Indian Hill (4 page)
“Man, Ratsniffer’s so far up my ass he knows what I ate before I fart,” I groaned.
“How does he do that?” Paul bemoaned back.
“Do what?” Now my curiosity was a little peaked.
“Dude, every time I turn around the little bastard could
be
read
ing
the soles of my sneakers. How
i
s he in two places at the same time?”
“Maybe he’s only half of a set of freakish twins.” We both laughed a little.
“Talbot, we can’t go the rest of the year with him following us around, we need to throw him off of us and onto someone else.”
“Any ideas? Or are you just talking out your ass again?” To which Paul punched me square in the shoulder. “Alright, alright, I’m listening.”
“Meet me at our favorite drinking location after dinner, and wear dark clothes.”
“Wear dark clothes?” But Paul had left the vicinity to make sure he didn’t miss his next class. The day dragged by as I pondered all the possible things Paul could be talking about, and did I really want to add fuel to a simmering fire. Ratsniffer might actually back off in a month or two or three…’Fuck it, I’m in.’ I thought. I picked through the majority of dinner. My nerves were starting to get the best of me, but since my Dad only read the paper and my mom spent the majority of the time glaring at my dad, my lack of appetite went completely unnoticed.
“Mom, I’m going to Paul’s to study!” I shouted as I headed out the door. She barely glanced in my direction; she probably figured if she glared at my dad’s paper long enough it would catch fire.
“Be back by curfew!” she shouted. With all the effort they put in to my rearing I often wondered why in these times they actually went through with the pregnancy. There was no spark whatsoever between my parents and I was fairly certain my dad had far greener pastures to sow on the weekends, but enough dilly dallying, Paul and I had some unknown business (at least to me) to finish with Ratsniffer. I made it down to the Stop and Shop in record time. Paul was already waiting by the dumpster.
“Hey bud,” I half yelled into the wind. “You heading up?”
“Naw, too cold, anyway we have too much work to do to be messing around up top.”
“What’s with the book bag? You going to the library?” I quipped. I wasn’t sure if he even knew which way the library was.
“Actually, yeah.”
“What?!”
Paul laughed when he saw my face. “Don’t worry, I’ll explain on the way.” He proceeded to tell me in detail his plan, and how every good crime needed a solid alibi.
“So we’re going to do some face time in the town library, but won’t people see us leave as soon as we enter? What’s the use in that?”
“There’s the beauty my friend, we can sneak down into the basement, get out of the library, do our business and be back inside without anybody being the wiser.”
“Dude, you’re a genius,” I exclaimed as I slapped him on the back.
Too bad the genius was short lived. We entered the sparsely populated library, making sure that our presence was noticed by being a bit loud upon entry. The head librarian was quick to shush us and look us up and down in that disapproving way adults do. Paul even made sure to go up to her and ask her for assistance in helping us locate a book for a report we had to do. When she realized that maybe these young hooligans were actually here to study, her demeanor softened a bit. We both made sure she got a good look at us and talked to us for a bit before we retired off to the far reaches of the south corner, and surprise, surprise, right next to the basement door.
The basement was far more disorienting then I would have expected. It seemed to be the repository for lost books… globally. Random stacks of books rose from the floor like literary stalagmites. We took great care to avoid th
o
se; one spill could alert the librarian something was amiss, or
bury us
. The window, which I figured would be painted shut, flew open with the slightest push. The fates were definitely shining down upon us, at least that was the theory at the time. We took extreme caution to make sure that our operation went completely undetected; it would do us no good to be caught running around Ratsniffer’s neighborhood moments before some ghastly deed was done. We even took to diving in hedges before passing cars.
“You sure you know where Ratsniffer lives?” But before Paul even responded I saw
his car
, a brand new white Cadillac. How he affords that thing I had no idea.
“Dude, put these on,” Paul said as he handed me a pair of surgical gloves.
“Good call. You really thought this out.”
“Shhh…” Paul said as he pulled me to the ground.
“
Dammit
!” Ratsniffer was in his living room watching TV in full view of his new Caddy and us. “Now what? Do we abort?”
“No fricken way,” Paul said. “We just stick to the rear of the car, he can’t see us from there.”
“Yeah, but passing cars can.”
“Then we’ll have to be fast. Here, put this on,” Paul said as he handed me a ski mask.
“
Y
ou have way too much time on your hands,” as I handed the mask back to him.
“Would you rather do in-school suspension until we graduate?”
“Good point,” I said as I
put the hat on.
“I’m gonna run over to his rear bumper. I’ll motion you when to come.”
My heart was thumping. Before this everything was just talk and bravado, now we were going to actually do something. I thought about backing out, but just then Paul motioned. Well, I couldn’t leave him hanging, so over I went. My heart was racing so fast I almost didn’t hear him.
“
S
lide!” Paul semi-shouted.
“Wha..?” And then I saw Paul doing the universal slide symbol for baseball, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out. I slid so hard
I went
half under the huge car. My heart was hammering, my leg was cramping underneath me but I didn’t dare move. From my vantage point I could see that Ratsniffer had gotten out of his Lazy Boy and was peering out the window.
He
really did have a sixth sense for trouble. Luckily for me Ratsniffer was suffering from a malady I really wouldn’t understand till much later in life, night blindness. If he put his hand out the window he most likely wouldn’t be able to see it after the flooding of light in his living room. But I’d swear to this day that he was looking right at me. Finally, after what seemed like hours but was more likely the end of the commercial break, he left the window and returned to his seat.
“Paul.”
“Yeah.”
“I think I
crapped
myself.” We both laughed hysterically as he dragged me out from under the car.
