Lively
Ontario, Summer 1984
Tyson opened the screen
door and darted into the kitchen, breathless.
“Scotty! Hey Scotty! You home? Hi Mrs. Reilly is Scott here? Can he come out –oh.” Tyson said.
He knew he messed up before Scotty’s mom turned around from the kitchen counter.
He lowered his head.
“I did it again,” Tyson admitted, studying his running shoes. He did his best
so sound remorseful, but his whole body was shaking with excitement. He
couldn’t wait to show his best friend what he had found.
“You sure did,” Mrs. Reilly answered. She planted her hands at her hips and
gave Tyson a look of disapproval. She was frowning at him, but Tyson saw the
smile in her eyes.
“So what do you do now, buster?”
“I know, I know,” Tyson sighed. He slumped his shoulders and walked back
outside. When the screen door closed, he raised his fist and knocked politely.
Coulda been worse, the eleven year old thought. Coulda been Scotty’s Pa caught
me coming in without knocking.
“Come in, Mr. McNamara!”
Scotty’s mom was
chuckling softly as he re-entered.
“My name is McNamara I’m the leader of the band,” she sang.
Patricia Reilly was a short plump and full bosomed woman with bright red curly
hair. She was always kind to him, that’s why Tyson felt sad and awkward when he
spotted her swollen and bruised lower lip.
“Can Scotty come outside Mrs. Reilly?”
He cast his eyes down and pretended to examine the zipper on his navy blue
windbreaker.
Before she could answer, his bestest friend in the whole wide world came
leaping up the stairs from the basement.
“One step at a time, sweetie. It’s not a race.”
“Sorry Ma,” Scott Reilly said.
Physically the two were opposites. Where Tyson was shorter than most boys his
age with a thick, solid frame and a head full of loose brown curls, Scott was a
scarecrow, his blonde hair straight and always neatly trimmed.
“Can I? Can I go outside with Tyson?”
“Be home by supper,” Scotty’s mother answered. She knew she had precious
seconds to rattle off her instructions before the two kids were out the door
and zooming down the street on their pedal bikes.
“Careful on those bikes, look before crossing the road, don’t go too far, and
STAY OUT OF PEOPLES GARBAGES!”
“Okaaaay!” Both boys called back. They were already half way down Sandra Boulevard
and picking up speed.
“Where we going Ty?”
“You’re not gonna believe it, buddy-roll. You gotta see it for yourself.”
Tyson wasn’t about to reveal their
destination and have Scotty race ahead of him. He might be tougher than his
good ol’ buddy ol’ pal (Scotty was always sporting ugly blue and purple
goose-eggs on the back of his head or ugly cuts under his chin that would scab
over and look absolutely awesome) but he was fast. He always beat Tyson when
they raced on their bikes, and even though Tyson would point out that Scotty’s
bike was newer and nicer than his own beat-up BMX, the words rung hollow in his
own ears. His friend had a nervous energy about him, always fidgeting in class
and doing annoying things like jimmying his legs under his desk like he was
playing an invisible bass drum. Scott never bragged about how much faster he
was than Tyson, but that didn’t mean Tyson had to like being left in his best
friend’s dust.
The boys pedaled side by
side to the end of Hillcrest subdivision, bunny-hopping the curb to travel the thin
strip of pavement that served as a bicycle path running parallel to the
highway.
“Aw, you shoulda told me we were gonna be exploring,” Scotty called from
behind. “I woulda worn my jeans instead of these shorts. I’d have brought more
supplies, too.”
“Trust me Scotty, this is gonna be worth some scratches and bug bites. Wait and
see!”
Scott Reilly was a stickler about being prepared. Wherever he went, he had his
A-Team backpack slung over his shoulder in which he kept all sorts of odds and
ends. Scotty called them his “tools” but they were really just a bunch of
household items that his friend insisted were high-tech gadgets from the
future. The tire gauge was his scanner and sonic screwdriver like the one Doctor
Who carried. He had a tuning fork that
warned of impending danger when he held it out in front of them like a water
divination rod. The egg beater? A communicator from the 24rth century that when
held above his head and cranked allowed Scotty to receive messages from the
friendly aliens of Alpha Centauri.
