“This book is ruined,” she said holding the cherished novel in her hands. “Davey, I trusted you with this book. You promised me you’d be extra careful with it.”
“I’m sorry Mrs. Corcoran. IIII really aaam. IIII was at the ppppool and a friend of mine, Tttttimmy threw it to me and itttt sank into the wwwwwwater. IIIII really didn’t mean tttooo…”
She removed her glasses and peered at me. “Davey, is that a reason or an excuse? Either way this book is ruined. Follow me,” she said with authority.
She sat down on her chair and slid in closer to her desk. Opening a drawer, she pulled out a pink slip of paper, and began to write. She handed it to me.
“The cost of the book that you ruined will be five dollars. You have two weeks to bring in the money; otherwise it will be treated as an overdue book at an additional cost of two cents per day.” Her voice softened. “Davey, I hate to do this, but you must learn when somebody entrust you with something you must take that trust seriously. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes mmma’am. I uuunderstandddd.”
She took in a deep breath, gave me an exasperated look then pointed at a nearby chair. “Davey, sit down for minute, please. We need to talk.”
She sat across from me and removed her glasses from the bridge of her nose. They swung back and forth from the beaded chain that hung around her neck. She sat near me and I thought I smelled a sweet scent of perfume, lilac I think. She wore a white starched blouse with an ivory cameo stickpin over the top button.
“Davey, I like you, but there are some things that you must remember. This is a library. It is a place where people come and find books that they want to read or do research on a school project or just pass some time reading, like you did when you first came in here. However, these books are precious. Think about it, these books contain the words of great people passed down through the ages. Imagine that the greatest people of all time have their voices right here in this library.” She looked away for a moment as a mother and daughter entered the library, smiled and went to the other side of the big room.
“Sometimes when I walk through the aisles here,” she began again… speaking so gently I could hardly hear her, “I can hear their voices asking… no begging me to read their words inside the book. But when a book is destroyed, you destroy not only a book but everything the author has said in that book. You silence the author’s words for anyone else to ever hear. No one can hear what they have to say Davey. Ever again. Do you understand me?”
“Yes ma’am, I do now.”
She stood up and smiled then hugged me. “Go read, Davey,” and walked away, back to her desk.
I walked outside and I looked at the pink paper in my hand—the book was going to cost me five dollars. Five whole dollars. All the money I earned for the radio was now going towards paying off the debt for this book.
I called Sunny and ask her if I could pick some of their mint from their backyard. I needed to make some money and hoped I could sell it again to the local restaurants. Five dollars plus the twenty dollars for the radio. I was never going to get enough money to pay Mr. Jost.
I could almost hear Sunny smile over the phone line. “Sure, Davey, anytime,” she said. “We have lots of the stuff growing in the backyard,” she told me when I called her. When I got to her house, I saw she was right, wild mint was everywhere. I began to cut the stems and piled stacks of the fragrant leafy elixir on some wet newspaper on the ground next to me.
Sunny walked down the hill and stood over me. “Here, try this,” Sunny said shoving a spoonful of food into my mouth. It was spicy but very good.
“Hmmm. That’s good what is that called?”
“It’s called dukbokkie. It’s a traditional Korean stew. Here’s some tea for you. You must also learn how to savor and distinguish the subtle flavors of various teas. There are millions of types of teas from all over the world. What did you think of the dukbokkie?”
“Tasty but spicy.”
She ran back into the house only to return moments later with more food.
“Here, try this,” she said handing me a pancake dripping with syrup. “It’s called hoeddeok.”
It was delicious. “That is really good and very sweet. You got any more?” I asked. She beamed at the compliment. “And some more tea? What are you doing all this cooking for anyway?”
“I’m practicing on you to see what you like to eat and well… my grammy wants me to learn to cook so I can write down all of her recipes from the old country. I’ll be right back.” I watched her run away and saw her for what she was, a sweet, loving, sensitive girl… who I had fallen in love with from the first moment I saw her.
She was back in a few minutes with a rolled cabbage dish. “This dish is called kimchi. It is a traditional dish in Korea.”
I tasted the cabbage roll and the sour and spicy taste filled my mouth. Ughh! I wanted to look for a place to hide or spit it out, but I didn’t want to hurt Sunny’s feelings. I took a huge gulp and swallowed. I didn’t like it, but I still smiled at her.
“Good? Did you like it?” she asked.
I was at a loss for words. My mom always said to tell the truth, I fudged a bit. “Yes, but it’s just not my favorite,” I told her politely. “But everything else was very good,” I hastened to add.
