Come Dark

     When I was a kid, a guy could wander.  A fresh summer morning, any day of the week, a fellow could open his door, walk outside, and just go.  As long as you were back “come dark.” The folks never worried.  Dad had a job five out of seven, but he wouldn’t have worried even if he had been unemployed like Timmy Sloman’s dad.  I think parents were made of tougher stuff in those days.  They had grit. 

     There had never been a “check-in” policy with our parents; just the generally understood, “Be home come dark.”  My friend Derrick and I had heard rumors of a kid on the next block whose parents had him check-in every hour.  We shuddered to think of the humiliation.  That kid was sure to never have friends.  Because of that knowledge, we stuck pretty close to the “home come dark policy.”  We knew that worried parents sometimes behaved irrationally, some to the point of instituting check-in policies.  That was a fate too horrible to chance.

     There weren’t any “bad people” back then; at least none that we knew of.  Oh sure, the teenagers use to chase us and pound on us a bit.  Once they even tied Derrick up and left him in the woods overnight.  Luckily his parents didn’t find out, because they thought he was staying the night at my house.  The big kids were just having fun though, and Derrick did sort of deserve it.  He and Willy Slick had snuck into Willy’s brother, Sylvester’s, bathroom and poured melted Vaseline into his shampoo.  I’d have been mad too if I was forever stuck with the nickname “Slick Slick.”  It was too bad Sylvester was one of the “big kids.”

It’s not like they were “bad people.”  The phase of the big kids terrorizing us didn’t last for long though.  About the same time they all started smoking out in the woods, they got nicer.  Well, maybe not nicer, but they stopped chasing and pounding on us.  They just seemed sleepier most of the time; hungrier too. 

      I overheard my parents saying once that those teenagers should stop smoking those funny cigarettes.  I was mighty worried that someone really might make them stop.  I was sure if that happened, the chasings and the poundings would begin again.  Derrick was of the same opinion.

     One August Sunday when we were eight, just after returning home from church, Derrick and I overheard the older kids talking about this awesome waterfall where some guy had fallen and broken his back.  We were really disappointed later when we found out the guy with the broken back wasn’t there anymore.  I guess we thought they’d just keep him there like the old cannon at Cannon Beach; a living statue.  The least they could have done was put up a bronze one.  After all, this was history.  It would have been a whole lot cooler than a rusty old cannon that they don’t even shoot off anymore.  What’s the fun in that?  The waterfall was cool though. 

     We followed the big kids all the way to the waterfall, being very sneaky and careful so they wouldn’t know we were there.  We didn’t want them to “shake us off their trail” like the bad guys always tried to do in the TV westerns when they were headed for a hide-out, or a lost gold mine.

     We crept along through the woods behind the big kids after they had turned off the road.  The trail wound through a sea of salal and ferns under the dark green canopy of conifer branches.  Not far into the woods, the trail began to mirror the twists and turns of a stream that had carved a trench into the forest floor. 

     Derrick and I hopped down into the stream bed, so as to be more stealthy trackers of our quarry.  As we splashed through the shallows, clanked over piles of rock and did the eight-year-old version of cursing, from tripping over branches, we approached our unwary foes.  From our hidden position near to the big kids, we could hear their quiet conversation, though it was a little too low to understand.  Then one voice raised above the others, “Boy, I think I’m ready to head home.  If there were any little kids around they might want to follow, so they wouldn’t lose their way home.”  I thought it was weird the way big kids couldn’t help being loud sometimes.

     “Yeah, I think I’m ready to head home too,” said another voice.  “You’re right though.  A little kid wouldn’t want to forget how to get home.” 

I silently agreed with the second talker.  It was a good thing there weren’t any little kids around; at least none I could see.

“Yep,” the second voice said again, “a little kid sure wouldn’t want to be out here come dark.”

     COME DARK! The words screetched through my brain like a metal leafrake on a chalkboard.  Derrick and I both stared wide eyed at each other.  Besides the obvious reasons for not being caught out COME DARK, reasons known by every adventurer that valued his soul and skin, there was the possibility that our parents might decide that they needed to institute a check-in during the day; maybe even two or three times.  We couldn’t risk it.

     At the sound of the big kids trudging back through the forest toward the road, we began to scramble to the top of the gully where we had been concealed.  Just short of the brink the sandy clay mixture that made up the wall crumbled and deposited us back in the stream.  Derrick pointed out that it was a good thing we had landed in the water because it had help wash some of the red clay out of our white Sunday school shirts, which we had still been wearing when we set out on the waterfall adventure. 

After several minutes of the same repeated failures, we finally made it to the trail.  We turned in the direction the big kids had headed and we started to follow.  We couldn’t see them, but luckily big kids are easy to track, by sound and smell if for no other reasons.

Suddenly, Derrick froze.  “We ain’t,” Derrick said and then flinched violently.  His mom was an English teacher and I often saw that reaction out of him following a grammatical faux pas.  “We haven’t seen the falls yet,“ he corrected.

     “Yeah. That would be embarrassing.”

     “Yeah.”  We both turned and headed down the path in the opposite direction of home.  Somewhere ahead we knew that we would find monstrous torrents of water thundering down with rock crushing, and back breaking force, to the boulders below.

It didn’t take us long to find the falls.  The trail ended abruptly at a cliff.  To the right of us, the stream that we had been following leapt out of V-shaped gouge in the top of the cliff.  From there, it fanned out slightly as it curved earthward, then accelerated downward until crashing into a small pool, fifty feet below us. 

     Next, we did what every boy between the ages of 5 and 80 would have done.  We started throwing stuff.  Everything that was not nailed down got thrown.  Happily, we were in the woods and nothing was nailed down.  Rocks, sticks, small plants and old beer cans sailed over the brink in a seemingly endless stream.

