THIRTY-THREE
After I had cleaned up and changed into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, I went out front and found Steve, Jason and Cory playing a game of 500 in the middle of the cul-de-sac.
In this game a batter hits a tennis ball to the players that stand about fifty feet back from him. The players then scramble in the direction of the hit ball. If a player can catch it before it bounces off the ground, he earns one hundred points. If the ball bounces once before he catches it, he gets seventy-five points. Twice, fifty. Three times, twenty-five. If the ball bounces four times or more it’s a dead ball. The first player to get to five hundred gets to be the batter.
Steve tossed the ball up in front of him and smacked it high into the air with his wooden Louisville Slugger. Jason’s and Cory’s heads immediately snapped upward to follow the arc of the ball and they both took a few steps backward. The sun was high in the sky and they used their gloves to shield their eyes. The ball soared back toward earth like a missile over the boys’ heads. At the last minute, Cory shot an arm out and pushed Jason’s shoulder, sending him reeling a few feet. He then lifted his glove up to make the catch, but the ball hit off the tip and bounced next to Jason who stole the play back.
“Seventy-five points,” Jason exclaimed. He turned to Cory and pointed a finger at him. “That’s what you get, cheater.” He threw the ball back to Steve as Cory threw his glove on the ground and cursed.
Steve caught the ball with his left hand and said, “Nice play, Sinfield. Hey, Dayborne. Try putting some glue in that mitt.”
“Just hit the ball,” Cory shouted back as he picked up his glove.
Just as I reached the sidewalk and the shade of the tree in the parkway, Steve looked over and said, “Hey, there’s your brother. You guys want to go now?”
The other two looked over and Cory said, “Come on, man. I’ve got four twenty-five. I just need one good catch to get my ups.”
“Hey, Sinfield over there’s been giving you half the plays so you won’t feel so bad,” Steve chuckled. “It’s getting too hot for this anyway.”
“Alright. Alright,” Cory said. “One more hit. The guy that gets it wins the game. Okay?”
With the ball in one hand and the bat in the other, Steve looked at Jason and asked, “What do you think? One more?”
Jason smiled back at him and said, “All right. One more.” Then he turned to Cory and added, “But no more cheating.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Cory mumbled.
“Okay. Here it comes,” Steve shouted as he lobbed the ball into the air, cocked back and swung with all his might.
The bat connected with the ball and sent it soaring once more high into the warm sky. It was a fantastic hit, far over both of their heads.
“Oh, shit,” Cory hollered.
“Better run,” Jason said and then took two quick steps back which made Cory turn around and start running as fast as he could.
Steve must have been holding back in his earlier hits because this one was gone.
“Here I come,” Jason yelled, stomping his feet in place in the middle of the street. This made Cory pick his head up and run faster. “I’m gonna get it.” Jason turned around laughing and looked at Steve who was laughing himself.
The ball came down two houses up form ours and about twenty feet ahead of Cory, who was still putting on the steam. It bounced twice before he realized he wouldn’t be able to grab it and still get points, so he threw his glove at it instead. The glove missed and the ball kept going until its momentum gave up six houses away where it rolled and came to rest in the gutter.
Steve and Jason jogged over to where I stood underneath the tree and gave each other a high-five.
“That’ll teach him for cheating,” Steve said. “Hey, Ricky, finally decide to get up?”
“Yeah,” Jason said. “How come you slept so late today? I saw you on the couch when I got up.”
I shook my head as they stared at me, waiting for an explanation. “I just had a nightmare last night is all.”
Jason squinted his eyes and asked, “The bubbles again?”
I nodded, hoping I wouldn’t have to go into detail about the Dark Dream or the new one I’d had last night.
“Bubbles?” Steve said. “What bubbles?”
Again, I was waited on to answer. But when I didn’t, Jason told him for me.
“Just some nightmare he had a few nights ago; bubbles popping and screaming. Right, Ricky?”
“Right,” I said and hoped they’d drop it.
We all looked up the street to where Cory was. He had picked up the ball and was bouncing it on his way back to pick up his glove. He was sweating and breathing hard from his run.
“Hey. Steve thought of something for us to do today,” Jason said to me.
“Yeah, but we wanted to wait for you to come with us,” Steve added.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We’re gonna…” Steve started.
“We wanted to…” Jason said at the same time.
The two looked at each other and Steve said, “Go ahead.”
“No,” Jason stammered. “It was your idea. You tell him.”
