"Yeah, got stuck in Miss Hendricks' yard again first thing this morning."
"Sorry. If I had known that you were behind, I could have helped you after school."
"You're too small. Besides, last time you helped me, you sprayed kerosene in old man Snyder's spring."
Brad clutched his .22 tightly between his knees and fought back the tears. It was always the same. Why won't they leave me alone? Why are they always telling me what I can't do? Well, I can damn well do more than they think that I can.
Brad took a long shaky breath. He wiped his runny nose on the too short sleeve of the corduroy shirt which he used for a hunting jacket and tried again.
"Coming home on the bus tonight, we saw a big bobcat. It crossed the road right about here." Brad pointed through the dirty windshield towards where the grove of old oak trees lay hidden in the dark night.
"Oh yeah. How is your mother?"
"I went up above Ballou's to find him. George said the cat would go up in the ledges behind the sawmill." Brad paused.
Harold was still sitting in the driver's seat after turning off the foul smelling engine.
In the sudden silence Brad hurried on. "I saw two cats up there in the big cliffs. I could have shot at least one of them!" His boyish enthusiasm was starting to pick up speed. "The cliffs are really high up there. You can't see them from the road."
"She must still be in bed I don't see any lights on. Get that brown paper package off the back seat. Now damn it, be careful! It's the glass for your mother's window that you broke."
"Ya, okay. I don't think Greta is home yet either. She and lover boy must be in Wilmet yet." Brad added. He was successful in getting the result he had expected. Even in the dim glow of the feeble yellow dome light he saw his father's jaw muscles tighten. Bringing up Greta's boy friend was a touchy thing in the Burgess household and would always provoke some kind of reaction. Brad hated his sister's grimy lover Edgar, and put him down every chance he got.
Brad was bursting to share his experiences of the evening with someone. He was sure Harold wouldn't let him use the old wall-mounted crank telephone to talk to George. The phone was across the hall from his parent's bedroom and under no circumstances would he be allowed to do anything which might possibly disturb his mother. Behind the closed bedroom door she would be in her bed curled up in the same fetal ball. Suffering the same migraine she had been suffering since yesterday morning.
When Brad heard his father running water and rattling their breakfast dishes in the kitchen sink he went to the phone. He was sure if he was careful no one would hear him using it. He quickly swiveled the brass and Bakelite mouthpiece down as far as it would come. By standing on tip toes Brad could talk into the mouthpiece. He listened to the black ear piece for just a second to be sure that no one was using the party line. Swiftly he made a loop in the brown cotton covered ear piece wire and snagged the shiny brass shutoff hook. He pulled the hook down against the oak cabinet into the off position. You aren't going to get me this time. Brad remembered one of the few times when he had forgotten and kept his hand on the brass hook when he had cranked the magneto to ring for the operator. He could still feel the lump on the back of his head from a couple of weeks before when the electrical shock bounced him against the heavy, ugly maple buffet.
He stole another quick look around the doorway into the kitchen. The water faucet came on and Brad rapidly cranked the phone as quick and short as he dared. He hoped that if his dad heard it he would think it was someone ringing off the party line. But on the other hand Brad wanted the operator to know he needed her.
Almost immediately the operator responded with, "Number please?" letting Brad know she hadn't been too-busy or preoccupied.
"BJ? This is Brad Burgess. Can you ring George, the school bus driver for me, please?" Brad spoke low and quick. He stole another fast look towards the kitchen while he listened to BJ. She was the youngest of the five telephone operators. Even so Brad thought, she sounds pretty old, maybe twenty two or three, or even as old as twenty-five.
"Sure, Brad dear, hang on now."
Brad took a deep breath, exhaled quickly and waited. First he heard a long ring followed closely by two evenly spaced shorter ones. In the background, the rattle of dishes and his father sloshing dishwater blotted out the electrical hiss that the phone always emitted.
"Hello?" Came the soft melodious voice of Muriel Sampson, George's petite, and Brad thought, very sexy wife.
"Muriel? This is BJ. How are you dear?"
