 |
| Rick, Mick and Joe |
Dad's remedy is to shave their heads - just around the wound - to prevent infection. Sometimes all three of them sport a bald spot at the same time. There is the day, for instance, the three of them squeeze into a cardboard box, careen down the second floor stairs, and knock all their heads together at the bottom.
 |
| Rick, Mick and Joe - 50 years later |
"Where do they come from?" I demand of my mother. She laughs but insists they are neither adopted nor stolen from wolves. A troublesome thought occurs. Perhaps I am the adoptee.
Everything they do is foreign to me. I particularly cannot fathom their fixation for collecting other worldly creatures. One summer they're obsessed with crawdads. Every afternoon they sling a half a dozen buckets and pails to City Park to fill with crawdads from the big lake. Their method is ingenius - they attach a dab of liver to the end of a piece of string and lure the things out.
Our next door neighbor, little Chris Romer, is their partner in crime. By the end of the week, the four of them triumphantly cart home more than 300 crawdads.
"Let's build them their own town!" Joe suggests. In a corner of the Romers' yard is a huge sand pile. Chris and my brothers dig a mammoth hole in the middle, line it with plastic and fill it with water. They dump all 300 crawdads into the water hole and grin at each other with deep satisfaction.
The next morning, Mrs. Romer screams as she discovers four crawdads nestled together under the morning paper by her front door. Similar cries of horror are heard up and down Eudora Street. Every crawdad has escaped, and our neighbors' yards, porches and sidewalks are mysteriously taken over by the tiny, horrible creatures.
"It's like a plague from the Bible," old Mrs. Lazaar warns my mother. "A sign of the end times," she shakes her head soberly. Everyone knows Mrs.Lazaar's mind is leaving her, but Mom kindly nods her head in sympathy. And perhaps a little fear. It's far better for Mom to believe the Apocalypse is imminent rather than that Joe, Mick and Rick are responsible for the Crawdad Coup.
That same summer, after a big rainstorm, Joe, Mick and Rick splash through the gutters armed with jars to collect tadpoles. Unbeknownst to Mom and Dad, they sneak the jars upstairs to their room and gaze in fascination at thousands of beautiful wiggling tadpoles. A few days later, all of us wake up scratching and covered with bites. Turns out the tadpoles are mosquito larvae. Dad grounds my brothers for two days.
No matter the season, my brothers find trouble. In winter, behind the shrubbery at the Masonic Temple at the end of the corner, they fling snowballs at moving cars on Montview Boulevard then duck down to hide. The moving driver of one car turns out to be Dad coming home from work. Joe, Mick and Rick stare at each other then run like hell down the alley to make it home before Dad turns the corner on Eudora. The three of them are innocently playing in the front yard when Dad pulls up.
"How was work, Dad?" Mick greets him brightly.
Dad looks sharply at the three of them contentedly making snow angels. Nothing, however, appears to be amiss. He grunts in irritation and strides into the house.
Dad is no fool. He understands his boys are usually plotting some sort of chaos. Mom, however, is a soft touch and can usually be persuaded that Rick would never be guilty of breaking the McCabes' window with a baseball or that Joe would ever smoke with his seasoned fifth grade buddies.
She is never fooled, however, by Mick.
Mick is far and away the most troublesome of my three brothers, and even though Mom watches him like a hawk, he manages to elude her on many occasions. One afternoon, home from school for the lunch hour, Mick is entrusted with a couple of dollars. Mom instructs him to run down to the neighborhood grocery store for a loaf of bread. "Get some peanut butter, too!" she calls after him.
Mick makes the purchases and has a little money left over. He decides it's a fine day to treat himself to some candy and ditch school. After lunch, instead of heading back to Blessed Sacrament, he veers over to the Masonic Temple and hides behind the hedge with his stash of candy. In the meantime, Blessed Sacrament School calls Mom to tell her Mick has gone AWOL. But Mick isn't worried. He's crouched behind the hedge two blocks away and figures Mom'll never spot him.
After inhaling a Big Hunk, he peaks his head through the hedge. Mom is on the other end of the block searching intently. He whisks his head back behind the bushes, but it's too late.
"MICKY BROWN!" Mom is enraged. Before he knows it, she's collared him and drags him by the arm back to school.
"Mom! How'd you..." Mick sputters. "How'd you see me?" He is amazed by my mother's super power vision.
Mom pushes him through the school doors and into Mrs. Farley's classroom where class has been in session for the last half hour. Mick is made an "example of" in front of all his classmates. This is what happens to little boys who ditch school. But the real punishment awaits him at home.
"Just wait," Mom, still enraged, whispers to him before she releases him to Mrs. Farley. "Wait until your dad comes home."
To be fair, my brothers aren't always wreaking havoc. Joe is the talk of the neighborhood when he wins the local King Sooper's YoYo contest. He's awarded the coveted gold championship yoyo and entertains every kid on the block for months afterward.
Rick is voted MVP for his sixth grade performance in the Denver Athletic Club football league. At the end-of-the-year banquet, he receives a trophy and a football signed by every Denver Bronco.
And Mick? Mick is caught by the nuns behind the trash bin at recess showing all the fifth grade boys a Playboy magazine.
And then he waits for Dad to come home.
No comments:
Post a Comment