I was eight when Stevie killed Petey. Stevie, who was 15, lived in the next house down the street.
I’d found the bird with a hurt wing in our backyard. Dad helped me use chicken wire and a cardboard box to fashion a cage we put in the carport. The plan was to nurse the pigeon back to health then set it free. But when Mom, Dad and I got home from the grocery store that Saturday, we found Petey’s head had been neatly snipped off. There was no proof Stevie was the culprit, but we were pretty sure.
Mom told me it was a bad thing about Petey, but to remember he was only a bird. I guess she was trying to make me feel better, but looking back I think she also didn’t want to cause trouble because Stevie’s father was Dad’s foreman at work.
The next day, Mom and Dad were doing housework or something when I noticed Stevie plucking an arrow from our back yard. I went out and asked if he killed my pigeon. Stevie said he was sorry about “the flying rat” and offered to make it up by letting me shoot an arrow. That wasn’t a very good deal for Petey, but I really wanted to shoot an arrow.
I couldn’t draw back the string on my own so Stevie reached around from behind me and helped. The arrow streaked to his yard and almost hit his dog. I was horrified, but Stevie just laughed.
When my folks discovered Stevie was arcing arrows our way, they were more than a little upset. Dad apparently didn’t complain as nicely as he told Mom he would. The arrows stopped, but Dad thought he was going to be fired. Luckily he wasn’t.
Stevie’s mother, Linda, came to our house to apologize for her son. Then she began sobbing, and she and Mom went into the kitchen. I couldn’t hear the details, but something had happened to a litter of kittens. My folks said I couldn’t hang out with Stevie anymore.
I mostly obeyed till Stevie got a remote-controlled model airplane. I snuck out and hid behind some bushes with him. He zoomed the plane right at an oncoming car on Wood Street then pulled up at the last second. We whooped and hollered and hugged.
A few weeks later, Stevie turned 16, and his parents gave him a fantastic present—an old, dilapidated Mustang. Stevie asked me to help him fix it up. I begged my folks for permission, and Dad thought it would be a good learning experience. I mainly just handed Stevie tools, but was as proud as he was when we got the engine purring. Somewhat purring.
Stevie painted orange flames on the sides of the car, drilled holes in the muffler and rattled the front room windows when he gunned it past our house. He said it was his way of saying hello. He offered to take me for a ride. I started to get in, but my Dad saw and called me in for supper.
By then summer was galloping to an end, and I wanted to sleep out in the yard one last time before school corralled me again. I always had to pitch the tent near the house so Dad and Mom could keep me and my buddies in line, from the bedroom window. Somewhat in line. This time none of my friends could make it. I insisted I was old enough to go it alone, and my parents reluctantly agreed.
I woke that night to find Stevie in the tent, stroking his fingers through my hair. I screamed and yanked the sleeping bag over my head. The next thing I knew, Mom was in the tent asking me if everything was OK, and Stevie was gone. I said I’d had a bad dream because I didn’t want Dad to get fired.
I avoided Stevie after that. He eventually moved out of his folks’ house. I went away to college and relocated to another state. I’d pretty much put him out of my mind till one Sunday I was on the phone with Dad, and he told me Steve, as he now called himself had moved back into the home of his parents, who’d both died. He was married and had a young stepdaughter.
Surprisingly, Steve turned out to be a good neighbor to Mom and Dad. He trimmed their shrubs, cleared snow, cleaned the gutters—things they were too old, and I lived too far away, to do. Mom said he’d finally outgrown his wild side. Dad said they couldn’t possibly get by without him.
One weekend when I was visiting my parents, Steve stopped by with his family. It seemed to me the girl kept her distance from her stepdad. Steve and I sat in the kitchen and reminisced. When he asked if I remembered his Mustang, I asked if he remembered my tent. He snorted, got up from the table and said he was going to mow my parents’ lawn. He refused the twenty dollars Dad offered. Mom told Steve she’d bring him out a glass of ice-cold lemonade.
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author bio:
David Henson and his wife have lived in Belgium and Hong Kong over the years and now reside in Peoria, Illinois. His work has been nominated for a Best of the Net and has appeared in numerous print and online journals including Bull & Cross, Moonpark Review, Lost Balloon, Fiction on the Web and Literally Stories. His website is http://writings217.wordpress.
This story’s featured image is by Kalpesh Patel, and can be found on Unsplash.