Blood in the Woods Page 10

  “I hope you know those guys aren’t real,” Jack said, sarcastically.

  “I know that, damn it. But our parents can’t keep us away from each other if we’re brothers. I mean – you’re my best friend.”

  “I know, Jody.”

  “Look, all we have to do is rub both of our fingers together and we’ll be brothers for life, even though we have different moms.”

  Jack stared at the ground, deep in thought, as if he had the hundred-yard stare. I began to think for a moment that I’d upset my friend or something, until he looked up and shot me a weak smile. Right then, at that very instant I knew he wanted to do it; so I broke the silence and teased, “By the way, my mom is way cooler than yours.”

  “No way. My mom is way cooler than yours!” he rebutted.

  “Yeah, right. Your mom doesn’t even let you stay up late to watch movies. My mom lets me stay up as long as I want on the weekends,” I bragged.

  “Oh yeah? Well your mom won’t let you shoot your BB gun at your Memaw’s bluebirds. My mom doesn’t care about how many birds I shoot. She says I’m a good shot – just like my dad.”

  When the word Dad came rolling out of Jack’s mouth, everything that was going on around me seemed to vanish. It was as if I had been scooped off into another dimension, light years away; I was now in a dream world that only let me see what I was thinking. I visualized my father, who was at that time living in Baton Rouge with his new girlfriend. It felt like I was there with them as they enjoyed dinner together at their kitchen table. I missed having a father, even though he wasn’t worth a pot to piss in, just being able to say I had one made me feel normal, like all the other kids. I wanted a father to teach me how to shoot like Mr. Shawn taught Jack, but Momma told me that Daddy didn’t love her anymore and she didn’t know if he would ever come back around. I couldn’t quite comprehend why he never did come back, it wasn’t Hunter’s or my fault so what was the big deal with being around us...?

  “Jody? Earth to Jody...” Jack said and waved his hand in my face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You had that same look on your face that you get when you’re on the bus. You know, that spaced-out look.”

  “Yeah... I think I did space out for a second there. Sorry.”

  “It’s cool. What were you thinking about?” Jack asked me.

  “My Dad.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay. I was just wondering what he was doing right now. I wonder if he’s drunk and doing naked jumping jacks in his girlfriend’s living room, just how he used to do them in ours,” I mused, feeling that I had to throw something humorous in there, or else the conversation would have turned too serious and we would’ve never gotten rid of those damn smoke bombs.

  “Oh yeah, I remember you telling me about that,” Jack laughed.

  “Oh my God, it was so funny. This one time, he’d just got back from drinking with his buddies out in Hammond and he walked in the trailer smelling like booze. Momma started yelling at him, calling him a drunken bastard and then Daddy looked over at Momma and said, ‘I’m not drunk! Watch this shit!’ Then no joke, Jack, Daddy stripped down butt-ass naked in the living room and started doing jumping jacks, counting out loud like he was in gym class.” Toward the end of my little story, I was trying so hard to hold back – it was like I had a bag of laughs that wanted to open itself up in my mouth and consume my whole body.

  “Oh my God, that’s so funny, Jody,” Jack laughed uncontrollably.

  “I know. My Dad’s a dumbass.” After that final comment, laughter overcame us both and we collapsed to our knees, laughing loudly like crazed lunatics, fingers dripping with blood and all.

  A couple of minutes later we regained control and stood up from the ground, facing each other.

  “You ready?” Jack asked.

  “Ready,” I said.

  We brought our fingers together and pressed them tight against one another. Our blood smeared together as we rubbed our fingers up and down until we were absolutely certain our blood was in each other’s veins. We then brought our arms down to our sides and just stood and looked at each other.

  “Are we blood brothers now?” Jack asked.

  “Yep, and we always will be,” I told him.

  “Awesome!” Jack yelled.

  “Sweet! Now let’s go set those damned smoke bombs off in Mr. I’m too Cool for School’s mailbox,” I said.

  “Let’s do it!” Jack replied.

  As we rode in the direction of the Oaks subdivision, I looked over to Jack and asked, “You want to start a gang?”

