Gladdie, Loie & Iris

(Originally posted at joecsmolen.com 10/22/22)

Thinking back now about GW I and GWII and the terrible meaning of those fights, I figured out they’re part of history same as any of it we studied at school, only in Gulley War I, where I rock-drilled that poor little kid in the back and knocked him down, it was me, personally, making regrets and sorrow out of thin, peaceful air. Late and Fizz didn’t do it. It was just me. I let Them have it. It was all just me acting as agent of darkness. It was just me turning the arm loose. It was me knowing what would happen to Them. I coulda held my fire and let Them sputter their pitiful slo-mo rocks at us. It was just me, myself with my old, violent ways that escalationed Us and Them that day into GW II.

But to pick up the main trail that leads down to the sound, GW II Day, we hadda pass through neutral territory, convey in plain sight down through the gulley and across the ball field – which is what we were doing with our lunches and fishing tackle and sheath knives on our belts when I spotted their finished tree fort up there and no garrison – meaning, nobody was guarding. Besides, I pretty much knew from the lessons of GW I that we had superiority so I said we should right then invade.

From down below on the field, even undefended like it seemed it was way up there, Their fort looked way far and forbidden and mysterious like an island you might spot through the rain just for a sec from a speeding car. You might spot the island when the rain parts stingy, and lets you glimpse across leaden water into another world on the far side of somewhere and then the car you’re in tears on, but you can never forget the island. You can never stop thinking about the mysterious island.

 And from down on the field, we could see they had help building their fort, how it had a roof now and half-way up walls, making the insides secret, private, probley fulla Their secret club proceedings. There was a long, fat rope hanging way down off the fort and you could see it was gonna be one of those really cool swings with the big knot at the end, where you fly off on it into mile-high empty space. From down on the field, when I looked straight up past the edge of the fort’s tree lid, high clouds speeding by north against the sky-blue back ground made me feel like I was gonna tip over on my back. The morning sun beat down on us fierce, but I reasoned they wouldn’t be expecting us.

The only way up through the stickery salmon berries that covered the whole bank leading up top to the fort was the dump chute where Their whole neighborhood heaved every kina rotten yard junk down. Like a giant, palm-up hand, the big maple the fort was platformed in fingered out over us into the sky. Late looked up there one last time,  hacked up a loogie, spit it about twenty feet and started climbing. The dump chute was loaded steep with everything They hacked outta their yards and gardens, the grass they caught in their lawnmower bags. There were dead rose heads and rotten headless horse men from past Halloweens, busted old wooden lawn chairs, hairless but still tinseled Christmas trees, mashed tomatoes still clumped on their tore-out bushes, half-ate watermelons, car-loads of raked-up leaves, whatever they could find or dig or scrape outta the ground. There was dog poop – lotta that – and bushels of brown, rotten apple gunk that I got all up my legs in the climb – anything they knew the snakes would want to coil in the sun on and bask. First man up, Late found an old, green plastic hose he tied off up at the top and me and Fizz hand-over-handed up it in a hurry. It was a race to take possession of Their fort before we got detected.

Just so you know, a dirt bomb’s a five-fingered maple leaf big as a garbage can lid with a pile of dirt in the palm. Fold the fingers over the dirt, wrap the stem around and jam it through for a fuse. Fits my hand the way a hard ball does.  Up on top, right away, I made two.

Took Fizz a long time like always and when he got up to the fort, you could tell right away by watching him sniff the stink of his hands, he’d been fooling around with the snakes. You forget how bad snake stink is and how hard it is to get it off you. He even had a bloody, snake-bite V in the web of his left hand between his thumb and coin-return finger where he made a Red Racer mad and it struck.

From the back of the fort, the way up to the platform you hadda balance careful. The ladder was just some short boards nailed by their middles like steps up the giant trunk like shinning up a live dinosaur neck, his head way up outta sight in the big, tree-top leaves. I thought sure I would fall off and be lost down the bank in the brush. Wasn’t a wall in the back – just the platform with the roof jagged-edged in junk lumber and scrap plywood over it.

When I stepped upon the platform and got the news, I was sweating hard. And whap! Right away, right in the side of my left leg just above my knee, a dirt bomb hit! I heard some kid, mad, yell, “Hey! We were here first! Get outta our fort!” and “This is our yard!” and then another whap! where another bomb split on a branch next to my head and dusted my sweating face dense with dirt. From there, it was every man for himself.

