Twirple
The little boy paused briefly at the rim of the ravine before walking down its slope. He wore a neat button-up shirt and flannel lined blue dungarees, rolled up at the bottom. His hair had been combed that morning and he carried a Howdy Doody lunch box. The path he walked was how most kids who lived southeast of the elementary school walk to and home from the school. He didn’t notice the other boy until he heard, “Halt, who goes there?” The other boy was older and taller. His neck and arms were slender, his hair shaggy and his clothes were old and kind of dirty.
“It’s me, Timmy Mathewson”, said the little boy. “Who are you?”
“I am Twirple, Troll of the Ravine.” The older boy had no idea where the name Twirple came from. It just popped into his head. “You must pay me if you want to walk on the path through my ravine.”
“But I don’t have any money”, said the little boy.
“Do you have anything in your lunch box”, asked Twirple.
“I have some celery sticks, but I usually give them to Sarah Thompson’s rabbit before I get home. My Mommy always puts them in my lunch even though I tell her I don’t like them.”
“Well, you seem like a pretty nice boy, so I guess they’ll have to do for today. But, my usual fare is half a sandwich”. “Give me the celery sticks and don’t tell anybody you saw me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll know if you do and I can use my magic to make you sick. He paused briefly, looking at the little boy. “But, I won’t. I won’t have to. Because if you tell people you saw a troll in the ravine, they’ll think you’re silly and they will treat you like a little boy. They will stop listening to anything you say.”.
“Really?” said the little boy. “You don’t look like a troll to me.”
“Well that’s probably because I just got my first troll assignment. I’m a young troll – only 50 years old. Beginners only get things like paths through ravines.” Timmy began to grin. “When I’m 300 years old, I’ll have long wild hair and big bushy eyebrows. My nose will be huge and have a great big hairy wart on it.” Timmy snickered. When I’m old, I’ll be short and fat and walk around like this.” He hunched over dangling his bowed arms in front of him and waddled a small circle on bowed legs. Timmy laughed again. “Why when I’m 300, I’ll be the King of the Trolls. I’ll live under the most important bridge in the world and have hundreds of great-great-great-great-grand children,” concluded with a flair. Timmy looked at him with a big smile on his face.
“Now give me the celery sticks and go on home.”
The little boy opened his lunch box and gave the three small celery sticks to Twiple.. Then he picked up his things and began walking up the other side of the ravine. Near the top, he stopped and turned around. “Will you be here tomorrow, Twirple?” he called back down to the boy.
“I might”.
The little boy smiled and said “Okay, see you tomorrow”, before turning back around and disappearing beyond the edge of the ravine.
The boy, Twirple, watched the spot where the little boy had vanished for a minute before he turned and headed down the ravine.
The ravine was part of an old creek bed, about twelve feet deep at the school path. The creek had been filled in and rerouted as the town grew, especially after the war. A couple hundred yards upstream from the school path it ended abruptly with a retaining wall. A few drainpipes emptied into the ravine between the retaining wall and where it became steeper on it’s run down to the river.
About halfway between the path and where the slope changed, Twirple had established his Troll’s Lair. There was a corner there defined by a bushy outcropping. A gully entered the ravine just beyond the turn. The bottom was just about Twirple’s shoulder height above the floor of the ravine. A small opening between shrubs led to the Lair. It had been formed by rain runoff from a two-foot diameter drainpipe that entered on the right. The drainage shadow created by a tree near the right side, preserved a narrow section of level ground that was perfect for a bedroom. The left side, opposite the bedroom, included a crude stairway that would facilitate an uphill escape, if it ever became necessary.
Twirple had made some improvements since moving in a few days ago. He’d cleaned the sticks and leaves out of the bedroom. Concerned about the gap in the entry wall, he’d uprooted a nearby bush to use as a gate. In a niche just below the bedroom he assembled several good-sized throwing rocks and a sturdy staff for hand-to-hand combat. And, though he didn’t think anyone would come looking for him anytime soon, he would always use loose brush to wipe out his footprints, just as he’d seen on TV westerns. And, at least he didn’t have to worry about the school roof crashing down on him and his classmates as they hid under their desks when the Russians attacked.