We watched, time after time as the debris we threw leapt out, (fanned out if composed of loose materials) and headed earthward, crashing to the bottom of the chasm.  After an indeterminable time, Derrick and I noticed that the stuff thrown mimicked the waterfall in the way it leapt, curved, accelerated and the crashed.  This was the beginning of our road to understanding physics.  At that tender age we were touched with insight into the way the universe worked.  Derrick said it best after using both hands to uproot a large fern and throw it into the chasm, using a modified hammer-throw style.

     “Cool.  Did you see that?”

     Later in life it turned out that our first physics lesson really took with Derrick.  He is now working with a highly respected engineering firm and has several clusters of letters after his name.  I, being the brighter of the two of us, have not yet decided what I want to be, if I ever grow up. 

     Eventually, the thrill of throwing stuff took a break.  Any boy, of any age, will tell you that it never really goes away.  During that break we decided that the real fun would be to go down in the canyon, which had been washed out by years and years of that stream racing downhill toward the sea.  Well not really the sea, but the lake. 

     It took Derrick and I surprisingly little time to get to the bottom of the ravine.  We would have been down sooner if it hadn’t taken several minutes to find a good overhang in the bank, on which to ride down.  When we reached the bottom and looked up we were very disappointed to see that there weren’t any other overhangs on which we could repeat our tumbling method of decent. 

We quickly got over our disappointment when we realized that we had landed in the pool of water, thereby rewashing our Sunday school shirts.   Even better, we found that standing under the cascading waters of the falls further cleaned the fabric.  Derrick was slightly dismayed when the force of the water tore the pocket from the front of his shirt, but recovered quickly when he realized how extraordinarily clean the pocket had become.  He was sure his mom would be impressed. 

     For quite a while, we splashed in the pool, threw red clay mud balls at each other (requiring further dunkings in the pool) and found what we were sure were flecks of gold mixed in with the mud.  This discovery of treasure finally headed us in the direction of home, because my dad had a gold pan, somewhere in our garage.  I knew how to use it because I had once seen how it was done on an episode of Alias, Smith and Jones.

     Surprisingly, our mothers were not impressed that we had washed our cloths. I just can’t figure out mothers.  I couldn’t then and I can’t today.  Derrick pulled out the shirt pocket remnant, which he had carefully folded and tucked away in his front pants pocket.  He just kept holding it up to his mom.  The look on his face said, “If you’ll just look closer, I’m sure you’ll see how marvelous this is.”  She never looked close enough to be amazed.

     The upside was that we were home “come dark,” and no mention was made of having check-ins. 

My first experience with actually being caught out “come dark” was when I was four.  My sister says it was because I was too gullible.  I know that it was because I was blessed with an incredible imagination.  I heard my dad once suggesting to my uncle that it might be something on the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum, whatever that meant. 

One afternoon my sister and her friend were eating some red licorice.  “Hey where did you get that,” I demanded sweetly.  I had been practicing demanding sweetly,” and thought I was getting pretty good at it.

“From the licorice tree,” my sister said with a smile.  I should have known something was up right then.  My sister never smiled.

“Where’s that?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you.  It’s a secret.”

“Please…please…please!!!”  It made me feel kind of soiled to say please to my sister; like I needed a bath. How often does a guy feel like that?  I figured saying please at this point was for a good cause though.

“Well, let me check with my colleague.” 

“Huh?”

“Just a second,” she said, and then she leaned over and whispered something to her friend.  Then she turned back to me.  “We’ll take you to the tree, but you have to be blind folded.”

“No way!  Never”

“Then we won’t take you.”

“Oh, Okay!”

My sister ran into the house and emerged with a wad of cloth.  “Turn around.” she said.  Then she wrapped a strip of cloth over my eyes and around the back of my head where she tied it, with several clumps of my hair, into a knot.  

“Hey, what’s that?” I said about the sack that was then yanked down over my head.

“A pillow case.” My sister replied.  I could hear her dumb friend snickering off to my left. Not being satisfied with just a blindfold, my sister had put a pillow case over my head.  That really bugged me because it was her pillow case, which probably had cooties.  Also, I had been able to see pretty well around just blindfold by itself. 

“How much farther is it?” I asked

“We have to go quite a ways just to get to the turtle.”

“Turtle.  What turtle?  I thought we were going to a tree.”

“We have to have the turtle carry us over the lake.”

“Lake.  What lake?  I want to go home.”  I said.

“Lic-ooooooo-rice.”

“Never mind.  When do we get to the turtle?”  We had to walk a long way to get to the lake. 

“Okay, we’re at the lake now.  Step right where I take you, because if your feet splash it will scare off the turtle and we won’t be able to get a ride.” 

“That turtle is a scaredy cat.”

“Shhh.  You’ll hurt his feelings.  Stop here.  Now keep moving your feet so the turtle knows we’re here.  If he can’t feel us walking, he won’t know we’re here and he’ll swim under water.  You don’t want to go under water with a pillow case over your head do you?”

“How fast do I move my feet?  Is this right?  Should I go faster?  Do you think this is too fast??????”  I was happy it was a short turtle ride.  It sure was a smooth ride and it’s back felt as sturdy as walking on solid ground.

After a quite a bit more walking, we finally arrived.  The girls took off my blind fold and I looked up.  I was really disappointed.  “That’s not a licorice tree.  It’s a cedar, just like the one in our back yard.”

“No really,” my sister said.  “Licorice trees are a kind of cedar tree.  I’ll prove it.  You wait here and we’ll climb up and throw some licorice down to you.” 

Soon, licorice started dropping down all around me.  “Here you go.  Here’s another.”  It was good too.  Apparently, licorice is warm when you pick it off a tree, almost as warm as if it had been in someone’s pocket for an hour of walking. 