“Alright, let’s get this started,” Paul stated as he pulled the can of spray paint out of his pocket. “You keep a look out and I’ll do my artistry.” I began to peer over the bumper at Ratsniffer who was most likely engrossed in a ‘
W
hen wild animals screw’ documentary when I heard Paul mutter “Aw shit.” Without taking my eyes off Ratsniffer I asked him what was wrong.
“The nozzle on the paint is frozen, do you have a lighter?”
“Come on man, what kind of special op would this be if I didn’t have a lighter?”
“Then get over here and dethaw this thing.”
I lit the lighter carefully to shield the bulk of light from Ratsniffer’s direction while Paul kept the pressure on the nozzle just to make sure that it wouldn’t refreeze on this blustery winter night. And then it happened, our rude shove into hardcore crime. The nozzle unleashed its load into the waiting arms of the Bic
's flame
, paint spray can instantly turned into flame thrower and as luck would have it, it was aimed squarely at the car’s tail pipe. Yes, the same make and model that was later recalled for excessive fuel spillage through said tail pipe. Paul and I barely had time to notice the blue flame as it snaked its way straight to the fuel injectors. The rest, as they say, was history. We had barely traveled fifteen feet when the first explosion ripped the hood clean off. It would have been an awesome sight if we weren’t in such a rush to leave the scene. The second explosion was much more pronounced and we would later learn smashed windows two houses down from Ratsniffer’s. We had barely made it to the library before we heard the familiar blare of the town fire siren. By now sweat was pouring off of us.
“Ginner, we can’t go up into the library looking like we just ran a marathon.”
“Dude, we’re gonna have to take that chance, we can’t
mess
around now. We definitely have to make it look like we were here all night. Wipe the sweat off and let’s go.”
We had barely managed to grab our seat when the cacophony of police and fire sirens wailed by.
“Oh my, I wonder what happened,” Miss Crinkage, the head librarian said as she came shuffling to a window near us to see what all the fuss was about. “Oh dear, it appears to be a fire,” she said as she squinted. I let out a heavy sigh of relief. Paul looked at me with questioning eyes and mouthed ‘what?’ I made two circles with my fingers and held them up to my head and mouthed back, ‘no glasses.’
“Oh,” he sighed back. We hoped her limited eyesight would not be able to detect our glistening foreheads or rosy cheeks. We did little more than stare at our respective books, but we dared not leave until well after the fire was dispelled and the police ha
d done all of their questioning.
We wanted to make sure that our time line was as solid as possible, because we were definitely on a short list of suspects that Ratsniffer would point out. And a short list it was. We most definitely headed straight to the top, primarily because we were ultimately the suspects closest to the proximity of the crime. Ratsniffer already had us convicted but of course the complete lack of evidence and the rock solid statement by the head librarian pretty much kept our heads off of the chopping block. After that incident Ratsniffer backed off of us and actually took a job to be head Dean at a private school in
Connecticut
. We weren’t going to miss him.
The rest of the school year hauled ass, especially with us not having to look over our shoulders all the time. And to be honest we had been pretty freaked out about the whole incident, we were only aiming for a little graffiti, not arson. So for at least a few months Paul and I became model students. Our collective parents were duly impressed.
Summer hit with all the oppressive heat and humidity that only the
New England
region can deliver, but generally as kids you don’t notice it too much. Playing baseball took up the majority of our time, that and a thing we liked to call night games. At night we would play this game called jail. There were two teams and the object was for one team to hunt down the other team and put them in ‘jail.’ But the real reason for the playing of this game was Lacy Mullins. Paul and I both wanted her; she was literally the girl next door
type
. And any chance we could have to chase her was well worth the effort. Lacy wasn’t overly pretty, she just had something about her. She was sort of sultry, I mean as sultry as a fourteen year old can get, anyway. She mainly dug Paul but when they had an occasional spat I was more than happy to lend a shoulder to cry on. I didn’t truly realize it then but this girl put a lot of stress on my and Paul’s relationship, and had we not had such a strong bond the fate of our planet might actually have turned out vastly different
, all for a girl, wouldn’t be the first time I suppose
.
The summer all in all was the last truly innocent or better yet naïve summers of my life. To me I still seemed to be a kid, I still loved to play baseball and expand my baseball card collection. Besides a little macking with Lacy, the opposite sex was still a complete mystery. My parents were still omnipotent, the thought of driving seemed eons away. And so, we cruised controlled our way into the 10
th
grade, high school. And like a punch drunk fighter who has cold water splashed on their face, my eyes were beginning to open up wide. Much of that awakening can be attributed to a girl named
Alice
Potter. She was a transfer student from
Pennsylvania
. The first time I saw her I knew she was trouble, but as a young teenager, not much machinations of the brain are present. Most of my thinking was being driven by the excessive hormones my body was producing. I’m not sure what she saw in me, maybe it was that we were so completely different; she was a flower child burn out. You know the type, suede jacket with the fringes, sundress, hell she even had flowers in her hair. And a sly smile that melted my heart. I was hooked and we hadn’t even kissed yet. The rumor mill had her pegged as a slut that would do it with anybody any time, I think that only heightened my desire for her. Her bright auburn hair
complimented
her eyes. And the way she moved her ass, hell even
I
knew I was in way over my head, but where the penis leads the body will follow, and somewhere in all that mess is the brain completely covered over in moss and virtually useless. She taught me more in the three whirlwind months we went out, than obviously the two girls before and most of the women I would later meet. She was my first love and she broke my heart in such a way that I never thought I would trust a woman again, and truly for the most part, I don’t. Christmas pretty much sucked, especially with me sulking through winter break. My mother actually expressed some concern over me, but that quickly faded as she realized that she still despised my father; the hate consumed most of her existence. Just hearing her talk on the phone to her friends or sisters about how much she hated him was a constant reminder. But God has a plan for all of us, so I’m told. He taketh away and he giveth.