But this is the spot where I hope I warned you about before where something big and black came in front of the Sun and cast its shadow on just me. I been thinking about it a lot. I remember one time me and Late and Fizz and I when we hardly knew each other and we walked all the way up to Crown Hill Drug Store. The whole idea was milk shakes and we had money we made honest from bottles we picked up along Holman Road. So we walked clear up there past Swanson’s, almost two miles, and it was milk shake weather – plus ten. But my problem was, Late brought his football. We just got our shakes. I sucked on mine only one little drag and Late goes, “Hey!”  and fires me a pass. Well, see, that kid down on the ground was dirt-bombing me – I mean accurate – and yelling and, see, thinking back on it now, I’m ashamed I’m so slow on the up-take. It was the same exact thing as Late’s football and I can see now I never learned one thing from dropping that shake and seeing it splat on the sidewalk and watching ants get it instead.

 It’s a fact - I didn’t have to just because that kid was throwing at me - but I had two dirt bombs and I let that kid have it with both of them. Hard. Fast. Pop, pop. First one took him middle of the chest. Second one, middle of the face. Tipped him over, flat on his back. He laid there seemed like ever. Then he started screaming and screaming and yelling, “I can’t see. Momma. Momma. My eyes!” and that’s when I notice we’re in a backyard and there’s a greenish house right there across a mowed lawn with white croquet wickets and the whole trip and I see a mother tear out the back door our way too fast for me to see her tomahawk, but I know by the way she moves she’s got one. And right behind her, a rag around her head and her face and arms same black and shining as a coffee bean, I saw a second lady, kina fat, but coming along double traction and a cigarette in her mouth and a mean look. And then from somewhere, there was a third one. They were just like yellow jackets and I always been allergic.

I saw Late and Fizz ditch back down the chute head first and then tumble. They started down running, tripped right away and dove. But I screwed up. I took to the rope dangling off the outside of the fort like down the side of a skyscraper where everything down there is just specks and that kid was still screaming and all three mothers were yelling stuff like, “You boys come back here! Where do you live?” and then more, “You kids get back here this instant!” and “This is the la-a-a-st time you’ll...” and all like that, and suddenly I skidded to the end of the rope and all rope-burnt, my hands stung and I could barely hang on and I was still twenty feet off the tops of the salmonberries and a dragon fly flew by close in the thin air up there and – seemed just like – laughed. Hanging there, I could see Fizz and Late down on the field gawking back over their shoulders, deserting across toward the trail down to the Sound.

I was so scared, I thought I was dead, but I couldn’t die because then I would get caught. I knew I might die, too, if I let go. It was a mile down, but the Mothers were coming to get me. I was shaking, quivering all over. I was so scared. I knew I might die if I did, but I let go.

I landed kina splayed in the salmonberries and one branch with giant stickers on it jabbed up my right pant leg, scraped my leg pretty good, but fear! I mean, from where I was stuck in the salmonberries, I saw two of the mothers leaping down the chute. I heard the one left up on top yell, “He’s the one. He did it. Get him!” Charging to the bottom of the chute, another one yelled at me, “Stop right there, young man. This instant!” But I followed Fizz and Late’s example, only it felt molasses speed. It was exactly like in a dream where your legs won’t go. You’re running full blast, but your legs are sausages linked at the ankles. Right then, that ball field stretched and expanded ahead as I went, spread a mile wide and I could hear the two mothers down on the field pounding after me. At the out-field fence, I stopped just a sec and glanced back and they were still there, sprinting after me, you know, the way mothers do. Like to forget what they looked like. The fat one’s cigarette was gone. So was her head rag. You could see she wasn’t dressed for pursuit and her lungs were jumping like pistons, powerful, fearful – and I couldn’t let her catch me.

Up on the field, I was good as dead, but they didn’t know the trail down through the woods. It got steep fast and I knew where I could short-cut and leap down sand banks twenty feet high, and land soft in sifted sand at the bottom and take a lead on them and keep going, but I never got so far I couldn’t hear them. They were mad.

