“Well?” sneered Laney Mason.  “You jumping or not?”

 

Stanley Thacker stretched his neck like a chicken and peered down at us.  The worn toes of his sneakers stuck over the edge of the corrugated tin roof.  He slid them wider apart and studied the ground between his feet. Stanley was tall for a ten-year-old and his arms and legs appeared freakishly long as he loomed above us.

 

                  “I told you I would jump, didn’t I?” he said.

 

                  “Well, then get on with it,” Laney said.  “We ain’t got all day to stand around here and wait on you to do it.” Laney folded his arms, cocked his head and closed one eye against the sun. We stood reverently in a semicircle, gazing up as though we were waiting for some impending celestial event.

 

Stanley scooted his feet closer to the edge.  He looked at the ground, looked at the sky, looked at the ground again.

 

                  “Back up a little, boys,” he said. “I’m coming down.”

 

He seemed to be moving in slow motion as he wound up his arms and leaped from the roof.  He landed hard on his feet, his knees bending to absorb the shock, his arms out to the sides like airplane wings.  Small puffs of dust rose around his shoes.  He straightened his knees and pulled his frame up straight.  His lips curled into a crooked smile as he surveyed our faces.

 

                  “See?” he said.  “Nothing to it.”

 

All five of us let out a collective whoop and ran around the corner of the coal house.  One at a time we scrambled up on the trellis and pulled ourselves onto the tin roof. We ran to the edge and formed a line, our feet pounding like thunder.  We took turns jumping to the ground below.  As soon as everyone had jumped, we ran around, climbed to the roof, and lined up again.  We jumped until we no longer felt that delicious quiver in our stomachs as we sailed through the air. We sat down in a circle under the walnut tree.  Stanley pulled up tufts of grass at his feet and covered up the toes of his shoes.

 

                  “Hey,” Marvin said. “Let’s go over and see if that old blue tick hound is still laying in the road.”

 

We leaped up and ran until we reached the street behind my house.  We slowed to a steady pace, marking cadence in the gravels along the side of the road as we marched toward the old quarry.  Stanley scratched at a large scab on his arm, a trophy he earned retrieving our rubber ball from the downspout last week.

 

                  “Boys,” Eddie Lawson blurted, “I seen Trudy Lawson naked yesterday.”

 

The line came to an abrupt halt and everyone looked at Eddie.  After a few seconds of stunned silence Laney stepped closer to him.

 

                  “You’re a liar,” he said.

 

                  “No, I ain’t either,” Eddie said.

 

                  “Plumb naked?” Laney said.  “Butt naked?  Get out of here.” He pushed Eddie back a step.


                  “I’ll take a dying oath on it,” Eddie said, raising his hand.  “Naked through and through.”

 

We gathered around him and waited for him to speak.  He shook his several times, then raised his face.  His voice was low and he moved closer to us. 

 

                  “Well, I went over to take Mrs. Lawson some Ladies Home Journals my mom was done with.  I pecked on the screen door three or four times and nobody answered.  So I figured I’d just go on in and leave them on the kitchen table. I’ve done it before. But them other times, nothing happened.”  He shook his head and studied the ground.  It seemed hard for him to go on.

 

                  “I was just about to lay them down on the table there when I heard this kind of scuffing noise.  I looked up and. . . .Lord,” he said.  He dropped his eyes again.

 

                  “Get on with it!” Marvin said. “Then what?”

 

                  “Well,” Eddie said, “there went Trudy, walking right by the doorway, naked as a jaybird.”  He looked at the ground again and shook his head. “Lord,” he said quietly.

 

                  “Lord!” Marvin said. “Did she holler?  Did she holler when she seen you?”

 

                  “Well, see, she didn’t see me.  I stood real quiet.  Quiet as I could,” Eddie said.  “Lord.”

 

                  “What’d you see?  I mean, exactly what did you see?”  I asked.  The words came out louder and faster than I meant.

 

                  “Well.  I kind of don’t remember,” Eddie said.  “I was pretty frazzled and I forgot to pay real good attention.  I think I blacked out for a minute or something. I do recall it was a side view, though.”

 

                  “Well, shoot,” Marvin said.  “What’s the use of that? All the good stuff is either on the front or the back.  There ain’t nothing to see from the side.  Is there?”

 

                  “I think she was walking from the bathroom or something.  Her hair was all wet and hanging down.  I do recall that much,” Eddie said.

 

                  “She was likely taking a bath,” Laney said.  “I do know girls sometimes take baths in the middle of the day.”

 

                  “That’s what I figured,” Eddie said.  “Anyways, she just walked by the door.  I can’t say I saw anything much.  But she was definitely naked.  And that’s a fact.”

