool, we had made our perfect home in the woods. Dad would return right when it got dark and not a minute before. His creel would be so full of trout that many of them were still wet and alive. Dinner, cards, stories by the campfire (which I considered a living thing), and not an asshole in sight. Life was good. At night in the mountains you could almost touch the stars. You could talk to God and believe he was there. I would always thank him for what I had and ask him for the same thing. He must have been busy. I wasn't getting any taller.