The Thunderbird Swing

Nancy Hartry

Uncle Ted said Jimmy bumped his head falling off the swing. He said Jimmy just seemed to let go of the chains and, when he reached the highest arc, he fell, thunk, to the ground and lay still. Uncle Ted got out of his car and ran over to Jimmy. He said he talked to him. “Jimmy. Jimmy, wake up!” He slapped Jimmy’s face. He jiggled him. When Jimmy didn’t wake up, Uncle Ted carried him to the car and placed him gently on the backseat of his Thunderbird convertible. He didn’t even stop to open up the door.

The last part is right. The getting out of the car, the talking, the slapping, the jiggling, the carrying, and even the laying down. The first part is not.

Jimmy never fell off the swing.

It was dim in the park when it happened. The streetlights had come on above the ravine, signaling all the little kids to leave. It was too early for lovers, and all the cigarette-puffing teenagers were at a community dance. Uncle Ted chose the perfect time to teach Jimmy a lesson he’d never forget.

Uncle Ted must have thought he’d get rid of the remaining kids by paying them off. He’d snapped a blue five-dollar bill over his head, folded it lengthwise, and passed it to Betty Lou, the tallest kid. “You’re the banker, my dear. Off you go, and mind the little ones don’t push and shove at the Dairy Bar.”

Uncle Ted just didn’t count on me, Cyndy, perched in a tree where the park and the parking lot meet.

It started at the beginning of the summer of 1958, on the last day of school. It was a Thursday. I know this because it was Uncle Ted’s regular visiting night at his sister’s house. Uncle Ted had made it his habit to visit Aunt Jean each Thursday ever since her eldest son, a fighter pilot, had been shot down over the English Channel in the war against Germany.

Just to be perfectly clear, I call them Aunt Jean and Uncle Ted, but they aren’t my real relatives. Jimmy and I were born ten days apart. Aunt Jean is his mom and they live in the other side of my duplex house, which is the end one before you go down into the park. My bedroom and Jimmy’s are separated by a fire wall. When we were little, we used to do Morse code messages on the wall after “lights-out,” until Aunt Jean would scream, “Stop that blooming racket!”

So, since I’ve been born, I’ve spent more time in Jimmy’s house than my own. My mom works crazy shifts at the button factory. Aunt Jean gets paid to watch me.

On the last day of school, a Thursday like I said, Uncle Ted parked in front of Aunt Jean’s duplex house. All the kids streamed out of their houses, like ants to a honey pot, to see Uncle Ted’s honey of a brand-new car. A baby blue and white Thunderbird convertible, with fins like wings.

Every kid in the neighborhood coveted that car, but no one more than Jimmy. All summer long, twenty times on Thursdays, Jimmy would say to me, “Yippee, it’s Uncle Ted Day. Don’t you love that car, Cyndy? Wouldn’t you love to drive that car more than anything in the world?”

Boys are so dumb about cars. I could have said, “Jimmy, you need a license to drive a car.” Or, “Jimmy, you have to be sixteen to drive a car!” But what was the point? I ignored him.

Every Thursday during the summer, while Uncle Ted was visiting with Aunt Jean in the back kitchen, the kids swarmed the car. They jumped on the bumper. They took little kicks at the white wall tires. They opened the doors, or slid over the doors and fell, plop, onto the white leatherette seats.

Some kids adjusted the radio or the aerial, but it was only Jimmy who sat behind the wheel. After all, Uncle Ted was Jimmy’s uncle, so he should be the driver. Once Jimmy slipped on Uncle Ted’s white gloves, no one asked him for a turn. He put on Uncle Ted’s white driving cap backwards because the peak blocked his vision.

“Rummmn. Rummmmn!” Jimmy turned an imaginary key. All the passengers ran their engines too. I did the running commentary, telling them what we were passing. Steed’s Dairy. Bush Hardware. Armitage’s Bakery. All the sights up and down King Street. We acted like a bunch of five-year-olds.

Then Jimmy always got carried away. He tooted the horn at the Ye Olde Candy Store.

Uncle Ted would burst out of Aunt Jean’s house, hollering. “You kids get away from my car! How many times do I have to tell you?”

The kids scuttled like cockroaches back to their duplex houses. Then it was only Jimmy, Uncle Ted, and me.

Uncle Ted shook his fist at Jimmy. “And to think I put you in charge!”

He turned to me. “How could you let him do it, Cyndy?” He handed each of us a chamois and we spent the rest of his visiting time polishing kid fingerprints off that car.

“It’s not much of a punishment, is it, Cyndy?” Jimmy grinned so wide, I thought his mouth would reach his sticky-outy ears.

I do admit, now, that I liked the polishing. When you thought you were done and looked at the paint sideways, there’d be just one more print. I liked huffing my breath on the baby blue paint and then polishing the marks away. It was a challenge.

Each week the routine was the same. When Uncle Ted left, he kissed Aunt Jean good-bye. He peeled a purple ten-dollar bill from his billfold and pressed it in her hand. We gave him back the chamois. He patted my head and punched Jimmy in the right shoulder.

Although Uncle Ted Day was the most exciting day of the week, Fridays were a close second because we had group lessons at the community pool.

“What’s that on your shoulder?” I asked Jimmy one Friday.

“Just a bruise. I must have fallen.”

He couldn’t fool me. That bruise on Jimmy’s shoulder was an Uncle Ted Bruise. Each week it got darker and darker, one bruise on top of the last week’s one, on top of the one from the week before, none of them getting a chance to heal between visits.

“Uncle Ted shouldn’t hit you so hard.”