Secretly he felt the whole thing kind of
babyish, but Tyson would never say it aloud. His dad told him that Scotty had
it rough at home because his father liked drinking better than going to work.
He said Scotty’s Pa wasn’t much of a man. Tyson wasn’t exactly sure what that
meant, not really, but he did know Scott Reilly was his bestest pal, his
closest compadre and his brutha from anutha
mutha, and if that meant believing a tire gage was a sonic scanner or a garden
spray gun was a photon blaster that discombobulated alien mutants with a single
shot, well then Tyson thought, set
phasers to kill.
The bag itself was pretty
cool though, it had a picture on the back with all the members the A-Team with
their names and military specialties listed above their heads. Hannibal, Face,
Murdoch and the two boys’ favorite member, B.A. Baracus, played by the imposing
Mr. T. with his signature hairstyle stood with their arms over each other’s
shoulders, still managing to look completely badass despite the grins on their
faces.
The two of them left the bike path and turned left on Black Lake Road. A few
hundred feet from the corner was their destination, a large brown brick
building containing a bowling alley and bar that they weren’t allowed in unless
accompanied by their parents or on a field trip with their school. It wasn’t
the building they were interested in.
Tyson coasted into the back parking lot and hopped off his BMX to park it, but Scotty
came in like a speeding bullet, leaping from his seat just before his expensive
mountain bike collided with the brickwork of the bowling alley’s rear wall.
Tyson was always puzzled about
how his friend could be meticulous and organized with the worthless props he
carried around in his backpack, and then so careless and destructive with the stuff
he owned that was actually worth something. It didn’t make sense.
Then again, Tyson thought as they
ventured further into the forest, a whole
lotta things don’t make sense about Scotty. Things like the bruises and
goose-eggs he showed up to school with sometimes. He never wants to talk about how it happened.
What young boy wouldn’t wanna tell his friends in his class how he got a gnarly
lump on his head or a nasty gash on his knee that required stitches? The boys
Tyson knew would demand every gory detail while the girls scurried away looking
disgusted and wondering why boys had to be so gross.
His mother would nervously check Scotty’s wound and remark how clumsy her poor
little boy could be, but Tyson had seen his best friend take a hundred jumps on
his mountain bike and climb just as many trees and never fumble or fall a
single time.
“We almost there?”
“Check it out,’ Tyson answered triumphantly.
They stepped out of the sweltering heat of the deep bush into a clearing, and
in the center stood the biggest, most well-built cabin the boys had ever seen.
Standing two stories tall and made with wooden planks and lumber, it was more
of a building than a bush-cabin. There was even a woodstove on the ground
level.
“What is it?”
“It’s a fort that someone has hired us to defend,” Tyson said.
Scotty smiled and recited the intro from their favorite television show: "In 1972, a crack commando unit was
sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men
promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles
underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of
fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find
them, maybe you can hire... the A-Team."
The two boys inspected
the area surrounding the building thoroughly, quickly discovering the
architects and builders of their makeshift fort by the trash they left behind.
Cigarette butts, roach-clips and empty beer bottles pointed invariably to teenagers,
and not the nice kind like the safety-monitors on their school bus.
“Looks like this is where they come to smoke their smokes and drink booze,”
Scotty said. “What if they come back?”
“We run, silly.” Tyson waved his arm across the butts littering the ground.
“You think a bunch of dumb smokers are fast enough to catch us?”
Scotty thought about it for a minute before nodding in agreement.
Once inside they climbed the wooden ladder to the second floor and found more
drug paraphernalia and empty bottles of cheap wine along with candy bar
wrappers and spent bags of potato chips. The air inside the cabin smelled of
musty wood and stale alcohol and the teens had carved various swear words into
the walls along with the symbols of various rock bands like the VH from Van Halen and Twisted Sister’s
stylized TS. The north wall opened
onto a deck bordered with a hand railing on which a thick yellow rope was tied
that hung to the ground below.