  “You mean like those kids in the Lost Boys movie?”

  “Sort of. Except we don’t fight vampires. That’s dumb. Vampires aren’t even real. We’ll just be a gang of troublemakers or something.”

  “Sounds cool to me. Too bad we couldn’t have motorcycles, though. That would be totally awesome.”

  “One day I’ll have one, but I doubt I’ll get one any time soon.”

  “Too bad, huh? We could get so many girls if we had ‘em.”

  “I know. But, Memaw would shit a brick if I was to ever get on one of those things. You remember when Pepaw had that big motorcycle in the back yard?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, one day I was riding on the back of it with Pepaw and she came running out the house and throwing a fit. She told Pepaw she didn’t want me on one of those death traps and he needed to get me off of it.”

  “I know what you mean. My grandmother is the same way. She doesn’t even like when I slide in to home base. She thinks I’m gonna break my leg every time I do it.”

  “Yep. That sounds just like Memaw too. God, I hope I don’t turn out like them when I get older,” I said.

  “Me either,” Jack said.

  “Anyways... so I guess we’re a gang now, right?”

  “Right,”

  “So what are we gonna call ourselves?”

  “I don’t know... how about the Lost Boys.”

  “That name has already been used – twice,” I said.

  “Really? The movie was the first time I heard it.”

  “What!? You’ve never heard of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys?” I asked my brand-new blood brother.

  “Oh yeah,” Jack replied with a smirk, “those kids were a bunch of pussies, though.”

  “Whatever, Jack. They lived in the coolest tree house in the world, and killed pirates all day long. I would love to do that all the time. Kill pirates, save girls, hang out with friends, no parents – now that’s the life for me.”

  “Damn. Too bad Neverland isn’t real either.”

  “I know,” I said as we turned onto Alvin Drive, the main street of the Oaks subdivision.

  As we rolled down the street on our bikes, I took some time to check out the surrounding area for just in case we needed to make a quick break for it. You never knew when shit like this was going to go sour, and for some reason I had a real nervous feeling in my stomach. I hardly ever felt this way when Jack and I were up to no good, but for reasons I couldn’t explain I had that Luke Skywalker feeling as we continued to pedal.

  The Oaks was called a subdivision, but in all actuality it wasn’t. It was just a way for Mr. Benson to get more people to move here onto Rhine Road. The Oaks had four streets; Daniel, Alvin, Keith and Benson Drive, and was a huge man-made square of middle-class houses with streets that all interconnected at some point

  It just so happened that our target, Chris Jacobs – the little ass-face that Jack and I hated so – lived on Daniel Drive. That was great news for us because it meant we only had three houses to watch out for, since there were no other homes on the right side of the street. The fewer the houses, the better chance Jack and I had of not being seen. We rode our bikes around the subdivision several more times, studying the neighborhood as if we were professional thieves, before rounding the corner onto Alvin Drive for the last time.

  “Alright – the coast is clear. You ready,
Jack?”

  “I was born ready,” Jack said boldly, and that made us both snicker again.

  We turned onto Daniel Drive and rode our bikes into the woods behind the first house on the street. Chris Rogers lived in the second house, and that worked out perfectly because it meant we wouldn’t have to run that far back to our bikes when we were done with our mischief.

  We gathered our equipment; Jack took the matches and stuffed them in his pocket, while I snatched up the smoke bombs. We walked onto the pavement and hung a left toward Chris’s house, talking to each other all casual, like we were just some regular kids hanging out. About thirty feet away from the mailbox, I slowed down my stride and Jack pulled ahead of me. He approached the mailbox, reached up with his left hand, and pulled open its aluminum face. He kept on walking another twenty feet or so and stopped.

  At this point, I was reaching into my pocket to prepare the smoke bombs for their departure. As I snuck up to the mailbox, I threw them in and continued on until I caught up with Jack again.

  “Okay. They’re in there,” I said.

  “This is going to be awesome,” Jack said, excited.

  “I know, I know,” I said, keeping my voice to a near hush. “Here’s the plan. We stand here and talk another minute or so, and then we’ll head back over there. I’ll light them while you look out.”

