by J. P. Willie
“Is that drums, Jody?” Momma asked me; I could see the eerie beat was making her feel uneasy.
“I think so. Is that what you think it is too, Momma?”
“Yeah. That’s what it sounds like to me,” She said quietly, not wanting to wake Hunter. “But who the hell is banging on drums at this hour? Jody, go check the microwave and see what time it is,” she instructed.
I took off like a bat out of hell and ran into the kitchen to check the time on the microwave’s built in clock. My heart was racing as I looked at the blinking green timer as it flashed on and off, displaying 12:02.
“Well, what does it say, Jody?” Momma called from the couch.
“Two minutes after midnight.”
“Oh,” she said, calming down a tad. “It’s probably drunken high school kids back there in the woods past Hilton Road, beating on tin cans or some such.” And so saying, Momma shut the window all the way and turned back around. “They’ll stop soon, there’s bad weather coming. But if they don’t, somebody will just call the cops on them. They got a lot of old folks that live back that way and they don’t like being disturbed this time of the night.”
“What if it doesn’t stop, Momma?” I asked.
My heart was beginning to slow back down after the big rush of whatever it was that had washed over me like some cold fever. It might have been fear, or excitement, I don’t know, but it certainly wasn’t the last time I would get this feeling.
“It’ll stop, Bubba.” Momma reassured. “Like I said, it’s just a bunch of drunken teenagers making a bunch of racket – nothing to be worried about.” Momma said, with one of her special smiles. “When your Daddy and I were dating, we would go in the woods and shoot rifles in the middle of the night at the trees. I used to think it was so much fun; this type of thing is just a stage kids go through. Let’s just be happy that its tin cans they’re beating on and we don’t have bullets flying through our windows.”
I gave Momma a little grin and turned back around to pick Hunter up. I lifted him gently off the couch and made my way toward his room. Even though he was a short little thing, my brother’s ass seemed to weigh a ton. I kicked the door to his room open, wobbled over to his bed and dropped him down on it with little ceremony. I tucked the kid in nice and tight, turned off the light and exited the room.
As I was shutting his door, I looked back over to Momma, who was poking her head out the window again and listening to the drum beat that wafted over on the darkness. After a moment or two, she pulled her head back into the trailer, looked at me and blew me a kiss goodnight. I jumped up and pretended to catch the imaginary kiss that was soaring my way. We both smiled at each other and I walked over to my room, which was next to Hunter’s and I opened the door. I walked over to my bed, un-tucked the covers and climbed in, getting myself nice and cozy under my newly purchased Super Mario Brother bed sheets. I closed my eyes and tried to get to sleep, but all I could do was listen to the sound of those drums; I could still hear them in my room and even though it was faint, it was still there. I did try to think about something else, but my mind was filled by that haunting beat.
CRACK!!
Lightning struck outside my window and turned the inside of my room turn a bright, electric blue. At that moment, I stopped thinking about the drums and pulled my covers up to my chin, and rain began beating down on the trailer, sounding like a million needles falling from the sky. I glanced nervously over to my closet to make sure it was closed... and it was, thank God.
As the rain came down ever harder, the last thing I remember was its thrumming pitter-patter sound as I drifted off to sleep.
***
We finally got the hell out of school for the summer, and I couldn’t have been more excited about getting out of the fourth grade, the main reasons being I couldn’t stand my teacher, and all the kids in my class annoyed the shit out of me.
I had recently been diagnosed with a severe under bite by the orthodontist three weeks before school let out. I was told I’d have to wear braces for about three years as I was starting to look like a piranha, so Momma took me in fast. Memaw and Pepaw forked out the dough, and they slapped those shiny bastards on my teeth quick, snap and in a hurry. And so, thanks to those damned braces, all the kids in school began picking on me, and to top it all off, I had to wear fucking headgear as well.
I guess the kids all thought it was pretty hilarious watching me walk around school with a football-type mask on my face. They’d all point and laugh at me, so I’d reach into my mouth, un-hook one of the rubber bands that was attached from my braces to my headgear and I’d shoot it directly at their faces. Of course, I always got caught doing that and the teacher, or teachers in some cases, would start yelling. Then I’d go to the office, they’d call Momma and I’d go home to get my ass beaten.
And that was how the last week of fourth grade went for me, but deep down I really didn’t care. Fourth grade was about to be over and the summer was here.
Finally, on the last day of school, the bell rang and I took off out of the classroom, passing all the other kids, busting out the main doors of the school like the place was on fire. The buses were lined up around the flagpole, and I stopped to scan for my bus number – 7-H. I looked from left to right, and finally found it, the first bus in line, so I ran up to the door and it swung open. I looked up and there sat Ms. Kenton, the meanest bus driver to ever drive the streets of Hammond, Louisiana. She had hair that stuck up in the air like she had just been electrocuted, and a set of lips that put Steve Tyler to shame – I always had to hold back from laughing every time I set my eyes on her.
“You ready for the summer, son?” she asked me with her raspy voice.
“Yes I am, Ms. Kenton,” I replied; I was looking at the ground at this point, because if I made eye contact with her, I knew I’d be done for – the laughs would just burst right out of me.
