signor_ferrari

I know, it's been too long. I've really struggled with this chapter because I felt like I wrote myself into a couple of corners I've got to get out of to keep the story going. I'll write more about this segment later, but for now, here are the words. We're flashed back to the 80s again.

As Mom walked into the room, glancing at the remnants of it all, the feathers from the chicken floating carelessly in the air, the oil still dripping from the rafters above, she remembered the promise she had made to herself and knew that this time, she could finally follow through.

---

Since the fawn incident, Marc and I quickly became best friends.  For the first few days after the accident, I was in the habit of coming over to keep him company at his house.  We worked our way steadily through my collection of board games and comic books.  I brought over whatever portion of my collection my family had unpacked the day before as they got us settled into the house.

Jordana, I found out later, was somewhat resentful of all the time I spent with Marc.  Part of it was due to the fact that I had found a new friend already in our new hometown, while she still had to wait until she started school to find new playmates.  Being as far removed from town as the house was, it wasn’t like Mom or Pop could just stop next door to meet the neighbors and see if they had kids Jordana’s or my age.

She was also upset at first because she felt like she was having to do more work helping get the house unpacked.  My parents leaned on her to help get boxes emptied in both my room and hers, and she clearly felt like the division of labor in the household was unfairly poured onto her almost four-year-old shoulders.

All of this came pouring out at dinner one night.  I was actually home for the evening, the first time that week.  We were quietly having supper, when I turned and looked at Jordana.  “Hey shrimp, you messed up my comics when you unpacked them,” I told her.  “The cover was half torn off on a bunch of them. Can you be more careful with my stuff?”

She muttered something under her breath, her mouth half full of food.  Mom glanced at her.  “Jordana, don’t talk with your mouth full.  Finish what you’re chewing and then repeat yourself for your brother.”

Jordana never looked up from her plate.  She chewed a bit more, swallowed, and then said quietly, “You can unpack your own stupid comics.”

“Jordana!” my Mom scolded.  “You don’t be rude to your brother!”

“You always take his side!” Jordana cried, throwing her fork down on her plate.  She folded her arms across her chest and slouched back in her chair.

“Don’t yell at your mother,” Pop chided Jordana quietly.  “And don’t slouch at the table.  You can either behave, or you can go to your room without finishing your supper.  And that means you won’t get any ice cream for dessert.”

“Fine,” Jordana said quietly.  She scooted her chair out and tromped to her room, slamming the door behind her.

I watched her go, then turned and continued to eat.  “What’s her problem?” I asked my parents.  “She’s being a turd.”

“Watch your mouth, young man,” Pop said sharply to me.  “You can be punished too.”

“Yes sir,” I replied.

Mom finished the last bite on her plate.  She stood and took her plate to the sink, rinsing it a bit before setting it down.  She went to the freezer and took a half-gallon of ice cream out.  She searched in a drawer for the scooper and then lifted a clean bowl from the drain board.  After making a bowl for Pop, she laid it on the table before him before clearing Pop’s plate and my own.  “Your sister is just feeling a little lonely,” Mom said quietly.  “She doesn’t have a friend out here like you do with Marc, and you’re not here to keep her company.”

The thought my little sister might be lonely without me around was a revelation.  I had enjoyed hanging out with Marc so much, it had not occurred to me that Jordana might be lonely.  Mom set a dish of ice cream in front of me, but it suddenly looked less appetizing to me as I considered how I might have hurt my sister’s feelings.

“Well,” Pop interjected as he finished his ice cream.  “Maybe now that it looks like things are a little more stable for me with this new job, we might be able to look at getting her some company.”

My ears perked up.  “You mean we can get a dog?”  My sister and I had been bugging my parents to let us have a dog since well before we left El Paso.

Pop chuckled.  “I’m not saying anything like that.”

“Yet,” Mom added with a smile and a wink.

“Yet,” Pop agreed, smiling back.

The thought of a puppy to play with around the house brought my appetite back, and I started spooning up my ice cream with relish.

