One Long Summer
I didn't think that it was such a good idea, but they didn't care. My brother, Rocky, sat on the hood of my cousin Hank's ten-year-old, beige, Jeep Cherokee as he guided it slowly down Big Run Road. Rocky laid his shotgun across the brace on his left knee and he was looking keenly about.
We had spent the weekend fruitlessly hunting squirrel. Actually, they alternated drinking and hunting. This could account for their lack of success. I had no plans of being successful on my hunt. I had absolutely no desire to kill anything, but I didn't let on. I didn't want to let my brother know that I was weak.
Now, renewed by the last batch of beer, they had a new plan, to take a shot, literally, at the mess of rabbits they had seen all over the road when we came up the hollow. The problem was that the rabbits were gone. I sat in the middle of the back seat watching, expecting Rocky to fall off to his death. His left leg was already a mess. He busted it when he fell off a truck at work. I imagined him lying in a hospital bed with a brace, like the one on his leg, covering his whole body. That's about the time it happened. Hank saw this old red bone hound peeing on a fence post up ahead. Hank slowly brought the old S.U.V. to a stop. Rocky looked back through the windshield with a question on his face.
"Get in the truck, Rocky. We ain't goin' home empty handed." Rocky followed Hank's gaze up the road to the dog and looked back grinning. He slid off the hood and began to limp around to the front passenger-side door. I didn't know what Hank had in mind but I began to imagine. That old Red Bone hound had terrorized this section of Big Run Road for years. Nothing went by without being chased. Cars, trucks, terrified kids on bikes, and pedestrians alike were chased. I thought Hank planned to drive up and simply blow Old Red's brains out, but it was worse.
Rocky climbed in the truck and Hank slowly took off. He was driving in the middle of the gravel-covered, black top road. The dog picked him up immediately and began to growl. Rocky cackled aloud as Old Red started running toward the vehicle. She was running along side the jeep barking like crazy. Hank had his head out of the driver's side window taunting her. He began to drift to the left a little at a time until he was driving as close to the left hand shoulder of the road as possible. He and Rocky were yelling at the dog and taunting her, making her crazy. I didn't know what the point was until Hank looked up and steered the car a little bit to the left, just onto the shoulder. Bam! Old red smashed head first into an old hickory tree growing at the edge of the road. The collision was full speed. I looked back, out of the back window, to see the dog flip in the air and land on her side, and just lay there. Hank slammed on the brakes and he and Rocky jumped out. They laughed hysterically and yelled like wild men. That was probably the worst thing I had ever seen. My fear of Rocky and Hank, bolstered by constant torture and abuse, just doubled. I knew that they would kill anything. I was thirteen but didn't think that I would see fourteen. They climbed back into the truck and we headed home.
***
Summer was coming and I wasn't excited. It wasn't that I liked school, but it was better than home. I lived with my 22-year-old sister Gayle and our cousin Vera. To say that Gayle and I didn't see eye-to-eye was to say that Israel and Palestine had some issues to resolve. They wanted to cruise town (an obsession I never understood) and mingle in the social politics of Fleming County's party crowd. Gayle used to make me go because she thought I was too young to leave at home. Now I was too big to ride in the floorboard of her pickup truck, without being seen by her would-be suitors. I still cannot see how Gayle saw those nights on the town as anything but cruel and unusual punishment.
I clearly remember one such night, awhile back. The three of us had gone out one Friday night. Gayle drove, Vera rode shotgun, and I lay on the floorboard between. We had been riding around for an hour, and I was complaining pretty heavily.
"Billy, just shut up ok? God! I am getting sick of hearing it." Gayle barked.
"The floorboard is really hot, and it's burning my back." I pleaded.
"You baby. You just don't want me and Vera to have any fun. I work all week making money so you can eat. The least you could do is just lay there and keep your mouth shut. I swear to God, Billy. I don't get to do anything I want to do. Never!"
She was lying. Mom sent money for food, we lived in a house dad had left me when he died. I got survivor's benefits from Daddy's pension. The truth was, I took care of her.
I guess it was a combination of everything; the floorboard, the music blaring through the door speakers into my ears, and Gayle's attitude. I started crying.
"Billy, honey. What is it? What's wrong? You're being really selfish, you know?" Gayle paused to let me feel bad. "Ok. We'll go home. I don't know why I even try."
"I don't want to go home!" I yelled honestly. I really didn't want to go home. I knew that if I caused us to go home early I would never hear the end of it. She would make me feel bad for the rest of my life. "I just don't feel good. It stinks down here."
We didn't go home, but she still made me feel bad about complaining. I still don't know how that works. I didn't know it then, but I was learning basic politics. I d what I didn't want to do, so I wouldn't have to do what I really didn't want to do.