“I could tell. You ran up here so fast you almost took the doors off the bus.”
“I’m just glad it’s summer time, that’s all.”
“You and me both,” Ms. Kenton spit out. “Now get on the bus!”
I said no more and did what she told me. Once I was on, I went to my assigned seat at the back of the bus and sat down. Shortly after that, the bus began to fill up with the rest of the kids and we were off.
“Sit down and stay in your SEATS!!” Ms. Kenton screamed at the top of her lungs.
All the kids on the bus ignored her and continued to do what they were doing. I was staring blankly out the window when John from the seat behind me tapped me on my shoulder.
“Guess what, man?”
“What?”
“I got spit ball pens!”
“COOL, where did you get them from?” I asked.
“I made them in class today. Everybody was outside at recess, but I stayed in the bathroom to make them,” John explained.
He lifted his backpack up off the floor and placed it in his lap. He opened it and pulled out three empty BIC pens. He had pulled off the little black cap from the end of each one, removed the points from the tips and had carefully taken out the plastic ink tubing from the inside. He took the pen from the middle and handed it to me.
“Thanks, John,” I said, taking the empty pen from his hand.
“You want some paper?” John asked.
“Sure, give me some.”
“Not a problem, I got a whole notebook full!”
He reached into his backpack and pulled out his notebook, ripped a sheet of paper out and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I said, “Now watch this.”
I ripped a small piece off and stuck it into my mouth. I chewed it up until it was a nice little hard ball. All the kids behind me started getting excited because they wanted to see me whack somebody with the spitball.
“Watch little Suzy Thompson up there on the second row,” I said, feeling like Billy the Kidd.
I lifted the empty pen up to my lips, aimed at my target’s head and blew with a
ll my might.
SPLAT!!
“OOOWWWW!!” Suzy shrieked out loud.
The spitball had smacked her square on the cheek and all the kids started laughing their asses off.
“You got her, Jody – you got her!” John laughed.
“Watch this one,” I said, scanning the bus for my next victim, “Chris Rogers, two rows up.”
“Do it, do it, do it,” John exclaimed, squirming back and forth in his seat with eagerness.
I chewed another piece of paper, lifted the empty pen back up to my mouth, aimed at Chris’s head and blew.
WHACK!!!
“Who did that?!” he yelled, “Who did that?”
“Holy shit, Jody, that one smacked him dead on the ear.”
“Stop laughing! He’ll see us and figure it out,” I said.
“No he won’t, he’s a dumbass. He failed the fourth grade – again.”
“No way?” I was completely shocked.
“Yes way, he probably can’t even spell his own name,” John said, making us all crack up again with uncontrollable laughter.
“I dare you to hit Ms. Kenton, Jody,” a sweet voice said.
The laughter stopped, and the back of the bus fell silent as if the Grim Reaper himself had just joined us. This suggestion had come from one of the quietest kids on the bus – Angela. She was a pretty blonde-haired girl with sparkling blue eyes who had just moved to Rhine Road about two weeks ago. She’d moved from Mississippi because her father had got some new job in Hammond that paid him better money. She lived at the far end of Rhine Road, in a big red two-story house. Her family was really quiet, and extremely religious from what Momma had told me when I asked about the new family on our street.
This was the first time Little Miss Quiet had chosen to speak to me and she’d had the nerve to ask me to hit the meanest bus driver in the world with a spitball. Everyone in the back of the bus was shocked as well, I think because no one had ever heard her talk before.
“You want him – to hit Ms. Kenton – with a spitball?” John sounded nonplussed.
“That is what I said, wasn’t it?” Angela snapped back with more than a little bit of attitude.
“You must be out of your mind, Ms. Kenton is pure evil! She’ll kill all of us if you do something like that. You’d have to –”
“I’ll do it,” I said, interrupting John’s speech while looking into Angela’s eyes. She was looking back into mine and my heart started beating faster than a galloping pony. My body began to feel hot, and I pulled my shirt from my neck to get some cool air down there, and it felt like everything around me was moving in slow motion. Angela’s cheeks turned red, and finally she broke the stare to look down to the floor.
“Hello? Are you going crazy, Jody? Ms. Kenton will eat you alive if she sees you!”
“Well – I’d best not get caught then,” I said with bravado.
I slipped another wad of paper in my mouth and chewed it up until I got a nice-sized ball. Once more I raised that empty pen to my mouth and aimed at the back of Ms. Kenton’s head. Everyone fell silent again and I looked over at Angela who was on the edge of her seat watching me with a big smile on her cute face. I focused back on my target and aimed a lot higher. I knew I’d have to blow pretty hard to hit the driver since she was all the way up front, and if I didn’t aim high enough the spit ball would fall short.
“Here we go,” I said, and I blew with all my might.
SMACK!
“Aaahhh!” Ms. Kenton screamed and yanked the steering wheel hard to the right.
The bus jolted and half the kids screamed for their lives. I tried to duck down into my seat, but Ms. Kenton had turned the wheel so hard, the momentum lifted my feet off the floor.