“Well one of you tell me,” I demanded.
“All right,” Steve continued, resting the Louisville on his shoulder. “I thought maybe we would go up to the Tree today and sort of fix it up.”
They both stared at me as if this was the coolest thing in the world.
I looked back, confused and said, “I don’t get it. What do you mean?”
“Well,” Steve went on, “you know how there’s a bunch of trash and beer cans and stuff from who ever has been hanging out there before us? I figure we could grab some trash bags and some rakes and stuff and go clean the place up. Make it look nicer, cleaner.”
It did actually sound like a pretty good idea. The Tree was a little trashed with all the crap that teenagers had left up there after their parties.
“Okay,” I said. “When are we going?”
Just then Cory came walking up and joined the group after having retrieved the ball Steve had hit.
“You guys are dicks,” he said.
Steve and Jason exchanged a smile and Steve said to Cory, “Let’s get going up to the Tree like we talked about earlier.” Then to the rest of us, “Okay, go put your gloves away and grab a rake and a couple of trash bags. We’ll meet back her in ten minutes.”
With that he turned and headed for his house. When he was half way across the street he turned around and said, “And bring a lunch with you guys. Well eat up there, too. Like a picnic when we’re done.”
Cory headed for his house and Jason and I went back into ours. We told our mom what our plans were for the day and asked her to make us lunches to take with us. Then we filled a couple of canteens with water from the bathroom sink.
Before we headed out the door, mom made it clear once again that we were not to talk to strangers. We told her that we wouldn’t and headed out to the garage to get the supplies. Jason grabbed the yellow rake that stood in the corner along with the rest of the gardening tools. I grabbed three black trash bags and shoved them down into the pockets of my shorts, making them bulge.
Steve and Cory made it back out front before we did and each waited with a canteen of their own and brown paper bags with their lunches in them. Steve had a shovel over one shoulder the same way he’d held his bat earlier. Cory had a small green rake.
“We got everything?” Steve asked.
We nodded and headed up Cottonwood, talking and laughing about kid things the whole way.
It was just around one o’clock by this time and the day had become hot again. Within the next few hours the temperature would reach the triple digits. The sun in the sky seemed pissed off and had decided to take its wrath out on us. A few clouds had blown in form the coast and hung in the air like wet cotton and the wind blew its hot breeze at us as if in cahoots with the sun.
We passed by Mr. Gagner’s house and by Dead Grove and crossed Magnolia, diagonall
y, before we reached the abandoned house on the corner. Cars puttered up and down Fullerton as we crossed through the field on our way to the Tree.
When we arrived we were sticky with sweat and we all took long, cool drinks from our canteens before we started our work. The shade form inside the canopy was delicious, cooler than the outside world.
“Jason,” Steve said, recapping his canteen. “Yesterday you said there was something in that article I read that reminded you of something. Remember you said you had déjà vu when I read it. Did you figure out what it was?”
I looked down at the base of the tree where Steve had left the section of newspaper the day before. It was gone now, most likely carried off on the breeze.
Cory cut in and said, “Man, are you going to start in on this again, detective? What do you keep talking about those dead girls for?”
Steve shot him a warning glance. “Shut up, Dayborne! Nobody asked you a damn thing. This is an A and B conversation. See your way out of it. I don’t want any of your lip today. Got it?”
Cory looked away, hurt, probably remembering what Steve had said to him the day before at this very spot just before Steve had exploded.
“Sorry,” Cory said.
Steve blinked once and nodded. “Cool.” He then turned back to Jason who was swishing water around in his mouth. “Did you remember anything, Jay?”
Jason shook his head and spit water onto the carpet of dead leaves at his feet. “Huh uh. It was bugging me all day yesterday but I couldn’t figure out why. There was something there though. I know it.”
“Keep thinking. It’ll come,” Steve assured him.
We all sat in silence for a few minutes, taking little sips of water, catching our breaths from our walk, listening to the sounds around us. Birds chirped in the giant pepper tree that provided us with shade and doubled as our fort. The breeze stirred the leaves of the Tree and that of the other two that stood in the field to the south. The June bugs buzzed and circled and landed in the branches high above. A horn beeped from a car driving down Magnolia or Fullerton.
When he felt we had rested long enough, Steve said, “Alright, boys. Let’s do it. Jason, Cory, you guys start raking up all the leaves and any other junk that’s lying around on the ground. Me and Ricky will start picking up the bigger stuff like the boxes and old branches.”
