Scarecrow Gods (16 page)

Maxom drained the tall sweating glass of iced tea.

It was time to play. He couldn’t afford to get angry. The anger would only serve to anchor him to the earth. And the earth was one place where he was truly limited. His concentration snapped into place as he let his body go. In seconds he was surging up and out to the freedom of an elite universe. He glanced once at his still form, then melted through the thin tarpaper roof.

From the
Land of Inside-Out
it was only moments before he found the life pad of one of the ever present crows that littered the trees. The battle for control was short as he shoved the small spirit of the bird aside. He flapped his wings twice, cocked his head and took to the air.

He wondered for the millionth time,
who needs legs when you have this?

He knew for a fact that Lo Lo had been able read minds. Language and culture were non-barriers as the man dove and wove his way through Maxom’s dreams, memories and secret wishes. In fact, it was the initial feathery brush of the small man that had first directed Maxom to what he now knew only as
The Land of Inside-Out
and all the possibilities it represented. The old Mung had seen through Maxom’s eyes and felt the crippling sadness as the crucified man watched the birds pick apart the remains of his dead friend.

It took six days for the Mung to teach Maxom. Sitting and fasting, Lo Lo tutored until he’d swayed with weak-ness, his body finally turning traitor to the mind as it rebelled from lack of food and water. And then Maxom soared, his soul catapulting from his body, first into a blue land, and then into a pin-point of brightness where he shot up and up. The pain, the loss, his wounds were far below and forgotten. He rose higher and higher until the land was no longer visible. Maxom soared through a camouflage of clouds. The wind whipped across his feathery surface as he cut through the air, the complications of dying bypassed through the Mung’s assistance.

Life was suddenly livable.

* * *

Chattanooga, Tennessee

“Come on you Sissies! Break out the Spades. I feel a Boston coming on,” said Clyde, tossing the
Playboy
aside and rubbing his hands together.

From over the top of another
Playboy
, Danny glanced the other boy’s way, then returned to the naked girl’s statistics. “Shit. You couldn’t feel it if you were sitting on it with the way you’ve been farting all day.”

Clyde grinned. “Yeah, we had corned beef and cabbage last night. I feel like a regular turbo-charged racer.” He finished with a combination mouth-fart and the sound of a car peeling out.

Bergen squinted over the top of his own magazine—the May 1968
Playboy
issue featuring Julie Newmar. Each of the boys had watched old Batman reruns for two months after they’d scored that particular copy of
Playboy
at a garage sale. Gathering in front of the screen, wading through the silliness of the
BIFS
and
POWS
and Robin’s stupid sayings, their only goal was to see Catwoman, remembering the way her hooters really looked under the hard rubber form-fitting costume.

Tony shot up from where he was reclining. “Hell Yes. Me and Clyde are going to bring you and Bergen down. I’m a Yankee and proud of it and if there’s anyone here who can play a little Spades, it’s me.”

Danny sighed and caught Bergen’s gaze. Finally, with a twist of his lip, Bergen grinned in resignation. Spades was perhaps the only thing that could keep him from his medical examination of Catwoman’s curves on this hot afternoon.

Spades it was.

“I suppose if you little boys want to get spanked again, me and Bergen can do it to you.”

“The only spanking you’re going to do is on my
Pepe
when you lose,” said Clyde, in a bad French accent.

“Pepe is right. Pepe Le Pew. You are one stinky shit,
Mon Cherie
” said Bergen carefully laying aside Julie Newmar and pulling up a log.

With spades, it was the terminology that Danny loved the best. To win you had to make
tricks
.
Tricks
were a good thing in Spades. In fact, the more tricks you made the better the chances of beating the other team. Then there was
Boston
. Danny had no idea why it was named after the famous Massachusetts city, but going
Boston
meant you would win every trick, thus leaving the other team trickless, luckless and winless. Playing a
Boston
meant that in one perfect, magnificent hand, the game was over.

Unless it was tournament play. Tournament rules were different, and more often than not, the boys played that way, regardless of the temptation to play the city. Tournament rules allowed so many more ways to score points, so many in fact that it took tremendous skill and even greater luck to stay on top of a game. You could score even without winning any
tricks
.

There were
Blinds
and
Nils
and
Double Blinds
and
Double Nils
and every once in a while, a last gasp attempt to win could result in a team betting
Double Blind Nil
. Uncle Stan had called them the
Fate Cards
. To bid, a team had to decide, without even looking at their cards, that one person wouldn’t win any tricks and the other would win seven. They were each allowed to pass two cards and if they made the bid, received a whopping three-hundred and twenty points. With a bid of
Double Blind Nil
, even the other team was silently rooting for you to win. So hard. So impossible. Yet, so fun.

Two years ago, much to the chagrin of Danny’s father, Uncle Stan, on one of his visits taught Danny and Elaina spades. The card game was so much better than Go Fish, Rummy or Double Solitaire. More importantly, spades was a grown up game.

When Uncle Stan returned home to Iowa, Danny and Elaina wrangled their parents into replacing their Saturday night game of the kiddie board game of Life with the adult card game of spades. It was a hard sell and both parents had tried to dodge the game, but Elaina had reminded them of college and how, according to Uncle Stan, the two had spent every hour of every weekend for two years locked in marathon games, much to the detriment of their grades. Danny remembered seeing his parent’s eyes momentarily brighten at the memory and it had only taken a few of his patented
Pleases
to bring them around.

Those had been the days, sitting on the deck with a pitcher of iced tea snug beside a pitcher of Gin and Tonic for Mom and Dad, the setting sun casting bloody red rays upon the green waters of Lake Chicamauga. With the dusk, came the cool breeze pushing aside the oppressive heat and thick humid air. They’d laughed their way into the night, each member of the family surprised at the other’s spade’s acumen.
Blinds
and
Nils
and a few
Double Blinds
set the stage for a close-fought game.