“I’m coming up too,” I called.  There was a pause.

“No don’t bother.  That was the last piece.” 

I scrambled up anyway.  I was sure she was lying.  After getting up in the tree I could see she was right.  They had picked them all.

“When will it grow more?”

“Well, its magic.  After dark they grow again.  If you clean my room for me, I’ll bring you back tomorrow for more, but you’ll have to wear the blindfold again.”

Just as I was about to agree, I noticed a house through the trees, and a swing set, and bicycle.  And I knew whose bike that was.  It was Chris Jameson’s.  I realized that they had tricked me, that it had been a sham.

“Hey, I know where we are.  You liar.  That’s Chris’ house right there.”  That darn licorice tree was hardly more than a block from home.  That’s when I had realized that dumb turtle hadn’t even gone across the lake.  I yelled some stuff at my sister that the big kids in the neighborhood sometimes yelled at me.  I didn’t know what it meant, but my sister seemed to and it must have been bad.

She climbed down out of the tree with her friend, and then yelled for me to come down too. 

“No.  Now I know where we are and I’m going to stay up until this tree grows more licorice.  It’s already starting to get dark.  I’ll come home after that.”

“We made up the stuff about the licorice tree.  There isn’t going to be any more.” My sister called.

Well, since I had just caught her in one really big lie about a turtle, I wasn’t going to believe that story, and I told her so.  She yelled for a while, and finally gave up and stomped off.

Before long, I noticed that “come dark” had arrived, and I was caught out in it.  I kept waiting for the licorice, but it never arrived.  

Well into the night, my parents and my sister arrived.  Apparently, they had forced a confession out of her.  Later, I began to suspect that the confession had been concerning the whereabouts of a missing pillow case, and finding me had just been a byproduct of the pillowcase search. 

Luckily, my parents blamed the “getting caught out come dark incident,” on my sister and there were no talks about instituting a check-in policy for me. 

When I was nine I had my next, “caught out come dark incident.”  I blamed that one on the big kids. 

By that time, the big kids had already begun smoking their funny cigarettes and had decided they needed a more private place to smoke them.  Privacy to a kid is spelled f-o-r-t.  They decided, with surprising wisdom, not to build a tree fort that they could fall out of.  The alternative being an underground fort.

Derrick and I stumbled across the fort one day as we were exploring the woods.  It was a good thing we didn’t actually stumble into it though because it was deep; really deep. 

The first stage of the big kid’s fort, the hole, was the first thing we had ever seen the big kids do that we considered cool.  They had dug a square hole, with straight up and down sides.  It was as long and wide as my room at home and deeper than my room was tall.  It was awesome.

“Wow,” Derrick said turning to me “It’s furnished.”  He pointed back down to a couch that had been dropped into the pit, and pushed up against one flat sandy wall.

Next to the pit, there was a pile of lumber that the big kids had stolen from a construction site.  They were obviously going to put a roof on their fort.  They just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.  There wasn’t a ladder, but after searching around we found some rope.  We tied one end to a tree, using a good sturdy knot Derrick had learned from his cousin, and we climbed in. 

There were some sticks on the floor of the pit which we used to carve our names and little shelves and tunnels in the sandy walls.  We were very surprised later to find out that the big kids didn’t consider these to be improvements.  After that attempt at interior design, the chasings and poundings resumed again for a while. 

Shortly after getting tired of improving the fort for the big kids, and then deciding we needed to make a fort like it for our own, we noticed that it was starting to get dark.  Shortly after that, we noticed that what we had thought was a good sturdy knot, wasn’t.  I had grabbed the rope with both hands and hopped my feet several feet up the dirt wall when I heard the sounds of “swish” and “kerpow,” just like Indian Jones’ whip would have made.  Then I noticed that the rope was no longer holding me up.  Derrick said the sound I made when I landed was really funny.  I don’t seem to remember that.  I just remember the sense of doom, and a bit of pain.

Wide-eyed, open-mouthed and unusually quite, Derrick and I gazed up at a darkening square of sky above us. Derrick flopped down on the, until now ignored, couch that the big kids had lowered down into their fort.  He unflopped even quicker when two rats ran out from underneath it.  I thought the rats were monumentally cool, until I realized that I was likely to be spending a long dark night with them. 

After several minutes of scurrying and squeaking, Derrick and I were able to calm ourselves down.  During that time the rats had thoughtfully disappeared back under the couch.  I didn’t have any faith that they would stay there once the darkness had completely arrived. 

Derrick and I spent the few remaining minutes of light digging and scraping holes in the walls that we hoped would serve as a ladder to climb out.  We soon realized that dirt that was really good for digging deep holes in, carving names in and scraping shelves into is not the kinds of soil that supports the weight of a nine year old boy.

Just as we were coming to the realization that we were about to be caught out “come dark,” we snatched up sticks to protect ourselves.  I didn’t say anything to Derrick, but I was pretty sure that sticks the size of pencils which had been perfect for carving names in hard sandy walls were probably not going to be perfect for protecting little boys from monsters.  I kept that little tidbit to myself.  I figured that when the creatures of the night attacked I’d yell, “Get em’ Derrick.”  While they were chewing him up, I would hopefully figure another way out.

Knowing it was going to be a long night we did what we could to increase the likelihood that we would be able to get some sleep.  We screamed for help and scrabbled frantically at the walls until we dropped, exhausted, to the ground. 

Through the night we could occasionally hear the scurrying, sniffing sounds of the rats.  That wasn’t so bad.  What really bothered us was the sound of the mummies, vampires, and werewolves that circled above us all night long.  We could hear them shuffling along, just out of view.  Occasionally, we would hear them sniff; testing the air for the scent of little boys to devour.  The only thing that kept those villains at bay was the sound of our war cries.  These war cries sounded remarkably like whimpering, sniveling and crying. 

