Summer

Well, I'm a bit early. Tomorrow is the 1st day of summer, officially.

I've never liked summer. I'm an autumn kinda guy. I always considered summer vacation to be an unwelcome jarring change in my school schedule (and my school schedule was my *life* schedule)...another example of the uncertainty of life. I'm serious. I used to feel uneasy as the calendar changed from May to June. As school finished, classmates dispersed, scattered off to vacations, camps, alternate parents in different states, the end result of divorce agreements. I didn't understand it fully--but I did understand how I was impacted. Friends I had played with during the other seasons were now gone. And now I was stuck there with three months... To most kids that's freeing... three months is an eternity. To me it was a prison sentence... A crushing, endless blanket of oppresive hot weather, buzzing mosquitoes with enough tenacity to plague a Pharoh, and the worst of all: an implacable lonliness that made one wish for entropy to just hurry up and get it all over with. I'd walk down the sweltering streets past the houses of vanished kids with a sickening churning in my stomach. It wasn't just ennui. It was everything. Everything was off-kilter. The routine I had trusted... it had been up-ended. Of course, this feeling only lasted about a week or so. Necessity invented activities for me... There was a library in Emmett, after all. But it was the ragtags... the kids like me that didn't have their summers scheduled to death... the ones left to fend for themselves...Well, we found each other-- the casulties of summer.

Denny was one of those kids. I knew a couple of things about Denny. He was from a big Mormon family--the house was overflowing with siblings--an astonishing 7 in all. And he was poor. Not that any of us cared. None of us were rich, or anything. I had no concept of money beyond how much I needed to buy a candy bar or comic book or a Mad Magazine. If anything, it made him a better friend to have. He knew how to get by on next to nothing...A bag of marbles in his skilled hands would always draw a group of kids, who quickly abandoned their electronic football and Atari to watch him play. (And inevitably, they'd all lose their marbles to him...he was the equivalent of a poolhall hustler.) There were a lot of angles to Denny. He was wildly inventive and street smart. He was unfailingly polite and loyal--classic Mormon upbringing--but he had a wild streak to him too. You could not wish for a better combination in a friend for a 13 year old boy. That nexus where loyalty and wildness converged... that was what made Denny a brother to me. He was not a good victim for a bully. He was thin and lanky, but he was strong from the endless amount of chores he had to do--everything from chopping wood to roto-tilling the huge garden his family had. He *worked*. The most the rest of us had to do was mow the lawn, take out the trash. And he could fight. He wore glasses, which perhaps decieved many a hapless tormentor into picking a fight. But Denny had a fierce sense of justice and he wouldn't back down when threatened. And he wouldn't back down when we were threatened. Which didn't mean that he never got his ass kicked. He did, on occassion, get in over his head. I remember seeing him get clocked in the nose. I retrieved his glasses which had sailed into the gravel. Blood was flowing down his face from his nose and Denny hung on tightly to his opponent, determined to go down getting as much blood on the kid's shirt as possible. He dug in and it's probably the only time in my life that I got the whole Homeric glory of battle. I understood it, for a second. (In case you're wondering, the rules of engagement were always one on one. I'd gotten into a couple of fights, but really, I'm a coward. When confronted, I demure. Denny... Denny was a lion.)

Denny was pretty shrewd as well. Sometimes justice turned into revenge. Again, Denny wasn't somebody you wanted mad at you, cause he could get you good with an elaborate practical joke, even if he had to wait months for the perfect time to carry it off. Bill was about three years older than us, which meant he despised us. We all had paper routes, including Bill. The bundles of papers arrived at our houses around 4:30. Around 4:45 me and Denny would meet up on our bikes and combine our routes, which made up the south section of Emmett. I actually forget just why Denny wanted revenge on Bill. Sure, Bill was always making fun of us, pelting us with rocks fired from his slingshot, but that was typical older kid stuff. Denny had it in for him for a more personal reason and I'm not sure what it was. At any rate, Denny had his revenge. He had me meet him 4:30 a.m. sharp. Outside of Bill's house. This did not sound good. If anybody other than Denny had asked me, I would have said no. But I owed him more than I could ever repay. I had to do it, despite any reluctance, brought on by pragmatism or cowardice. I mean, Bill was an ace with that slingshot. A real terror. On a Saturday night, he'd take out 8-10 light bulbs, quick as you please. Whatever Denny was planning, I knew that going directly to Bill's house couldn't possibly end well.

We waited behind the fence, swatting mosquitoes, and the delivery truck chugged in, stopping and dropping off Bill's bundle of papers. As soon as the truck was gone in a trail of exhaust, Denny ran over and grabbed the bundle. We both sped off, Denny balancing the bundle of papers precariously on his handlebars. We were laughing like goblins, feeling that insane adrenaline rush that only kids get.

I suggested tossing them in the canal. (The grown-up environmentalist hangs his head in shame.) The light off of the street lamp allowed me to see Denny grin. "Nope," he said and we turned down the alley that led back to his house, where he promptly dropped off the ill-gotten cache. Okay, it was somewhat of a funny trick to play on Bill... but not *that* inspired. So we stole that day's papers... So what?

The next day, Denny had me meet him at Bill's again. Same time, 4:30. I pull up, seeing Denny's silhouette moving in the dark. His shadow creeped over to the front doorstep, leaning over the bundle. In a flurry of movement, he jerks away and comes running toward me, carrying another bundle. "GO, go!" he whispers with great urgency and we pedal away, furiously.

"You stole it again?" I ask, watching him teeter on his bike, trying to maintain balance with the bundle on the handlebars. "Yup," he responds proudly.

"You know we can't steal his papers every day, Denny."

"This is the last time," he says grinning. "I switched today's bundle with yesterday. His route is going to get yesterday's papers." At this, I spontaneously burst out laughing and it's infectious: Denny follows suit. It's too much... picturing Bill getting call after angry call...all those subscribers...oh, Denny, you're a genius! Now I don't know if the sequence of events unfolded exactly as we fantasized they would. Perhaps Bill noticed before he delivered them. Maybe he caught on. I don't know. It didn't matter... we loved the idea of it. And that idea was so perfect, it sustained itself. On a morning like that, intent was enough.

Sometimes surviving summer means indulging in some good-intentioned hooliganism, disguised as justice. And sometimes hooliganism means doing something stupid at 4:30 in the morning just to be a friend. It could be aruged that friendship requires circumstances like these to truly understand the concept. These are the kinds of things I learned during summers... lessons that couldn't be taught anywhere else. Lessons like: All good things require you to do something you'd rather not. Sometimes bleeding all over somebody can be considered a victory. And if you're going to piss off Denny, you'd better get up before 4:30 a.m.