Twirple knew he didn’t look like a troll. He didn’t know exactly what a troll was supposed to be, but he felt like they started out being people like him. But, he had his ravine and lair and maybe someday he would move up to living under a bridge.
When Twirple surveyed his surroundings that afternoon after meeting the little boy, he thought it was a pretty darn good lair for a novice troll. However, even a troll needs food, water and a comfortable bed. He’d have to see what he could do about that.
The next day Twirple set out early on his logistics recon mission. He’d figured before he fell asleep the night before that a place to poop and wash up a little was available in the bathroom of the Esso station up at the highway. It was in the back and it always open because the lock was busted. It was also a source of water, though it would be nice to have a way to keep some back at the lair.
Bedding was another issue. In the movies, cowboys always sleep on the ground when they’re out on the range, but Twirple didn’t have a blanket or a saddle to lay his head against.
Those things were important, but nothing mattered more than finding food. Sharing lunch leftovers with the school kids on their way home in the afternoon was obviously not going to work. Timmy was practically the only one who walked alone. Twirple didn’t want to deal with more than one kid at a time.
Having no other plan in mind, he headed out toward the town dump. It was a Saturday so he didn’t have to worry about being picked up as a truant and who knew what he might find out there? The dump was about two miles north of the ravine. He took the path toward the elementary school and then veered toward the river. As he walked, Twirple thought about what he needed at the Lair – other than a source of food. The thought of eating what the local vermin had rejected at the dump was out of the question. Instead, he began to think of what would make his new home a more livable place. He was pretty excited when he reached the dump.
With the caution of a newly minted troll, Twirple scanned the old sandstone quarry from the woods that surrounded it. As it was, he stood about as far as possible from the entrance where a couple of householders were unloading junk from the backs of their station wagons. Being the oldest end of the dump, most of what was there was either covered with dirt or in an advanced stage of decay. As he began to explore the dump in the open, Twirple came to understand that the only things really worth the effort of carrying back to the Lair had been dropped off in the last few weeks. Determined to find some the things he needed, the boy eventually began looking through that day’s offerings. When asked what he was looking for, he responded, “my homework”.
His first find was a BSA back pack with a missing strap buckle. He pulled it out from under a TV with a smashed screen. A simple knot would replace the buckle he thought. Turning things over in that general area he came across a canteen. Its bag and strap were sun rotted to uselessness, but with his new backpack that was no problem. There was also a pocketknife that had lost its bone cover on one side. The stream of useable goods dried up for a while until he noticed a package of thick short candles. Near it there was as metal dish with three round indents the same size as the candles. He set them in his pile. Twirple found a pillow, but when he picked it up and smelled it, he threw it back.
Twirple finally decided it was getting late and packed his booty into the new backpack. As he began his walk back to the path he’d taken earlier in the day he noticed the corner of a blanket sticking out from under a bunch of wooden blocks. He gave it a tug and eventually pulled out an old canvass tarp. It was about four by eight feet and had a few holes around the edges. But, would work perfectly as his bed. He sniffed it to be sure and, other than faint scents of dirt and grass, it just smelled like canvass.
Twirple’s return trip to the castle seemed longer than his morning hike. It wasn’t the weight of his booty or how tired he felt, but the thought that a whole day had been spent without addressing his most immediate problem – hunger. It really didn’t matter how well he adapted to living on his own if he couldn’t feed himself. Stealing corn or apples or other produce from local farms wouldn’t work now because it was Fall and everything had already been harvested.
Not long after he’d left the woods, while walking through the north side neighborhood’s small business district, he saw a dollar bill on the sidewalk. After looking around, he stooped to pick it up. It wasn’t a dollar bill. In fact, it was a ten. He quickly looked around again for anyone who might dispute his claim to good fortune. After realizing that it was his alone, relief, hunger and joy tumbled over each other in his mind like a trio of just fed puppies. He walked back past a couple of shops to where a bench sat outside a small hardware store. There he argued with himself over whether to buy and immediately consume all of the things he’d loved best to eat in one glorious frenzy, or to use his windfall wisely and stock his pantry for the long haul. In the end, he compromised. The boy bought a small ice-cream cone at the drug store soda counter and spent the rest on a loaf of bread, some baloney, a few tins of sardines, apples and other things that would last for a while.
