COOL!
Boy, boy, crazy boy,
Get cool, boy!
Got a rocket in your pocket,
Keep coolly cool, boy!
Don’t get hot,
‘Cause man, you got
Some high times ahead.
Take it slow and Daddy-O,
You can live it up and die in bed!
Boy, boy, crazy boy!
Stay loose, boy!
Breeze it, buzz it, easy does it.
Turn off the juice, boy!
Go man, go,
But not like a yo-yo schoolboy.
Just play it cool, boy,
Real cool!
- ’COOL’ from West Side Story,
Composed by Leonard Bernstein,
Text by Stephen Sondheim,
(c1956, 1957, 1958, 1959)
PREFACE
This story is about Mashnee Island. The story is fiction. The Island is real.
It’s also about James A. Rocket. Everyone calls James “Jimmyrocket.” One name, without pause.
Jimmyrocket is ten years old and lives in the small, rural town of Seekonk, Massachusetts with his sister Alison, three years his senior, and his parents, Sonny & Beverly. They live in a grand Victorian home, perhaps in need of some spot touch-up paint and replacement of a plank or two of rotting wood around the garage frame, but otherwise quaint, clean, and well cared for. His home is directly next door to a well-known dairy farm, the odors of which he’s long grown accustomed to, the magnificent ice cream from which he consumes daily in great delight.
And although skinny and relatively modest of stature, his legs are strong and nimble, and he can run like the wind. In fact,
Jimmyrocket’s the fastest kid in school.
That’s good. He’ll need to be.
PROLOGUE
“Shhh…I see someone coming,” whispered fifteen-year-old Stevie Bird (aptly nicknamed Bird Brain, or when we were pissed at him, Four-Eyes, or when all else failed, The Shitting Pelican). Stevie, who looked old enough to shave when he was ten, nervously fidgeted with his always-crooked eyeglasses, the ones with a perpetually scotch-taped bridge, as he peered out of The Hut’s improvised window, basically a peep-hole of knotty pine.
“Oh man, so do I,” chimed in Patrick Flaherty, the big, strong, tow-headed son of a prominent Massachusetts Supreme Court judge. A fun-loving, good-natured, teddy bear of a kid, Big Patrick was prone to occasional fits of boiling Irish temper, turning his normally pale complexion beet red, and raising to the surface an army of crimson freckles screaming in alarm. It was best to be his friend.
It was just then that our fearless leader, Tommy Bourdon, hands down the roughest, toughest kid I had ever met and a few years older than the rest of us, (those extra years translating into a driver’s license and a souped-up, jet-black Ford Mustang convertible, aptly nicknamed “Lady Killer”) calmly stood up, stepped out of The Hut where he could see and be seen, and casually dug his bare feet deep into the scratchy Mashnee Island sand, managing to look more badass and nonchalant than ever. Then the large, flashlight-wielding silhouette came into view from down the beach. It was headed our way. Tommy took a deep drag from his Winston cigarette, flicked it to the sand, then coolly and confidently instructed his scattering league of frightened summer compadres,
“Ditch the joint, boys, it’s da fuzz.”
I threw up.
So began the Greatest Summer Ever.
I mean, it would have been the greatest,
except for… murder.
PART ONE