For the next two hours Tyson McNamara and
Scott Reilly defended their position against imaginary threats, taking turns
pretending to be different members of their beloved A-Team. The boys were so
wrapped up in their adventures they didn’t hear Robbie Castille and the other
teen known only a Horvath approaching. Tyson and Scotty were sitting on a
couple of red milk crates on the second level planning a patrol route around
their fort when they heard “Who’s in there?”
The boys looked at each
other, wide-eyed with panic.
“The rope,” Scotty suggested. They scurried onto the deck and looked down,
weighing their options. They could shimmy down to the forest floor, but then
what? Run deeper into the bush and risk getting lost in unexplored territory?
That’s if the rope held, something they both expressed doubts about during
their initial inspection.
“Whoever’s in there, youse better come out by the count of ten,” the voice
commanded, “or we’re comin’ in!”
Tyson and Scotty climbed down the ladder and nervously exited the cabin and
stared blankly at the older boys standing at the edge of the clearing.
“Jus’ a couple lil’ faggots,” Horvath said. Robbie chuckled at his buddy’s
description.
Both teens were wearing denim jackets, Robbie wore a black KISS shirt and green
khakis beneath his, Horvath a red sweater with the hood pulled over his head. Tyson
and Scotty knew them from the neighborhood, they were just the kind of big kids
their parents had warned them to stay away from.
Robbie Castille had long
greasy brown hair that covered his ears and hung to his slumped shoulders. He
had thin patches of stubble above his top lip and chin, the starting of a
mustache and beard that wouldn’t be fully realized for a few more years of
puberty.
Horvath had a narrow face covered with acne, his eyes were always red and puffy
and never seemed to open wider than slits. His voice sounded flat and tired. “What
were you two bum-chums doin’ in there, sucking each other off?”
“We weren’t doing anything,” Tyson said. He held his hands up to demonstrate
they meant no harm. “We just happened to find this cabin and were looking
around, that’s all.”
“Ye-yeah,” Scotty added. “We were just gonna leave.”
Robbie cocked his head and pointed at Tyson’s best friend.
“Hey, aren’t you Buzz Reilly’s kid? Old Buzzy the booze-hound?”
Scotty frowned. “Shut up,” he said in a low voice.
Robbie poked his friend. “My mother found his old man passed out in his own
puke in the shitter at the ‘Winds,” he said. “Just the other night.” Horvath
giggled, a stuttering nasal sound that reminded Tyson of a billy-goat.
“And what, pray tell was your mother doing in the mens room of the local
tavern, Robert?”
It was a high, crackly voice that startled Tyson and made Scotty shiver. It
came from behind them. The boys turned to look but saw no one at first.
The teenagers took an unconscious step back.
“Who said that,” Robbie Castille called out. “Who’s there?”
Horvath walked toward the boys. “Who else you little queers got with you?”
An old man in a black suit walked out from behind the cabin. He wore a matching
bowler hat and shiny dress shoes, not the kind of apparel one would wear to go
walking in the bushes. He was smiling, his mouth filled with big pale yellow
teeth that looked like the keys on an old broke down piano, decaying and
hopelessly out of tune. His shirt was bright white and beneath the collar hung
an old fashioned black string tie.
“Who are you?” Robbie’s tough-guy front was betrayed when his voice cracked.
“Answer my question and I’ll answer yours, Robert Castille. How did your mama
happen to be in the gentlemens rest room at the Tradewinds hotel?” The old man
was eyeing Robbie inquisitively with a glimmer of mischief in his faded grey
eyes.
“She-she works there,” he answered, somewhat defensively.
“A serving girl, then,” The stranger said in a mocking tone. “Not a very
prestigious position, is it now? Glass houses, my boy. Glass houses.”
“She’s not some welfare waitress,”
Robbie insisted. “She makes good money there. She’s the manager.”