Back at his lair, Twirple surveyed the fruits of his day’s labor. Beside the glorious groceries lay the tray and candles, his pocketknife and the backpack and canteen. All was displayed on his second greatest find, the tarp. However,the best find of allwere the six comic books he’d discovered after beginning his homeward journey. He had remembered to buy a little box of matches to light the candles. With the tarp for warmth and a candle providing a little light as the day darkened, he came to the conclusion that this whole troll life was beginning to look pretty good.
Twirple continued his foraging, albeit with less urgency, given his newly improved circumstances. And he also had to pretty much stay out of sight on school days. Parts of those days were spent wandering the through the woods between town and the river. More than once, sitting with his back against a tree just uphill from the riverbank, his daydreaming would drift back to the time before. On those occasions he would wake up lying curled up at the trees base in a bed of leaves feeling – what? Rested? Safe?
No matter his day’s itinerary, Twirple would always return to his observation station behind the bushes by the turn in the ravine as school let out for the day. Here he’d watch the kids walking in groups of friends to their homes, to their moms and dads, to dinner and warm beds at night. However, he never left his post until the little boy, Timmy, came down the slope. Then he’d leave his position, walk toward the path and call out “Halt, who goes there”? Timmy’s response was always a bright smile and an enthusiastic “Hi, Twirple.” He would ask how Twirple’s day was or tell him about something that excited him about his day at school. On more than one occasion, Timmy asked Twirple if he’d like to come home to his house to play and stay for dinner. One time he asked Twirple if he could come to his Lair. “Oh no”, said the boy. “Only trolls are allowed to enter a troll’s house”.
“But can I come and just look at it from the outside?”
“No.”
“Well, I could follow you home and then I would be able to see it”, Timmy said.
“You couldn’t see it even if you did. It’s invisible to normal peoples’ eyes. You would never be able to find my troll home.”
Timmy gave up. He opened his lunch box and gave Twirple half of peanut butter and jam sandwich – neatly wrapped in a paper napkin – and three small celery sticks. Then, he said good-bye and headed home.
Timmy was always the last kid to walk the path home. When Twirple finally asked him why, Timmy’s smile disappeared and he looked down at his feet. After a minute or two he said, “My teacher lets me erase the blackboards and empty the waste baskets. I help her clean up.” Then he offered up his daily fare, said he had to go now and walked away without another word.
Twirple walked slowly back to his hideout. Sitting on the tarp, he ate the half sandwich and considered his immediate future. It was now nearly two weeks since he had become a troll. His food was almost gone, the candles were all used up and the nights were getting longer and colder. He decided to make a short visit to Mama’s house. He knew that there were a couple of sleeping bags in the shed behind the garage and that he could use some more clothes. He’d know if Chuck the Drummer was there because station wagon would be parked in the yard. If Chuck were there, he would have to come back another time. He’d time his visit for early afternoon. Lately, Mama was often asleep on the couch around that time of day.
Twirple had trouble falling asleep that night. He was cold and hungry curled up in the tarp and more and more lately he had been doubting his ability to live on his own. He tried thinking of the time before, like he had down by the river, but memories of learning about the crash and visions of time after Chuck the Drummer had entered his and Mama’s life kept interfering.
The next day he woke up early. It was still pretty dark in the Manor, the ravine being low down and surrounded by trees. Despite his efforts not to, Twirple shivered with the cold. He really had to pee, and so he got up, removed the Castle gate – now just a collection of dry twigs – and let fly down into the ravine. Relieved, and refreshed by a new day, he dove into the tarp and pulled it over his head. The thoughts of going to his heretofore home, of getting some other clothes and who knew what else and of seeing Mama buoyed him. Eventually he drifted back to sleep. When he woke again and looked out from beneath the tarp, the sun was already between the rim of the ravine and the tops of the trees.
It was only a little more than two miles to Mama’s house, though the route wound through a neighborhood and a small industrial district that thinned into the occasional outlying business. Mama’s driveway, barely noticeable between two large trees, was just a couple of narrow strips of dirt that led to a cleared opening not far from the road. The boy stopped in the shadows of the trees, looking and listening for any reason not to go on.