 

We were quiet for a while, each of us considering the implications of Eddie’s experience.  We were awash with both envy and fear.  I wondered if Eddie would ever be the same after having gone through such a thing, if it would be possible to come out of something like that unscathed. 

 

                  “Well, come on, boys,” Laney said finally.  “Let’s go check on that old blue tick.”

 

We had made daily trips to the quarry for the past two and a half weeks, ever since the afternoon a large hound dog had collided with a pickup truck right in front us.  We had seen the dog fly across the road and plop with a loud yelp onto the grass near the ditch at the side of road.  The truck did not stop, did not come back to survey the damage.  We ran to see if the dog had made it, but we knew the verdict as soon as we looked at its contorted body splayed beside the road.  A thick ruby stream ran from its mouth, painting the tall grass around its head.

 

We figured the bright orange truck that picked up dead animals on the road would scoop the hound up and take him off in a day or so. We knew the county road crew burned road kill out behind the metal shack down by the dumpsters at the old quarry on County Road 56.  In the summertime we generally kept a watch on the burn site.  It was a good chance to see the variety of wildlife that had fallen victim to careless drivers or an overdose of courage on their part.  It was also a great lesson in anatomy and a study in what fire does to flesh and bones. 

 

Ironically, and to our good fortune, the blue tick had somehow been overlooked by the road kill crew, however. It had lain by the road more than two weeks, moldering in the summer heat. We figured they hadn’t noticed it because the sickly sweet smell of death was an ever-present thing at the old quarry and the tall grass around the corpse had straightened back up concealing it from view.  The county’s oversight had given us the unique opportunity to systematically monitor the stages of decomposition – a rare treat for a group of bored ten year old boys. 

 

The odor from the hound was especially pungent on that day, and we had to pull our t-shirts up over our mouths and noses well before we reached the spot where he lay. The flesh was almost all gone now and the grass around the skeleton was stained dark and slimy. 

 

                  “Lord,” Marvin said, gagging the words rather than speaking them. “Ain’t that a mess?”

 

We stood reverently around the corpse, studying it quietly.  Stanley squatted down dangerously close to the carcass and leaned in to get a better look.  He picked up a stick and raised it over the skull.

 

                  “Don’t!”  Eddie yelled.  “We said we weren’t going to bother it. Just let it go natural till it’s plumb gone.”

 

                  “Oh, alright,” Stanley said.  “It sure is hard not to poke at it, though.”

 

                  “Look!” Marvin said.  “There’s a piece of glass gone out of that building over yonder.  Reckon what’s in there?”  His eyes were shining and the parade of possibilities marched through his mind.

 

We walked to the metal building and gazed up at the missing window pane.

 

                  “You think a feller could fit through that hole?” Laney asked.

 

We all turned and looked at Stanley.

 

                  “I don’t know. It’s pretty high up,” he said. “Think you all could give me a boost?”

 

We scrambled into a tight circle and laid hands over arms until we had formed a web of tanned flesh.  Stanley stepped on our conjoined arms and stretched his frame upward.  He could just reach the broken pane.  He peered through the hole.

 

                  “Can’t see much,” he said.  It’s darker in there than I thought.”

 

                  “Can you get in or not?” Laney asked.

 

                  “Well,” Stanley said, “I believe it’ll be tight.  Can you get me up any higher?”

 

We grunted and struggled and finally raised him up to the level of the missing pane of glass.  He stuck his head through and then threaded his arms in the small opening.  We backed off and stared at his legs dangling just out of our reach as he worked to pull his body through the hole.  I looked at the large star-shaped scar on the calf of his left leg.  I thought for a moment about the day he got it.  We wondered if a feller on a bicycle could make it all the way to the top of the thin steel rail that ran along the loading dock behind the feed store.  Stanley wound up speared on a metal stake sticking up from the pavement beneath the ramp.  It was seven days before he could walk unassisted, and even then he suffered with a wicked limp.

 

                  “Boys,” he said after a few seconds.  “I got a little problem here.”  His legs hung limp.

 

                  “What is it?” Laney asked.  “Are you hung?”

 

                  “Well.  Kind of.  It’s a long way down to the floor from up here.  I don’t think it’s a good idea to go on in head first like this.”

 

                  “Well, could we push you in feet first?” Laney said.  “Once you’re in, you can come around and open the door for us.”

 

Before Stanley could answer, we heard the whine of tires on pavement.  We turned around just in time to see the big orange county truck roll onto the gravels on the opposite side of the building.  Without a word we made a dive toward the kudzu-covered bank behind the building and climbed up and over the guard rail at the top of the hill.  We never looked back as we ran up the road and circled back around toward home. 

