Where's My Wand?: One Boy's Magical Triumph Over Alienation and Shag Carpeting (21 page)

Dad had recently restrung the webbing on the aluminum patio lounge chairs, and the tight bands of scratchy plastic material served, I discovered, as a perfect support for the barrel of a gun. After carefully draping two beach towels over a chair—one of which, conveniently, had a couple of holes in it from too many washings—I aimed the chair so that its backrest—with an overhang of beach towel—perfectly hid from view a crouching marksman.

Then, I began to lie in wait.

This was, unfortunately, easier said than done. It was hot, and squatting on the redbrick patio made my thighs ache and sweat run into my eyes, blocking my vision. I was forced to take repeated breaks, missing Albert on two separate days as he trundled by, gun in one hand and red, white and blue Bomb Pop Popsicle in the other.

It was also boring. Turning a transistor radio on would only attract attention, so I had to kneel behind the chair with a paperback, alternately reading paragraphs of
Please Don’t Eat the Daisies
and aiming my weapon.

By Day Five of my stakeout, things were getting seriously tedious. I hadn’t seen Albert in two days, and I began to wonder if he had forsaken his homicidal ways in favor of more benign activities, like popping wheelies in the cul-de-sac or rubbing himself against his bedspread (a current favorite of mine). My legs were sore, I’d run out of reading material and had to resort to
Popular Mechanics
, and I was missing my afternoon television reruns. But recalling the violent image of Albert and that rabbit always managed to revive my flagging contempt for this fat assassin.

Suddenly, I heard the familiar
ping
.

I quickly set down the magazine and raised my gun into position, the barrel just barely peeking through one hole of the beach towel. Albert came lumbering across the common ground, gun in hand. Where were his parents? I thought indignantly, conveniently forgetting that I was likewise unsupervised.

He stopped and glanced around, as though he heard something, giving me a perfectly stationary target. I had a fleeting moment of conscience—would shooting Albert make me no better than he? But I was immediately reminded of that biblical axiom, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Not that I even cared what the Bible said.

He started to move. There was no time to debate. I took aim and squeezed off a shot.
Ping!

“Owww!!” Albert yelped, whirling around and flailing at what he obviously presumed to be a bee or a wasp.

That
is for the squirrel you tried to kill, I thought as I quickly and as quietly as possible pumped the gun to reload. I took aim again.
Ping!

“Aahhh!”

That is for the bunny you
did
kill.

Albert dropped his gun, ducking and weaving in an attempt to dodge the stinger-laden insects that he obviously thought were attacking him.

I took aim a third time.
Ping!

That is for every other animal you’ve hurt or scared or just made feel unsafe.

This BB just grazed him, but it did the trick. Albert took off like a shot, back toward his house, shrieking like a big, stupid girl, leaving the gun lying conspicuously on the ground.

This was more than I could have hoped for.

I waited for thirty seconds or so to be sure that the coast was clear, then casually strode out to the edge of our backyard, glancing both ways to see if Albert was anywhere to be found. He wasn’t. I grabbed his BB gun and shoved it into the waistband of my jeans, the barrel thrust down one pant leg. I pulled my shirt over the butt of the gun and slowly began to sidle nonchalantly back toward our yard.

Then I realized that if Albert came back for the gun, he might suspect I’d stolen it. His parents would confront my parents, they’d discover the evidence, and there would be a lot of screaming (Mother’s) and crying (mine).

I turned and ambled as quickly as I could down the common ground to the creek about a hundred yards away, my walk a stiff gait, what with a loaded rifle in my pants.

Some days there would be kids hanging around the creek since there was a popular rope swing suspended from one of the trees, but today, thank God, the area was empty.

I suddenly realized I hadn’t really thought this through. What exactly was I gonna do with the gun?

I surveyed the area quickly. Dirt be damned, I decided. I leaped over the embankment into the stream and, in the privacy of the creek, pulled out Albert’s gun and buried it as deep as possible in the mud.