“In the meantime, you think you could stay here for the next couple of days and help out with the last of the unpacking?” Mom  asked.

“Sure thing!  Marc’s feeling better, and maybe he can come over and help too!”

Mom seemed somewhat relieved.  “I think that sounds very nice.”  She looked at Pop.  “Can Artie and I take Jordana some ice cream as a peace offering?”  Pop nodded, and Mom went to the sink to wash out her bowl and spoon before making a fresh one for Jordana.

---

Marc came over the next day, and that is how he and my sister first met.  Between the three of us, we were able to unpack the last of the boxes in the house in what felt like record time.  Mom commented frequently on how helpful we had been throughout the day.  Because Pop was working in Ft. Worth regularly now, he had to leave early to get to work on time and frequently got home late.  I don’t think I had realized how much help Mom needed while I had been hanging out with Marc, and felt good about my decision to stay home and get Marc to help.

With the last of the unpacking done, it freed Marc, Jordana and I up to go exploring the land around our house.  Jordana had been reluctant to go out around the house since finding the dead fawn, but with Marc and I both there, she seemed to have forgotten the fawn and we frequently had to run to keep up with her.  There wasn’t much to see out in the middle of nowhere, be we had fun all the same.

Jordana also tagged along when I went over to Howie’s to play with Marc as well.  Howie and Marc would show Jordana and I around Howie’s property, looking at some of the old buildings that Howie’s great grandparents had built.  There was an old barn that they hadn’t used in years.  The roof had partially blown off in a storm when Howie was my Pop’s age, and so we stood in the center of it, looking up at the blue sky and clouds through the wide hole in the rafters.

The pen where we had burned the fawn corpse was where Howie’s father had made an ill-advised attempt to try and raise and break horses.  Howie said his father didn’t have the temperment or patience to train horses, and they wound up selling off the horses Howie’s father had bought within less than a year.

Howie also showed us his family’s old chicken coop, and it was this that captured Jordana’s attention beyond measure.  There was a large henhouse that Howie showed her, lifting her up with one arm as he held the roof of the henhouse up with so she could see inside where the hens would roost and lay eggs.  Jordana was mesmerized by the idea of watching baby chicks hatch from eggs and eventually growing into full-size chickens that would waddle and flutter about the pen enclosed by the wire fence.

“I don’t want a puppy anymore,” she told our parents at dinner that night.  “I want a pet chicken.”

The words had no sooner left her lips than both of my parents laughed from the shock of the suggestion and the sheer audacity of it.

“You don’t know anything about raising chickens, you dork,” I told Jordana.

“I do so,” she insisted petulantly.

Pop stopped laughing, knowing it would only agitate my sister even more.  “Jordana, honey…you can have a pet chicken, dear.  Even if we bought you one, there’s no place where you could keep it.”  He looked at her with, an unspoken pleading in his eyes for her to understand.  “Chickens aren’t like dogs or cats, sweetie.  They can’t just sleep in the house, and they’re messier than a puppy to clean up after.

Jordana began to pout,  “I know that,” she said speaking as though this was a fact that had long been evident in her young world, and couldn’t believe her parents were only now figuring this out.  “But Howie said he could take the henhouse apart and put it back together here for me if I wanted to raise a chicken as a pet.”

There was a clatter of dishes Mom dropped in the sink as she took in this latest parry from her precocious daughter.  I saw her glance back over her shoulder at Pop, a frustrated look on her face.  “Remind me to thank Howie for being so helpful the next time I see him,” she said coldly.  I felt a brief moment of panic at the thought that my parents my not let me visit Howie’s any more, nor Marc come to visit us for fear of the Wilson family being negative influences on my sister and I.

“I don’t know, honey,” Pop said slowly.  “We promised a puppy someday soon, we didn’t talk anything about chickens.  A puppy is a big responsibility by itself, but I think a chicken might even be more so.  Puppies are a little more self-sufficient.”

“What does that mean?” Jordana asked.

