Middletown, New York is a city with plenty of parks and designated play areas among the shopping centers, supermarkets, and concrete jungle, but, if you are a kid, there are also plenty of wooded areas to explore and step away from the trappings of city life.
Behind my house at 15 Corwin Avenue, there used to be a huge field. The grass was taller than a man and many of us used to trample the green blades into discernible paths. They cut that down a many years ago, some time around when I was in elementary school. An Italian restaurant was built in its place, but, there was still a wooded lot where Joey and I liked to play. It was behind Mrs. Wade’s house and next to the VFW building.
Mrs. Wade was old from the time I met her. She had a chain link fence around her house and back yard. Beyond that, we’re not sure who owned that square piece of land with all the trees and the rocks you could sit on. No one ever played there except us kids. You could find rusted beer cans and empty candy wrappers mixed among the trees, twigs, dirt, and rocks While it was accessible from my back yard, it was easier to walk past Mrs. Wade’s house, down the VFW driveway, and around the back of the VFW building. To get there through my back yard, you had to carefully skirt the edge of our garden and then walk a path that wasn’t even wide enough to be called single file to reach the wooded area. I would sometimes lean against Mrs. Wade’s fence to make sure I didn’t fall. I’m sure I would have only broken a bone or two, but I preferred not to fall thirty feet into the parking lot of the Italian restaurant.
Joey and I had spent the better part of the morning riding out bikes up and down Corwin Avenue, pulling wheelies, skidding, and generally doing all the cool things you can do with your bike that your mom yells at you to never do. After making several circular skids in the gravel parking lot of the VFW, we went back to Joey’s house to rest for a little bit. Joey’s house was diagonally across from Mrs. Wade and directly across the street from the VFW.
We dumped our bikes on the ground. There was no need for using a kickstand. We had removed them as soon as we each got our bikes. Kickstands were a hindrance and were discarded as soon as we found a 15mm wrench to remove them. My mother was never happy about that. She believed bicycles were modes of transportation and should be cared for. I saw a bicycle not only as a means to get me away from home, but as a way to push myself to the limit and see how much damage I could inflict on myself and the bike before something broke. I’ve never had a broken bone, but I’ve had more scrapes and cuts than I could ever count. There were probably a few mild concussions as well, but they were treated with either ice or a need to keep quiet so your mom didn’t “give you something to cry about” for cracking your skull on the blacktopped road because you were a dumbass, again.
We sat on the edge of the driveway outside Joey’s house. I poked at the bubbling tar on the edge of the road with my thumb and forefinger, listening to the popping sounds as I went. Joey used a twig to accomplish the same task. Sometimes, the familiar “snap” of a popping bubble was replaced by a low hiss. Other times, there was silence.
The warm tar, heated by the Sun was smooth and glided between my fingers like thick, black ink. If I tried to separate my fingers, the tar would stick and create a long stringy connection between my thumb and forefinger. You could only do this so many times before the tar cooled and then stuck permanently to your fingers. We always felt that with the pliable tar we could reshape that small piece of road however we wanted.
The tar was always flattened and even along the road, except for the edges. There, it could twist and turn, creating fissures, cracks, and lines that reminded me of pictures I had seen in books of cooled lava. On really hot days, you could carefully push your foot into the tar, leaving behind the tread of your shoes. That gave you the right to claim the spot as yours.
This was another pleasure my mother wished I would give up. Every summer, New York was so hot the tar bubbled. Fortunately for us, it was usually on the side of the road. Every child around had an inbred need to pop those bubbles, much like the desire to pop bubble wrap. It has to be in our DNA. The tar, however, does not come out easily. If you kneel on the road, it will transfer to your clothes and, come the weekend, your mother will be yelling. It’s worse than writing on your hand with a sharpie and takes twice as long to get off.
We pointed out different bubbles to pop and talked about the awesome burnout Joey did before tumbling ass-over-teacups on his bike, a group of three girls approached us. They weren’t from our neighborhood, but I recognized them. They were in my older sister’s grade in school. They were loud and obnoxious just like her, real pains in the ass.
I had my chin on my right knee. My left knee was a few millimeters from the ground – the perfect position to start sprinting away. One of the girls kicked Joey’s foot. They called us fags. Being the wise ass I’ve always been, I responded with, “Thank you because a fag is a bundle of sticks and a bundle of sticks makes a tree and trees are beautiful. So, thank you for calling us beautiful.” Sandy, the only one I knew by name, leaned over and smacked me. Then, she grabbed my hair.
“I’m going to kick your fucking ass,” she said.
“You and who’s army?” I said. It was all talk. Those three girls were bigger than me and Joey.