“It takes a while to get used to it. You’ll learn to love it.” She smiled and with that smile, I knew she was right…about everything.
That week I sold three more batches of mint, but the managers of the restaurants all said they were going into their slow season and they weren’t sure how much more mint they could use. They told me to keep coming by anyway, just to check with them. They invited me to try their lunch specials. I told them I had errands to run for my mom. They were too expensive for me.
I had to try something else to raise money to pay for the radio and now the book.
Finally, I called Mr. Jost. “Let me know when your car needs washing Mr. Jost and I’ll be right over.”
“Davey, you can come over now if you like, and I’ll review the instructions on how to wash it with you. Okay?”
“Sure Mr. Jost. That sounds great,” I said with mock enthusiasm. Uggh.
Three hours later, I was done washing his car, all for one whole dollar. Never again, I promised myself, never.
I called Timmy and told him where I spent the last three hours.
“Oh man, I’m really sorry about the book. I’ll give you the money if you want since I was the one who threw it to you.”
“Are you kidding me? Man that would be great. It’s five bucks.” My spirits soared until I remembered who it was I was talking to on the phone. Timmy.
“Okay good. In the meantime, let’s go down to the lake. Just you and me. No Sunny. She’s been acting a little strange lately. Have you noticed?”
“No… not really.” He looked at him closely before saying, “See you after lunch.”
I met him at the corner. We walked and walked. On Midland Avenue, we stopped by a small stream that ran underneath the four-lane road. He reached inside his rucksack and pulled out a small bag. Timmy took out a firecracker that was nearly as big as my hand with a huge wick sticking out of the middle. He took one for himself, one for me then pulled out some matches.
“What’s this?” I asked him.
“They call it an M-80. They use them in the army to simulate hand grenades. Dutch gave ’em to me before he went into the joint. It’s so cool. They are really loud. Hold it a minute, while I light ’em.”
“Are you crazy, I could blow off my hand off!”
“Chicken?”
“No, I’m nnnnot ccchicken.”
“I always thought you were a chickenshit. Just hold it while I light both of ’em. Unless you really are a chickenshit? Just hold it, like this. And we’ll see who the real chickenshit is. Hold it. The first one to throw it away is a chicken. Got it?”
He lit both fuses, and they began to burn. I could not take my eyes off mine until I looked up at Timmy, he was grinning some crazy grin. He wasn’t even watching the fuse burn. The wick kept burning, lower and lower. Then I could feel the hot flames coming closer and closer to my fingers. Finally, I threw it over the bridge and it sounded like a cannon when it exploded. It echoed underneath the viaduct over and over. It was really loud. Timmy still held onto his, all the while he kept grinning. Holding. Holding. Holding, then he finally threw it. It exploded about five feet in front of us. It was so loud it sounded like a bomb.
“I knew you were a chickenshit. Come on let’s go.” He was wrong; I just wasn’t crazy like him.
We walked down Lackland past Brown Road and past the new church, which was on one side of the street and the new bank on the other side. It was hot, but a slight cool breeze made it bearable. I had my rucksack, my book, my journal, an army canteen filled with water and my new compass in my army surplus shoulder bag. I carried my bag everywhere. Two blocks past the church, we turned onto Sherwood Drive.
It was like a different world there on Sherwood. Tall pine trees stood watch over the shady narrow street with the big homes set off far away from the street. The houses were big and majestic with huge front lawns with pools around the back hidden by fences and landscaping. I loved this street. I knew a couple of kids who lived here and they were normal just like me. Many of the houses were empty because the neighbors went to Cape Cod, Nantucket, Block Island, or elsewhere back east.
We walked down the hill to the end of the tree-shrouded street until we could see Lake Sherwood off in the distance. It was a private lake just for residents. We jumped a fence then cut through a side yard that stretched all the way down to the lake’s shore and sat on a hill under an old oak tree overlooking the lake. It was cool and sheltered underneath the tree.
Timmy threw his old carpetbag on the ground and we laid down on the soft bed of pine needles and grass.
We watched lake boats go whizzing by with skiers trailing behind them churning up the frothy water with their skis. We made sure we were back from the tree line so no one could see us as they went by on the lake. It was all private property with no-trespassing signs posted everywhere. It never stopped Timmy.
“So let’s see, how much money do you need?” asked Tim as we lay back looking up at the sky.
“Well, I need five dollars for the book and twenty dollars for the radio. I have just enough money for the book and I washed Mr. Jost’s car so I only owe him nineteen dollars. And I got three dollars from the mint I sold to the local restaurants.”