“That means they can take care of themselves a little bit, honey,” Mom replied, coming to sit down at the table.  My parents seemed to be behaving as though the felt this discussion might be getting out of control.  “Besides, Jordana, your brother was pretty keen about getting a puppy, too, and…”

“You always take his side!” Jordana cried out.  She burst into tears and ran from the room.

Mom and Pop looked at each other helplessly, unsure of what to do or say.  Finally, Mom stood up and walked out to see where Jordana had run off to.  I looked at Pop for guidance.  “Your Mom will take care of it, just leave it be,” he told me.  He resumed eating his dinner. 

I picked at my food a bit, but it had already gotten cold and my appetite wasn’t there.  “May I be excused?” I asked.  Pop nodded, and went to clean up my plate.  “I’ll take care of it son.  You go on,” he told me.

I started to head to my room, but could hear Jordana crying and my mother trying to comfort her in Jordan’s room.  I crept down the hallway to see what was happening.  I peered around the edge of the doorway.

Mom’s back was to the door as she sat on the bed holding Jordana.  Neither of them were looking in my direction, so I stood there quietly watching them.  After a moment, Jordana pulled away from Mom and laid back on her pillow, her eyes cast down at her hands in her lap.

“You love Artie more than me, don’t you?” she asked.  I was about to yell at her when I remembered they didn’t know I was there.  I heard my mom chuckle softly at the suggestion before brushing a strand of Jordana’s hair away from her eyes.  Mom took Jordana’s chin in her hand, tilting Jordana’s face upwards until my sister had no choice but to look Mom in the eyes.

“We love Artie and you equally,” Mom told Jordana.  “I know it may not always seem that way.  Part of that comes from the fact that your father and I view each of you through our own eyes and experiences from when we were your age.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

Mom considered Jordana’s question.  “Well, it means that your father looks at Artie and some of the things he does, and he sees how he might have done things when he was Artie’s age because he was a young boy once.  And I look at you and try to remember what it was like when I was a young girl like you.”  This last comment brought a gentle smile to Mom’s face that I could just see the edge of.

“Did you think grandma and grandpa liked Uncle Allen better than you when you were my age?”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure I did,” Mom said.  Something in her tone made me think she was recalling a very specific incident when she thought about this.

“And they didn’t?” Jordana asked.

“No, sweetie.  They loved your Uncle Allen just as much as they loved me.  It’s just sometimes they show that love in different ways because we’re very different people.”

Jordana fell silent, trying to understand this.

“Look,” Mom told her, taking Jordana’s hands into her own.  “I promise you that I love you and Artie equally no matter what, and I think I can make that same promise for your father.”

Jordana considered this, and nodded her head.  “OK,” she said softly.

“And I promise you that we will do everything that we can to treat you both equally,” Mom went on.  “Both for the good things that you do, and for the bad things if they happen.”

“Cross your heart?” Jordana asked.

Mom made a motion across her chest.  “Now, we talked about a puppy, and I think we’re still ok with getting you and Artie a puppy sometime soon.  But we need you to try and put this idea of raising chickens aside for now honey.  Your father and I aren’t farmers, we can’t learn everything you need to know about raising chickens just like that.”

Jordana nodded again. Mom leaned forward and kissed the top of Jordana’s forehead.  “Now lets go back and see about getting some supper, ok?”  I ducked back as they stood and quietly tiptoed back to my room.

---

The puppy came home a week later, a basset hound I immediately took to calling Dumbo because of his big floppy ears.  Mom and Jordana didn’t like the name, but the puppy responded to the name the first time I used it, and they knew there was no use fighting it.  The name stuck.

The surprise came a month later.  School had started, and Marc’s mom had decided that it was better for Marc to live with Howie for a while. She was working a graveyard shift job, and given how little time she would have to spend with him during the school year, Howie and Marc’s mom thought it best for Howie to raise Marc.  So even though Marc and I were both new to the school, we each had a friend already in our class.