"Oh, fine BJ. You're working the swing shift this week?"
"Oh, yes. Sara is on vacation and "
Come on for Christ's sake. Brad thought. But he would not interrupt. It wasn't right to interrupt an older person, especially when they were doing something for you. Of course, he was capable of talking for himself. He could butt in and ask Muriel if George was there.
"Oh, I am sorry, Brad." BJ cut herself off as if she had read Brad's impatient mind. "Muriel, Brad Burgess wants to talk to George. Is he there?"
"No, he isn't BJ.
"Brad, how nice!" The sweet voiced Muriel proclaimed. "Can I help you? George is at a Volunteer Firemen's meeting and won't be home until really late, maybe nine or even nine-thirty."
Brad knew as sweet as she was Muriel wouldn't shut up if he ever gave her a hint of what he wanted. Also, BJ was still listening and would keep on listening.
It was great when he talked with George though. He always told the operator to stop listening. "We're going to talk man things," he would say, "now do you want to make ole Brad here blush?"
If it was BJ on the line, she would laugh in her deep strong voice and tease back, "I can take a hint now, George Sampson.
"Good-bye, Brad. Ring if you want me." And she would unplug her 'gossip wire' as George called it.
"No, that's okay, Muriel, I'll ask him on the bus in the morning, thank you. Bye now." Brad hurried to finish when he heard his father's heavy boots coming across the red and green speckled gray linoleum. It was then he realized all of the kitchen sounds had stopped.
"Who were you talking to? I didn't hear the phone ring."
"It didn't. I called Andy about history class." Andy was Brad's best friend and sometime hunting partner.
"Well, never mind. Just don't bother your mother. Supper is almost ready."
What does 'never mind.' mean?
Brad started for the kitchen with a frown on his forehead as he thought about it some more.
He looked at the simple meal. Boiled potatoes reheated in the frying pan and cold pot roast his father had cooked for supper on Sunday. For a vegetable, there were canned peas which Brad could see were bigger than double ought buckshot and were sure to be almost as hard.
He was having a problem hiding his disappointment. It was important to Brad that he tell someone about his adventure. Anyone who would listen. He really wanted to tell George. George was always a good listener. And Brad was sure George would understand why he hadn't shot the big tom. As well as why Brad had stayed on the mountain until well after dark. Brad had confided in George one time that he was afraid of the dark. George had told him not to worry about it. The more Brad was out in the woods and in the dark the quicker he would get over it.
THREE
Brad squirmed around between the warm sheets after some of the cold predawn air had invaded his bed when he tried to look out of the high windows on the opposite wall of his bedroom.
Even though the sun hadn’t risen above the hills to the east he could see it promised to be a crisp, clear Saturday morning. Squirrel and bird season would open at sunrise and he was going hunting.
It had been too quiet around the house for a couple of weeks. In fact, it had been that way since he broke the window in his mother's French door and it worried him. He also realized that during the past two weeks there had been hardly an argument from anyone in the household. Even his
sister wasn't talking back in her high whining voice about wanting to spend all of her time with her grimy anemic looking boyfriend Edgar.
There were the usual silences at the supper table. Supper was always a rather boring, every night occurrence and last night had been a typical evening in the Burgess household: There were moments of sheer quiet between the lively tidbits of, 'pass the salt.'
"Eat your beets, Brad."
"I hate them. They make me gag."
"Eat them anyway." His father commanded.
"Shit!"
"What did you say!?" His father's voice never got any higher. It would just get louder and louder as his eyes flared brighter and brighter. It was really scary to Brad. He always tried to avoid pushing his father too far. Usually he couldn't help it. The words just seemed to come out by themselves.
"Nothing! I didn't say anything!"
"You did too! You swore. I heard you," Brad's older sister, squealed on him again.
Why do you do that to me? Dad wasn't going to do anything until you had to open your big fat mouth. Brad glared across the table at the overweight sixteen year old.
God. I hate you.
He tried to zap her with his mind. But he decided that it was useless. This is too much like trying to talk with a slug. Brad thought.