I climbed back up the embankment, a filthy mess, and rushed home, quickly formulating an “I fell off the rope swing!” excuse in case Albert spotted me.

I rushed into the garage and removed all my clothing. Mud had gotten into everything, even my tighty whities. I balled the entire mess up and threw it into a Hefty bag, carrying it down to the basement. I should have enough time, I calculated, to wash and dry the clothes before Mother and Dad got home.

Unfortunately, I had no idea how to work the washer, since Mother had done every stitch of laundry in my thirteen years of life. I tossed it all into the machine and stood there naked, attempting to navigate the switches, when I heard a gasp.

“Gross!”

I froze. Val was standing behind me.

Luckily, the rope-swing excuse worked on her. She actually didn’t seem to care what had happened, as long as I got some clothes on in a hurry.

And as I stood in the shower, rinsing off the mud, I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment wash over me.

I had done this by myself.

I didn’t need magic.

All I needed was me.

In the past, I might have presumed that God had somehow intervened and aided me in getting Albert’s gun. But this idea now seemed wildly fanciful, a remote possibility twisted into truth only by the capricious imaginings of a boy who didn’t know any better.

Yet I felt a deep and mournful longing for that magical me of the past. The teamwork that God and I had shared had been comforting. And although I was now discovering that I was strong enough to go it alone, I desperately wished that I didn’t have to.

T
hat was private!” Val hollered, attempting to snatch my Radio Shack cassette recorder away as I played back the tape of her end of a phone conversation with her boyfriend, Tommy. “What were you doing, you little perv, holding the microphone against the
door
?”

“Of course not,” I replied indignantly. “You don’t get sound quality this good through a slab of wood. I hid under your bed.”

I ran into my room and slammed the door, clutching the tape recorder to my chest.

“Why do you need to hear what we’re talking about?!”

“Why do you need to keep it a secret?” I yelled back. “You sit in there whispering like you’re plotting a murder!”

“If you play that tape for anybody,” Val shrieked as she kicked the door frame, “I’ll be plotting yours!”

What had happened to my relationship with my sister—the girl who once led a parade of a dozen six-year-olds down our street, naked? The girl who would unwrap and rewrap all our presents under the Christmas tree to ensure that our demands had been met? The girl who taught me how to break into the house when we came home from Vacation Bible School without our key?

We used to have such fun together, especially in the summertime. But ever since she had grown boobs (or “tids” as I now referred to them, having overheard this supercool slang term from the worldly Darren Pulaski), Val’s idea of a good time seemed to revolve around making sure
I
wasn’t a part of it.

She was gone all the time now. And on the rare occasion when she
was
home, she barricaded herself in her room, talking to Tommy and making collages of the name “Mrs. Tommy Kipling” from letters cut out of
Seventeen
magazine, which, even with heart-shaped
o
’s and
i
’s dotted with smiley faces, looked disturbing, and made it unclear whether her aspiration was to become a married woman or the world’s youngest serial killer.

I, on the other hand, was willing to devote my time and attention to her 24/7. Truth be told, this was not so much a generosity of spirit as the fact that seventh grade had not been a good year. I hated junior high, a brick penal colony that housed all the most heinous people from elementary school plus several hundred new students vying for the title. My one class in grade school had now mutated into six classes per day, which multiplied the number of students who could despise me on a daily basis. And my only friendship—and an intermittent one at that—was with Mitch McKirby down the street, whose idea of fun was stamp collecting, a hobby so boring it almost begged to be punched.

But Val couldn’t have cared less. And now, the summer days of playing Monopoly were long gone. The afternoon discussions of the pros and cons of being raised by wolves (we wouldn’t have to rake the forest, but we wouldn’t get paid five dollars for every A) were over. The road trips we took around the neighborhood with our pet guinea pigs in a rusted red wagon were, for Val, nothing more than a dim memory.

All because my sixteen-year-old sister had tids.

“What did you guys do today?” Dad—who was the first of our parents to arrive home each day—asked.

“I changed the guinea pigs’ litter and taught Peanut Butter how to jump up and down the stairs,” I said proudly. “He’s like a Slinky with fur.”