Mom had taken a day job in town working the register at the market.  So Marc, Jordana and I would ride the bus and get off at Marc’s stop after school and stay with Howie until Mom got off work.  The three of us had just clambered off the bus when we saw Howie waiting for us at the stop.  “Hey kids, got a surprise for you,” Howie said smiling.  All of us perked up at the news of a surprise, and we all began speaking at once asking questions to try and figure out what it was.  Howie just smiled and motioned for us to follow him back to the house.

When we approached the house, Howie began walking not towards the front of the house, but around towards the side.  Marc and I looked at each other, confused, while Jordana blissfully follwed Howie around the side.  We caught up to them just as we heard Jordana start to squeal in glee.

We noticed that the old henhouse had been recently fixed up and painted.  The wire fence had been patched up, the rotted posts holding the chicken wire in place replaced with fresh wood.  And beyond the wire, Jordana was staring at a good size red rooster scratching at the dirt and strutting around inside the pen.  There were also three other chickens walking and flapping about, two brown ones and a white one.

Jordana was pleading with Howie to let her into the pen so she could pet the chickens.  Howie chuckled at her.  “Well hold on a second, darlin’, you’ll get to know them soon enough.”

“What’s up with the chickens,” Marc asked Howie.

“Well, I had a talk with Artie and Jordana’s parents, and they told me how much she wanted to have a pet chicken,” Howie replied.  “I’d been toying with the idea of fixing the henhouse up and getting a few because I remember how good it was having fresh eggs for breakfast.  So I told them that I didn’t mind teaching Jordana about how to raise chickens here if she was interested.”  Jordana began clapping her hands together excitedly.

“I can see by her reaction that she is,” Howie said laughing.  He turned to Marc and me.  “And I’d be happy to teach you boys as well.  If Jordana does well with these fine feathered friends, then who knows…maybe when she gets a little older, y’all might have some chickens out at your place before long.”

“So what do you boys say?  You want to learn about raising chickens with Jordana?”

Marc made a dismissive gesture with his hand.  “Pfft.  No thanks, grandpa.  They’re just stupid birds.  They stink and they’re too loud.”

“Well, guinea hens are noisy as hell and they never shut up,” Howie replied.  “But I had enough sense not to get away of those little boogers.  But suit yourself.  Come on Jordana, let’s meet your new friends.”

Marc turned and ran towards the house.  I followed, pausing to look back at Howie and Jordana.  They had moved into the pen, and Jordana was giggling and chasing after one of the hens as it fluttered and hopped about the pen.  I had to smile at how happy my little sister seemed to be to have chickens about.

---

Life went on as usual.  Jordana became very fond of all the chickens, naming them after some of the dwarves from Snow White.  The rooster was now Grumpy for the way he seemed to push all the hens around.  The one hen that ran away from Jordana every time became Bashful, while Happy always fluttered over to Jordana when she entered the pen to feed them.  She never told me why the last one became Dopey.  It just was.

Over the next few months, Jordana fed the chickens, helped collect the eggs with Howie, and generally just had fun taking care of the birds.  Marc and I tried many times to get her to play games with us, but she never seemed interested.  When she wasn’t taking care of them, she sat outside the pen, watching them do what chickens do.  Sometimes she went out there with her Big Chief tablet from school and a box of crayons, drawing pictures of the chickens.  Before long, the refrigerator at home was covered with the drawings, as was one wall of her room.

I never really cared about how much Jordana loved the chickens, but it seemed to bother Marc for some reason.  When we would ask Jordana to do something with us and she said know, Marc always started muttering about the “stupid chickens” being “more fun than us.”  “Silly things can’t even fly,” he once said angrily.  I told him to forget about it, and he would for a little while.  But he always would come back to muttering about stupid chickens and glaring at the pen.

Looking back, I should have realized there would be a problem someday.

---

It was now late winter.  January in Texas rarely brings snow except maybe in the panhandle.  Crowley was no exception to this, and waiting for the school bus was miserable with a biting wind making my teeth chatter.