“He doesn’t mean anything by it. I’m just a softy, that’s all. And he’s like a big door. He doesn’t know his own strength.”

I squinted at Jimmy. That last part sounded like Aunt Jean’s words. Hogwash! Uncle Ted may have been as tall and as wide as a door, but he was more like a screen door to my way of thinking. There was always hot air rushing out of him.

The Thursday before school went back in, the one before Labor Day, was Aunt Jean’s summer windup canasta tournament. But she was prepared to stay home and visit with Uncle Ted like usual.

“Go. Go. Jimmy and I will be fine,” said Uncle Ted. He gave Jimmy a little love-punch in the shoulder to prove it.

Don’t go, Aunt Jean, I wanted to scream. Stay home! No words came out.

Aunt Jean put on her white gloves. She pinned her straw hat on her head and snapped her purse shut. She kissed Jimmy good-bye.

“Be good,” she said, including me.

When Aunt Jean was almost out of sight, Uncle Ted turned to me and said, “Go tell your mother she wants you.” So I went and sat on my porch.

“Jimmy, keep your little friends away from my car.” He took the paper and sat in Aunt Jean’s back kitchen, where it’s cool and he could read in peace.

The kids swarmed all over the car as usual, but with Aunt Jean gone, Uncle Ted seemed madder. I think now that his anger had been building up each week for the whole summer.

When Jimmy tooted the horn, Uncle Ted came out screaming. Even I was scared and I was not involved. He yanked Jimmy out of the car and jumped in behind the wheel. Jimmy threw himself across the trunk.

“Get off. Get off, you kids.” Uncle Ted started the engine. “I’m putting this car in gear.” The car moved forward with a jerk. Then he slammed on the brakes. Forward, slam. Forward, slam, like a baby blue bucking bronco, until all the kids, laughing, fell off the car and onto the road. All except one.

Jimmy was splayed over the trunk holding on to a handle in the backseat.

Uncle Ted zoomed off down the lane into the park, with Jimmy bouncing on the back. All the kids followed.

I ran as fast as I could. My hair streamed off my neck and I galloped, trying to go faster.

When I got down into the park, the light was getting dim. The swings and the cat-poop sandbox and the picnic tables looked soft. Uncle Ted was blowing hot air about how rich and important he was and handing Betty Lou a five-dollar bill.

I shinnied up a tree and blended in with the leaves.

When all the kids were gone, Uncle Ted turned to Jimmy. He punched him in his sore shoulder and then his good shoulder and then his sore shoulder. “So you want to drive my car, do ya? Huh? Huh?”

Jimmy kept moving back during the punching and going forward to say, “Yes, I want to drive your car!” From my perch, it looked like they were doing the cha-cha dance.

Uncle Ted pushed Jimmy with two hands. “Well, you’ll have to race me for it.”

Jimmy got on his mark, lined up with the front bumper of the car. Uncle Ted tooted the horn and they were off. Uncle Ted gunning, gunning, and Jimmy pumping his legs so fast. He did pretty good. He ran straight down the parking lot. From my angle, I thought Jimmy won, but no, there had to be a rerun.

On the rerun, Uncle Ted changed the rules of the race. The car turned into a bucking bronco. It swerved into Jimmy’s lane. It cut him off, just missing him. Jimmy kept running. When he realized that Uncle Ted was chasing him, he sped up. Jimmy ran out onto the grass. Ted didn’t care. He went up and over the log that marked the end of the parking lot and drove on the grass, trying to run Jimmy down. Jimmy darted. He dodged. He leapt out of the way and dove into the backseat of the car.

I thought he was safe now. But no, Jimmy was like a burr to be shaken loose. The car lurched and Jimmy was thrown from passenger door to passenger door and back again. Oh, those sore shoulders!

I started to get down from the tree. “Stop! Stop! Stop!” I was dangling from the lowest branch when Jimmy’s body flew out the back of the car. It arced in the air and dropped to the ground, thunk. Jimmy lay still.

The rest I already said. I can’t tell it as fast as it happened.

Apparently Uncle Ted passed Aunt Jean coming home from canasta. Aunt Jean tells how she cradled poor Jimmy’s head all the way to the hospital.

Jimmy didn’t go to school on the day after Labor Day. He hasn’t been to school yet because of his head injury.

Uncle Ted still comes on Thursdays, which is fine because Aunt Jean has no other visitors but me, and Jimmy is a peck of trouble. A peck of trouble. Aunt Jean says that a visit from her only living relative makes a nice break. It’s something to look forward to.

It is now my job to scoot the kids away from the car, which is easy because I have a new technique.

“Can Jimmy drive your car?” I ask Uncle Ted sweetly. “Those diapers he wears since he fell off the swing and hurt himself don’t leak a bit.”

Uncle Ted always lets him, but I have to put down the car blanket first. Jimmy sits behind the wheel and I go rummmn, rummmmn. He bounces up and down like a baby and the other kids stay away and watch.

When it’s time for Uncle Ted to leave and he is handing over a ten-dollar bill, I say, “Aunt Jean could do with some more handkerchiefs because of Jimmy’s drooling on account of his head injury from falling off the swing.”

Uncle Ted peels two more bills off his billfold and presses them into Aunt Jean’s hand. Then Uncle Ted goes to pat Jimmy on the head. Jimmy ducks. He tries to give me a love-punch in the shoulder. I put my two hands up like a shield and kick him in the ankle.

“Cyndy!” says Aunt Jean.

I don’t say anything. What would be the point?

On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday after school, I push Jimmy on the swings. He loves to go really high and touch the sky.

Our Jimmy is not scared of anything or anybody.

Neither am I.