Brad flopped over onto his belly, buried his face in both hands and tried to wish the unwanted images away. He wasn't even out of bed. The sun was still just a figment of the morning's imagination, but he felt his whole day would be ruined unless he could escape from the house right now.
It took him twenty long minutes to make it out the door to freedom.
The sun was just clearing over the low easterly hills and cracking open the dark valleys when Brad silently slipped the door latch back into place. His dog was chasing shadows ahead of him. Under his thin flannel shirt a peanut butter and jelly sandwich oozed grape jelly onto its wax paper wrap. He trotted across the paved road and slipped under a wooden gate ignoring the warning posted on the green board in yellow letters. It proclaimed to any who bothered to read it: WILDLIFE SANCTUARY: NO HUNTING.
It had taken him most of an afternoon pretending he was his mother, (his voice was still too high to fool anyone that he was his father), to reach the Game Warden. "No Mrs. Burgess. It is not a real or legal animal preserve.
Yes ma'am, your son can hunt there. If he doesn't trespass.”
"What?”
"Yes ma'am, he must have the owner's permission to go onto the land. And yes, he must have a hunting license."
"Shit! Let them city people catch me hunting on their land. They could have said yes when I asked them, instead of being so damn uppity and mean." Brad talked quietly to himself while he quickly walked away from the gate on the freshly graveled road.
When he was out in the woods, he either talked to his dog, or to himself.
"Well, at least it's a one way conversation." He always rationalized out loud whenever he felt strange about his lonesome conversations. Particularly after his brown and white mutt overheard him and gave him one of her through-the-top-of-her-eyes looks. It would immediately make Brad defensive as if she had accused him of something. He never could quite figure out what she was accusing him of.
Brad never bothered to tell his parents he needed a hunting license to roam with his rifle or the small fact that he had to be sixteen to get the license. He just kept breaking the law and avoiding people he didn't know or trust whenever he was away from his house. His parents neither knew such laws existed nor seemed interested in finding out about hunting seasons and such.
He opened the bolt of his single shot .22, dropped a hollow point, Super X cartridge into the chamber and quietly slipped the bolt home. The serrated steel of the hammer bit into the cold flesh of his small thumb and index finger while he struggled against the heavy hammer spring to cock the rifle. Brad knew the feeling well but still continued to wince in pain every time he attempted to cock the round ended hammer. The loud click of the hammer locking back brought a smile of success replacing the frown of his struggle.
From fifty feet away, his constant critic snapped her head around and threw a glare at him for his intrusion into the quiet of their domain.
The boy-sized .22 was the love of Brad's life. He remembered the day a year and a half before when he had finally reached his goal of $15.98. That was the price of the single shot rifle in the Sears and Roebuck catalog and a carton of .22 long rifle shells at Joslin's hardware in Wilmet.
Brad had not eaten hot lunch in the school cafeteria since the day after Labor Day which was the day school started that year. Instead, he smuggled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from home under the constant threat of Greta squealing on him. He knew if his sister discovered what he was doing, she would tell his mother. There was no doubt in his mind the result of that would be for him to go back to eating those terrible unappetizing school lunches.
The $1.22 per week for school lunch went into his cache along with the State's fifty cent bounty on each of the porcupines he had killed with a stick during the summer. To collect the bounty he had to cut the head off each porcupine and present it to the Town Clerk. He had greedily hoarded his money until he had enough for the rifle and a carton of 500 .22 shells.
His struggle to raise money continued. Only now it was to buy .22 shells for the little rifle. He always seemed to fire the shells faster than he could come up with the fifty-two cents to buy a new box of shells. Brad had found a friend in Oscar the clerk in the hardware store. If Brad could scrape together five dollars, Oscar would sell him a carton of ten boxes of fifty .22 cartridges and throw in an extra box for free. But at a dollar and twenty-two cents a week for hot lunches it took a while to roundup the five dollars. Saving his hot lunch money to buy shells was almost the same as getting an allowance like his classmates. At least that was how he thought about it. The illusion of an allowance was there.