Though it had been only two weeks, the sight before the boy shocked him. It wasn’t that the scene had changed so much as it was that, since his time away, his memory had reverted to the times before the crash. The small wood sided house and the cleared area around it looked uncared for. The light gray roof shingles were chipped and covered with black spots and some of them were missing. The outside of the house was dirty and looked like it needed painting. But, worse was the condition of the yard. Mama had planted and cared for flowering shrubs around the base of the house and Dad kept up a nice lawn in the front. Now it was dead and dried out, only the hardiest of weeds showing green. But the saddest thing of all was Mama’s vegetable garden off to the right where it would get the most sun. It was now just a collection of scrabbly weeds.
Chuck the Drummer’s car was not on the lawn and there were no sounds at all except for the occasional car back on the road. The boy made his way around the house to the storage shed behind. The door was ajar and the interior looked as it did when he last saw it. The garden and lawn care tools hung where they had always been near the door. Farther back, were the shelves of camping gear, Christmas decorations, and what Dad used to call “the what not”. To the boy, this encounter with the time before was too much. He grabbed the one remaining sleeping bag and stepped outside.
The need for warmer clothing and wanting to see if Mama was around and doing okay checked his impulse to run from the ruins of his previous life. He walked back around the house and entered it through the front door, leaving the sleeping bag on the porch.
The house was musty and smelled of cigarette smoke. Mama wasn’t in the kitchen to the right of the entry. It was mess, with a sink full of dirty dishes, a cold pot full of something on the stove with flies buzzing around it and some kind of mess on the floor. Rather than walk on into the living room, the boy turned left and walked toward his bedroom. First came JR’s room, unchanged since the crash except for the dust, spider webs and the dirty windows. His own room was pretty much the same as when he’d left. As quickly as he could, the boy stripped off the clothes he’d been wearing for the last two weeks and changed into new underwear and socks, jeans and a long sleeve flannel shirt. He grabbed extra underwear and socks and a jacket and, on his way out the door, the pillow off his bed.
After piling the things he had gathered on the porch and deciding to put it all into the sleeping bag to carry back to the lair, the boy paused. Mama might be asleep in the house. The thought overwhelmed him. As changed as she was, she was his only living connection to the time before. It took him a while to reenter what had always been his home. She wasn’t in what had been her and Dad’s bedroom. Returning to the entry, he walked into the living room. There she lay on the couch.
Her legs were curled into a fetal position, her head lay on a throw pillow and her arms reached out to the nearby coffee table. The noontime sun lit up the room through the big window opposite the couch. The boy stood in absolute silence in a room that smelled of rot and mildew. There lay his Mama, the most important person in his life. He looked at her for a while and then walked across the room thinking to wake her. When he kissed her cheek, it was cold and dewy. Shocked, he drew back and then noticed that her eyes were only half shut. They seemed to be staring at something on the coffee table. There he saw a syringe, a teaspoon and a candle that had burned out. The boy looked at the unseeing eyes, at the eroded figure lying there who had been his mother and, stepping back, at the wreck of a house that had once been his family’s home.
The boy returned to his hideout in the gully intersecting the ravine. Though the sun had yet to set, he laid out the sleeping bag on the tarp, placed the pillow at the head and the extra clothing down in the foot, climbed in and pulled the upper half of the tarp over all to shut out the world. Dark. Silent. Numb. Empty. And, alone.
The sun was well up by the time the boy crawled out of his cocoon. The weather had changed and he was glad he’d remembered to grab his jacket. After walking around the ravine for a while, both above and below the crossing path, he retired again to his improved bed. Though he hadn’t had much to eat in the last three days, he was not hungry.
As he lay there, he thought about Mama and the times before. She seemed so much younger in his memory of those times. He pictured her in their kitchen talking a mile a minute to Dad after he had come home from work. She’d tell him about her day and ask him about his. She’d pass on anything JR or the boy had told her and about what she may have heard on the radio that day. And all while bouncing around the kitchen getting dinner together in what looked like a perfectly choreographed dance. Sometimes dad would sneak up on her and grab her around the waist. She would squeal with laughter and run around the dining area with him in pursuit. That part of the dance always ended with an embrace and a kiss.
