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SEVEN

  It was eight forty-five when we got back home, but our mother wasn’t at all angry with us for being fifteen minutes late. She had laid out hoes and rakes and gardening gloves for us to use to weed the hill with and after I put my wagon back in its place on the side yard, and put the shoestring I had found at the construction site in my desk drawer, we started on our chores.

  About an hour after we had started the yard work, Cory had come strolling up on us after having tired of the video games at 7-Eleven. He told us that he needed to mow his back lawn for his dad and then he was going to take a dip in his back pond.

  He actually had two small fishponds in his backyard. One was about four feet across and a foot deep, a circle. The other was five feet across and three feet deep, shaped like a pear. I would only go in the first of the two, not because I couldn’t tread three feet of water, but because you couldn’t see the bottom of the pear shaped pond and for some reason I believed that small, slimy things lived down there waiting to attach themselves to my feet. We told him that we would ask our mother if we could come over after we ate lunch and take a dip with him.

  After about three hours of working up old shrubs and ivy that had gotten too long and brown, our mother called us in for a meal of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

  “How much of the hill did you get done?” Mom asked as we dug hungrily into our lunches.

  With a mouth full of grilled cheese my brother mumbled, “A lot.”

  “A lot,” I agreed.

  We had too. We’d weeded about twenty feet of that hill on the side of our house. With it being about a hundred feet long, we would be able to finish it by the end of the week as our father had wanted.

  After checking on our work outside, our mother had agreed to let us quite for the day, but not before we bagged up all the vegetation that we had pulled and put it on the side of the house with the trash cans. Only then did she set us free to do as we pleased.

  “Just be home by six for dinner,” she called after us as we rushed out of the house, letting the screen door bang shut behind us. “And don’t be late this time. Your father will be upset if he has to wait on you for dinner.”

  We ran straight to Cory’s backyard. He had a long wrought iron fence and gate with a simple latch that Jason flicked to allow us entry. There was an enormous jungle gym with a swing set and playhouse that we ran under and then crossed the newly mown grass to the back. He was already in his trunks, relaxing in the bigger of the two ponds.

  At just before one it was well over ninety degrees, and sitting in the cool water was heaven. The three of us stayed in the ponds for an hour or more, splashing and running in circles, making whirlpools, until our fingertips pruned up. Then we put our shoes on and moved over to the jungle gym and played commando in the playhouse. We’d pretend there was lava under the monkey bars so we had to cross over without falling or else we’d burn.

  After another hour and a half of play we decided to get out of the heat and go on into Cory’s house. His parents were both at work. Both were limousine chauffeurs. His father also rented out a small, single prop Cessna airplane that pulled long advertisements from its tail on weekends.

  The inside of Cory’s house-in the summertime-was always kept at a cool sixty-six degrees. And after a few hours in the scorching sun, it felt like walking into a meat locker. It was bliss.

  We decided to see what his sister Christy was up to, and as usually, she was in her bedroom listening to records on the stereo their father had given her after he’d bought the family a new one.

  Christy Dayborne was two years older than Cory and Jason and although we were younger than her, she never seemed to mind us hanging out in her room. We even humored her at times by playing Barbie dolls. She was way cool.

  And now there were four.

  We all sat and goofed around, listening to her record collection until six that evening, by which time my brother informed them that we needed to get home for our dinner. Cory’s parents would be home soon as well.

  “Come on Ricky,” he said and we headed out of the room and back into the June heat.

  But as we were crossing the street, Cory called my brother back over. “Hey, ask your mom if you can spend the night tonight.”

  “Can I spend the night too,” I asked him, not wanting to be excluded.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Cory said with a disgusted look on his face, and then punched me in the arm good-bye.

  And Jason said what he always said to Cory when he asked him to stay the night. “You think it will be alright with your parents?”

  “Do they ever care?” Cory’s usual answer.

  His parents were those cool parents that you rarely had to ask permission from to do something. They never kept tabs on Cory the way most parents did with their children. It wasn’t that they didn’t care what he was up to; it was probably just the way they were raised themselves. That and his parents got drunk most evenings and tended to go to bed before he did. So he was free to do what he wanted until all hours of the night. This reason alone was the best for spending the night at his house. We could sneak out and they’d never be the wiser.