 

Stanley’s mother had to pick him up at the sheriff’s office.  Thankfully he didn’t have to go to jail. He got off with a stern lecture from a pot-bellied deputy about the consequences of breaking and entering. His mother boxed his ears once she got him in the car, but he was used to that. All told, it could have turned out a lot worse.

 

The week after the breaking and entering episode, we decided to see if we could build a human catapult.  Laney had seen it in a movie and he immediately proposed we pursue making our own.  He allowed it would be a fine adventure and a great ride to boot.  We knew we could find an abundance of old inner tubes out behind the co-op, just thing from which to make an oversized sling shot.  They threw them out there in a large pile when they changed tires, letting them mount up into a black rubber mountain before they burned them along with all the old tires about once a month. 

 

Eddie kept watch while we crawled around the pile of old tires and retrieved a good supply of inner tubes.  Once we felt we had enough, we ran to Laney’s and hid them in the coal house.  After a meeting under the walnut tree to consult on a list of tools we’d need, we broke up and headed home for the night.  Each of us would draw a plan and present it to the group the next day.  The design deemed most practical by the majority of the group would become the blueprint for us to work by.

 

Cutting up the inner tubes until we had a satisfactory sling was easier than we thought. The hard part was coming up with a structure on which to anchor the sling.  After several failed attempts at making something sturdy enough, Marvin was struck with inspiration.  He remembered the remnant of an old gate in Thatch Ray’s now abandoned cow pasture. 

 

                  “It’s just two big old metal posts sticking up out the ground,” Marvin said excitedly.  “And you know they’re anchored in concrete. They’d be solid as a rock. You know they would.”

 

Before we knew it, we had the rubber sling mounted on the rusty fence posts and we were ready to launch.  We had built a makeshift ramp from cinder blocks and an old piece of plywood.

 

                  “Okay,” Laney said.  “Get on there, Stanley, and let’s see how she flies.”

 

Stanley climbed on the ramp.  We adjusted the position of the ramp several times until we had what we thought was adequate tension on the sling to give Stanley a good hard launch.  He fell off the ramp once, skinning his ankle, but he climbed back on as soon as he had pulled a long bloody splinter from his flesh.

 

What happened once we finally pulled him back as far as we could and then let go is a bit of a blur.  It looked like he was going to fly for sure.  I remember the top half of his body above his waist jerking backward as his feet went on ahead.  Then I remember a loud thud, followed by a deafening silence.

 

I guess we had misfigured the angle of the launch.  Stanley’s left side slammed into the metal pipe and he fell into a heap on the ground just in front of the ramp.  He was face down in the grass.  His left arm lay at an awkward angle and his left leg was twisted up almost to his waist.  He wasn’t moving and we could see blood seeping out around his head.

 

Without saying a word we all ran frantically back toward town, stopping at Eddie’s house.  It took a full five minutes for his mother to get the straight of it from us.  She called an ambulance, then called Stanley’s mother.  We were told to sit on the couch and not to move until she got back.  It was the longest afternoon of my life.

 

Stanley’s left arm and left leg were badly broken.  He had also lost the biggest part of his left ear and sported a large crescent-shaped scar on his cheek.  He was in the hospital most of the remaining weeks of summer vacation and he didn’t come back to school in the fall.  We heard from Mrs. Porter that he had a teacher who came to his house so he wouldn’t get behind.

 

None of us went to see Stanley. We weren’t sure his mother would want us visiting so we just didn’t make the attempt.  We didn’t talk about him much either. It felt awkward, so we avoided it as much as possible.  We stayed pretty close to town when we did get together, leaving behind most of our old haunts.  Our adventures after that day consisted mostly of fairly placid activities, like bike riding near our homes and occasionally fishing or frog-gigging in Chadwell’s pond.

 

Right before Christmas, Stanley’s folks moved away.  We never knew where they went and we heard nothing from Stanley again until two weeks after our high school graduation.

 

Marvin came by and knocked on our back door the second week of June.  When I came out on the step, he handed me a folded copy of the local weekly newspaper.  He said nothing and he wore an odd expression. I felt a row of goose bumps run up my right arm as I unfolded the paper.

 

On the bottom half of the front page was the picture of familiar face, a smiling young man in a crisp uniform.  Most of his left ear was missing and his cheek bore a moon-shaped scar.  The column of print underneath the picture told of the death of an army private serving in Vietnam who was a former resident.  He was killed when he had gone out ahead of his squad on patrol. He had placed his foot directly on a land mine.  The paper said the lives of the others had been saved because the private had moved out in front.  There was no explanation given as to why the private had gone ahead in front of the others.