The boy thought also of just how much Mama loved growing things. She had a wide brimmed straw hat she would wear when planting or trimming the boarder bushes and flowers or working in her vegetable garden. Many were the times when he and JR would walk down the driveway from where the school bus had dropped them off and find mama out in the vegetable garden weeding or watering or gathering something for dinner.
He also thought of her singing. She would sing quietly to herself while occupied or suddenly burst out with a song that applied to what someone had just said. He fell asleep remembering how she would quietly sing to him sitting on his bed while saying goodnight.
The boy awoke suddenly from his nap, hungry and scared. He couldn’t remember his dream – only that it made him want to hide. He sat up and looked out on the early afternoon. It was cold. Staying within the sleeping bag he wriggled himself into a sitting position against the sidewall of his sleeping area. There the source of his unease gelled from fog of sleep. It was Chuck the Drummer. He had been there one morning when the boy got up. Wandering out of Mama and Dad’s bedroom in his boxers and tee shirt, he said, “Hey there, sport.” To the boy’s “Who are you”, he responded, “I’m Chuck, the new man around here.”
After the crash, Mama changed. She no longer laughed or sang. She lost interest in her garden. One night the boy heard her crying after they had gone to bed. He got up and climbed into bed with her. She clung on to him and cried until she fell asleep. It became their routine on her bad nights. And then Chuck entered their lives.
He was a member of a jazz quartet that played locally and in nearby towns. Sometimes they would go on the road to places farther away. When he was working locally, he would come back to the house late at night. Sometimes the boy would wake up and hear Mama and him talking or, sometimes, just grunting. When Chuck wasn’t working, he would hang around the house all day, mostly watching television. He smoked cigarettes and soon Mama did too. Sometimes he would make his own cigarettes and share them with her.
Then he was off work for a long time. He and Mama smoked more of his homemade cigarettes and started drinking “hooch”. After a while, Chuck became churlish. He would complain and criticize Mama. Often the boy would hear them arguing. One morning Mama’s cheek and nose were red and swollen. Another time she spent the day in bed because her side hurt.
Not long after that, on a Saturday morning, Mama came out to the kitchen in the morning to cook breakfast with a half shut eye surrounded by a dark blue ring. When Chuck came out to join her and the boy after they had finished their breakfast, he asked her if there were any cigarettes around. There weren’t. Would she get in the kitchen and fry him a couple of eggs. There weren’t any. Would she at least find him something to drink? There wasn’t anything. He started yelling bad words and calling Mama names. He came at her with is arm in the air. The boy rushed to get between them and tried to push Chuck away. Outraged, the man slapped the boy’s face and kicked him on the side of his thigh. He pushed the boy to the floor and moved toward him with rage in his eyes. The boy jumped up and ran to the door, opened it and took off. As he sprinted toward the driveway he heard “Don’t you ever come back” come from behind him.
Those memories drove the boy from his lair. He went to his lookout post, though it was later than when he usually arrived and only a few small groups of school kids crossed the ravine. The sun was already well below the tops of the trees when he saw a little boy stumbling down the path as quickly as he could. His shirt was partially untucked from his trousers, there were stains at the knees of his pants, he was crying and, at the bottom of the ravine, he tripped and fell. It was Timmy. Before he could recover, his three pursuers were upon him.
Twirple launched himself from the blind and ran at the biggest of the bullies. The force of their collision lifted the kid off the ground. One of the other bullies grabbed Twirple from behind. The third socked him next to his left eye as hard as he could. The clout hurt the kid’s hand and he stepped back. Twirple kicked at him. Though aiming for his crotch, the boy’s foot caught the bully’s leg just below the knee. A sickening popping sound was followed by the kid’s cry of pain. He turned and limped away in retreat.
