This is an original work on progress.
Chapter One
Billy watched silently as the rain beat steadily against the smudged glass of his classroom window. No doubt, countless hands and fingers containing mud, crud, boogers, and an endless list of bacteria had made the glass almost opaque. It didn’t matter though he wasn’t looking outside anyway. He wasn’t even looking at the glass or even the dozens of greasy fingerprints that smeared its smooth surface. He didn’t care about any of that stuff. That was stupid. What did he care about the dumb old glass anyway? Even if he did and wanted to clean it, it would just be “One more thing” that would somehow land him into trouble. Trouble. Yeah, right. Trouble. Trouble, trouble, trouble.
“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST ON THE CROSS! HOW MANY GODDAMN TIMES DO I HAVE TO FUCKING TELL YOU BILLY? What are you, stupid? Ignorant? Or just plain dumb? I swear, I think you were put on this Earth to make my life a living HELL! What the fuck is the matter with you? Can’t you do anything right? I swear to God, I wish I never had ANY of you fuckin’ kids. The day you were born was the sorriest day of my life!” Billy Colin’s mom shrieked as threw pots and pans into the kitchen sink with a vengeance.
“Sorry, mom” Billy pleaded, hanging his brow beaten head.
Yeah, sorry. Right.
Sorry, mom.
Sorry.
Mom.
Or was that a sorry mom? Cause she certainly was a sorry mom, that’s for sure. Granted, up until a few years ago, Billy had had no idea of how sorry a mom Mrs. Colin actually was. It hadn’t been until a friend of his from school had invited him on a weekend camping trip. During that trip, Billy finally got to see how life could be with a family that wasn’t quite so dysfunctional.
Jackie Johnson had been a new kid from downstate that had just moved to Billy’s town in the March of 1989. Jackie didn’t know anybody here and was feeling really down and out and alone. Billy understood and could relate to those feelings all too well. It occurred him that he had felt like that just about as long as he could remember. None of the kids in his neighborhood, or even at school seemed to want to have anything to do with him. Billy remembered the first time he spoke to Jackie. It was a bright spring day and the birds were chirping outside in the school playground.
“Hi. My name’s Jackie”, he had said to Billy with a slight southern draw. “I’m new here, you want to hang out?” he asked Billy shyly.
“Hang out? Yeah, sure” Billy had said, trying to hide his enthusiasm. Little did Jackie know that this was turning out to be one of the happiest days of young Billy’s life. (“Want to hang out?! Hell, yes he wanted to hang out! Hang out! Damn Skippy he wanted to hang out! Hang, yessiree bob! Hangin’ out! Hangin’ wit my homie, Jackie. Oh yeah!)You see what Jackie didn’t know at the time was that Billy didn’t have a friend in the world. Oh, there were some little kids in the lower grades that spoke to Billy. Heck, maybe even one or two that liked him. But nobody Billy’s age had EVER asked him to hang out. “Yeah, that’d be great!” Billy beamed back. So the two had become fast friends and Billy started thinking that maybe life wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe things would get better with a little help from a friend. “Yeah, let’s hang out and be buds,” Billy smiled.
The two boys quickly grew close and one day Jackie said, "Hey, want to come over to my house and ride the tire swing?"
Jackie’s family had bought the old Matlin place up on Lovering Avenue, it was a bit of a hike, but Billy was more than eager to make the trip. Anything was better than being at home taking a daily tongue lashing, as well as a barrage of insults from his mother.
The Matlin house, where Jackie and his family lived, was a beautiful old Victorian home, with a wraparound porch and even a porch swing. “It’s a little rundown, but my mom’s a designer and my dad’s a contractor.” “They’re gonna redo stuff and make it look beautiful and brand new again.” Jackie proudly declared.
