About thirty minutes later the front doorbell let out its lively ring. By this time, Mom was up and around, worrying about how the house looked for company. But it wasn't company. It was just Wooly, Chris and Rick.
"What are you boys going to do today?" mom asked.
After what seemed like an eternity of kicking at the carpet with our black Chucks trying to think up a good lie, Bob said, "We really haven't figured it out yet."
"Well, just be careful." Mom was always worried about that. I guess all moms are.
"Well will, ma! See ya!" I said, trotting energetically out the door.
"Way to lie to my mom, Bob," I said once outside, only half seriously.
"Well," he said, "I had to say something."
Passing the Turner's big yellow house on the corner, I turned around and saw my kid brother running quickly behind us.
"Oh, great," sighed Wooly. "Just what we need, a little kid to tag along."
"Hey, it's ok," I replied. "He's all right. Besides, I told him he could come with us today. So leave him alone, will ya?"
When we got to the house, Rick was the first one inside. He found a box of nails and some staples and I found some Elmer's glue and sandpaper. Bob's discovery of a bag full of assorted goodies such as paint, tubing and spackle completed the booty.
We played with our find for nearly an hour before someone suggested we do something else. I was the first on in the rafters. The house was still pretty much a skeleton, and we pretended it was a pirate ship and I was the dreaded Captain Kidd. We'd heard of him in our literature books, but none of us had ever read enough to know exactly who he was. We just knew he was a pretty nasty guy.
"All right, you scurvy dogs," said I in my best guttural buccaneer growl, "hoist up the mizzen mast and swap the poop deck. We've got a long sea mile to go a'fer the journey's through." It was very good outlaw talk, but we had excellent imaginations.
After an hour or so of playing pirate, in which each of us took his turn being his favorite sea dog, we all decided to see what was in the basement. I had always been afraid of basements.
I had a monster living in mine that would try to get me every time I went down there. He did that until I was about fifteen, then, all of a sudden, he moved out. But I wasn't going to let my irrational fear of basements stop me from exploring this one. After all, this house wasn't finished. Maybe the monster hadn't had time to move in yet.
There was no light when we got to the bottom of the steps. The cool, concrete dampness of the air struck us all and sent shivers down each spine. "I don't like this," Bob said.
"Yea, I don't either," said Chris. "Let's go back up."
"What in the world are you afraid of?" I asked. "Monsters?"
Laughing nervously, I could tell they all had monsters in their basements, too.
"Wait a minute," said Wooly. "I found a pack of matches upstairs. Let's have a look around."
All right, Wooly! Monsters hate fire!
Holding the matches out in front of us, we explored the various nooks and crannies. It smelled of concrete and moldy water and there really wasn't much to see. There were just some bare rafters and an open bag of cement in the corner. Even that, though, wasn't enough to motivate us to stay down there any longer. We only had four matches left, and every time one would burn out we could all feel the monster of the house getting closer.
Back upstairs, Wooly started for home. "Where are you going," I asked.
Wooly turned around and pulled his jeans up past his belly button. "I've got piano lessons this afternoon," he said. "I've got to go or my mom said she'd never let me out of the house to play ball again. I'll see you guys a little later."
We could all empathize with Wooly's situation. We'd all heard the very same thing from our moms for one thing or another. We always believed it, too, although I'm not sure why. Our moms were always trying to get us out of the house.
"Well, what do you want to do now?" said Chris. "We've still got a little while before it's time to go in for lunch."
After standing there for several minutes in complete silence, we all started looking to Bob to come up with a brilliant plan. After all, it was his responsibility.
"What?" he said with a dumb look on his face.
"What do you mean, 'what?’? We're waiting for you to tell us what we're doing next."
Bob turned his head from corner to corner and from ceiling to floor. "Well, we could go down to the dump and watch them bury the trash."
A huge sigh came from each one of us. "We did that two weeks ago, Bob," said Chris. "Isn't there something better we can do?"
Bob scrunched his eyes up in much the same way Wooly had when Mr. K called him Mr. Woolwine. "We could go climb the stairs at the school annex and throw Mr. Turner's rotten tomatoes off."
Another sigh. "Bob we did that last week," I said. "Besides, I don't think he's got any left."
"Oh, yea," he said, thrusting his hands into his pockets in frustration. "Hey!" he bellowed, pulling his hands out. "I still have four matches that Wooly gave me downstairs. We could do something with them!"
We all liked the idea. The only question was what we were going to do with them.
"We could go flick them at Karen Staggle!" said Bob.
We all laughed. None of us liked her much, but the idea wasn't a very good one.
"We could build a fire and pretend we're in the Yukon."
"That's a little better, Bob, but it's too warm out to do that," said Chris.
Bob sighed. He was starting to lose patience when his eyes lighted up like a bonfire on a cold night in January.
"We could go burn up the hornet's nest over on Mr. Alarcon's garage!"
I looked at Chris and he looked at Bob. Bob looked at my kid brother and my brother looked at me. With eyes filled with excited anticipation, we headed toward the garage.
Coming soon - Part III
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