exactly she went back to school, got her degree, and started working in social services. I do remember that we moved even more frequently now, from one cheap rented house to the next.
To be closer to Pop, we ended up in Massachusetts and moved to the first of three towns we would live in on the Merrimack River. It was 1969, and for the first time since moving East from Iowa, we lived in a house on a street with a sidewalk and other houses and there were kids to play with, and so we played.
Once more we were the new kids in school. Jeb and I had long hair and sat in the back of the bus singing Beatles songs to the girls next to us. They began to like us, which was a sweet surprise, and then a few of the boys did too. Every day after school and that summer Jeb and I played war with Craig and Danny D. and Scotty K.; it’s what we knew from the TV every night. It’s what grown-ups argued about and lost friendships over. And we killed all day long.
Danny D.’s father had a barn full of junk. We found a box of brass light sockets which we turned into hand grenades because you could yank the chain and hurl the socket and if one landed close to you, you were gone. We knew about the Viet Cong stabbing our soldiers’ bodies after they were dead just to make sure they were dead, so when some of us were down, the others went around poking sticks into their back or ribs.
Danny D.’s big brothers, Gary and Sean, would light firecrackers and toss them at us. They’d let us come to their room and listen to the Doors and watch them smoke dope. One rainy afternoon, Sean, who was big with dull brown eyes, tied me to a utility pole out back of the barn and stacked twigs at my feet. He covered them with gas from the lawn mower and tried to light me up. But the gas was mixed with oil, and his matches were damp from his pocket, and when he ran back into the house for more I wrenched my wrists from the rope and ran for home.
In the summer, we’d catch frogs down on the muddy banks and haul them back in a coffee can. We’d stack bricks into a square prison yard and drop the frogs in, then Sean would douse them with gasoline, light a cherry bomb or M-80, and jump back for the bang and flame and smoke. Danny’s brother Gary, sixteen maybe, with long brown hair and a cross around his neck, he’d tie the blackened frogs’ bodies together with string, then run it to the back of his three-speed and drag them up and down the street. I’d be laughing with the rest, but that queasiness would come again.
Years later Gary would die running from the cops.
It was after midnight and it’d been a long, dangerous chase along the back roads and the police had radioed ahead for the drawbridge over the Merrimack to be raised. I don’t know what Gary was driving, but he must’ve thought it was light and fast because when he got to the bridge it was already rising past 40 degrees and he gave the engine all it had and flew up into the air, then down into the swirling black water where he drowned.
Once I was sleeping over and Big Sean squeezed my neck in a headlock, digging his knuckles hard into my skull. I screamed, and Gary came out of his room. Jim Morrison was singing. Gary wore only underwear and a T-shirt, and he punched Sean in the back and slapped him twice in the face.
“Fuckin’ leave him alone, all right ? He’s a nice kid, Sean. He’s a good kid. ”
“I didn’t do nothin’.” Sean let go. Gary looked down at me, his dark eyes fiery and sad and kind, and he turned and walked back into his room and shut the door.
THE SUMMER of 1970 was hot and dry, and we moved to Newburyport where Mom had gotten a job working for Head Start helping poor kids. Newburyport was at the mouth of the river, the Atlantic Ocean three miles away on the other side of the salt marshes. The town was called “Clipper City” because of all the sailing ships built here in the 1800s, but when we came along the place looked abandoned. The streets of
To be closer to Pop, we ended up in Massachusetts and moved to the first of three towns we would live in on the Merrimack River. It was 1969, and for the first time since moving East from Iowa, we lived in a house on a street with a sidewalk and other houses and there were kids to play with, and so we played.
Once more we were the new kids in school. Jeb and I had long hair and sat in the back of the bus singing Beatles songs to the girls next to us. They began to like us, which was a sweet surprise, and then a few of the boys did too. Every day after school and that summer Jeb and I played war with Craig and Danny D. and Scotty K.; it’s what we knew from the TV every night. It’s what grown-ups argued about and lost friendships over. And we killed all day long.
Danny D.’s father had a barn full of junk. We found a box of brass light sockets which we turned into hand grenades because you could yank the chain and hurl the socket and if one landed close to you, you were gone. We knew about the Viet Cong stabbing our soldiers’ bodies after they were dead just to make sure they were dead, so when some of us were down, the others went around poking sticks into their back or ribs.
Danny D.’s big brothers, Gary and Sean, would light firecrackers and toss them at us. They’d let us come to their room and listen to the Doors and watch them smoke dope. One rainy afternoon, Sean, who was big with dull brown eyes, tied me to a utility pole out back of the barn and stacked twigs at my feet. He covered them with gas from the lawn mower and tried to light me up. But the gas was mixed with oil, and his matches were damp from his pocket, and when he ran back into the house for more I wrenched my wrists from the rope and ran for home.
In the summer, we’d catch frogs down on the muddy banks and haul them back in a coffee can. We’d stack bricks into a square prison yard and drop the frogs in, then Sean would douse them with gasoline, light a cherry bomb or M-80, and jump back for the bang and flame and smoke. Danny’s brother Gary, sixteen maybe, with long brown hair and a cross around his neck, he’d tie the blackened frogs’ bodies together with string, then run it to the back of his three-speed and drag them up and down the street. I’d be laughing with the rest, but that queasiness would come again.
Years later Gary would die running from the cops.
It was after midnight and it’d been a long, dangerous chase along the back roads and the police had radioed ahead for the drawbridge over the Merrimack to be raised. I don’t know what Gary was driving, but he must’ve thought it was light and fast because when he got to the bridge it was already rising past 40 degrees and he gave the engine all it had and flew up into the air, then down into the swirling black water where he drowned.
Once I was sleeping over and Big Sean squeezed my neck in a headlock, digging his knuckles hard into my skull. I screamed, and Gary came out of his room. Jim Morrison was singing. Gary wore only underwear and a T-shirt, and he punched Sean in the back and slapped him twice in the face.
“Fuckin’ leave him alone, all right ? He’s a nice kid, Sean. He’s a good kid. ”
“I didn’t do nothin’.” Sean let go. Gary looked down at me, his dark eyes fiery and sad and kind, and he turned and walked back into his room and shut the door.
THE SUMMER of 1970 was hot and dry, and we moved to Newburyport where Mom had gotten a job working for Head Start helping poor kids. Newburyport was at the mouth of the river, the Atlantic Ocean three miles away on the other side of the salt marshes. The town was called “Clipper City” because of all the sailing ships built here in the 1800s, but when we came along the place looked abandoned. The streets of
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