Frisbee

by Eric Bergreen

TWELVE

  The air outside felt slightly cooler than that of the stifling heat in the playhouse. Although it must have been somewhere in the mid nineties, a weak breeze blew in over the mountains from the Pacific Ocean some thirty miles to the west. Up in the cloudless sky a flock of seagulls rode a thermal, a cyclone of feathers.

  As the three of them headed for Steve’s garage, I took Jason’s baseball glove and mine, along with the tennis ball, back to our house. Butts up would have to wait for another day. Steve had also instructed me to bring back the walkie-talkies I had received as a gift from my parents last Christmas. We’d need them for Star Trek.

  After finishing my task, and checking in with my mother, I headed over to the Hanel house. The Amy Garret story had stuck in my mind like congealed soup. It must have been terrible what she went through. Why did that poor young girl have to suffer like that? What would possess someone to kidnap an innocent child, torture, and brutally murder them in that fashion?

  Strangulation.

  I had an inkling of what the word meant. Choked, was the best way I could describe it to myself back then. Choked with something like a rope. The device found still around her neck. The sick person hadn’t even had the decency to remove it. Like whoever had done it was bragging about it, showing off their work.

  I needed to get the story out of my head, and a little playtime with the fellows would help out.

  When I got to Steve’s, I walked to the door that led into the garage on the side. The larger door in the drive was still closed. I had to walk past the front door of the house to get there, trying to avoid Steve’s older brother Jacob in the process. He must have still been in the house with Jackie because I didn’t encounter him, thank God.

  The guys where in the garage, already messing around and from the noise they were making, having a pretty good time at it. I grabbed the handle to the door and turned. It resisted in my hand, frozen in place.

  Locked.

  I decided to knock on the door, the common thing to do when locked out of any room then changed my mind and kicked it a few times.

  “Who is it?” came a voice, high pitched, made to sound female. It was Cory’s. That I could tell. Giggles followed.

  “It’s Ricky,” I said. “Open up.”

  I heard faint whispers, a few more chuckles, and some shushing sounds and then footsteps coming closer on their side. The door was cracked open a few inches and being so bright outside, I could see nothing inside the garage.

  I pushed a little with my right hand and when I was met with resistance, pushed with my hip and shoulder. Still nothing. The guys were messing with me, and I didn’t find it one bit funny. I wanted in. I knew they were up to something and I wanted to be a part of it. There’s something about being young and hanging around with older boys, you always want to be doing what they’re doing. I looked up to them. Well not to Cory, but he was still okay. Sometimes.

  “What’s the password?” This time the voice was meant to sound older, deeper. It was Steve’s.

  Password? I knew nothing of any password. I just wanted in, to find out what they were doing. More giggles from their side.

  “Come on guys. Let me in, huh.”

  I was still pushing with the weight of my small body when the barrel of a rifle was poked out and aimed at my chest.

  Whoa, I thought, what’s going on? I jumped back to the side up against the house, trying to keep from getting shot. The door opened all the way know and Steve was standing there with his BB gun in his hand, laughing. They all were.

  “What’s wrong with you guys? You scared the crap out of me,” I told them. Which made them bust up even more. After a few moments I began to laugh myself.

  Steve dropped the barrel so the gun was pointed at the ground and said, “Don’t worry, I didn’t even pump it.”

  I walked into the dimly lit garage just as Cory said, “Better check his pants, he probably crapped ‘em.”

  I stepped up to him and looked him in the eyes and said, “Why don’t you grow up, dummy?”

  The one thing Cory didn’t like was being called stupid or dumb. It wasn’t that he was, but we all knew just as well as he did, that he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. The look on his face hardened.

  “What did you say, you shit?” It was his best comeback. And as I turned away from him, he sucker punched me on the shoulder blade.

  I staggered. “Ow, jerk!” I yelled as he started in for another swing.

  “Knock it off, Cory!” The command from my brother stopped him cold.

  Jason was older than Cory, but smaller by an inch or two and a couple of pounds lighter. This made no difference to him when it came down to protecting me. I had no doubt in my mind that if it really came down to it, Jason could beat the living shit out of his best friend.

  Cory and Jason held each other’s gaze a few seconds before Cory looked away. “Fine, but you just tell your little butthole brother here to watch himself,” he said with a huff.

  After a second or two of silence Steve broke in. “Alright, girls, that’s enough. We didn’t come here to fight.”

  “Yeah, are we going to play Star Trek or what?” I said and then noticed what they had been doing while I had run home.

  There were pictures taped to the inside of the big garage door. But not just any pictures. They were pages that had been neatly torn out of magazines, glossy and a little wrinkled. Naked women looked back at us with frozen expressions of ecstasy in different poses. Little holes and tears pockmarked their surface from where the guys had been shooting BB’s at them.

  “Whoa.”

  “We’re playing something different right now, Ricky,” Steve explained. “Want to try?”

  I nodded, my mouth hanging open, staring at about twelve different sets of breasts and a half dozen vaginas. They had set up a tall box for a makeshift gun stand about fifteen feet back from the big door, and had put a chair behind it to sit in while aiming.

  “It’s twenty-five points for a tit, and fifty points for a pussy shot,” Jason told me.

  I had shot Steve’s BB gun before, but had always had trouble pumping it up. So he loaded it and pumped it for me, then handed me the rifle. Sitting in the chair I laid the gun on the box to steady it, took aim, and after a second, fired.

  Whap!

  The small copper ball had taken the blonde somewhere near her bellybutton. Not a bad shot for an amateur marksman.

  “Missed,” Cory yelled out.

  After looking at him with slatted eyes I asked Steve if I could try again. He reloaded it, pumped it five or six times, and handed it back.

  I aimed at a brunette this time.

  Whap!

  I hit just below her left breast.

  “Does that count?” I asked.

  “Close enough,” Steve said. “Twenty-five points.”

  I handed the gun back to Steve who shot four or five times at different girls, scoring one hundred and seventy-five points. He then handed it off to Jason. Jason shot a couple times and then let Cory have a turn. We did this for about a half an hour before Jason’s curiosity got the better of him.

  “Hey. So, where did you get the pictures from anyway?” He said.

  “I was wondering when one of you was going to ask,” Steve answered. And then with a sly smile on his face said,” You guys want to see something cool?”

  We all looked at each other, and in unison started nodding.

  “You bring those walkie-talkies like I asked, Ricky,” Steve said.

  “Yep,” I answered and pulled one from my right pocket and one from my left. The hand held radios were small and had a range of about two hundred yards. There was a sticker of Batman on one and Robin on the other. My father had picked them up from Radio Shack and given them to me for Christmas about six months before.

  “Well then,” Steve said. He could actually do a pretty good impression of James T. Kirk. “Man… your… stations!”