Billy was in awe. What the heck was Jackie talking about? This place was awesome. It was beautiful and everything Billy had ever imagined living in a house should be. Having lived an apartment all his life, his only playroom had been the cracked asphalt outside or the dark, dank smelling basement of the apartment complex. Jackie’s place was like freakin’ Disneyland compared to that! A big front yard where you could play catch, football, or even freeze tag. A tree, just made for climbing complete with a tire swing. Billy was already planning on how to con the Johnsons’ into letting him help them rake leaves this Fall. “Yeah, that’d be so cool. In the Fall, maybe he and JJ could rake up some leaves and build themselves a giant fort to jump into. Oh my God, that would be awesome!” Billy mused to himself. As they rounded the back of the house, the back yard loomed in front of them and appeared to go on forever. “Holy smokes!” Billy muttered in disbelief. The backyard was enormous, with room enough even for a kid to have a dog. “Wow.” That was all Billy could say.
Jackie looked at Billy strangely and said, “You alright man?”
Billy Colin just stood there staring blankly at the yard with an expression Jackie couldn’t quite place. Fact was, Billy couldn’t identify his reaction either. It was probably resembled the expression that one would see on a blind man’s face, if he had suddenly gotten the power of sight.
“Huh? What?” Billy stammered.
“I saaaid, are you okay? You look like a starvin’ man at the Lord’s Banquet table!” Jackie laughed.
“What? Oh, sorry.” Billy smiled shyly. “I guess I must have spaced out for a minute. It’s cool, man. I’m alright.”
Over the years Billy had gotten pretty good at hiding his feelings or what he was really thinking. He had discovered a while back, that this was an effective way from letting people get too close. Getting too close meant letting them “inside”. Letting people “inside”, was something Billy tried very hard NOT to do. It wasn’t that he didn’t want that kind of friendship with someone. In fact, there wasn’t anything that he wanted more than to be someone’s “BFF”, but he also thought that sometimes these wishes came at a terrible price. Many times the hurt and tears and the feelings of abandonment from a failed attempt, outweighed his desire for such a friendship. Billy had learned early in life, not to let people in too close. People sometimes hurt you. Sometimes you got hurt by accident,.....
...... sometimes on purpose.
So Billy just smiled his smile and said, “Nah man, I’m cool. I was just surprised to see that rickety old swing was still hanging there. Thing’s probably fifty years old by now.”
“Yeah, my mom don’t like it much neither.” Jackie said. “She told my dad, ‘Henry Johnson, the first thing we’re going to do is cut down that disgusting looking tire swing!’” Jackie said in his highest pitched Southern Belle accent.
“Really, wow that sucks.” Billy moaned. “I mean, a kid like you probably would really dig having a tire swing in your front yard right?” Billy quickly tried to cover the mourning of his quickly fading dreams of hot summer days of Jackie and him swinging and laughing their heads off.
“Yeah, but my dad wasn’t havin’ none of that bunk!” Jackie laughed. ’Nancy Ann, you just’ hold on one danged minute there woman.’ Jackie said in his most Ret Butler-like impression. ‘A young boy needs things to do, less he finds his self getting’ into all sorts of messes. Shoot, when I was a young, me and my brothers had us a swing just like that one! Man, I tell you, they was some of the best days I can remember as a boy down in Memphis.’
“Wow, really?” Billy asked amazed. “What’d your mom say?”
Jackie got a big old grin on his face and smiled. “She just said,’ Mr. Johnson, you’re incorrigible.’ And then she just smiled and walked away. My dad shot me a wink and I knew we were keeping the swing.”
Suddenly,Billy decided he like Mr. Johnson. Though he hadn’t even met the man yet, it was clear that he was a man of character and insight. It sounded like he knew just what it was like to be a kid, as though he was still a young boy somewhere in his head. A young boy playing on a swing with his brothers, in the blistering summer sun of Memphis. Now man, that was cool. These elements as well as Billy’s lack of a positive role model in his life, placed Mr. Johnson somewhere between John Wayne and the President, Ronald Reagan.
“Sounds like your dad’s pretty cool, Jackie.” Billy smiled.
“Eh, he’s alright I guess.” Jackie scoffed. And with that, the two boys headed for the tire swing.