Marc and I got off the bus at the stop by Howie’s as usual.  Jordana had stayed home in bed, nursing a fever.  Mom had taken the day off from work and stayed home to take care of her.  She had told me that she would pick me up before dinnertime so that Marc and I could have fun playing with some of the toys and games he’d gotten for Christmas.

I had been looking forward to going inside a warm house and playing with the new video game console that Marc had gotten.  We had gotten inside the house, and I was about to take off my jacket when Marc stopped me.  “Grandpa,” he called out.  Artie and I are going to play outside in a little bit.”

“You sure about that son,” Howie called back from the kitchen.  “It’s bitter cold out there.”

“Yeah!” Howie yelled.  “I just need to get something from my room.  We’ll feed the chickens for Jordana while we’re out there.”  He turned and ran up the stairs.

I was immediately certain something strange was going on.  Marc never wanted anything to do with the chickens.  Why he mentioned that specifically had me feeling like something was very, very wrong.  Before I could think about it any more, Marc came bounding back down the stairs, a large package wrapped in brown paper tucked under his arm.  When he hit the landing, he reached for the door when Howie popped his head around the corner.

“I’m gonna need to run up to the store to take care of a couple of things.  You boys be ok without me for a little bit?”

“Sure grandpa!  Artie and I will be fine!  C’mon, Artie, let’s go!”  With this, he grabbed my arm and pulled me outside.

He started running for the abandoned barn, and I quickly lost my breath chasing after him.  Marc pulled the barn door open and stood there impatiently waiting for me to catch up.  When I got inside, he quickly pulled it shut behind us.

“What’s going on Marc?” I asked.

He turned towards me, a look of manic glee spread across his face.  He opened the top flap of the package he’s retrieved from upstairs and pulled out a brightly colored bundle.  It took me a moment to realize what he had.

“Bottle rockets?” I said, astonished.  “Where’d you get those?”

“Ricky Daniels said his family had them left over from New Year’s Eve,” Marc said excitedly.  “He sold them to me for thirty bucks!” 

“Where’d you get thirty bucks?”

Marc pulled another bundle of bottle rockets out of the package.  “I’ve been saving change and birthday money in a bank in my room.  I had almost fifty saved up when I heard him talking about the firecrackers at school last week.”  Marc’s head jerked towards the barn door when he heard the screen door from the house slam shut.  Marc ran towards the door and peeked out a crack. 

After what seemed like an eternity, he turned away from the door.  “Grandpa’s gone.  He won’t be back for at least half an hour.”  He shook more items out of the package.  “Let’s light some of these suckers!”

Marc had a couple of old tin cans and a big box of matches in the package.  There were also a few odd items: plastic toy soldiers, a big roll of duct tape.  He excitedly set the cans up in the middle of the barn floor, confusing me further.  “We’re not going to shoot them off in here, are we?”

Marc pointed up, an annoyed look on his face.  The gaping hole in the roof had always seemed huge to me before, but now it looked oppressively small.  I immediately had a vision of a rocket shooting off at a bad angle and striking on of the rafters, the old dry wood immediately bursting into a huge fire that would kill us both.  Idly, I wondered why Marc wasn’t more afraid of fire for someone who had had such a negative encounter with it in the last year.

Suddenly I heard a light hiss, and looked down to see the fuse on the first rocket lit and burning towards the base of the rocket.  The small spark of the fuse grew larger as the base ignited and suddenly the rocket shot into the air through the open hole of the barn door roof.  It soared for a few seconds and then exploded in a splash of sparks and smoke.  Though it was daylight, there were still some low hanging clouds that provided enough backdrop for us to see the explosion of the rockets.

“You want to light the next one?” Marc asked excitedly.  And in that moment, seeing the box of matches held out towards me, I knew that whatever my fears were about the barn, I wanted to send the next rocket up.