  “No way, Jody. They’re my matches and smoke bombs – I’m lighting them.”

  “Aww – come on, Jack. Let me light ‘em, please.”

  “No way,” Jack was firm.

  As disappointed as I was, I could see where the kid was coming from. I was very stingy and selfish with certain things that I possessed, so I really couldn’t get too upset with him. I was pretty sure that at some point in our friendship I had been an ass to him, too.

  “Okay, you win. I’ll be lookout while you light those bad boys.”

  “Now that sounds like a plan to me,” Jack said.

  When we got back to the mailbox, I glanced around wildly, and to anyone who saw, I would have looked like a paranoid schizophrenic. I was watching everything around us so quickly, my attention bouncing between houses and objects was so fast that I couldn’t have been locked onto anything for more than five seconds at a time and I was getting that funny feeling in my stomach again.

  Jack brought his head up from the mailbox. “There’s no mail in there.”

  “What!?” I exclaimed.

  “Yeah, no mail is in there. The mailman must not have come yet.”

  “Damn it. Now what are we supposed to do?”

  “We can come back later and do it,” Jack suggested.

  “I won’t be able to come back. Momma said we’re going to the store in a couple of hours, and you know how we like to stay gone forever.”

  “Well – screw the mail.”

  Jack pulled out the matches, took one out of the pack and swiped it along the side of the box. The acrid stink of sulfur hit my nostrils and in an instant I heard the smoke bomb fuses burning. Jack slammed the mailbox shut and took off like a rocket back toward our bikes.

  “Wait up!” I yelled as I ran after Jack.

  I was running so fast that I passed him and dove into the wooded area where our bikes were waiting. I laid there for a while, catching my breath as Jack came in head first to land only a few feet away from me.

  “Did you light em’ all?” I asked him.

  “Only the ones you put in there, but yeah, that mailbox is smoking,” Jack told me with a grin.

  I leaned over and celebrated our successful mission by giving Jack a quick high-five before throwing myself back onto my bike.

  I was pedaling out of the woods, back onto the road, when I glanced down the street and noticed the mail truck making its way in our direction. Jack came out of the woods on his bike and stopped right next to me. The mailman was making the right onto Daniel when he stopped directly in front of us and studied the mailbox that was now producing thick green and blue smoke. My throat dried up, and I do believe I heard Jack cut loose a nervous fart.

  The mailman turned his head slowly and looked at us. The sweat on my skin turned cold and sent a shiver down my spine.

  “Do you boys know who did that?” the mailman asked.

  “Did what?” Jack asked stupidly.

  “You boys know what I’m talking about.”

  As I stared at the mailman, I couldn’t help but notice how creepy-looking he was. I used to think that all mailmen were old as dirt, already retired from a previous profession and were just doing the job to earn a little extra cash to top up their pension. But this guy wasn’t old at all. In fact, he couldn’t have been a day over thirty-five; his hair was long, dark brown, slicked back like a businessman’s and tied in a ponytail. But the thing that disturbed me the most about the guy was that he looked like he hadn’t slept in days and his voice was a deep baritone.

  “You know, messing with people’s mail is a federal offense. You can get five to ten years in jail – sometimes even more,” the mailman informed us with a cold, matter-of-fact tone.

  “It wasn’t us, sir. We were just back here building a clubhouse in the woods. We were just on our way back to my house to get some more nails,” I lied.

  “Really?” the mailman replied.

  “Yes, really,” I nodded.

  “Can you show me the hammer you’ve been using, then?”

  I thought to myself, who the hell does this guy think he is, Magnum PI? And then Jack answered his question. “It’s back there in the woods,” he said. “But we really have to hurry up and get home. My dad locks his shed up soon, so we really need to get back.”

  “I thought you said you were going back to his house – not yours,” the mailman said.

  This guy was good at getting to the bottom of things. I knew he was trying to catch us out in our lie, but we weren’t about to let that happen. Jack and I came to a mutual, silent conclusion that we were going to have to finagle our way out of this one, big time.

  “My house is his house,” I shot back.