With the .22 hanging from his right hand he hurried after the brown and white mongrel. His fingers were carefully wrapped around the trigger guard and his small thumb was stretched to its limit encircling the upper part of the serrated steel hammer. He did this to hold the hammer back should the trigger get pulled accidentally. The little rifle had no other safety.
It was turning into a hot Indian Summer day. Brad tied the sleeves of his lightweight, brown corduroy jacket around his skinny waist before he unstuck his shirt from the smear of jelly on his stomach.
A half hour ago, he had eaten the squashed peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich. After eating the sandwich he was still hungry enough to lap the smeared jelly and peanut butter from the wax paper wrap even though the heat was melting the wax. Now his mouth felt hot and gummy from the jam and wax mix.
The exceptionally dry summer and fall constantly changed the face of Brad's world. The small water holes and beaver ponds were slowly drying up, and the hidden springs of clear, cold water had retreated into the rocks and gravel. The other signs of the year-long drought were in plain evidence as the thirsty alder and willow leaves twisted and shriveled, their way of conserving moisture, in the heat along with the cattails. The usually lush green rushes had turned prematurely brown and hard, and were rattling in the warm breezes.
When Brad realized how high in the sky the unseasonably hot October sun was, he guessed it was about noon time. He pulled on the short piece of rawhide boot lace which was tied to the right front belt loop of his worn dungarees. His Big Ben pocket watch was hanging from the end of its leather leash, and clunked along as usual. Its hands read 12:32.
"It's too early to go back to the house, but I really need a drink of water. Wait a sec, Doc Flanders has a spring in back of his place. I can get a drink there." Brad was talking to himself again since his dog was too far away to hear him. She was chasing an imaginary bear and wasn't interested at all in what Brad was talking about.
Brad searched his memory for the way t
o Doc Flanders' spring, and he remembered seeing a sign pointing out the trail to the spring.
I think it's right behind the house where all of the doctor's scenic trails start.
He's kind of weird, but he's a nice guy. He won't mind if I get a drink out of his spring.
Brad decided that was the thing to do. It was only about a half mile to the Flanders’ place. It was closer than any other water he knew of except maybe his own house which he definitely didn't want to get any closer too, and he knew that it wouldn't take him long to get to the doctor's.
Brad tried to whistle up his dog. It didn't work, as usual. He still couldn't whistle loud enough to get her to pay any attention to him. So he hollered, as usual.
Before turning away from the swamp, Brad looked toward the puddles where there was usually a foot or more of murky swamp water in the low spots between the huge red cedars and scattered clumps of small stunted black spruces which grew under the dominate shadows of the cedars.
The brown and white dog charged across the swamp in answer to Brad's shout. Her tongue lolled out almost to the soggy ground and her belly and legs were covered with black mud. She skidded to a stop next to Brad's legs. An exuberant shake slung big gobs of oozy, putrid black mud up and down the legs of his faded dungarees. She jumped belly-deep into the nearest puddle of black coffee-colored water. The pool was as big around as a washtub and nearly as deep. She splashed around in the green slime covered water for a couple of minutes before sticking her nose into it. She pulled her head up and started snorting and blowing before thirstily gulping down some of the green algae and black water.
"You gross bitch get out of there!" Brad hollered in frustration. "I'm dying of thirst, and you have to drink that cow piss? Come on, let's go!"
The easy tempered dog smiled and enthusiastically wagged her white feathered tail at him, before thrusting her muzzle back into the lumpy black water.
Brad walked away in disgust.
The white sign distinctly said MINERAL SPRING, in bold black lettering, and had a broad black arrow pointing at the right hand fork of one of the doctor's trails. Brad had never seen or drank from a mineral spring before. He was not even sure what it was, but he did remember hearing someone say they sometimes smelled of sulfur, but usually in New England, they just tasted like rust. Brad didn't really care what the water tasted like it just had to be wet and cool. It didn't even have to be cold. Merely cool would be fine. And he was sure it would be safe to drink. Doc Flanders would never say there was a spring there if it wasn't safe to drink from. I'm sure of that.
Struggles of a Country boy Page 3