  When we got back to our house our dinner was already on the table. My father sat in his usual spot, mom poured milk into everyone’s glasses. After washing our hands, my brother and I joined our family. Our mother said grace, and food was eaten. There was always little talk at our table. My father usually asked his one question to us, “How was school today?” But being summer and having no classes it wasn’t brought up. Instead halfway through the meal, it was Jason who got the conversation rolling.

  “Is it alright if we stay at Cory’s tonight?”

  Mom’s fork hesitated an inch from her mouth, buttered noodles unraveling as she seemed to think it over. Finally the food went in and she chewed not only her food but also the question that had been asked. She was a loving and very open-minded mom and although she knew that Guy and Janeal Dayborne partook in the drinking of spirits at home, she always trusted them and knew they were dear friends. I don’t think she ever knew just how plastered they actually got at night though.

  It was a rare time when she wouldn’t let us spend the night at a friend’s house, with the exception of Steve Hanel, whom she thought was a little old for us, although we hung around with him on a daily basis. She also didn’t care much for his older brother, Jacob. No one did.

  After finishing her mouthful and mulling it over for a few more moments, she looked up at my father who was paying attention to nothing but what was on the dish in front of him. “Is that alright with you, Gary?” she asked.

  Looking up from his half eaten chicken breast, my father, lost in his own world, hadn’t heard any of the conversation. “What?” he asked back.

  She wiped her mouth with her napkin and placed it back on her lap. “The boys want to know if they can stay the night at the Dayborne’s tonight. Is that alright?” she said again looking more concerned this time.

  He looked at Jason, and Jason looked back with pleading eyes. He looked at me, and I looked back with a smile. He looked at our sister who sat in her chair with her thumb in her mouth, her other hand twirling a lock of hair behind her right ear. After a moment she smiled back at him around her thumb. Our father stuck his tongue out at her and made her giggle.

  When he turned back to mom, he said with his trademark sigh, as if the weight of the world had become that much heavier, “I don’t care. It’s up to you, Juanita,” then went back to his dinner.

  After another bite or two of food, she turned to Jason and said, “Its okay, but, you stay inside the house. No sneaking out.”

  “Okay. Thanks, mom,” Jason said.

  “You boys be home by nine tomorrow to start on the hill again. You guys did a good job today. I want to see that kind of progress everyday this week,” our father said to the both of us.

  “Okay, pop,” my brother and I said at the same time.

  Jason and I finished our supper and then head
ed to the hall closet to grab sleeping bags. Mom packed us a bag with our pajamas in to take with us.

  We always stayed up late watching movies when we spent the night at Cory’s. According to him, he hadn’t fallen asleep before midnight in years. One of the reasons I believe he got held back a grade was from falling asleep in class; the result of too many late nights in front of the boob tube.

  Janeal Dayborne made us popcorn from their cool new air popper. The kind that looked a little like a coffee maker with a yellow visor pointing down so you could catch the popped kernels in a bowl. After she brought in three separate bowls and set them in front of us, she brought us each an RC cola. That was one thing that I always thought was neat, cola before bed. It would never happen at our house.

  And after settling us down with our snacks and drinks in our sleeping bags in the living room of their house, Guy and Janeal headed back to their bedroom, she with a glass of red wine, and he with a vodka martini, dirty.

  And that was pretty much a typical day for us in the few summers we had all spent together. A little bit of work around our houses and then a whole lot of play outdoors, anywhere we could find something interesting to do. Like exploring new areas of our side of town, or just playing in one another’s backyards. Some days we’d play baseball in the street and others we’d have boxing matching with the kids around the neighborhood on someone’s front lawn. We might ride our bikes down to the 7-Eleven to play video games or find a new construction site going up to play in when the workers weren’t around.

  Life was good for us back then. Every kid should be able to grow up in a safe environment the way we did. We didn’t have any worries, except maybe when we were going to be able to afford a pack of baseball cards or if we had money for the ice cream man.

  But as the old saying goes, life has got to throw you that proverbial curve. That summer in Corona changed Steve, Jason, Cory and me. Because you see, something evil was happening in our city, our side of the city for that matter and it would soon creep into our neighborhood. We didn’t know it then, us in our blissful stupor, but within two weeks the four of us would have committed an act that no child should ever have to. We live with it to this day and can never take it back. Our only hope is that we are forgiven for it at the end of our lives.