The next morning we were found by the big kids.  After hauling us out of the pit, they proceeded to chase and pound us for a while.  We didn’t mind.  It was a small price to pay for our rescue.  We then ran home embraced our parents and begged them to institute a check-in policy.  Twice, maybe even three times, a day sounded pretty good.

The Goree Intellect Averaging Principle

            In the following investigation of several case studies I clarify certain events that will enable the reader to understand a particular truth from the sciences of psychology and sociology, and endocrinology.  Each of the following case studies have been changed so as to not name any specific individual, describe recognizable physical characteristics as to make individuals readily recognizable within a group of his or her peers, or to remain completely faithful to the specific details of each case.

At the conclusion of this article, a main, indisputable truth will be outlined (The Goree Intellect Averaging Principle).  The aggregation of the data in these studies will render reader, layman or doctoral philosopher powerless to find fault, or alternate theoretical ground.

Case 1:

A call is taken to a triage nurse at County General Hospital, as relayed by 911 being dialed on a cell phone.   Hospital operators kept an open line of communication while an aid unit was in route, and the conversation was recorded.  Screams could be heard in the background.  The male on the phone seemed distracted and at times unintelligible.

Operator: “An aid unit is on its way.  Could you explain the nature of the injury, Sir?”

Hysterical Friend:  “Like, I thought he was going to blow up, Dude.”

Operator:  “I am a ma'am, Sir.  Not a Dude.  Could you more fully explain the nature of the injury, Sir?”

Hysterical Friend:  “Yeah.  Like, it’s chili night, you know, and me and Jim, and Bill, and Rickster, and Rondo were piggin’ on some major beanage, ya know?  Then we were laid back polishin’ of a few brews when Rickster says ‘Gimme your lighter, Dude.” So like, I give him my lighter.  The next thing I know he bends over, blows some stink, and as this flame lights up the apartment he yells ‘eight-point-four on the Rickster scale Man.’ 

Operator:  “Is Rickster your injured friend, Sir?”

Hysterical Friend:  “No, no.  That’s Rondo.  He gets all jealous cuz Rickter looks so cool.  We all yell, ‘No, don’t do it, Man.  You’re too hairy.’ And he really is hairy; like sasquatch hairy.  Do you think he listens to us?  Not even.  He blows and sparks up.  And just as the flame starts up he hiccups.  Oh man, you never saw a pair of buns get toasty so fast.  Old Rondo dropped to floor before we knew what was happening and he started scooting along like a poodle on speed.  I don’t think the real fire got him any, but he has rug burns all over his butt from doin’ the poodle scoot.”

Operator:  “Do I understand correctly, Sir, that there are five males together without female supervision?”

Hysterical Friend:  “Uh, Yeah.”

Operator: “I see, Sir.  I believe I understand the nature of your problem.  An aid worker will be there momentarily to administer salve to your friend.  This worker will also administer estrogen shots to you and the rest of your friends, Sir.”

Hysterical Friend:  “Will it give us a buzz?”

Operator:  “I’m sure it will help to eliminate many of the problems with brain function that you are now experiencing, Sir.”

Hysterical Friend:  “Cool.”

Operator:  “Sir, I have a call that the Aid unit has pulled up in front of an apartment that has your address.  They want to verify that your apartment has a sign on the front door that says ‘No Fat Chicks.’  Is that your residence, Sir?”

Hysterical Friend:  “Ya.”

Operator:  “When the paramedic comes in, Sir.  Tell him that Marge said you are eligible for a double dose.  Hopefully that will help, Sir.”

Hysterical Friend:  “Righteous.”

Case 2:

Four young boys are hospitalized with symptoms of shock and hearing damage after they throw a cup of homemade nitroglycerin off a farmer’s barn roof. 

“I figured it couldn’t be all that bad since the recipe was in the encyclopedia,” said one boy. 

“I never knew what a mushroom cloud was before.” Said a second boy.

“What did you say?” Said a third boy.

The other boys failed to respond to any of this interviewer’s questions; or to even realize the interviewer was speaking.

After being asked what reason the boys could have had for perpetrating such a dangerous act, the first boy responded, “Well, my dad said I could have an Xbox, when pigs fly.  I guess I took care of that, didn’t I?”

Case 3:

From an article in the Appalachian Tribune Herald Gazette; The bodies of four unidentified youths were brought into county general hospital today.  The dead boys were fishing on Jacobsen pond at daybreak, during this morning’s heavy wind.  The cause of death appears to be shock and physical trauma sustained when an unexpected shift in the wind blew their fishing gear (dynamite) back into their twelve foot aluminum skiff.  Closed casket services will be held for the young men Sunday afternoon at the conclusion of the University of Minnesota vs Puerto Rico State curling match.  Time to be adjusted for commercial breaks.

            If the reader has noticed, there are certain similarities between the three cases.  First, all participants were male.  Second, there were multiple males together in a group.  And third, though not absolutely critical to the foundations of the following theory, all of the males appear to be under the age of twenty-five. 

The details of these cases, as well as my own experiences as a young male, a teenage male, a male in my twenties, a male in my thirties, a male currently in my forties, and a teacher of males in the sixth grade, as well as a general observer of the absurd, have led to the formulation of:  

The Goree Intellect Averaging Principle. 

In order to quantify this theory, the first given that must be accepted by the reader is that the average human intelligence is an IQ (intelligence quotient) of 100.  The principle states that:

            Males, when left unattended, must divide the average IQ of 100 between all males present. 

Therefore, if four males are in attendance they must divide the total average IQ by four.  This leaves each with an IQ of 25; only one IQ point higher than is necessary to continue the bodily function of breathing.