And like with his family, the four boys filled the glade with their laughter. Jibes and curses passed as often as stunned looks. Bergen and Danny were winning. As Clyde began to deal the dreaded
French Cut
, Doug stumbled into the clearing.

“What the—” said Bergen, jumping up.

“—fuck” finished Eddie.

Doug groaned and fell.

“Doug!” shouted Danny, throwing his cards aside and rushing to his friend’s aid.

“Greg,” he said through a mouthful of blood. “Found out about the itching powder.” His lips were thick, cut in several places.

“Holy shit!”

“How the hell did he find out?” asked Tony.

Doug coughed again. The effort bent him over and a drool of blood escaped in an unbreaking string. Finally, he sat up. “Because I’m stupid. Me and Greg, we was talking. I mean really talking. He wasn’t treating me like garbage at all. More like we were real brothers or something’ stupid like that.” He paused, waiting for the laughter.

But everyone was silent. Danny knew exactly what he was talking about. What he would give to be able to talk to his sister again. He prayed that, wherever she was, she was happy.

“I mean, we were going back and talking about all the best and meanest tricks we’d done. Everything from silly-ass short sheeting beds to Midnight Crap Bombs. It was a laugh a minute and he never even punched me once. I mean, my brother with all his problems can do some pretty cool things. Remember what he did last Halloween? Funny as hell, wasn’t it?”

Of course Danny remembered. It
was
funny as hell, but it had almost caused several accidents, too—his mother’s car included. In fact, he’d been grounded from playing with Doug for two weeks before his mother had finally relented and all because of Greg’s ghost. He turned to Bergen again and watched as his friend tossed an acorn at a crow sitting on a low branch. His aim was true, but the bird side-stepped and twisted its head slightly, as if to ask
why
.

“Everyone knows he stole the idea from a Brady Bunch rerun,” continued Doug, “but those geeks did it down the stairs and it was Greg who was smart enough to do it across a road. I mean, when that sheet slid down the wire, it looked like a real ghost attacking the traffic.”

“Yeah, people still talk about it sometimes, calling it the Haunting of Lake Haven,” said Clyde. “Stupid suckers.”

“See. It
WAS
a good one. Well, I wasn’t about to let Greg win the best trick contest, and after all, we were getting’ along so well. So, I figured I’d just tell him about the itching
owder. I mean, how mad could he be after all this time?” asked Doug. One eye was already closed and it looked like the other might soon follow. The left side of his face was one large matte of purple hues. Blood had begun to crust on his nose and his lips were already the size of Vienna Sausages.

“Bad move,” said Tony.

“Deadly,” said Danny.

“Suicidal,” said Clyde.

“No shit,” said Doug.

The Itching Powder Episode had truly been the best trick any of the gang had ever, or would ever, pull off. Back in November, Greg had been dating a short blonde named Bunny Manoshovitz. Girls with names like Bunny are immediately stereotyped as dim, flighty and ready to spread their legs like a turkey at Thanksgiving. Or so Elaina had said, and Danny supposed everyone thought the same thing. According to Doug, Greg had been thrilled as hell that this particular
Bunny
seemed determined to live up to the reputation every Friday and Saturday night when the two would park in his 1965 white Mustang convertible down by Chicamauga Dam.

Bergen was the one who’d come up with the idea. On vacation to the Outer Banks, he’d scrounged through a specialty shop that not only sold books, shells and antiques, but an entire shelf of gags ranging from whoopie cushions to a small glass bottle that promised to make someone itch until their skin peeled. Although Bergen couldn’t wait to use it, he didn’t want to waste it. So he hoarded the stuff, waiting for the perfect opportunity to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting enemy.

The opportunity came one Friday afternoon after Greg had bullied him at school. So, while Greg was pimping in the bathroom for his date with Bunny, Doug dusted the backseat of the Mustang with the vile powder. Then the boys met at Danny’s and with the gusto of a platoon of infantrymen, charged to their ambush point on their bicycles. The road wound for two miles along the lake edge, up and down steep hills and through the kudzu covered forest. When the boys finally arrived at the Dam, their shirts were plastered to their bodies, their breath coming fast and fierce. They hid the bicycles in a copse of azalea, then ran down the hill to the hedge surrounding the picnic area. They could barely contain themselves as the minutes ticked by.

At nine thirty, the white Mustang finally pulled up. No sooner had Greg parked than the two were ripping each other’s clothes off, Greg fumbling with the complicated mechanism of a double D bra’s hasp. Lips still interlocked, they slid into the back, pushing the front seats forward to provide more room for their gymnastics. The boys had seen naked girls before, but for Danny and Bergen, if you excluded a sister and an old aunt, Bunny was their first, living, breathing three-dimensionally naked girl.

The boys exchanged barely shushed giggles and elbows to ribs. Danny was in a state of awe.

Suddenly, Bunny jerked up, dumping Greg gracelessly onto the floor. She ignored her date’s protestations and began to scratch furiously at the backs of her legs. Greg, instead of being angry, levered himself onto the seat next to her, trying to scratch his back. He finally settled on rubbing it against the edge of the seat like a dog to a tree. The moments of super-heated gymnastics had twisted into a frenetic session of cooperative scratching. The more they scratched, the more they itched. Like the label said, the itching powder had built up under their fingernails, each scratch adding to their misery. Finally, with screams of frustration, they scrambled out of the car and across the park, and dove into the cool water of Lake Chicamauga.