“Gimme,” I told him, picking up one of the loose rockets out of the first bundle.  Marc handed me the box of matches as I walked to our new improvised launch pad.  I set the firecracker into the can, opened the box of matches to pull a fresh one out.  My hand trembled slightly until I struck the match head against the side of the box.  As the flame licked up, my hand became instantly steadier.  I set the fuse alight, waved the match out, and moved back a few paces.  In the blink of an eye, the rocket zipped up with a hiss and then popped against the sky.

“We can do it, General,” I heard Marc say behind me.  I turned and saw he had taped one of the toy soldiers to the long stick protruding from the rocket’s base.  “We can put a man into space.  We’ve got to do it before the commies do!”

I tossed the matches back to Marc.  He grabbed them and sprinted to set the soldier’s rocket in place for his flight into the great blue beyond.  I ran to pick up another rocket and a new soldier to attach to it.  I heard the hiss of the new fuse being lit and turned to see Marc’s effort shoot into the air.  The fuse flared up, and the rocket jerked into the air, but not on nearly as straight a trajectory as the ones before.   It actually seemed to come perilously close to hitting the edge of the hole as it passed through.  It exploded much lower in the sky than the ones before, and my vision of the barn fire came back stronger than ever.

“Hey Marc, maybe it’s not such a good idea to attach the soldiers to these bottle rockets,” I said hesitantly.  “It seems like they’re not flying as far or as straight.  We don’t want these hitting the roof exploding inside of the barn.”

Marc surprised me by nodding his head in agreement.  “You’re right.  We need something that was designed to fly.  I’ll be right back.”

I found myself relieved that Marc had agreed it was a bad idea to shoot off bottle rockets with plastic soldiers.  The appeal of setting the rockets had worn off me considerably, and I looked at the remaining unfired ones as though the bundle was a nest of live snakes.  I inched away from the bundle slightly, and then slouched against the barn wall.  Suddenly I was aware of how cold it was again.  The barn blunted the chill of the wind, but it still was freezing outside.  I was about to head back into the house and forget what Marc was up to when he came back into the barn.

Under one arm he held the largest firecracker I had ever seen.  It looked like a real NASA rocket, but smaller in scale.  It seemed almost as big as Marc was, though in reality it probably wasn’t more than a couple of feet in length at the most.

Under Marc’s other arm…was Dopey.
“Marc, what are you doing with Dopey?” I said, confused.  “They’re easier to feed in the pen.  I’ve done this with Jordana before.  Here, give her to me.”  I reached for the chicken, but Marc pulled her away from me.

“No, I don’t have her here so we can feed her,” he said to me.  Marc sounded almost angry at me, as though he couldn’t believe how silly I was.

“Well why do you have her out of the pen?”

He smiled a smile that made my blood run cold.  “We’re going to teach this chicken how to fly,” he said confidently.

My mouth fell open.  “We’re...what?”

Marc bent over and picked up the roll of duct tape in his fingers.  He then walked over to the launching site.  “We’re going to teach this bird how to fly.  Chickens are birds.  They have wings and feathers, but they can’t fly.  I think that’s dumb.”  He settled the large rocket down on the ground.  The whole while, Dopey was resting under Marc’s arm, blissfully calm under the circumstances.

“This is why Ricky Daniels charged me so much.  He had this one monster rocket left.  I thought it was perfect to get one of these stupid chickens into the air.”  While Marc was talking, he set Dopey on the ground and then straddled the chicken, keeping it trapped somewhat under his weight and between his knees.  He placed one hand near the back of Dopey’s head, holding her neck.  And then he began pulling feathers out by the handful on Dopey’s back, causing the chicken to raise a ruckus.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” I screamed.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“The tape won’t stick to the feathers enough to keep this stupid chicken stuck to the rocket,” Marc said back through gritten teeth.  He seemed to be pulling feathers out with a ferocity I’d never seen before, and I was very frightened of him in that moment.

“Marc, you’re crazy, you can’t do this!” I said, nearly crying.  “Even if you can tape the chicken to the rocket, it has to be too heavy for the thing to fly!”  A horrible realization came to me as I said this.  “And what happens to Dopey when the thing blows up?!?!”