Following with this principle, if Einstein and three of his peers were left unsupervised, they would likely end up being the subjects in case study 1.

Sleeping Out

            I work in a building where many of my co-workers complain about the mold and mildew.  They say it arouses their allergies, and they have taken to calling it a “sick building.”  If I were to start referring to it as such, I would say that the name might have more to do with the attitude of the occupants than the structure itself.

            I personally adore the smell.  To me that smell is a doorway in time, back to my childhood.  It is the smell of a canvas tent, well used and put away by a small boy whose definition of dry wasn’t quite the same as his father’s. 

            That tent was my first avenue to the adventures of camping out.  My father had come home with the tent, one day when I was five.  It wasn’t new, which even at five I could tell.  I don’t know where he had picked it up, probably a ditch on the side of the road, but I was five and new or old didn’t matter to me.  I had a tent. 

            My cousin had had a tent, but apparently it hadn’t fared too well on a cold December campout in his back yard.  Flammable not being a word that had become part of my cousin’s vocabulary at that point, his unwise efforts to provide some lifesaving heat had proved problematic for the tent.

            The day my father came home with the tent was magical.  We thought, talked and acted like mountain men all day long, without the scratching and cussing that is.  That night we cooked out over a campfire.  We ate like I’m sure all the best mountain men ate (popcorn and root beer floats).  Then we finished the night snoring away to the delightful, moldy scent of old canvas.  I thought the evening a total success. 

            The next weekend, my tentless cousin came to spend the night.  The food was about the same, but he added a bit of authenticity to the night with what I was sure was some authentic mountain man style cussing and scratching.  Though flammable wasn’t part of his vocabulary, he had obviously spent enough time around mountain men to acquire some of their other linguistic peculiarities.  By the sound of it, those mountain men had been pounding their fingers with hammers, and dropping heavy objects on their toes while my cousin was engaged in new vocabulary acquisition.

            The popcorn and root beer float portion of the evening was enjoyable, as it had been the previous weekend with my father.  I must admit I enjoyed the show of cussing and scratching as well, but before we had been out more than a couple hours I noticed a strange phenomenon.  In just the one week since I had spent the night out with my father, the nights had become noticeably darker, exponentially so.  And where just the week before there hadn’t been so much as an owl, cat or stray dog that had come to visit, my cousin and I were experiencing what could be described as a monsoon of monsters and viscous animals.  We could hear them just on the other side of the canvas. 

            The night before I had been lucky enough to stay up late and watch the first half of The Blob, on Nightmare Theater. 

Good Parent Advice - If you are going to let your young child watch the beginning of a scary movie, it is imperative that at the point in the movie that your child sees the monster, you must realize you have reached the point of no return.  You must allow the child to watch the movie to the conclusion, where the heroes defeat the monster and the world is safe once more.  Otherwise that monster will arrive in your child’s life every time the light gets low enough to make reading difficult.

            As I was saying, the night before I had gotten my first glimpse of The Blob.  I knew the Blob still lived because I had seen its gelatinous mass quivering in the doctor’s office after consuming the teenager that had come across it in the woods.

            Soon after we had bedded down, my cousin complaining that the smell of the tent was affecting his allergies, I heard the wet mucusy sounds of an approaching gooey mass.  I shook my cousin awake. 

            “Chance, it’s the Blob.”  Even though the sounds of the monster’s approach had stopped as it heard me croak the warning to my cousin, Chance obviously appreciated the gravity of the situation.

            “What?!  The Blob!  Help, Uncle Paul!” Chance yelled as he exited through the side of tent, where previously there had been no exit.  The last echoes of my father’s name still quivered in the air as my cousin entered my house.  He was soon joined by me and the rest of my family who had been awakened by Chance’s screech.  It was then that I noticed something I had been suspecting since I had first learned of the existence of mountain men.  Mountain men sleep in the buff.  My sister also learned something that the other girls at school wouldn’t believe her about until they found out for themselves in the seventh grade growth and development class.

            My cousin and I later figured that mountain men must survive through employing the same glass-shattering, high-pitched screech.  It obviously was capable of frightening away a full grown Blob, so surely it would be capable of driving off something as insignificant, by comparison, as a grizzly bear.

            Armed with a new knowledge of sleeping out survival tactics, I spent many nights sleeping out with friends that summer.  Almost every time I would hear the mucusy respiration of the Blob.  I was however, never able to get tentmate corroboration of these sighting, or rather, listenings.  Each campout evening, the Blob would stealthily depart immediately upon my rousing whatever companion was in attendance.  That friend would then spend the rest of the night listening for the same wet sound that caused me to awaken the him.  However, on not one occasion did the gelatinous devil return after my tent companion had awakened.  I took this as an obvious sigh that the beast was as clever as it was evil.

            I always explained to my companions that they need not worry while camping out with me, because I had learned many valuable lifesaving mountain man skills.  The “screech” and the appropriate use of the emergency mountain man tent exit which my cousin had been kind enough to create in the side of the tent, earlier that summer.  With these two skills, I would tell my fellow camper, survival was assured, or at least pretty likely.

            I still have that old tent.  It must be fifty or sixty years old by now.  I went to the garage today and pulled it out.  I unrolled the lovely, pasty green package and was greeted with that familiar nostalgic scent.  My eyes began to tear up as I spread out the wrinkled green fabric.  The old ropes felt rough against my hands, like I remembered they always had, and I heard the resonating clank of heavy long steel nails that we had used as tent stakes.  My father would have used those nails on landscape timbers thirty-something years ago if they hadn’t found their way into those folds of green canvas. 

            I snuffled a sigh through mucusy nostrils and rolled the package shut again to the clack of wooden tent poles.  Instead of pushing my old friend back to the hidden recesses of garage shelves, I hid it in my car.  It would be a present for my son, tomorrow.  A dense wrinkled green something that looked like it had been found on the side of the road. 

