But just as Owen was about to swing his leg up, the outside light adjacent to the kitchen window came on and we froze, stiff and silent, holding our collective breath as Owen hung precariously from the roof’s edge. Then fortunately (for now anyway), both the outside light as well as the kitchen light were shut off, once again cloaking the property in the darkness we fervently preferred. That triggered Owen’s remaining scramble up and over the edge, and as gently as possible, onto the roof.
With skinned knees and sweaty brows (and at least one semi-nauseous stomach), we were finally in position, and Patrick raised his arm in preparation to signal. So far, thanks to some frantic gesturing from Mary Ellen, both squadrons were still in sync, and awaiting her now famous, deranged owl kind of a sound, the Mashnee equivalent of a mortally wounded brigadier general’s last call to—“CHAAAAARGE!” And, that’s exactly what we did!
Thus started about thirty seconds of utter chaos, followed by a much longer period of trouble, BIG trouble! It went something like this…
Upon notice, Owen and I made a heavy-footed dash around the circumference of the roof, careful not to get too close to the edge, followed by a fast-paced skip-a-thon around the chimney and a few karate kicks for good measure. Then all at once…
Every light in the cottage went on!
Every light in the neighbor’s cottages went on!
Every light on the street went on!
And we were still scrambling to get the hell off the roof!!
Let’s just say our descents weren’t pretty.
First I catapulted off the roof, bombing momentarily onto Patrick’s shoulders, one foot inadvertently kicking him in the face. Then I somersaulted hard to the ground, immediately followed by Owen’s complete belly-flop into the waiting arms of his now-pissed-off cousin Patrick. Both stumbled ungracefully backward, but somehow maintained their footing, thanks, I’m certain, to Patrick’s sheer will and brute strength!
Just then, the kitchen door to the cottage violently slammed open, and a very pissed-off, bare-chested, red-faced man, probably in his late 20s or 30s wearing only boxer shorts and a sour-puss expression, came catapulting out, hysterically screaming at the top of his lungs: “GAWD DAMN KIDS! I’LL FLATTEN YOU ALL, YOU LITTLE BASTARDS!”
Worse yet, he was brandishing a thick, wooden baseball bat!
Now, I’m not sure if a healthy kid can actually have a heart attack, but if it’s possible, I was within milliseconds from having one. Panic was an understatement. I spontaneously launched into complete fight or flight mode, and doing what I did best, ran like hell!
Instantly, Patrick took off in another direction, but Cousin Owen made the critical mistake of trying to follow me, flopping loafers and all, with the crazy-ass bat-wielding psycho-dude clipping at his heels. I’m not sure why, but the thought occurred to me, to head toward The Club’s playground, and hide in “plain sight” (ok, I saw it on TV once). So I tore-ass toward the playground at an obscene rate of speed and jumped on the yellow round-a-bout ride pushing myself around, like, la-dee-da, I’ve been right here forever and have nothing to do with anything bad, terrible or awful you may or may not have experienced! That’s when things went from bad to awful.
As Cousin Owen headed toward the playground (what are you thinking dude, this is my hiding spot?!) at a high rate of speed, with the crazy man and his Louisville Slugger in hot pursuit, the predictable happened. One of Owen’s ill-advised boat shoes went flying off into outer space, causing Owen to lose his balance and nose dive into a faceful of playground fescue grass, and then, as he was lying there trying to catch his breath, the poor kid was solidly punched in the back, with full force mind you, by his fully grown-ass assailant, Mr. Crazy.
The THUD upon contact was LOUD. He hit him hard. The look on poor Owen’s face said it all, he was scared as hell and who could blame him. Mr. Lunatic was now threatening him with the bat, looking good and ready to crack him with it!
My feet were already churning as I jumped off the ride and with no time to spare, tore-ass toward the fray and did the only thing I could think of doing without this guy killing me too. I swooped in fast and in one-motion grabbed the bat out of Mr. Crazy’s hands (He never saw me coming.) just as he was swinging it, and burst past him with said assault weapon in hand, and ran like a banshee.