The whole mess between Gayle and me came to a head when she threw my birthday cake in the trash on my last birthday. I had simply requested that she leave a part of the cake without icing, the way I like it. It was a reasonable request since it was my birthday cake. She responded to my apparent ungrateful attitude by throwing the whole cake, pan and all, into the trash. I cried for about two days, and then something in me snapped. I began to stand up for myself, to her at least. This resulted in frequent battles, sometimes involving melee. I just sort of steered clear of her after that. But it would be harder in summer. She would begin to make me do the chores that she didn't want to do, which was all of them.
Her thought was that little brother was the same as personal lackey. She got this idea from our older brother Rocky, who bullied everyone. He lived with my uncle, Ellis, and all of his full-grown kids, in a house about one hundred yards away from where we lived. Rocky had been there since he started having some troubles in his marriage, right after his accident at work. Rocky had made a slave of Gayle growing up and now she intended to do the same with me. I had other plans.
I planned to spend most days playing baseball with my friend Tracey, whom everyone called "Peanut" because he was so short. I knew that if I was out of the house by noon, I could go undetected because Gayle and Vera were out late almost every night. I had not figured out how I would eat. Food was scarce enough at home.
I really missed Mom. She had married a local fellow and moved to Danville, Kentucky. They had taken my little sister Nicole with them, and asked me to come, but I could not. I originally hoped that by refusing to leave, they would stay, but they left me to rot in Fleming County. It worked out for the best, I guess. I got to stay with my school friends and focus on my schoolwork. For some reason, my grades had been terrible since Dad died of cancer a few years back. I don't think of him a lot really, so I don't understand the connection. It's just that I don't focus that well. And, to be honest, I don't really care. I do well on the tests, but I can't bring myself to do homework. Maybe that is because if I am home, Gayle will be riding me and I have no place else to go.
I got up at 7:00 a.m. on the first day of summer break and slipped out of the house. I took a couple of cinnamon twists I found in the cabinet, and walked to the barn at the end of our road to eat them. They were small and not very filling and I had nothing to drink. I originally planned to wander around the barn until nine thirty or ten o'clock, and then go get Peanut. But my gummy breakfast had left me parched with my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. I would have to make Peanut sneak me something to drink, and something else to eat, from his house.
I started the two-mile walk to Peanut's house when my mind wandered. I had spent every spare moment of the last two weeks thinking about a girl that I had met. I had ridden the bus home from school with my buddy Allen, with whom I planned to spend the night. That's where I met Cindy. She was an eighth grader, a year behind me in school. I can't say what had captivated me so. She was somewhat plain looking, really. She had glasses and wore no makeup. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. There was something about her shyness that really touched me. She didn't talk like other girls her age, who passed notes and clumped together to talk about boys and whatever else girls talked about. Allen said that she was really smart, but I could tell that just by talking to her. She laughed at all of my jokes, which weren't really that funny. I had only met her once, but I couldn't stop thinking about that bus ride. It was surreal, like a dream that really happened.
I felt stupid for fantasizing about her. Boys my age should be daydreaming about girls that they have no chance of dating. I didn't know why I was so sprung on her. Aside from an exceptional pair of breasts, nothing really stood out about the way Cindy looked.
I snapped out of my trance to find that I was more than halfway to Peanut's house and already walking on the highway. This was actually a dangerous part of the trip. People flew on this road. There was really no place to walk except in the ditch or on someone else's property, and that was probably more dangerous than the wild drivers were. People along Muses Road were paranoid, and rightfully so. Sober drivers were in the minority, and people who wouldn't steal from you were even scarcer. Most people kept the doors locked all day and a cabinet full of loaded guns. It was not uncommon to hear of someone being shot at, or even shot, in the part of the country that I lived in.
I was walking through Old Man Hayes's yard when I saw Goose Hilterbrand coming. He had a rusted 83' Chevy truck that was jacked up, and had over-sized mud tires on it. It had straight pipes, instead of a muffler, and a roll cage in the back. You could hear him long before you could see him. It was a unique aural combination of his twice-pipes roaring and beer bottles rolling around in the bed of his truck as he swerved down the road.
Unfortunately, Goose looked in my direction at about the same time that I saw him. His cousin Scotty, who rode shotgun with him, began rolling down the window. I started running as fast as I could, headed for the little shed up ahead. I could see Scotty, his drunken torso totally hanging out of the passenger side window, beer bottle in hand. As they got close, I decided to hit the deck. I dove into a baseball slide; head first, onto the ground. I looked up, when I heard the sound of glass smashing against metal, to see the beer explode as it impacted the "No Passing Zone" sign.
