Stinky Pete

There is a legend among my brothers. The legend of Stinky Pete. When we were young we moved into a house in the country. The location isn’t what’s important though, it’s what was inside. And not just inside, but downstairs. The basement was finished. By finished, I mean it was painted white, it had a drop ceiling, carpet, and doors between the main area and the laundry room on one side, and the room with the heater on the other side. In the middle of the room was a metal pole, that looking back now I understand was there to support the floor above it, but as a child of 9, it made little sense. The pole wasn’t more than 6 ft. tall, but it was big to us, so we would climb it, hang from it, flip off of it, and smack into it all the time. Initially this was our play room, because it was a wide open space where our parents could send three little boys to play without making a mess of the main floor of the house. Eventually though, the TV made its way down there with the couch, and it became our Family room. For us it had always been a place where large amounts of time was spent, playing with Ninja Turtles, our first hours of Super Mario, watching rented VHS tapes, or trying to push each other off the couch with our feet. But we were not the first to occupy the space.

Before we moved in, I remember meeting the previous owners on only one occasion. I don’t remember the parents, only their son. He towered over us. He was probably in High School, and probably a football player. I don’t recall anything that he said, other than that his name was Pete. We walked through the house and met his family. We toured the rooms looking at this feature, and this thing that would need fixing, and finally we came to the basement where Pete’s bedroom was. It was a bedroom you’d expect from a 16 or 17 year old boy in the late 80’s. There were posters of bands and girls, a big bed, and laundry on the floor. I’m sure his parents were pleased that his room looked like this with potential buyers walking through the house. I’m sure they were also pleased with the way his room smelled. It smelled like sweat and socks, and a stink I had no name for. It wasn’t a powerful smell, but it was there. I think that’s when we named him Stinky Pete. Not to his face of course. He could have crushed us. But before we moved in, between my brothers and I, he was Stinky Pete.

We lived in the house for years. Time passed, and we grew, as did the legend of Stinky Pete. Anything that we found hidden somewhere in the garage, the pole barn, or out in the woods, MUST have belonged to Stinky Pete. Old toys, broken tools, failed tests shoved in hiding places adults wouldn’t find… All were attributed to Stinky Pete. But nothing we’d seen could match the final piece of the puzzle.

As we grew taller, we found we could reach things that we hadn’t before. The drop ceiling in the basement for instance. If we pushed up the tiles we could see the room in a whole new way we’d never seen before. We took turns lifting each other up to stick our heads through the ceiling.

Then Nate turned around.

Not three feet behind where our heads had popped through the ceiling was a pair of underwear. And, unfortunately there are very few reasons a person might hide a pair of underwear from his parents. These were dirty. By dirty, I mean covered in poop. Stinky Pete had hidden his darkest secret right above where his bed had been. That pair of tighty-whities had sat in that ceiling for 3 years at the least. Possibly more. By now the stink had worn out of them. The legend only intensified.

We disposed of the underwear, but we’ll never forget him or his underwear. Stinky Pete.

Izzy

                There were pirates, and then there were PIRATES. I suppose that’s like most anything though. There are good people, and then there are GOOD people. We like to qualify things like that. Izzy fit nicely into both the pirate and GOOD people categories though which made her a bit of an oddity. Pirates aren't good people, or at least they aren't supposed to be. Pirates steal, kill and destroy. Izzy didn't do any of those things… but she did wear boots an ear ring, and had a bandana around her head. Somehow that was enough to get her into the pirate crew even though she never participated or condoned the normal raping and pillaging that the crew enjoyed. But why even become a pirate if you’re not into that kind of thing? I mean, if you’re a good person, making people walk the plank doesn't normally fit into your plan for the day. And yet, there’s Izzy, standing with the other pirates, smiling like the little kid that she is while they run off to burn down another village and steal their gold.

                

Maybe she was brainwashed! Maybe she was the daughter of the mayor of some sea-side town that the pirates came upon and they kidnapped her to use her for ransom, but somehow things didn't work out and they had to keep the girl and raise her on the ship. The only moral compass left to her was a locket her father had given her that held a picture of her mother and father.

See, that would make for a good story. A girl out of place, trying to do good in a world of corruption, perhaps waiting for the right time to escape, or the right swashbuckled buccaneer to come and rescue her and take her away on their own adventures.

That’s when Jake came along.

The pirates that held Izzy came through a storm to an island they’d never seen and couldn't find on their maps. They saw a village and decided to do what came naturally, but this time they were stopped by a small band of children. Some said they seemed to fly, others claimed there were fairies aiding them, but whatever it was, the pirates were rebutted.

For the first time Izzy saw someone like herself, dressed as a pirate, fighting like a pirate, but protecting the innocent rather than taking whatever he could just because he could. Jake confronted the captain himself, and they fought for what seemed forever. Swords flashing back and forth, sparks flying, the two of them leaping and ducking swords. Jake fought bravely but the captain was more than twice his size. Before the boy escaped the captain left him with a gash in his left arm.

Izzy looked at the captain standing tall on the deck of his ship, yelling at his men to push these children back into the water. Then she looked down and saw the trail of blood leading to the shore and the now small boy pulling with one arm trying to reach the shallows. She made her decision and jumped in after him. The captain called after her, he swore and screamed, his men fired at her but their aim was weak at range and she was a fast swimmer. She caught up to the boy as he reached a sandbar, only a hundred yards or so from the safety of the beach and the forests beyond. The gash on his arm stretched almost from his shoulder to his elbow. She’d seen men cut like this before, having grown up on a pirate ship, and knew he would either die soon or lose his arm.

His eyes focused on her and he smiled, “You rescued me.”

