Markwildyr.com,
Post #226
Image courtesy of dreamstime.com:
Don Travis and I are still guest posting each other’s blog sites. I hope you liked his “What’s in a Name,” last week. This time, it’s a two-parter. Hope you enjoy it.
* * * *
By Don Travis
Wally Hamner was the proverbial “boy next door,” the guy
who was always there. We grew up together like that… next door. Two peas in a
pod, my dad used to say. We played together in diapers and in shorts and in big
boy long pants. We were buds even though he had me by a year. It hurt a little
when he got interested in sports and developed other friendships. But I
adjusted and came to grips with it.
What I had that the others didn’t was proximity. Proximity
and history. It was easy to hop the fence and join me in the back yard and pick
up a conversation from yesterday or the day before after he returned from this
excursion or that. We talked with an ease that neither of us had with anyone
else. I knew his ambitions—to be a fighter pilot—as well as his aspirations—to
marry Mary Sue Klonheim and build her the biggest house in town. I knew his
fears—snakes—and his joys—double chocolate milk shakes in addition to Mary Sue.
The summer between our junior and senior years, respectively,
I came to comprehend how I served him. I was his conscience, the brake to his
recklessness. I was his anchor. Strange, because he was older than me. Maybe it
was because I wasn’t willing to jump out of a moving car on a dare or let
someone shoot a pencil out of my mouth. I wasn’t as audacious as he was. I was
the one to back off when things went too far. One of the best things about
Wally was that even if he didn’t follow my example, he respected it and never
talked down to me because of my natural passivity,
as he called it. He’d always say something like “Oh, come on, Bobby, what’s it
gonna hurt?” But when I balked, he never held it against me. Still, I suspected
that was why he turned to others as we grew older.
By that summer, Wally had the reputation of being wild,
at least among the adults. Ours was a small town where neighbors knew
everything there was to know about neighbors. The fact that I couldn’t go too
far overboard without my folks learning about it made me feel safe, but it
chafed Wally. The budding fighter pilot in him wanted to break the bonds of
small-town boundaries and soar. So it goes without saying he was usually in
trouble to some degree.
Because of his venturesome nature, it was strange that my
folks never tried to put the kibosh on our friendship. And his mom positively
glowed whenever I came over. I didn’t get it then, but she probably figured my
level-headedness to be a blessing. Funny how folks look at the same thing and
see it differently. Wally considered it as timidity.
As we approached that last school year before he’d go off
to college, the age difference between us didn’t seem so big as it had awhile
back. More often than not, Wally invited me to hang with him and his jock
buddies, and I did. But it wasn’t a comfortable fit because I was the naysayer,
the wet blanket, the raincloud hanging over the group whenever they wanted to
drag race or take a plunge off the cliff on the south side of Webber’s Lake. Or
worse yet, when they boozed before racing
or jumping off the cliff.
The Fourth of July of my sixteenth year is imprinted on
my mind—on my psyche—as if applied by a red-hot branding iron. My aunt and
uncle and their daughter from the next town over went with us to the lake for
the holiday. Virtually the whole town was there, including the Hamners. We no
sooner arrived than Wally stopped by to get me to go join his gang atop the
bluff across the lake. But out of a sense of duty—probably misplaced—I stayed behind
with my cousin Helen, a fifteen-year-old pain in the butt, as Wally hopped into
his old ’49 Ford convertible and headed off for fun and games while I played
nursemaid
As we ate fried chicken and “fixin’s” and listened to Helen
whine about this or that, my eyes continually strayed to where distant figures
cavorted atop the cliff. Occasionally, someone dove into the water, exciting
“oohs” and “ahhs” from those of us who happened to see. There was talk of how
dangerous that was and whether we should send a deputy sheriff—who was eating
with his family a couple of tables away from us—to put a stop to it, but
nothing came of such talk.
I happened to be watching when someone fell from the
cliff. It was different from the others. The figure wasn’t diving knife-like
into the water, it was dropping sideways and would likely land in the shallows.
My heart fell into my stomach as tiny stick figures collected at the top of the
bluff, gesticulating and yelling, their voices echoing off the water and faintly
tickling our ears like the irritating buzz of swarming mosquitoes or the sizzle
of fat in a hot skillet. Three or four of the boys dived off the cliff
Others on this side of the lake had seen the fall as
well, and the deputy was finally dispatched to check out the situation. By now,
most of the boys on the cliff-top had joined others in the water and clustered
in a group at the bottom of the bluff.
My heart fell into my stomach as a heavy sense of foreboding
pressed on my heart and rendered me dizzy. My blood seemed to have pooled in my
shoes, rendering me incapable of doing anything besides sag against the
concrete picnic table and gasp for breath. My dad and Mr. Hamner raced for the
shore and jumped in one of the boats taking off across the lake. As I tried to
stand, Mrs. Hamner restrained me. The haunted look in her eyes sent chill bumps
sweeping over me.
“Stay here, Bobby,” she mumbled. “Stay with your mother
and me.”
“Was it him? It-it was Wally, wasn’t it?” I stuttered.
“Hush up. We’ll know soon enough. God help us, we’ll know soon enough.”
* * * *
Thanks, Don, for
your previous post. And for the first half of this one. Readers, let me know
how you like his stories.
Website and blog: markwildyr.com
Email:
markwildyr@aol.com
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/mark.wildyr
Twitter: @markwildyr
Now my
mantra: Keep on reading. Keep on writing.
You have something to say, so say it!
See you later.
Mark
“Hush up. We’ll know soon enough. God help us, we’ll know
soon enough.”