            Smiling, I took out a handkerchief and sneezed my way back into the house.

Last Tide

Last Tide

            The fog drifted in ghostly tendrils along the smooth dark waters of the Puget Sound.  Sputterings and rumblings of outboard motors, which pushed wood and metal through the dark, could be heard to mark the passing of unseen numbers of fisherman on the early August morning.  In one such 16 foot aluminum Lund, two men could be seen, illuminated by the white light of a Coleman propane lantern.  One looked on in abject silence as the other, with studied confidence, deftly cut herring at precise angles as he steered with his knee. 

            Small sharp slaps of the water, and the whisper of a fishing knife slipping across a cutting board were, for a brief instant, the only sounds that could be heard.  It was well past the hour of the dead, but perhaps death didn’t carry a wristwatch.  These were the morbid mental wanderings of one man’s mind just before he felt he must shatter the silence or go mad. 

            “I don’t know Marty, I’ve never fished with a downrigger before.” Jim Zahn said, breaking the misty pre-dawn silence of the Puget Sound.  Jim looked on the rugged lantern lit profile of Marty Shore as the man thought this comment over with the apparent depth of an Eastern Sage.  “I’ve always used Pink Ladies.  They take the bait plenty deep for the silvers.”

            As if touched by divine talent, Marty Shore spat a glistening brown stream of tobacco juice in a fabulous arch that passed out of the sphere of lantern light, more than fifteen feet from the boat.  He spoke low, and slow, as he leveled his empty gaze at Jim.  “You tryin’ to teach me how to fish, boy?  In my own boat?  I been feedin’ my family for thirty years outta these waters.  They been eatin’ well too.  Every one of 'em fat.”  The volume of Marty’s voice never changed; it never raised; it never changed pitch, but a cold dread ran all along the length of Jim’s spine all the same.  “You try givin’ me advice again, I’ll kick your sorry Bellevue ass outta my boat, and you’ll be luck I don’t tie you to my anchor line first.”  Marty leaned his compact frame toward Jim.  “Are we clear, Boy?”

            “Uh-huh” was the best response Jim could come up with.  He didn’t think now was the time for anything humorous.  He had been regretting for over an hour that he had begged Marty to take him fishing.  This feeling had just increased exponentially.  He remembered his discussion of the fishing trip with a buddy at work.  Jim had told his buddy how he was going to be learning how to fish “The Sound” from the best.  To this his friend Daryl had responded that the fish were biting so good on the Sound this summer that all you had to do was shake your dick at them and they’d jump in the boat to get at it.  Daryl had insisted that learning a few new fishing tips was not worth spending a day in a boat with the scariest son-of-a-bitch this side of the Mississippi.  Jim was just thinking that he had come to agree with Daryl and was seriously considering faking an appendicitis attack to try to cut the day short with his guide, when the master spoke.

            “Okay, your line’s ready, Boy.  I’ll hook on this weight.  See how you do it?”  Marty didn’t wait for a response.  “Then you loosen up the drag on your real a little.  Yeah, like that.  Now, back off the drag on the downrigger.  Not that much!  Okay, there.  Now, let it bail out until it reads 80.  Then you tighten it back down.  Don’t light up a smoke though.  You’ll have a fish on your line before you could dig that pack of smokes out of your shirt pocket.”

            “Wanna bet?” Jim said, taking a risk and trying to gauge his mentor’s mood. 

            “Ten, or fifty, what’ll it be?”

            “I can’t afford fifty.”  Jim said, not knowing how Marty would react to losing fifty dollars before the sun had even come up. 

            “Okay, Pussy. “  Marty spat contemptuously.  “You’re on.”

            Jim watched as Marty quickly set up his line, and noticed that he didn’t put it into the water.  “Aren’t you going to fish?”

            “Don’t want to get our lines tangled.”

            “So you say.  Here I am coming up on eighty.  There we go.  Tighten it up.”  Jim murmured “Like that?”  He asked and caught the nod from Marty.  Jim decided he’d test Marty’s mood a little farther and was reaching for his Marlboro Lights when the tip of his fishing rod began to dance.

                                    *                                  *                                  *

An hour later, Jim and Marty were setting up to catch their last two silvers.  They had been throwing back “Humpies” left and right, and were sticking to silvers for the day.  It hadn’t even become fully light and the two were about ready to head in with their limits.  Jim, not only had given up his plan to fake appendicitis, but was considering recommending Marty for sainthood. 

Marty had kept them fishing the same area since they started, but now decided to change his tactics for their last two fish.  Jim didn’t see and point, but he had long since ceased to question Marty’s expertise in this fishing expedition.  Jim figured if he wanted to keep his next month’s paycheck, he had better keep his mouth shut.  He was already close to a hundred dollars down from taking Marty’s bets.

The two were making a pass near a buoy a bit south of their previous location and Jim was letting out line.  Marty was holding back on his bait as Jim had noticed him doing all morning.  Suddenly, the tip of Jim’s pole dropped hard.  He turned to give his guide another “well done,” but noticed a strange, anxious look on Marty’s face. 

“That don’t look right,” was all that Marty said.

As he worked at bringing up his catch, Jim said, “This thing must be huge.”  He slowly heaved up on the pole.  Then he let the tip drop as he quickly reeled in, trying to keep up with the fishing line before he lost any headway. 

“No, it just ain’t fightin’ any.  Might even be dead.”

Jim didn’t know why, but he was feeling that prickly sensation along his spine again.  “Should I just cut the line and let it go? If it isn’t anything we want to keep we might as well let it go before we even bring it up.”