“Come now Robert, have you ever seen more than five or six patrons in that
dive? What’s to manage?”
Robbie Castille had no answer.
“You’re right in a way, I suppose. Your dear mother is more than a simple
barmaid. The extra money she brings home is from servicing the men who frequent
that shit-hole. Sometimes with her hand, my boy, but mostly with her mouth.”
This creepy old man is enjoying himself, Tyson thought. He’s looking right
through Robbie. Seeing everything with those soft grey eyes that seem like
they’re burning.
“You-You’re lying,” Robbie stammered “My moth- my mom is the…”
The man continued. “When your mother comes home crying like she so often does,
do you think it’s the stress of managing a dying business that puts her in such
a sorrowful state?”
“Who gives a shit what this old bone-smoker says, Rob.” Horvath cut in. He
never took his eyes off the old guy as he spoke. “He’s just mad ‘cause he was
getting his knob polished by these little turds when we came along and
interrupted.”
The man in the black suit turned his attention to the hooded teen then. “You’ve
got quit the fascination with all things homosexual, don’t you Mr. Horvath? Do
you judge so harshly when you pleasure yourself to the poster on your bedroom
wall at night? You know, the big poster of the tall, dashing curly haired
driver of that souped up Trans-Am? The
Knight Rider he’s called. Am I correct boys? Is that what the TV program
is called?”
Horvath’s eyes were opened wide for the first time since he discovered the joys
of marijuana.
“Fu- fuck this old cock- fuck this old prick Rob. Let’s just go.”
“Yeah,” Robbie nodded hurriedly. “We’ll catch these little jerkoffs later.”
“You will not,” the old man said loudly. The tone of his voice dropped low like
an unnatural baritone, and when the echo of his command faded, the forest had
gone silent. The birdsong went mute and the noise of crickets and the other
insects of the forest abruptly died.
Robbie Castille and his partner looked at each other briefly before turning and
running back through the woods the way they had come.
II
The old man clucked and
then let out an amused hoot before approaching the boys and hunkering down on
his haunches.
“Well then, now that we’re rid of those two, I think proper introductions are
in order, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’m Scott…”
“You are Scott James Reilly and your friend here is Tyson Emmett McNamara,” the
stranger said. “Of course you are. My name is Louis Morningstar, but my friends
call me Louie”
“How do you know us,” Scotty blurted out enthusiastically. “How do you know
those other boys? Is what you said to them all true?” Tyson kicked his friend’s
lower leg and scolded him. He turned to the strange old man. “Sir, thanks a lot
for getting rid of those bullies, but we really have to get going.”
“So soon? But I came to your aid, didn’t I?” The man in the black suit removed
his bowler hat and held it his chest over his heart, grinning while his pale
eyes danced between the two boys. Tyson saw the man was bald save for a few scattered
wisps of white hair hanging dull and lifeless from his liver-spotted dome. “Can’t
we sit and chat a spell?”
“Well we don’t gotta leave right this minute,” Scotty said. He looked over at
Tyson and shrugged his shoulders. “What? We do
have time. It’s not even close to supper.”
“I
believe your friend is just being cautious, young master Reilly. Very wise,
very wise indeed. To answer your question, every word I said to those two
hooligans was the truth. When you’ve lived as long as I have, everyone you meet
reminds you of someone you once knew. I guess I’ve developed a knack for
reading folks, especially the dim-witted kind like Robert Castille and his
ilk.”
“You mean you can read minds,” Scott said wistfully. “I knew there was such a
thing as psychic, see Tyson I told you there was such a thing.”
Morningstar covered his mouth with a waxy yellow hand and chuckled, heheheh.
That’s not a funny laugh, Tyson
thought. He sounds like a villain on a
Saturday morning cartoon after he robs a bank or lays a trap for the good guy. It’s
a sneaky kinda laugh.
“You see, that’s why it’s such a delight to meet a young man like you Scott
Reilly. Such a brilliant imagination. Such spirit.”