Twirple then raised his leg again and kicked backward with all the force he could muster. Striking just above his captor’s right knee, the boy broke free of his grip. He too fell away and when Twirple turned around, limped off in retreat. He then turned just in time to see the first bully rushing toward him. Twirple stepped back and tripped the kid as he passed. With predatory quickness he landed in a sitting position on the kid’s chest, pinning his arms down. Twirple’s hands were instantly on the bully’s throat, his thumbs squeezing hard. Terror showed in the kid’s eyes as he struggled to breathe. Twirple stared back into them hating him for the crash, for Chuck and his Mama and for their attacking Timmy. But he knew the kid had really only done one of those things. He leaned close to the bully’s face and said, “Don’t you ever be mean to Timmy again.”
The boy let go and the kid joined the other two who were limping up the grade back toward the school. He turned around and looked at Timmy. He picked up Timmy’s lunch box and a book and after handing them back to him and tucking his shirt back into his pants, told him to go home.
As Timmy was about to reach the top, he was stopped by a loud cry that echoed up and down the ravine. It could have been the screech an animal or the lament ghost, but Timmy knew it was Twirple. As the cry faded he turned to look at the boy standing in the middle of the path. His face was buried in his hands and his whole body shook with his sobbing.
The next day Twirple did not show up in the ravine. The little boy waited for a while before continuing his walk home. It was Friday and it began to rain just as Timmy reached his house. For the rest of the afternoon and evening he kept looking out the windows at the weather. His Mom notices his unease and asked what concerned him.
“Twirple.”
“The ravine troll?”
Timmy turned and looked at his mother. “He’s a boy, Mom. There’s no such thing as trolls.”
“Well I’m sure he must live near by and is home with his mother and father.”
Timmy looked at her but said nothing. Later, when his mother came in to kiss him goodnight, he said to her “Twirple is in trouble”.
It continued to rain through the night and in the morning, while Timmy ate his breakfast, his father, Peter, noted that the temperature outside had dropped. Afterwards, he did his morning chores, watched a Saturday morning cartoon, dabbled with the puzzle he and Mom were working on together and tried to read his book. Nothing, it seemed, could divert his attention from what was going on outside.
His mother met him at the front door. He had put on his galoshes and yellow raincoat with a hood. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“Mom, Twirple is in trouble. I know it. I’m going to find him.”
“Sweetheart, I sure he is okay,” she said.”
“How? You don’t know anything about him. He could . . .”
“I’ll go with him,” said Timmy’s dad, who had quietly walked up behind his mom.
Timmy’s dad pulled on his galoshes sitting on the stairs and, while he was putting on his raincoat, Timmy’s mom called from the kitchen that John would meet them at the school.
John the Policeman was a friend of Timmy’s mom and dad from their high school days. When he, Timmy and his dad neared the center of the ravine, they found a small stream of rainwater runoff. Timmy pointed downstream and they headed off in that direction. They soon reached the small promontory on the right side where the ravine turned. Timmy and his dad continued on for several yards to where the descent toward the river began when they heard John shout, “Hey, look at this”.
When they reached him, he was looking up the bank to where a gully entered the ravine. “I’m going up to take a look,” he said. He grabbed hold of a bush above and pulled himself up and into the gully. Timmy and his dad hadn’t seen or heard from John for a minute or two when a loud “Holy crap”, filled the air.
“Pete”, he yelled, “Come the base of the wall.”
Half a minute later he showed up at the edge of the gully carrying an unconscious child. He carefully handed it down to Timmy’s dad and then slid down to the ravine floor. “He was in the drainpipe. He’s burning up with fever,” John said. “We’ve got to get him to the hospital right away.” John took the boy and Timmy’s Dad picked him up and together they all rushed back toward the cars at the school.
When I woke up I was in a bed. The room was mostly dark. A little light came through the slightly ajar door. The bed had a pillow and sheets and a blanket that were tucked tightly around me. They were clean. And warm too.
My right shoulder and upper arm were encased in a cast that also extended around my chest. A large bandage covered the left side of my head and my left eye. Every part of me ached and seemed hot, though I shivered. Breathing was hard and hurt. It felt like my lungs were full of fog. I drifted back toward sleep.
Where was I? Probably in the hospital. Who was I? A boy. What was I? A boy who had lost his Mama. Who had lost his Dad and his older brother, JR. Who had lost his home. As I named each loss, it seemed as though some part of my body disappeared. In the end I felt I was just a head, arms and legs connected to an empty shell – like one of those plastic baby dolls. I couldn’t understand how someone could live if they were empty. I started to cry.