“No!  No, we ought to see what it is, at least.”  Jim was thinking this was the first time during the day that Marty had seemed to have gotten riled up.  He hadn’t even wiped that sleepy look off of his face for the last ten strikes.  All of a sudden, a spark seemed to have been lit under him.  Jim guessed that Marty had played the same fishing scenario over and over for the last 30 years without anything out of the ordinary happening.  It must have gotten to the point of being tiresome if nothing unexpected turned up. 

“Don’t jerk up on the line like that.  You’ll snap it.  Just pull up slow and steady.  Let him come up through the water at his own pace.  There you go.”

“Can you see it yet, Marty?”

“Sometimes fishin’ is slow work, son.  Just keep at it.”  Jim wondered at being elevated in rank, in Marty’s book, from boy to son.  “Well I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch.”  Marty shouted.  “Hey, you gotta’ weak stomach?”

“No, not really.”  Jim grunted as he wrestled the weight up with his pole.  “Why do you ask?”

“Cause if you puke in my boat, you’re cleaning it.”  Marty answered, never raising his eyes from the murky green waters of the Puget Sound.”

“I don’t puke.”

“Betcha fifty bucks you do today.”

“You’re on!” Jim spat quickly before Marty could take it back.  He figured he could make back at least some of his losses on the day.  Jim leaned over the side to get a look at what he was bringing up.  He was so shocked at the sight of the shirtless corpse, which looked like it might be a young man, suspended five feet below the surface that he lost hold of the fishing pole he was using.  Through the swirling eddies of plankton and green tinted water, the man’s pants, held up by a black belt, appeared to be a pale green, though Jim assumed they were actually white.  At least, they probably once had been.  Through the imperfect light of the morning the men could not make out any more details. 

Marty sprang from the back of the boat and lay hold of Jim’s pole on the first bounce.  A bloated body doesn’t sink fast, and this one looked as though it might already have been floating up on its own, so there wasn’t much worry that it could have dragged the pole over the side in any hurry. 

“Boy, that’s a $150 setup you almost had to pay me for, alongside the other $150 you owe me.”  Jim guessed he had just lost ground on the Marty respect scale again. 

“Huh. . . $150?  Wait a second.  I haven’t puked.  That’s going to bring me back to 50.

“We’ll see.”  Marty said confidently.  Jim watched as Marty called for Coast Guard help on his radio.  “They’ll be here in about twenty minutes.”

“I heard.” Jim responded.

“Well help me get it in.”
            “What?  No way.  What would you want to do that for?”

“Cause if we lose it before the Coast Guard gets here, they’ll think we made it up, and they might fine us.  I’m not sure you can afford that.  You’ll be eatin’ Top Ramen for the next month as it is.  Hand me that boat hook.  I’ll wrap it around the belt and yank it up.” 

“Okay, but I’m not touching him.” Jim said weakly.

“Whatever you say, Pussy.”  Marty then jabbed the boat hook toward the belt, but the body’s bloated abdomen deflected the pole several times before he got it caught up.  Eventually, Marty was able to bring the body close enough to the boat that he was able to run a length of rope through the belt and secure the body in case they lost their grip on it.  “Okay, now you can cut your fishin’ line”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Let’s stow the gear so it ain’t in our way.  I guess we’re about done fishin for the day.”  After the men had packed away the fishing equipment in the sixteen foot boat, Marty announced that they were going to bring the body aboard.

“What the hell for?”

“We keep it hanging off right here in the open, something’s gonna start trying to snack off it.  You want to tell its family, and the Coast Guard you let that happen?  Don’t worry, Pussy, we’ll loop this rope under the armpits.  You won’t hardly even get your hands dirty.”

After a few minutes, the two, men had the line around the body and were trying to lift it clear of the water.  Jim had worried about it being gross when Marty had insisted on bringing the body in.  Now he realized, it was going to be hard work, too.  The body, which had floated lightly, didn’t seem so light as they tried to lift it up and clear over the gunwale.  The boat tipped, though not enough to put it in danger of flipping.  As the men brought the shoulders above the gunwale, the head flopped toward Jim.  Hearing the clunk of the head against the cold aluminum side of the boat, Jim wondered that the body wasn’t stiff with rigor mortis, like on TV.  Frozen, he stared at the cracked and pale purple blob that had swollen to fill the mouth.  There was a wet belching sound and gas escaped past the tongue, followed closely by an insect that scurried out of the mouth and dropped into the bottom of the boat.  When the sour, sweet smell of decomposition hit him, Jim lost his hold on the body, and lost another bet.

“I guess maybe we better just leave him tied off on the side here until the Coast Guard shows up.”  Marty chuckled darkly past a smirk.  “Gotta’ hand it to ya’.  You didn’t get none of that puke in my boat.”  Tucking chewing tobacco into his lip, with dirty hands, Marty said, “I guess you got time for that smoke now, son.”

Shaker and Rock

Charlie Jansen could feel the cold breeze and spray of salt water splashing up against his face. Through the dense ocean fog he could see the transport boat that was carrying his buddy Aaron. They had grown up together; gone to school together; even went to basic training for the Coast Guard together, and now they were going to be stationed together on the rock, Tatoosh Island. Charlie had arrived a week earlier, and now Aaron was pulling up to the dock. Charlie could see that his lifelong friend had been making his usual amount of friends, in the short ride from Neah Bay, out to the island. One of the deck crew was roughly throwing his duffel bag onto the dock. It looked like he would have liked to throw Aaron out onto the dock, as well.

Over the crash of the waves, Charlie couldn't hear Aaron, but he could see his mouth moving while the men working on the boat rolled their eyes and turned away. Then Aaron looked up to see Charlie on the rail above and waved animatedly. Aaron's bags, and other supplies for the island were loaded in a large metal basket and brought up to the top of the cliff by enormous galvanized hoist. Aaron started up the ladder talking well before he was close enough for Charlie to hear. Charlie knew it didn't matter, Aaron would repeat everything he had said several times. It was his way

"Oh man, this rock is desolate," said Aaron.