“He’s full of baloney Scotty.” The words were out of Tyson’s mouth before he
could stop them. “He can’t read the kinds of things he knew about those two
dummies and he’s no psychic. That’s the kinds of things you learn from being a
spy. Too late to stop now, Tyson
thought. He was scared of this Louie character, but his best friend was
captivated by the creep and Tyson desperately wanted Scotty to realize they
weren’t safe here with him. Everything about the old man was just…wrong. The
way he was dressed, the way he carried himself, the way he spoke and especially
the way he looked at the two of them was all
wrong.
“He’s nothing but a sneak. That’s the only way he can know the things he did
about Robbie and Horvath. He’s a nosy old man that peeks through windows and
searches people’s trash cans.”
Morningstar recoiled and got back to his feet, grimacing. He placed his bowler
hat back upon his head. “How very rude,” he said.
“No kidding,” Scott agreed. Both Morningstar and his best friend were looking
at him disapprovingly.
“He made those idiots run like scaredy-cats, Ty. They’d have beaten us up if it
weren’t for Louie, and you know it.”
Tyson sighed and looked down at his shoes.
“I wasn’t the only one doing the truth-telling. What Robert said about your
father is also true. He is sick with the drink, isn’t he Scott?”
“Not s’posed to talk about it,” Scotty muttered.
Tyson glared at the old man “And it’s not your business, sir. Not your business
at all.”
“He won’t get better,” Morningstar said, ignoring Tyson. “His tantrums will
only get worse.”
Tyson saw Scotty’s bottom lip start to quiver.
“He will continue to hurt you, but your poor mother will get the worst of it,
as she always has.”
Morningstar’s voice was smooth and steady. “One day, quite soon, your father
will hurt her quite badly.”
Tears were streaming down Scotty’s cheeks. He began to sob.
“Enough,” Tyson barked. “You shut your mouth!”
“It’s alright, lad.” Morningstar’s voice was rhythmic now, hypnotic. He continued
to ignore Tyson, like the boy wasn’t even there. “I can help you if you want me
to Mr. Reilly,” Morningstar said. “I can make it stop. I can make it so that
your father never touches you and your mama again. Will you let me help you?”
“H-How?” Scotty sobbed so hard his whole body shuddered now. He looked up at
the old man with an expression of misery and faint hope.
“Don’t listen to him Scotty,” Tyson pleaded. “He’s nothing but a liar. He’s a
dirty lying asshole.
Scotty flinched and faced Tyson then, not used to hearing his best friend
curse. He looked angry.
“You shut up, Tyson. You have a perfect house with a perfect mom perfect dad
who works in the mine and takes you to Wolves hockey games! You and your perfect
family go out to the movies and watch Happy Days on Sunday! You know what me
and my mom do on Sundays? We tip toe around the house and whisper so we don’t
wake up my shithead dad who drank so much the night before he’s sleeping on the
floor in our fucking hallway! You know what happens if we wake him up, buddy
old pal?”
“I’m-I’m sorry,” Tyson managed. He felt ashamed and deep sadness for his
friend. “Why didn’t you tell- this old man, you can’t trust him, Scott. Let’s
just leave okay? Let’s leave now.”
“THIS,” Scott screamed, pointing to a jagged mark above his right eyebrow.
“THIS HAPPENS,” he screamed again, pointing to the small pink scar where a
surgeon had to insert a metal rod to make sure his broken arm healed correctly.
“AND THIS, AND THIS, AND THIS!” each time he screamed at his friend, Scotty
pointed to another scar.
“Alright calm yourself boy,” Morningstar said. He took a white handkerchief
from his suit pocket and wiped the tears from boy’s wet face. When he was done,
the old man raised the cloth and appeared to be inspecting it, but when Scott rubbed
his eyes, Tyson watched the creepy fellow quickly shove it in his mouth and
suckle on it, his eyelids fluttering as if he were tasting the sweetest nectar
in the world.Oh man, Tyson thought. What do I do now?
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