These girls roamed the streets near the junior high and high school aggravating anyone they could. I figured it would be easy enough for Joey to run inside and get his mom, but he looked at me and said, “Woods?”
I agreed.
We bolted toward the wooded area behind Mrs. Wade’s house. Sandy was left with a clump of my hair in her hands as I ran as fast as I could away from her. The woods were tangled with pricker bushes and if you weren’t there often, you probably didn’t know the right turns to make to avoid them. Even someone as experienced as me had made the mistake of a left when it should have been a right. If you’re fortunate, your skin would be torn and you would bleed. If not, your clothes are torn and you must answer to your mom about how you managed to “waste her hard-earned money.”
We thought we could easily trap the girls and solve our own problems. It didn’t make sense, but I was ten and Joey was seven. It was the best our brains could come up with.
As we ran through the VFW parking lot, you could hear the gravel crunch under our weight and kick up and out behind us. You could also hear the heavy footsteps of the girls. I was convinced they were too fat and too slow to catch us. I was wrong.
We went behind the back of the VFW. They went around the other side. They caught Joey, who was only a couple of steps behind me. I stopped and went back to help him break free. Sandy punched Joey in the stomach and he fell to the ground. I got two punches in – a hit and a miss – before the two other girls grabbed me. Sandy punched me in the face once and then swept my legs out from under me. I fell on my tailbone and an audible “fuck” was heard. As Sandy bent over toward me, I was sure she was going to continue to pummel my face. She saw a better opportunity.
“Holy shit, girls,” Sandy said. “Will you look at that.” Sandy pointed toward a giant pile of dog shit partially covered in leaves, twigs and grass. I struggled to get up, but the girls were stronger than me and held me down.
“What time is it?” Sandy asked the girls. Before they could reply, Sandy said, “I think it’s time to eat.”
I struggled some more and managed to get on my knees with my hands on the ground. There was only one problem. I was facing dog shit. One of the girls grabbed my hair with both hands and started to push my face toward the ground. Joey fought as best as he could, but didn’t stand a chance. He was a small, skinny kid. Sandy and another girl had both his arms.
“Stop fighting and open your mouth,” Sandy said. I couldn’t tell, but I assumed Joey had lost his battle and was trying to make the best of the situation by closing his mouth.
Sandy, who just stood there shouting orders at the girls, promised us that as soon as we ate the dog shit they would leave us alone. I wasn’t planning on eating dog shit that day, or any other. However, if I was going to eat it, it wasn’t going to be by any choice and I was going to make sure those girls would not come out of cleanly either.
I pushed my head back as best as I could and then lifted my left arm. The sudden shift in weight caused me to fall on my left side. The girl holding me down fell, too. She was partially on top of me, but she was now more worried about avoiding the dog shit herself. She stood up and screamed. In what felt like one fluid motion, I rolled over, stood up, and ran. No one was home at my house, so I ran next door and into my grandmother’s house.
I skipped stairs one and three on her back porch and slammed into the back door. My body was traveling faster than my hand could turn the door knob. I stopped, told my brain to open the door first and entered Gram’s kitchen.
Panting, I her, “There’s some girl’s trying to make Joey eat dog shit.”
Normally, a swear word would earn me a smack on the back side of my head and a lecture.
“Where?” Gram said.
“In the woods behind the VFW.”
“Show me.”
We walked through my back yard, past the black walnut tree, the apple tree, the pine trees, and the garden. As we neared the dangerous part of the path near Mrs. Wade’s fence, Gram grabbed onto the fence. I momentarily paused to ponder how a grandma could traverse this ultra dangerous path so easily. When I turned around, the girls were fleeing. Gram went over to check on Joey. He was spitting out whatever had gotten in his mouth, but proudly announced that he had not, in fact, eaten dog shit. His face was, however, covered in it.
Gram led him back to her house where she used the garden hose to clean his face. Then she made him rinse his mouth out. Once that was done, she said it would probably be best to play in her back yard for a while. We agreed, but had to retrieve our bikes before someone stole them.
As we both walked back up the street toward Joey’s house, we saw our bikes were still on the ground, right where we had dropped them. Joey picked up a twig about three feet long in front of my house and began to swing it back and forth as we walked.
“I’m sorry I ran and left you,” I said.
“It’s okay,” Joey said. “I would have done the same.”
And just like that, all was forgiven.
When we got to the edge of Mrs. Wade’s fence, where her property ends and the VFW’s begins, Joey and I instinctively took a step off the sidewalk and onto the road. We always crossed diagonally from here until we reached his house.
“Hey,” Joey said. He had stopped walking and pointed toward the ground with his twig. Having gone a step or two past him, I stopped and turned around. A dozen or so tar bubbles glistened in the sun.
Suzie Wysocki
Eww.