“We’re going to die!” Ben Matthews cried out from two seats in front of me as the bus came to a screeching, juddering halt on the side of the road.
We were all flung forward into the seats in front of us, unceremoniously falling back into an upright position when the bus finally came to a halt. Kenton stood up, and walked down the middle of the walkway. Every kid was quiet, sitting nice and straight and showing Ms. Kenton the most respect she’d seen all year. It looked to me that her lips had gotten a little bigger, her hair standing even straighter up off her scalp as she reached behind her head and grabbed my spitball from the back of her neck. Slowly, deliberately, Ms. Kenton brought the offending projectile around to her face and studied it like it was a piece from some heinous crime scene.
“Holy shit, Jody,” John whispered, “you hit her in the damned neck.”
“I want to know,” Ms. Kenton said calmly, clearly trying hard to hold back from screaming, “Who hit me with – this?”
She’d almost made it without yelling – almost.
“It came from the back, Ms. Kenton. Somebody hit me on the ear with one,” Chris Rogers whined.
I thought silently to myself, Momma is going to beat the living shit out of me for this, as Ms. Kenton inched closer to the back of the bus. Chris Rogers, that whiny little bitch, had given Ms. Kenton a direction in which to check now.
“Angela,” Ms. Kenton asked sweetly, “do you know who did this?”
“No ma’am,” Angela replied, still looking down at the ground.
I could tell the gal was nervous, but she made it through.
“How about you, Jody? Do you know who did this?” Ms. Kenton asked me.
I could tell she was studying me hard, so I had to play it cool. I took a deep breath and said the first piece of bullshit that came to my mind. “No ma’am, I don’t even know what that is – looks like a booger to me.”
After that comment, the majority of the bus laughed, including me.
“You know what this is?” Ms. Kenton yelled. “Don’t play dumb with me, boy! I don’t care if this is the last day of school! This will not be tolerated! If I catch anyone doing something like this again next year, you’ll all be suspended for a whole year from this bus. Do you understand?”
Everyone nodded their heads in agreement and Ms. Kenton threw the spitball to the floor and stormed back off toward her seat.
“Oh my God, Jody,” John said, letting out the breath he’d been holding, “you almost got busted.”
“I know. That was way too close,” I replied, “but did you see the look on her face?”
“Yeah, she was pretty pissed off,” John said, and then we all laughed our asses off again.
We were finally on Rhine Road, and Angela was preparing to get off the bus, collecting up all her belongings before exciting one last time before the summer. As the bus slowed down, she walked by me and touched my hand with hers – by accident or purpose, I couldn’t be sure – and my heart raced all over again. We looked at each other one more time, for just a split second, and then she was gone and even though she was just down the street from me, it seemed like Angela with her pretty face and sparkling blue eyes was a million miles away.
As the bus set off I gazed out the window and Angela gave me a small wave. I returned it and sat back down in my seat with the biggest, dumbest grin on my face.
About five minutes later, the bus door flung open and I set foot onto Rhine Road for the summer. I crossed the street and ran into my front yard, where Hunter-man was waiting for me on the swing.
“Whatchya doing, Hunter-man?”
“Nothang, jus’ swingen,” he said with that endearing speech impediment of his.
“You want to go play under Memaw’s porch?”
“Yeah!” he shouted.
“I’ll beat you there!” I threw my backpack down on the ground and took off running without a care in the world.
Later that night, we were watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and it was getting to our favorite part of the movie; where Ferris jumps up on the float and sings Twist and Shout while the entire city danced along in the background. Tonight, though, Hunter decided to join in with the dance sequence, he jumped off the couch, ran into the middle of the living room and started spinn
ing in crazy circles. He then thrust his hips back and forth like he was doing the nasty while me and Momma sat on the little couch, laughing uncontrollably.
“Shake it Hunter-man, shake it!!” she said and clapped her hands along with the beat, and of course I joined in. My little brother danced that entire song while me and Momma laughed at how cute he was and Momma said he looked a like a four-year-old Elvis Presley.
Once the song was done, Momma and I clapped and cheered for Hunter and with a huge smile on his face, he ran over to Momma who covered him with kisses and lifted him back up on the couch.
“It’s about time for you boys to go to bed.”
“Aww, Momma, can’t we stay up a little bit longer?” I asked in that whiny way kids have when they’re over tired.
“No, ya’ll have to go to sleep. Memaw is taking ya’ll to the mall tomorrow to get some new play clothes for the summer.”
“This stinks! The movie isn’t even over yet!”
“I know, Bubba, but you do need to get some sleep. You know Memaw is an early bird and she’ll be over here bright and early for you boys.”
“Aww, alright,” I said. I picked up the remote from the floor, pointed it at the TV and thumbed the off button.
Thump... Thump, Thump, Thump ... Thump ...
There it was again.
It was back.
The drum line in the darkness, beating that same rhythmic beat as before. I looked over at Momma and saw a look of fear in her eyes for the very first time in my life. She looked back into my eyes and I guess she saw that I was feeling the same – she motioned me over to the couch.
I ran across the living room and joined her and Hunter. We sat there silently for a short while, just listening to that strangely hypnotic beat.