The problem of course, was that he was now in an angry pursuit of me.
I tossed said bat as far as I could into a group of thorny shrubs, and headed behind the first cottage into darkness. I swear I could almost feel the guy breathing down my neck when suddenly, from deep in the shadows, something long, thin, bony, quirky, and gawky slid out. I recognized the figure and immediately hurled myself out of the way mere seconds before Mr. Crazy came charging after me at full speed, only to go tumbling out of control over the strategically outstretched leg of the one and only, Rick the Stick Ginsberg, the force of which propelled the guy into a nasty-looking series of somersaults, before landing head first in a thicket of thorny shrubs. “Take that, Babe Ruth!!”
We didn’t stick around for extra innings.
Meanwhile, back at the playground Owen had wisely used the distraction to right himself, fortuitously managing to retrieve his shoe (even inspecting it for damage), then ran toward safety, while the rest of our gang was still in hiding.
The last we heard from Mr. Crazy he was pulling thorns out of his ass and spouting off a tirade of verbal threats and unprintable emphatic expletives!
“Kids, What’s the matter with kids today…”
Once the dust settled, we were all scared of being reported to the police, or worse still, our parents, but this was a different day and age. We never saw Mr. Crazy again, nor heard another word about it. I’m guessing he never came back!
But for us, the story of Cousin Owen was great, to be told and retold hundreds if not thousands of times, the best being when we got to tell Tony and his buddies about it, to a full standing ovation and hearty swigs of frappé, all around, even for us!
Hey, that stuff’s great.
Man-o-man, what a summer!
Chapter 19
Awkward
Back home in Seekonk, life was grand, but not nearly as grand as the summers. As always, it took a while to settle back into my winter routine and place Mashnee on the back burner. “Decompressing” is what my mom called it. “Decomposing” is what I did. The island out of sight, but never-ever out of mind.
In Seekonk, I was a regular Joe, ok kid, who ran a lot, ho-hum, and life was fairly routine, aka dull. In Mashnee, I felt like a superhero and life was a gas. In Seekonk, I followed my parents’ orders to the strictest degree. In Mashnee, I followed the stars. In Seekonk, I was that fast kid from the house next to the farm. In Mashnee, I was that fast kid who blazed the dike in skivvies to rescue his friends. I had recently noticed one other significant difference as well. In Seekonk, the girls sorta liked me okay as a friend. But In Mashnee, the girls were all-out flirting with me!
Like I said; everything was better on the island.
Everything.
That winter, my mother confirmed the much-discussed plans for me and my summer pal Patrick to get together in his hometown one Saturday afternoon. We talked about it alot over the summer and thought it would be fun, maybe have lunch and go bowling or something. His brother Ken might be there too. I was pretty excited. It would be my first time seeing a Mashnee friend somewhere “off-island.” But with that excitement also came a fair amount of anxiety, at the time I wasn’t sure why, but probably because I didn’t have the “home-turf comfort level” I had enjoyed at Mashnee, nor the summertime rituals and commonalities to talk about. Plus we were under the supervision of a parent. We did have a good time bowling and chatted a lot about our Mashnee histrionics and planned for the upcoming summer, but there was no denying it all felt a little awkward, a little foreign, a little uncomfortable. Even at that tender age, I began to understand things.
Some relationships, however special, feast on the delicately balanced nourishment of person and place;
to deny one,
is to lose the other.
As if sent specifically to unlock me from my winter doldrums, later that year I would find out the very best news ever—life-changing “Big News.”
“We’re looking into buying a summer house in Mashnee! It may take a while, kids, but we want to be permanent summer residents!”
Owners? Wow, did that have a nice ring to it! Just imagine, we were gonna be full-fledged Mashneeites! A dream come true!