“Twirple?”
I wasn’t sure I had really heard the word.
“Twirple?” Timmy said again and then he was out the door and down the hall before I could answer.
Almost immediately, Sarah the Night Nurse followed Timmy into the room and turned on the overhead light. “Hello there, young man”, she said cheerfully. “Nice to see you awake.” She then took my temperature, listened to my chest with her stethoscope, poked me at various points and asked how it felt. After adding a few notes to a clipboard at the end of the bed, she began to adjust things around the room and bed that obviously hadn’t moved since the last nurse had done it.
She turned off the overhead light when she left and Timmy settled back into the chair near the end of the bed. I fell back into a semiconscious state almost immediately. I remember the door opening and a couple of adults entering the room. They didn’t turn on the light and spoke in low voices. I remember when one of them picked up Timmy and they all walked out of the room.
I eventually learned that the collision with that bully caused a small crack just below the head of my humerus and another in my scapula. The cut on the side of my head had become infected. And, I had a serious case of pneumonia. It took three months for the cast to come off. Afterward, afterward I had to be careful when reaching for something above head height so as to not trigger a stabbing pain. Thus ended my dreams of pitching for the New York Yankees. The scar from the cut on the side of my face is barely visible now.
Timmy would come for short visits in the late afternoons. His mother, a tall woman with dark hair and a kind face, would leave him at the door and come back to pick him up after fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, Timmy would talk about his day in his quiet voice.
On the third or fourth morning, John walked into the room. He said, “Hi, son”, and introduced himself. Son was what he called all boys. After pulling the chair over and sitting down next to the bed, he said, “Son, we stopped by your mother’s house. She’s pretty sick now, but I think she’s going to be okay. She was taken to a different hospital.” Learning that my Mama was alive really shocked me. I really wanted to see her and barely registered John’s, “I’m afraid she is going to be there for a long time. As for you, we’re working on finding a family for you to live with while she’s away.” He put his hand on my forearm and gave a little squeeze, said he’d be back to visit again soon and left. I later learned that Charles “Chuck” McConnell was arrested on drug charges and ended up spending time in prison.
After lunch the next day, he returned along with Timmy’s mom. She came to the side of the bed and said, “Hello, Twirple. I’m Ruth Mathewson, Timmy’s mother. While your mother is recovering you will need a place to live. Timmy and I and Mr. Mathewson were hoping you would come and live with us.”
The Mathewsons lived in a big house in a subdivision in the southeast part of town. It had a covered porch in the front and when you walked into the front door, there were stairs that led to the second floor. I shared a room with Timmy, each of us sleeping in a single bed with a table between them and a lamp on the table. It turned out that Timmy liked to read, as did I. Our bedtime ritual was pajamas, tooth brushing and reading until Timmy’s mom would come in, kiss each of us on the forehead and turn off the light. Occasionally, his dad would turn off the light and then sit on the corner of Timmy’s bed and tell a story. He was really good at making up stories – mostly adventure stories about kids.
It was a little strange at first, but the Mathewsons did their best to make it seem I’d always been there. I was assigned chores and expected to abide by the daily regimen of breakfast, school, afternoon snack, doing homework, helping with dinner and the dishes, TV time and bedtime. Catching up on what I’d missed in school was not hard and my fear of being held back soon dissipated. Mrs. Mathewson had bought me new clothes, including a suit for Sundays. On Sundays, I would go to Sunday School with Timmy and then we would join his parents for the church service. Afterward came Sunday dinner, often attended by friends of the Mathewsons, including John, whom Timmy and I had taken to calling Uncle John.
A few weeks after I had moved in, while asking a question, I addressed Mrs. Mathewson as “Mom”, just as Timmy always did. She was quiet for a few seconds and then knelt down in front of me like she did with Timmy when she had something important to say. She told me that she and Mr. Mathewson couldn’t have children of their own and that Timmy was adopted. She said that he calls her mom because he doesn’t have one of his own. “But you do. And some day she will be coming back to you,“ she said. “Please call me Mrs. Mathewson or Ruth, but save mom for your mother.” Calling a grownup by her first name was strange but I preferred it to the alternative and eventually got used to it.