Then I made a big mistake. I was going too fast and I decided to throw them off. Forgetting about the big windfall maple from last winter, figuring I might ditch them, I detoured sharp left, off the regular trail. Figuring I knew the lay, I charged to the top of the next sand bank. I didn’t look down first, but I shoulda. I just jumped. I landed perfect, two-footed, but the big, ten-trunk tangle of a windfall maple laying on its side across the bottom of that sand bank had me plugged into a dead end. And just when I was realizing what a jam I was in, I heard the two mothers come thumping to a stop right above me at the top of the bank. A problem with mothers is they’re smart.

This was a picture I dream about sometimes still and wake up sweating. I looked up and it was me and those mothers – looking back and forth right at each other – blood enemies. That’s the way it was – not farther apart than a coupla ping-pong ball tables stood on end – them above me puffing and blowing and their hair witch-crazy and their eyes daggering down at me.

I was a fool to do it. I stood there trapped, looking up at those blood-thirsty mothers and I smiled an angel - you know – the kina smile that always works mothers like a Full Nelson. It didn’t work then, though, like I thought. I saw the eyes of the fat one blaze up hot and then she jumped. I mean, she swung her arms and pumped and she blasted off!  I dove head-first into the mess of busted branches and limbs and bushes and turned-out, nettles – crushed under the big windfall maple – and right behind me in the sift sand, I heard her land with a big, windy “Chuhhh!”as the breath got knock out of her.

The other mother up on top was yelling, “Oh, my goodness! Gladys? Are you alright? Gladys?”

But I’m stuck, face down in mashed nettles and stinking bog mud with a rusty-colored gasoline skin on cold water washing through all of it. My tight spot’s like climbing I guess through a tennis racket made outta stinging nettles and I can tell Gladys is fine, because I can hear her right behind me and she puffing and breathing hard and saying awful cuss things I never even heard before, not even from Fizz or Late, and she’s got ahold of my left boot and she’s hauling on it hydraulic.

If you don’t think a grown-up mother is a fearsome engine, you get the dunce cap. I never want to be that scared and ashamed ever again, not ever even if you paid me. I had just jammed both my shoulders through the tennis racket-size escape hatch. When I did I forced my face into mashed nettles, but I could reach beyond now to a branch just thicker than a broomstick, just right for my grip. I’m telling you, when you’re alone and you face the awful, you just got to want to live and I did. Two-handed, I started hauling on the broomstick branch and I kicked. There in those lonesome woods where nobody would witness what would happen to me if they caught me, I knew I had everything I was getting coming. While Gladys was hauling away at my boot, I heard her tell the sole of my boot, “You’re just a mean little punk and I’m going to...”, but just then, I heard the other mother land hard right behind Gladys, and just the hair of an instant, I felt my boot come loose and shift off my foot a little and Gladys lost her leverage, and desperate, I kicked loose from her grip and dragged myself clear to where I knew they couldn’t see me anymore. I’m telling you, this was adventure more than I ever read about – way more than I wanted anything to do with. It was awful.

But doggone mothers and their doggone arsenals.  I guess they need ‘em, because they’ve got to deal with brigands like me. Doggone mothers don’t even need sleeves to have weapons up them. I just heard the second mother land there in the soft sand at the bottom of that bank where I landed myself, but I didn’t hear her wind get knocked out. Next, I heard right behind me the hydraulic one. I heard Gladys start to boo hoo cry and moan and blubber pitiful that, “Oh, I’m so sorry, Lois. I’m so sorry. I had him by the foot and if I didn’t smoke, I think – if I was more like you...”

Oh, it was miserable to hear Gladys and all I could do was lay there still, wet and cold, pinned in the mud and get stung and listen to the second one try to cheer the cigarette one with stuff like, “Oh, I hope Iris’ boy’s not hurt. What kind of a parent would raise a creep like that?” and “I’m so proud of you, Gladdie. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw you jump. When I tell the girls the story, Gladdie, nobody in the whole neighborhood will ever see you the same again. Somebody that would jump that way is somebody to have on your side. Oh, I’m so proud of you, honey.” And Gladys just blubbered and moaned, “Oh, Loie”, but the rest of it was all muttery and tender-quiet and I couldn’t hear it.

But Gladys just cried and said her leg hurt besides and for awhile more, I just laid there nettle-numb and kina hypnotized by the miserable sound of those ditched mothers – ditched by the hair of an instant and me. Sounded just same broken-hearted as I did my own mom once before. Hit me in the chest just the same as then – like a cannon ball.