“I don’t know if I've rescued you, you’re bleeding pretty badly, and we’re still a long way from safety.” She said.

“I’m not worried.” He grunted, and tried to turn over to keep swimming. She stopped him from swimming away, and held him close. Drowning would be much worse than bleeding to death.

“Call the fairies, they’ll fix me up, if YOU ask them to. They can’t do anything for you personally, their laws only let them help when someone asks for someone else.”

She called to them, she yelled and yelled but nothing happened. The water around her was turning darker as Jake was turning paler.

“No, not like that. Clap your hands.”

She clapped. A little light appeared on the beach.
                She clapped again. Now there were two.
                She clapped until there were a host of them on the beach, they seemed to be swarming at the edge of the water now. She pulled Jake’s good arm around her shoulder, his blood now staining her clothes, and drug him to the shore where the fairies were waiting.

She looked down at him, the boy she’d seen stand up to a ship of bloodthirsty pirates, now laying near death on the beach, his breath was ragged, his face pale, and his eyes closed. She couldn't let it end this way. 

She simply said, “Please.” The rest of the words caught in her throat as she looked around at the now glowing swarm of fairies.

They began to glow brighter, and brighter until Izzy could see nothing but light around her and Jake. His arm seemed to close up, and the color returned to his face!

Jake’s eyes fluttered open and he smiled up at Izzy, her own face now stained with tears. He said, “I knew you’d rescue me.”

It hurt

The pages were stacked high on the desk. He called it “Spatially organized” which of course just meant messy. To the right was a stack of returned homework, and some peer reviews from a paper he’d written for class. On top of that was a stack of paper from the ER. “Here’s the medicine we gave you when you came in, here’s what you should be taking over the next few weeks, and here are some stretches you can do that should help as well.” The names of the medicine meant little to him, pharmaceutical companies seem to just throw letters in a mortar and crush them together until they come up with something that sounds serious. He didn't care what they were called, just so long as they made the pain go away. It hurt. That’s an important thing to mention. It hurt. He’d injured his back while at work, and now it hurt to do lots of the little things he’d taken for granted.

It hurt to sit in a chair for too long.
It hurt to hold his kids on his lap.
It hurt to walk.
It hurt to stand for more than two minutes.
It hurt to sit at a desk and write.

The medicine they’d prescribed was addictive. His brother warned him about it. His brother had seen lives wrecked by addiction to pain meds and didn't want that for him. He had a hard time saying no to the medicine that made things not hurt. Avoiding pain was one of his goals.

He decided to try something simpler. Regular pain medication that reduces inflammation and an ice pack. If he could fix the problem without the addictive drugs, he knew he’d be better off. He could get control of his pain, his back, and do it without losing control of his life. 

It was a truck

It was a truck. Well, it looked like a truck anyway. It had wheels and doors and windows and all the other “trucky” things that trucks have. But this one seemed different to me somehow. The dealer told me it had a clean history, and it probably did, everyone knows you can trust used car salesmen, but for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on, this one seemed different.

Long story short, I bought the thing. I drove it home, and it seemed nice enough. It made it off the lot without any problems, and when I drove it to my girlfriend’s house she seemed pretty excited about it when I drove up. We went for a drive through town and got lots of looks in my new truck. I guess they thought it was as sweet as she did. No matter how many times people told me how cool I looked, or tried to flag me down, the feeling in the pit of my stomach that something wasn’t right wouldn’t go away.

At a stop light, one guy actually got out of his car and came up to me just to warn me that the road was rocky or something. I told him, “Hey, I’m in a truck. I think I can handle it.” He looked at me funny and just kinda stood there for a while. It was really uncomfortable. The light turned green and I drove off, I watched him in the side mirror as I pulled away, yelling and jumping, trying to warn me about the rocks. And the weird thing was, there were no rocks on the road. I kept looking for them, expecting to have to swerve or use the 4 wheel drive (which I never did find on the thing), but they weren’t there. I don’t know what he was talking about.

Like I said, my girlfriend thought the truck was cool, so that’s all that really mattered to me. As we drove on, she turned on the radio, but it didn’t work right. It only got one station, and the music it played was really weird. It played songs like ‘Pop goes the weasel’ and, come to think of it, I never did hear a DJ or a commercial. But that’s not the weirdest thing. When she turned it on, the sound was all muffled until I rolled down the window. I have no idea how the window would be tied to the volume of the radio, but for some reason, in this truck it was.

As we were cruising around town, she asked me to pull into the neighborhood where she’d grown up. I really like her, so I said sure. As I turned onto the street, we saw kids everywhere. Some were playing tag, others were running through sprinklers… It was a perfect July day. She leaned over and squeezed my arm and told me that someday she’d like to have kids. I smiled. The radio was still on though, and I guess it must have been pretty loud, as the kids all seemed to drop what they were doing and run after my truck. Kids must really like that kind of music. She told me to slow down, so I did. I didn’t want to hit a kid or anything, but this was getting crazy. They all started yelling at once and I couldn’t really understand them so I just kept on driving. I think one of them tried to tell me about rocks on the road again. I rolled my eyes and sped up a little bit. As I pulled away, I saw the kids stop running, and some of them started crying which seemed weird. What could make them sad on a day like today?

I took the truck back. I told the dealer I didn’t want it. He asked why, and I told him how the radio didn’t work right, and I couldn’t find the 4 wheel drive to deal with the bad roads that everyone is talking about. He looked at me like I was crazy, and asked if I’d even looked in the freezer. I said, “Freezer? Is the A/C broken too?” He just rolled his eyes and filled out the paperwork. I wasn’t getting ripped off. No sir. I’m too smart for that.