"Get used to it, you're going to be here for a while," said Charlie.

"You said there were trees."

"There are. See, there's one over there and one over there."

"Oh man, those aren't trees, those are weeds. I mean being from the Northwest aren't you supposed to know what trees look like? Trees are big things."

"Oh, those kinds of trees? You are going to have to look over to the mainland for those," Said Charlie said while he pointed southeast, over the bluff.

"Well, at least the view is nice from this hockey puck of an island."  Aaron looked around sadly.  "I guess there aren't any girls here either, are there?"

"Not a one."

Aaron reached over the side of the giant metal basket that carried the duffle bag that was his luggage and said, “Well, are you doing to show me around this landfill?"

The men started up the gentle basalt slope toward the light house and research buildings.

"Holy crap, am I seeing what I am seeing?" Aaron said, pointing. From the top of the rise, the men looked down towards the buildings. Moving along a wall and then disappearing around one corner of the building, was a Jack Russell Terrier. With a hopping style of walk, the dog was tipped up on its front two paws, with its rear end up in the air.

"Be quiet, Man."

"What are you talking about man, did you see it, or did you see it."

"Yeah, I saw it, but shut up."

"Why?"

"I'll tell you later. Just shut up."

"Fine," Aaron said, looking puzzled and annoyed.

The men walked down toward the buildings. There was a lean, tan, gray-haired man sitting on a bench, next to the door. As they approached the man looked Aaron up and down. It didn't look like he approved, or disapproved of what he saw. He also didn't look like he was very interested.

"Hey Derek, this is my buddy Aaron that I told you about. Derek Jansen, meet Aaron Blaine.  Aaron, Derek."

"Hi, Derek, it's good to meet you," said Aaron.

"Yup," Derek said. "I can already tell you were right about him, Charlie."

"I often am, Derek," Charlie said, and then putting his hand on Aaron's shoulder, he said, "Follow me Buddy, I'll show you where you’re bunking down."

Charlie pushed open the door and walked in. The room had that tight, musty, sealed-in smell that is usually reserved for junior prisons and junior high buildings. The light that filtered in through the dirty windows did nothing to brighten the heavily painted cement and cinderblock interior.

"So what did you tell Derek about me?"

"I told him you would get on his nerves pretty quick."

"Well thanks a lot, Pal.”

"I was right. That is Derek's dog, and that dog is the only thing he cares about. Don't get me wrong, he is a good guy. He'll treat you better than you deserve, but I'm pretty sure he won't get attached to you. Eric doesn't attached to anyone or anything, except that dog."

"What are you talking about?"

"How old do you think Derek is?"

"About 45?"

"Not even close, Buddy.  Try two decades younger."

"No shit, what happened?”

"Derek has seen a whole lot of hard, in his lifetime. He used to run an auto shop. Owned it, actually. They say he's some kind of genius with a wrench. I don't doubt it.  I've seen him fix everything there is around here in just the one week that I've been here. He got a shop running and open for business before he even turned 18. He got his girlfriend pregnant they got married and had a kid. Heck, they may even have done it in the proper order. Then I guess when the kid was about four, the neighbors pit bull got into the yard and attacked him. That dog broke them up and tore him up pretty bad. It probably would've killed him if it hadn't been for that two legged wonder you saw a few minutes ago. That little Jack Russell was about six months old and it took on that pit bull. Shaker over there, kept that big dog busy until the neighbor on the other side took out the pit bull with his 30-06 rifle.

That poor little kid lasted three weeks. One of his lungs had been punctured, and they couldn't get the infection under control. Derek's wife killed herself with a bottle of vodka and a handful of painkillers a week later.

I guess Derek kept trying to work in the shop, but not long after the accident, he turned the business, house, and everything he owned over to his brother. One day, he climbed into his truck with his dog and headed north leaving Eugene, Oregon behind. Some friend of the family got him the job as the caretaker of this rock, and he's been here for the last two years. He isn't actually an employee of the Coast Guard, or NOAA, he works for the local Indian tribe. Apparently this island belongs to them with an indefinite lease to the US government."

"Damn, how do you live through something like that? I mean, damn! What would you even say to a guy like that?"

"For Christ's sake, don't say anything. If you ever thought there might be a time in your life to shut up, this would be it. Don't ask him about it at all.  If you just go on with your work, and keep your mouth closed, he will talk a little bit. I got the story from Steely."

"Who's Steely?"

“Luke Steele, he's one of the weather guys. He's pretty cool, not quite as dirty as the rest of them.  If you don't get on his nerves, take a salmon fishing. The guy is a fanatic."

"All right, why does that dog walk on its front feet?"

"Broken back."

"That pitbull got him?"

"No, that happened here. Some asshole from one of the local fishing tenders, got tangled up in one of the tsunami warning buoys. He tore up some of his equipment on it, and was pissed off. He broke it loose and brought it here wanting to yell at somebody. I don't know if he is going to do any really hard jail time, but the Feds don't like it when you mess with their equipment. Well, he pulled up to the dock and rolled that 200 pound float off the side of his boat and clipped little Shaker. I guess for a while, Shaker was paralyzed from the middle of his back on down. Derek took care of that little dog, twenty-four seven. At first he would just drag himself around by his front feet, then one day he realized he could get around a lot better, and a lot faster if he just walked on his front feet. It's funny, his back has healed up a bit, so we can walk on all fours again, but most of the time he just tips it up on the front two anyway. You should see that little bastard go up and down stairs." 

"No shit?"

"No shit."