So for the next couple of hours we set about our assigned tasks. Steve and I moved all of the bigger loose debris out and dragged it to one of the other pepper trees some hundred feet off. The old mattress was the worst. It took some muscle but we finally managed to move it from its spot where it had laid for God knows how long. When we first picked it up about a dozen lizards shot out in each direction, making me squeal like a girl. After getting myself together we took it out and gave it a new home in the middle of the field.
The cardboard boxes were full of spider webs and dead bugs. I let Steve take care of those while I grabbed old branches and moved them out. It took the four of us to move a thick, eight-foot limb and we placed it down on the mattress as if putting it to bed.
Steve produced a pair of trimming shears from his back pocket and cut away small runners and thin branches, giving us more room inside.
When Jason and Cory were done raking, we had just enough room in the three plastic bags to fit the last of the mess. Steve used his shovel like a dust pan to scoop up the remaining leaves and rocks and poured them in as well.
After taking the bags over to one of the other trees, we came back and surveyed our new and improved, cleaned up fort.
It looked great.
A person could probably have lived in it if they chose to.
We set our tools just outside the opening in the canopy that we used as the entrance, grabbed our sack lunches and sat down to enjoy our food. Steve and I sat on two plastic crates we had saved for seats and Jason and Cory perched themselves on the low branch that jutted out from the trunk.
“Good work, guys,” Steve commended. His shirt was wet at the armpits, his bandana damp with perspiration. He took both off and draped them on the branch next to Jason, that awful scar stood out on his forehead like a pink speed bump.
I dug into my sack and found that mom had packed a bologna and cheese sandwich and an apple. Jason got the same. I looked up to see Cory shoving the last of one of the two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches he had brought with him into his mouth. Steve was working on a ham and tomato, dry.
In between bites, Jason looked to Steve and asked, “Hey. Show Ricky what you found earlier?”
I took a pull on my canteen and looked over at him.
From his front pocket, he produced a pink tube that was about the size of a pack of Lifesavers and held it in the palm of his hand for me to see.
“What is it?” I asked, puzzled.
He swallowed what he had in his mouth and said, “It’s a flower.”
Now I was really confused. I looked at Jason and Cory for help but they just smiled around mouthfuls of food. I turned back to the older boy and asked, “I’ve never seen a flower like that before. What kind is it?”
“The kind you light and throw on the ground,” he answered. He then used his index finger to make a twirling motion and made a buzzing sound with his lips.
Then I understood. It was a firework. Andrew Moore had been lighting them off the night before for the whole neighborhood. But I thought they had cleaned up all the fireworks after the show.
“Cool. Where did you get it?” I asked.
After washing down the last of his sandwich with water, he said, “Found it in the Pharris’s front yard. I think Mr. Moore must have lost it last night because it hasn’t been used.”
“Are you gonna light it?” I asked him.
He shook his head as he took some crackers out of his sack and ate one. “Not here. Burn the whole field down.”
Taking another bite I said, “When you gonna set it off?” as bologna shrapnel flew from my mouth.
Off in the distance, a dog barked. The sound sent shivers down my spine and I almost missed what Steve said.
“I’m going to save it for a special occasion,” he told me. “When the time’s right, I’ll let you all know.”
Cory, eating a banana, said, “You better not light it off without us.”
Steve looked at him for a second and then jerked his canteen toward him, sloshing some of the cool liquid at him.
“Hey,” Cory yelled, pulling his legs up but not before some of the water hit his Keds.
The four of us were silent for a second before erupting into laughter.
“Don’t worry, Dayborne,” Steve chuckled, “we’ll all be together when I light it. I promise. In fact, I might just shove it up your caboose when I do it.” This drew more giggles from all of us.
Steve stuck the last couple crackers into his mouth and wadded up his paper sack. Just as he looked down to brush crumbs off his lap a blast of water smacked him in the face.
He froze, stunned.
He wiped the water from his face and turned his attention back to Cory, who was still as a statue, eyes wide. Cory’s canteen hung on a nub of branch two feet away. Jason, though, sat smiling, canteen in hand, water dripping from it.
Steve jumped up and shouted, “You’re a dead man, Sinfield!”
Jason jumped down from the branch letting go of his paper bag and apple, but not his canteen. As soon as he hit the ground he sprung back up and let Steve have it again, soaking his bare chest.
“You’re really gonna get it, now,” Steve bellowed.