While I was relieved that I was not their target for assault today, I was a bit dismayed about having to dig grass out of my shoes, hair and clothes all day. I guess it is better to itch from diving into the glass, than to take a beer bottle to the head.
I picked myself up and continued on my way. I still didn't know what I was going to do this summer. If I don't do anything, I could spend my summer thinking about Cindy. I don't want to do that. "Maybe Peanut can think of something to do." I told myself.
I finally got to Peanut's house. I was in luck. Peanut's Mom had made some breakfast, and I got to eat with her and Peanut. We had eggs, bacon and pancakes. It was awesome, but it made me miss my mom more. I hadn't eaten a home cooked breakfast for a long time.
We finished eating and I helped Peanut's mom, Elaina was her name, clean up. Peanut never really liked to help his mom do anything, but I didn't mind. I always thought that he should be glad that he lived with his mom, but I never told him that. Peanut and his mom were from Washington D.C., and they didn't really fit in Fleming County. His real dad had divorced his mom, and she and Peanut moved to Kentucky when she remarried.
I was interested in D.C., especially after Peanut told me so much about it. He was kind of a wild kid, but he said that all kids in D.C. were like him. Things that he did for fun in D.C.; shoplifting, keying cars and stealing mail, would get him seriously incarcerated here.
I liked hanging around him because we were both outcasts. He was made fun of because of his accent, and how he carried himself. I was taunted because I didn't fit into the redneck mold, and I was a preppy kid. Those were the two distinct factions at my school; rich kid and Ag boy. Peanut and I fit into neither group. I also liked Peanut because he was a little dangerous.
My mother was raised in a time and place where you were poor and polite. She raised me with those same principles. I was taught to say, "Yes sir" and "thank you", every since I could remember. I always tried to be considerate of others, and think about how others first. Peanut wasn't that way. A part of me liked that about him.
"Well, Billy," Peanut began. "What are we going to do today?"
"I don't know. I have been trying to figure out what we can do this summer. You got any ideas?"
"No. I guess we could ride bikes, play baseball and stuff."
"Yeah." I conceited. "Maybe we could play Sega."
"Maybe. Just not today. Mom is on this big kick. She is trying to keep me out of the house. We can do that some, though."
We walked outside and sat in the dirt by his basketball goal. We just sat there, quietly for a few minutes. Finally, Peanut got up and started to shoot ball. I didn't understand how he played basketball, or walked for that matter. His clothes were all so baggy. Everything he wore was at least four sizes to big. I didn't ask him about it. I guess that is how kids in D.C. dressed.
"We could steal a car." Peanut offered.
"Would that be to do for today, or the whole summer?"
"Either or."
I dipped my head and looked at him from under my brow, as if to say, "You've got to joking."
Peanut agreed that stealing a car was a bad idea, but he had no others. We heard Goose's truck coming from about a mile away.
"Great, hear comes Goose again."
"Again?" Peanut asked.
"Yeah, again. Pot head nearly killed me today."
"Him and the retarded cousin of his."
We saw him fly by straddling the yellow line. He had apparently taken Scotty home, because his truck was covered in the famous Fleming County clay. Muses Road was in the valley, and was always wet. The mud on Goose's truck gave me an idea. One thing that bothered me about where I lived was the dirty vehicles. Every vehicle that I saw was dirty, to some degree.
"What? Whose car? What, what are you talking about?"
"We could take your four-wheeler up and down Muses, offering to wash people's cars. We could charge like . . . $3.00, so it's cheaper than in town. We can hook your wagon up haul water from Mom's house. We have a well so the water wouldn't cost anything."
"I don't know. Knowing George, we would have to give him a cut for letting us use his equipment. He actually takes a dollar out of what he pays me to cut the grass, for use of 'his' equipment."
"So, we could give him a cut. Who cares? It would give us something to do this summer. We could make some money. It is going to be hotter that Hell this summer. What would be better than wet all day?"
"I can think of a bunch of things."
"Look, go ask your step-dad. Let's just try it."
"Okay, I'll ask. But he can be a dick when he wants to be."
George thought that we had a good idea, and was glad to loan us his air compressor, for a small cut. He thought it was very industrious of us to want to do something productive with out summer.
The idea was a big hit. Most people couldn't afford to have their car washed every week, almost everyone needed something washed at least once. While we washed two tractors to every car, we made about $300 each that summer. People in that neighborhood obviously cared more for their farm equipment than their automobiles. The two were one in the same for some folks.
Gayle didn't find out about my little business venture, or else she would have gotten a cut as well. The summer passed with only moderate trouble out of my sister, and a modest amount of time thinking about Cindy. Maybe I would look her up when she got to high school next year.