Marc shrugged.  “I don’t know.  What do you care, it’s just a stupid chicken, anyway.”

I was horrified.  I didn’t know what to say, and Marc seemed determined to make this happen.  I didn’t know what to do.  I began to cry, and Marc paused long enough to glance back at me.  “God, why do you have to be such a big baby?”  That was enough to jolt me to action.  I turned, pulled open the barn door and ran out towards the house.

I ran back to the house, unable to even see it with the tears blurring my vision.  My breathing was heavy from the exertion and from being so scared of Marc and what he was doing.  I was so upset I never saw steps to the porch, tripping over the bottom one and banging my shin on the edge of the porch.  I yelped in pain, clutching at my leg.  I forced myself to stand up and opened the door.

“HOWIE, I NEED YOU!!!  COME QUICK!!!”  I yelled.  The house stood silent.  Then I remembered Howie was gone and there was no one there.  I didn’t know when Howie would come back, but feared it would be too late.

I ran to the phone to call my mom.  I picked it up and dialed the house, waiting desperately for her to pick up.  Finally I heard the line ringing.

No one answered.  I hung up after the tenth ring without a response.  I slumped to the floor.  There had been no noise from the barn, and part of me idly wondered if maybe Marc had given up on the idea or realized he was being crazy.  I had no idea why he was being so hostile about Dopey.  The whole situation left me confused and scared.

I don’t know how long I was sitting there on the floor before I heard cars driving up the road.  I stood up quickly and ran to the front porch.  I saw both Howie’s truck and Mom’s car moving slowly up the drive.  I ran to meet them as they rolled to a stop.  Mom got out of her car first, her smile turning to a frown as she saw me and how upset I was.  “Honey, what’s wrong?” she asked rushing over to me.

“MOM!! HOWIE!!!  YOU’VE GOT TO STOP MARC, HE’S CRAZY, HE’S GONNA KILL DOPEY!!!” I screamed out, crying the whole while.

“What are you talking about, son?” Howie asked seriously.  “What the hell is this business about Marc and Dopey.”

I paused, trying to catch my breath and make myself understood.  “He got some fireworks from Ricky Daniels at school.  We were just shooting off bottle rockets, but then he got this big one and he said he was going to teach Dopey how to fly!”

Howie’s face turned from a look of concern to anger.  “Where is he?” he asked.

“In the barn,” I said, pleading.  “Please hurry, you’ve got to stop him!”

Howie began running towards the barn, Mom close behind him.  I ran with them to the barn, and just as we got there, we heard a loud pop, and the walls and door of the barn rattled with the force of the explosion.  Howie and Mom turned and looked at each other and then slowly, Howie reached for the barn door and pulled it open.  As the door swung back, a single feather, once white, now charred and black at the end, floated past us.  Mom and Howie looked in.

---

Once we got home, Mom went upstairs to check on Jordana.  I sat in the kitchen, waiting for Mom to come down and trying not to think about what I had seen in the barn.

“She’s still sleeping,” Mom said as she came in.  I was so focused on the events of the afternoon I didn’t hear her enter, and jumped a bit in my chair.  Mom put her hand on my shoulder reassuringly.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”  She looked at me with concern, though it could turn to anger at a moment’s notice.  Or at least it felt that way to me.  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

I wasn’t really, but felt like I should eat something.  I nodded slightly, still afraid to look her directly in the eye.  Mom went to the pantry and pulled out a large can of soup.  I sat quietly as she worked, listening to the hum of the can opener, the hiss of the gas turning on before the “whoomf” of the stove igniting.  That sound made me think about poor Dopey again, and I shivered involuntarily.  Mom set a large saucepan on the stove and emptied the soup into it, then adding the directed amount of water.  Once she was satisfied with the level of heat on the burner, she turned from her chore and sat down across from me.