Living with the Mathewsons was nice. I felt welcomed and safe and . . well . . loved. But I had felt that way before. I had had a mother and a father and an older brother. Before the crash. There were times, mostly after the lights were turned out at bedtime, that memories of those days seemed wash over me. Remembering things about the days before would usually make me happy at first. But they also made me sad. Sometimes I would share my memories with Timmy. One night I started talking about JR. I told him how he always helped me with things like fixing my bike or putting a worm on a fishing hook. When I was younger, he would read to me and when we wrestled, sometimes he’d let me win. He helped me learn to throw and catch and hit a baseball. When we would fight and be mad at each other, he would come up to me some time later and just extend his hand for me to shake. The last time we fought, I was the one to extend my hand.
“And then one day when they were driving back from a Boy Scout campout, another car didn’t stop at a red light and crashed into theirs,” I said. After a while, I said, “I really miss him.” I thought Timmy had fallen asleep and lay there with tears in my eyes. After a minute or so, Timmy softly said, “Now you’re my big brother.”
Ruth was right. My Mother did come back. The hospital she had been sent to was the medical wing of the county correctional facility. After her rehabilitation, she spent most of a year in jail for drug use.
Mama came back but she was not the same. She was very quiet, reticent and almost always seemed be apologizing for living. She asked the Mathewsons if it would be okay for me to stay with them until she got back on her feet. She moved into a one-bedroom apartment and took a job as a waitress in a local restaurant. A couple of times a month, Mama would come to Sunday dinner. She’d arrive in time to help get the dinner on the table and would help clean up afterwards. During dinner she was mostly quiet, only contributing to the conversation when directly addressed. Afterward, she and I would sit together for a while and visit, sharing what we had been doing for the last week or two. Some times on weekends, she would take me to a movie or out for ice cream. Those times were the best, especially if she laughed.
We never talked about the time before. Nor did she get back on her feet well enough for me to move in with her. She and her landlady became friends and Mama eventually joined her church. And then, a little more than five years after she went away to jail, Mama got really sick. She died in the hospital after just a week.
Her funeral was held in a chapel of the mortuary. The Mathewsons and Uncle John came, as did her landlady and friends from church. Her pastor led the service and some of her friends talked about what a nice person Mama had been. I spent a long time looking at her in the casket. I wanted to see the woman I knew in the time before. I wanted to feel that Mama was at rest. All I saw was the remains of a tired defeated woman whom the funeral parlor employees had done their best to make look pretty.
Soon after the funeral, Mr. Mathewson came and sat down next to me while I was doing my homework. He told me that he and Ruth wanted to adopt me and asked me what I thought of that. I said that I would like it very much. One evening after the adoption was all settled, I walked into the living room where Ruth was working on her stitchery. She would make pictures, only instead of using paints and a brush she used a needle and different colored thread. Nervously, I asked, “Mom, can I go to the football game with Mark Lucas and his folks on Friday night? His brother is on the team.” Without looking up from her work, she said, “Yes, dear. That will be fine.” From then on, Ruth was Mom.
I didn’t go out for sports that involved throwing or physical contact, but I did make the track team. The mile was my best event. I even made it to the regionals one year. Tim, on the other hand, was a three-sport letterman. Unlike the Mathewsons, he wasn’t tall. What he lacked in height, though, he made up in strength, determination, agility and quickness. He was an all-league running back, a point guard on the basketball team and made all state as the shortstop on the baseball team. When I was in college, on a good day I could hitchhike home in around two hours. I often left early on Friday afternoons so I could catch one of Tim’s games when I got home.
I teach English and Advanced Composition now at the High School and am thinking of starting up a creative writing club. Tim is out on the west coast finishing up his residency in pediatrics. We write to each other at least once a month. Toward the end of the letter I received today he mentioned that Judy was pregnant. He said that if it was a boy, they were going to name him Twirple.
I would like to acknowledge all the help I received from the following people: Connie, our daughter, Megan, my sister, Sharon and my friends Arvid Hoppas, Carol Hayward Passar and Kris Valancia.