“That’s great,” Dad said. “But make sure he doesn’t do his business on the carpet. Those things are little turd machines, and if your mother finds one, she’ll make you eat it.”

We both laughed.

“No, I’m serious,” he said. “She will.” He looked around. “Where’s your sister?”

“She left with Tommy and his friend Paul and I haven’t seen them since. I think they mentioned something about holding up ice cream trucks. Tommy’s dad has a gun.”

This was, of course, patently untrue, but I’d been alone all day, Val wasn’t there to hear it, and I had nothing to lose.

But no matter what kind of rumors I tried to start with Dad—“Tommy invited Val over to meet his wife”—or sympathy card I tried to play—“Not having anyone to talk to all day sure does make you wanna set fire to things”—he seemed to remain curiously blasé.

“Val’s a good girl,” Dad said, trying to allay my carefully rehearsed fears about her. “She’s got a big, fat mouth, but she’s a good girl.”

In the past, I would have set to work conjuring in order to make Val realize how much she missed me. But God and I were no longer on speaking terms.

 

 

IT WAS SATURDAY NIGHT. Mother and Dad had gone out for the evening, stupidly letting slip that they wouldn’t be back until eleven, an admission that, conveniently for Val, permitted the planning of carefully timed illegal activities.

“What are you doing?” I yelled, as I threw spoons at Val’s bedroom door from a spot down the hallway. “Come on out. I’ve been working on my show. I’ll give you a sneak peek!”

Over the past few weeks, I had begun creating a catalog of my own interpretations of popular songs for use in the smash hit trumpet concerts I planned to perform at stadiums all across the country. Once I was old enough to drive.

“I’d rather listen to a baby seal being clubbed to death,” Val hollered from the other side of the door. “I mean, come on . . . a ballad version of ‘Smokin’ in the Boys’ Room’?”

I heaved another utensil at the door. “It’s artistic!”

“Stop bothering me, I’m getting ready!” she yelled. “Tommy’s coming over.”

“He can’t come over without Mother and Dad here.”

The door flew open.

“If you breathe a word, I’ll tell Mother you were in the
living room
.” She slammed the door again.

I gasped.
No one
entered the living room. No one walked on the powder blue shag carpet. No one touched the navy blue and white hand-flocked wallpaper. This room was as pristine as the day we had moved in four and a half years earlier and, like a time capsule, was destined to remain that way until the moment we would leave to live in outer space, probably in the 1980s.

“Well, that’s just evil!” I heaved another utensil down the hall.

“Would you please stop throwing spoons at the door!”

“I can’t do knives,” I replied. “They’ll leave a mark.”

The doorbell rang.

With a sigh, I dropped the flatware and trudged to the front door. Tommy was standing there, looking like a teenage Jack LaLanne. He was a popular sophomore from our neighborhood who lettered in football and wrestling, and was everything I despised. His was the kind of face you wanted to smack—handsome and square-jawed, it just screamed easy confidence, and was the emblem of all that was wrong with my sister. I imagined the Rapture occurring at this moment and Jesus sucking Val and me up to Heaven, leaving Tommy standing there on the porch, looking around stupidly.

“Val here?”

It wasn’t long into Val and Tommy’s relationship when I determined that, of the many attributes that Tommy supposedly possessed, conversational skill was clearly not among them. A man of three to five words, he just stood staring at me with that football hero grin. I wanted to knock him off the porch.

“Yeah, come on in,” I said as I led him into the family room. Tommy flopped down on the sofa.

“You’ve probably figured this out,” I whispered, “but it takes
hours
for her to look decent. Hope you brought a canteen and some beef jerky.”

Tommy chuckled. Like most of my jokes, it was well rehearsed, since I thought of my best lines while lying around alone in my bedroom and thus had plenty of opportunity for dry runs. But Tommy didn’t seem to realize it, and his amusement buoyed me a bit. It was nice having an audience.

“So,” I said, “you have nine brothers and sisters?”

“Uh-huh,” he grunted.