I was still avoiding her gaze.  Eventually Mom broke the silence.  “You had no idea Marc was going to do that?”

I shook my head.  “Not until he brought that big rocket into the barn with Dopey under his arm.”

Mom nodded and considered this a moment.  “Did he ever do anything like this before with any other animals?  You’ve never known him or seen him doing anything mean to…a dog or a cat or anything like that?”

I thought about it a moment, trying to remember.  “The only thing I can think of,” I said cautiously, “was when we burned the fawn at Howie’s.  He seemed all keen to check it out and then when he actually saw it…when he touched it…I don’t know.  He seemed grossed out.”

“He helped carry it?”

I shook my head no.  “No, he just seemed curious I guess.  He reached out to touch it when Howie and Pop laid it on the tarp.  But then, he looked like it was really icky to feel and that was it,” I told her.

Mom sighed.  It seemed like my answers put to rest any lingering concerns she had, when suddenly her brow furrowed.  “And you’ve never done anything like that, have you?  You damn well better tell me the truth, young man!”

I shook my head fiercely.

Mom sighed again, then stood to check on the soup.  “Cause I swear to god, I ever see you doing anything remotely mean to poor Dumbo, I will tan your hide so bad you’ll be smarting til you graduate from high school.  And I will make sure you never have a pet as long as you live in this house.”

“No ma’am, I swear.  I will never do anything to hurt Dumbo, and I’ll never hurt an animal as long as I live,” I said, crossing my heart for emphasis.

Mom stirred the soup, lowered the heat slightly and then turned back towards me.  “Marc is not welcome in this house.  As it stands, I don’t know how I’m going to tell Jordana that Dopey is…” Her thought trailed off as she considered the scene she’d witnessed, and shivered as I had earlier.  “I told Howie that, and he was very understanding, all things considered.  He’s going to make sure Marc learned his lesson, of that I’m sure.”

This last got my attention.  “What about me?  Are you going to punish me?”  My mind ran through the gauntlet of potential punishments.  Would she let Jordana destroy some precious object of mine in retaliation?  Grounded for life?  Never being allowed to visit another friend without adult supervision close by?

She sighed.  “You know you father and I would never have approved of you playing with fireworks by yourself, or just with Marc and no grownups around.”  She frowned sadly.  “God only knows what would have happened if that barn had caught on fire.  You could have gotten out easily, but there could have been who knows how much damage to Howie’s property.”

Howie’s property.  Between being freaked out by what Marc did to Dopey and just being terrified of what punishment Mom would give me, I hadn’t even considered what could have happened to the house Howie had lived in for so long.  And that I wouldn’t get to see him anymore if I couldn’t hang out with Marc?  He was like my own grandpa, which was nice since I never knew either of my grandfathers.  Suddenly, I felt like crying again and realized I already had started.

Mom reached for a dry dishtowel and handed it to me.  I wiped at my eyes with it, sniffling.

“You did try to call me, though.  You knew what Marc was doing was wrong,” she said thoughtfully.  “I’m happy and relieved you knew Marc was doing a bad thing and didn’t want to be a part of it.  I think as bothered as you were by what Marc was doing and seeing what happened to Dopey, I think you’ve suffered punishment enough.”  Suddenly, Mom remembered the soup and went to check it again.  She turned the burner off and collected a couple of bowls, ladling out some soup for me, and setting the bowl down.  My appetite came back with a vengeance.

“Now you wait here, while I go break the bad news to Jordana,” Mom said sadly.  I wondered if she had even figured out how she would say it.

Mom was almost to the door when I called out to her.  “Hey mom,” I said quietly.

“Yes, son?”

“I think I’ve got enough money in my piggy bank to pay for Howie to get a chicken to replace Dopey,” I said sheepishly.  “Maybe even enough to get Jordana a couple to keep here, if Pop and I build a pen and henhouse for them?”

Mom smiled, came back and kissed me on the forehead.  “We’ll see son.”  She took the tray with Jordana’s soup and left the kitchen.