  “Yeah – we’re brothers,” Jack added.

  “Really? If that’s true, then where do you boys live?”

  “I can’t tell you that, sir. Our mother told us never to talk to strangers,” I said.

  “Well, you’re talking to me now, aren’t you? I wouldn’t consider myself a stranger if I was in your shoes – but that’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” he looked back up the road to the smoldering mailbox and then back to us, “Well, I have to get going, if you boys find out who set those smoke bombs off in that mailbox, please let me know next time you see me. There could be a reward in store for whoever gives me some information.”

  “No problem, sir,” Jack said.

  “Good. I guess I’ll see you boys around then,” The mailman smiled.

  I took a deep breath and released it slowly through my nose, and I thanked God that Jack and I had gotten out of that sticky situation without incident. We watched our friendly neighborhood mailman shift his little white truck into first gear and drive on toward the smoking mailbox. As he got closer to it, a woman – who we assumed to be Mrs. Rogers – came dashing from her house with a cup of water to extinguish the smoke.

  As soon as the mailman stopped next to Mrs. Jacobs, I tapped Jack on the arm and urged, “Let’s get the hell outta here!” And we came quickly to our senses and scurried off on our bikes.

  Somewhere along the way between The Oaks and my house, Jack jettisoned the matches and the remaining smoke bombs into the woods – the day’s stunt had almost been a failure, so we decided to take a break from the pyrotechnics for the time being and concentrate our efforts on other methods of destruction. I made a right onto Memaw’s driveway while shouting goodbye to Jack, not slowing down at all. I parked my bike up against the tree next to the front porch and ran inside to see what Pepaw was up to.

  ***

  “Jody!” Momma yelled, snapping me back into reality, “did you and Jack tear anyone’s stuf
f up? You better answer me, boy.”

  I looked over at Pepaw, and even he was giving me the evil eye. I was really on the spot, I didn’t know if I should tell them about the mailbox incident. For all I knew, if I told them the truth, I could end up in jail, just like the mailman said – five to ten years was a very, very long time, especially for a kid my age. Another reason I didn’t say a word was because I couldn’t be sure if the mailman had said anything about us to Mrs. Rogers or not, so I did what I did best, and I lied.

  After I was done being interrogated by Momma and Pepaw, I went back to my room and played my video games. About thirty minutes later, Momma came into my room and turned off the TV.

  “I want you to listen to me, Jody. I know you and Jack are off doing stupid stuff that you know you are not supposed to be doing. I know you’ve been lying to me recently, but you’re not as good of a liar as you think you are. You need to stop doing bad things with Jack, son. I don’t know who is the mastermind to all of y’all’s little fiascos, but the shit needs to stop, or I swear to God you’ll never play with that boy again.”

  “You can’t do that to us,” I said, “we’re brothers now. Blood brothers – and nobody can keep us away from each other.”

  “Do you know how serious this is, Jody? Somebody was so angry with you that they came to our trailer to scare us. If you don’t stop doing bad things, I promise you, I will call Renee and let her know everything. And I guarantee that she’ll agree with me to keep Jack away from you.”

  “But Momma!” I whined.

  “I don’t want to hear it! Just get in bed, and think about what you could have done to bring this upon yourself and this family.”

  Momma backed out of the room and slammed the door hard enough to shake the whole trailer. I crawled in bed and buried myself under my Nintendo sheets with my knees tucked firmly into my chest. I couldn’t stop wondering who it was that had been messing with our trailer. I also started to wonder what life would be like without Jack, and honestly I believe that was what scared me the most that night.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BIKING ACCIDENT: 1990

  After the trailer incident, life went on as it always does and the events of that night slowly vanished from my thoughts. I never actually got around to telling Jack about what happened that night at our trailer. Momma pulled me aside once in the Delchamps grocery store a couple of days afterwards, when I’d seen Jack running around on aisle three knocking shampoo bottles off the shelves. I went to take off after him and suddenly Momma grabbed me by the arm, stopping me in my tracks. “Don’t you dare say a word to Jack about what happened the other night, or what we talked about,” She hissed.