Jason dodged left and ran around the trunk of the massive tree. Steve stayed on the opposite side. Whatever way Jason came around, that’s where Steve would head. Cory and I looked at each other with stupid grins on our faces then went back to watching the fiasco.
“Come on, Sinfield. Come out. I won’t hurt you,” Steve promised, “much.”
Jason stuck his head around one side and Steve splashed water in his direction, missing him completely as he pulled h
is head back into hiding. Steve began to creep slowly around to the left and once Jason saw his tactic, started moving around the other side.
“Come on, Sinfield. Just come over here and talk to me for a second.”
“No way, Hanel,” Jason answered, a laugh escaping him.
Slowly moving around the trunk, Steve shot his head from side to side to keep track of his adversary. Jason edged away form Steve, keeping himself at his opposite.
The two had both gone one hundred and eighty degrees in a slow paced cat and mouse hunt. Once Jason had gotten to the place were Steve had started out he had to duck down to avoid the thick branch that Cory was sitting on, finishing the rest of his PB&J.
Once underneath, Jason stopped in a crouched position, waiting for Steve to strike. Instead, he got a hair full of water from Cory’s canteen above.
“Traitor,” Jason squealed and moved out from under Cory’s line of fire.
Steve moved into position, grabbing Jason in a headlock and dumped the rest of his canteen in his curly blond hair.
“Gotcha,” Steve exclaimed and then moved away laughing his ass off.
Jason, soaked from head to toe, looked up at Cory who was smiling back down at him. “What are you laughing about,” he said, then grabbed him by the ankle and pulled him off the branch. He landed on his hands and knees and Jason splashed him back.
Soon they were running back and forth tossing water from their canteens at each other, giggling and having a time. Steve, out of water, was doing his best to avoid the other two.
And just when I thought they’d overlooked me and left me out of their water fight, Jason, my own brother, pointed at me and yelled, “Get him.”
“Crap,” I yelped.
Steve came over and grabbed me around my torso, pinning my arms to my sides. Cory and Jason stood casually about and upturned their canisters, soaking me with the last of their water.
I struggled to get free, thrashing my head and kicking my legs, laughing and screaming.
Closer now, the sound of a dog barking floated through the field and into our fort; two quick yaps.
And although the water was cool on my skin, it was the barking that gave me goose bumps.
Because I had heard that sound recently.
I instantly stopped laughing and said, “Hey. Hey, guys. Hold on. Hold on.” Of course they didn’t until the last of the water had been poured over my head. When they were done drenching me, I shouted, “Knock it off, guys! Listen.”
Finally, Cory said, “What? I don’t hear nothin’.”
But after a few seconds it came again; two more high pitched yaps.
“That,” I said and jumped off the crate I had been sitting on. I walked to the opening in the canopy, waiting to hear it again, wanting to know that I wasn’t just imagining the sound. Because it was the same exact bark that I had heard in my nightmare the night before, I was sure of it.
The others walked over to me and flanked my sides. “Did you hear it that time?” I asked. “Did you hear that dog?”
Steve looked at me, perplexed, and said, “Yeah. I heard it. What about it?”
They wouldn’t understand if I told them about the nightmare. Hell, I didn’t really understand it myself. But they would think I was nuts if I told them that I had dreamt of that very sound less than eight hours earlier.
“He’s out there,” I whispered, pointing to the field that surrounded us. “The dog. He’s out there.”
There was a moment of silence and then Steve stuck two fingers into his mouth and blew an ear shattering whistle that could have reached back to our houses a half mile away.
Seventy yards to the east, a small brown and white head popped up form the tall, yellow grass and looked in our direction. With ears pricked straight up, it barked again.
Seeing the dog, my heart sped up with excitement.
“You’re right, Ricky,” Jason said. “There is a dog.”
Steve whistled once again and yelled, “Here, boy.”
The dog immediately started running in our direction, leaping through the field like a rabbit as it avoided the debris scattered around.
We all started in, now, each of us calling to the dog.
Cory: “Her, boy. Come on.”
Jason: “Good dog. Good dog.”
Steve: “Come on fella. That a boy.”
Me: “Alright. Come here. Come here.”
The dog stopped running and bounding as it neared us and slowed down to a trot as it got within ten yards. When it got about seven feet away, it stopped and sat down. It gave one great bark as if to say, ‘I’m here’ and Steve, Jason, Cory and I, smiling, looked down on the most beautiful dog any of us had ever seen in our lives.
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