“Well, then you’ll need to wash it another sixteen times and then you’ll be set.” He laughed.
I knew then he had no intention of paying for the book he destroyed. I was on my own to come up with the money to pay for it.
He reached into his bag and pulled out two plastic cups, a bag of ice, a soda, and something else… a bottle of cherry sloe gin. “You’ll like this, Davey boy. Oh and something else,” he pulled out a new pack of Newport cigarettes. “These are my mom’s cigarettes, but she’ll never miss ’em. What I was thinkin’, we could always walk into that new bank and ask them for some money. They don’t know us there.”
I laughed. “Yeah, but first of all, I don’t have an account with ’em or any money in their bank and I certainly don’t want a loan from them.” He kept pulling more stuff from the bag including six long Slim Jim sausage sticks.
I could not believe everything he had in the bag. “Where did you get all of this stuff?” I finally asked him. “We could get in a lot of trouble with all this gin stuff,” I said looking around the yard and on the lookout for cops.
“It don’t matter where I got it, I just got it, okay? And about the bank, hell we don’t need no account, we just walk in, ask them for money, and just show them this withdrawal slip,” he said as he pulled out the pistol his brother had given him to keep.
“Whoa!” I slid far away from him. “Ttttimmy are you crazy. You ccccould go to jail with that, Tim.”
“Who’s going to tell the cops? You?” He waved the gun around in front of me.
“No not me, bbbbut if anyone sees you with it and ccccalls the cops they’ll throw us both in the ccclink.”
He put the gun back inside his jeans. He just sat there smiling with a grin from ear to ear.
I heard a noise behind us, somewhere underneath the tree, in the tall grass near us. I sat up to look around. Then I saw it. A robin’s nest had fallen from the branch above and two late hatchlings were chirping for their parents. Sad. Timmy saw it at the same time and walked closer to it.
“Timmy, leave it,” I pleaded never knowing what he may do. “My dad says parents will not come back to them if they smell human scent on it. Leave it.”
He turned to look at me for a moment. “It’s not right to just leave ’em here. They’ll die if we don’t do something.” Then he cupped his hands together, grabbed a pile of leaves inside his palms, and scooped up the fallen nest. He lifted it and gently returned it to its former location marked by a remnant of twigs and leaves. “There that should do it. Hopefully, the parents won’t be able to smell me and will come back to them.” Then he smiled. A large feather drifted down from underneath the nest and he picked it up, put it his hair and smiled a big grin. He looked so goofy, but I’ll never forget what he did that warm summer afternoon by the lake. I admired him for what he just did.
“Wow man, that was great,” I said.
“Ah, forget it. Here have some,” he handed me the soda with the cherry sloe gin. It was sweet and harsh at the same time. “This is like cough syrup,” I said, as I tasted it.
“Yeah. Good, isn’t it? Hey, help yourself to a cigarette, they’re real smooth.”
I lit one and took in a drag of smoke, and started coughing and could not stop.
“Menthol. My mom smokes menthol, yuck, but what the hell man, they’re free. What’s better than free? Huh?”
“Where did you get the gin?” I asked taking another drink. It tasted smoother now.
“At Irv’s liquor. When he wasn’t lookin’ I grabbed a bottle off the shelf and shoved it in my pants. Here have some more.” He poured more in my cup then he poured some soda. It looked like he had done this many times before. I took a bite out of a Slim Jim, but it tasted funny at first, like cherry.
I drank more from the cup and had another cigarette. My head began to spin, and my stomach was churning.
“There’s a lot of things we can do to make some money to pay for the book you screwed up,” he said leaning with his back against the tree. “We just start asking around. Pick up soda bottles and take them into Weis’s and they’ll give you a two cents for each one.”
I was no longer listening and put my head between my legs to stop my world from spinning.
“Hey man, don’t do that, you’ll get sick. Lift your head up and focus on something. Here look at the boat on the lake.” The boat stopped and began motoring towards the shoreline. The people in it began to yell about it being private property.
“Aw shit, they’ve seen us, and I bet they’ll call the cops. Come on. Davey, can you stand? Let’s go. We need to get outta here and fast.” We picked up all our stuff and ran.
I went to bed early that night and slept until eleven the next morning. From that moment on, I got sick if someone even mentioned a menthol cigarette. But I fell asleep still remembering what Timmy did that day and that goofy-looking feather he stuck in his hair. Sometimes, he surprised me.