Prologue

            The day the letter came from the Hardin County Historical Society, I opened it with excitement, even though I knew more or less what it would say. 

            They asked me if I’d be willing to travel two-thousand-five-hundred miles from my home in the San Francisco Bay Area to participate in the rededication of the Philips Medical Park, a place with which I had a strong connection as a child, producing many memories—some fond, some ugly, some which might even be characterized as bizarre.

            In certain ways, I dreaded the return—as though there was unfinished business there—business I didn’t want to face, loose ends, as it were, ends which I would have preferred to have tidied up, but coupled with a fear of the stretch I would have to make to secure them.  In the end, though, there was a draw, some inexplicable force, which left no doubt in my mind but that I would leave my law practice for the few days I thought I could spare and return to this scene from my childhood.  Sometimes you have to go back to where you’ve been, I told myself, to see where you are headed.

            When I drove into town from the south through Mount Victory on that blustery Friday morning in March, I passed the front porch of one of my old girlfriend’s houses, which brought back twangs of puppy love.   Then as I drove further into town I found my taste buds longing for a stop at the Tasty Freeze, which I expected to find only a few blocks down the road.  But it was no longer there.  It had turned into a Convenient Mart.  So instead of stopping for one of Mr. Bloom’s extra thick peanut butter milk shakes, I headed straight for the park.   The town, a farming community in Northern Ohio was small and I found myself there in no time.

As I looked out over the park, the cold gray morning was just giving way to an afternoon of bright sunshine.  It was that time in March when winter was just about to relinquish its grip.  As the snow melted, it had apportioned itself into little rock hard islands, which I knew would soon be vanishing with the onset of warmer weather.  When I was a kid, the snow would have been speckled with the black soot of coal dust, but now it was as pure as, well . . . the driven snow.

            I parked my car in an alleyway between Main and Detroit Streets and peered over the jagged edge of the granite shale fence.  Memories danced in my head like the flurry of fireflies on a hot, humid summer evening, although it was still much too early for them.

            I wondered how many of my old friends, classmates and other acquaintances would be at the ceremony on Sunday afternoon, when my wife was to join me with our children.  I was especially interested in seeing the smiles, quizzical looks and telltale smirks of those who, along with me, had witnessed the events which made the park famous, as though it had an agenda of its own, independent of human influence.

            Sadly, I knew at least one of my very best friends wouldn’t be there, because he’d recently been killed in a car crash.  His sports car had veered out of control on the old River Road, when he was home visiting his mother.  There was conjecture that it might have been suicide, since he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had declined treatment—opting instead for the shorter quality-of-life route.  But I, for one, refused to believe that.  He was too full of life and reveled in it too much for me to accept the notion he had willingly given up even a small piece of it, albeit near the end of the road.

            Why they asked me to come early and be their keynote speaker was anybody’s guess, but I thought I probably knew the answer to that as clearly as I knew what was in that letter before I had opened it.  With the death of my dear friend, I was probably the only living person, who could faithfully recount all of the events and circumstances which had combined to make the park a legend.             

 

Part I

The Carefree Days of Youth
 

Chapter One

When I was a kid in Indiana in the 1950’s, I remember the feeling of my mother’s fingertips on my scalp, as she washed my hair.  Her clawing smarted, as she kneaded the mud and dirt she claimed to see as the soap foamed and lathered.

“Timmy, the water is just brown with dirt!   It’s pure mud!  It’s a wonder it doesn’t stop up the drain,” she said in an excited, authoritative voice.

I couldn’t see the water, because I was bent over the sink with my head down and my eyelids securely shut.  I was only four or five years old, maybe six at the most.

Then after she kneaded my hair for a while, she would reach for a glass and fill it with cold water.  I hated that part, because I knew what was coming.  The first part had been warm and tolerable, almost pleasant, even though she wasn’t careful about keeping the soap out of my eyes.  When I would complain about them stinging she’d say, “Quit your bellyaching.”

“Quit your bellyaching” was a refrain I would hear from my mother over and over through the course of my growing up years, even though I seldom had a bellyache.

She would pour that glass of cold water on my head, refill it, pour another.  What a sobering effect that had on me.

It was while she was scrubbing my head, or pouring the cold water, while I couldn’t look at her, that she reminded me our family history.  It wasn’t the part of the family history where we’d gone to a park, as an extended family, and had a picnic, although we did that a few times, but the part of the family history that was filled with lunacy.

She reminded me that my dad had mental problems, as did any number of “my relations,” as she called them.  Even though she told me about his madness, which manifested itself only on isolated occasions, I was savvy enough, even at that age to realize that she had peculiarities of her own.  These were not peccadilloes, but serious, deeply imbedded mental irregularities.

The only person in our household who was more afraid of everything that moved--  of heights, of water, of snow, of unexpected quirks, fates and fickles of nature, other than me, was my mother.  And I was the kid.  In fact, if it weren’t for her insistence and repeated pronouncement of these fears, I might well have gotten over mine at a much younger age.

Then, after reminding me of the bizarre manifestations of instability in my dad’s family, she went on to describe their gloomy and morbid fates, such as institutionalization or suicide.  She poured another glass of ice water, then told me I was very likely, virtually certain in fact, to one day have to endure them myself.

“Your dad’s illness came later in life,” she said.  “In his case, he was nearly forty before it came down on him for the first time.  So don’t think you’ll never get it.  You have to always be watchful.  He didn’t think he’d get it either, even though his dad had and a couple of his great uncles before that and, of course, you know about Aunt Mary.”

She seemed to think that if I became aware and vigilant, then perhaps I could fight off the demons, even though there were many in my dad’s family who had not been able to do so.

I felt perfectly sane, but how could I be sure I would always stay that way?  At night I would wonder if the pictures on the wallpaper might come to life, or the ceiling would spawn cobwebs that would descend on me, laden with thousands of poisonous spiders.  My skin crawled.  How would I know if I were “sick,” as my mother referred to my dad’s affliction?  My dad seldom realized he was sick when he was having one of his episodes.  Before and after, he did.

My mother’s counsel in these matters was as cold and driven as the running water, which she used to root out the mud.  . . . And her voice was as methodical and businesslike as her touch. 

My mother didn’t die until a few years ago and I can’t remember her ever touching me, except for those rigorous shampoos over the sink.  My older brother says she never did.

“Got to get the mud out!  Got to get that sand out of your hair!”  She was obsessed over it.  Those were her words, but the message was, “You’re doomed, boy.  You’re going to be a lunatic, just like your father.”

I felt cold, dark, empty and alone leaning over that sink.  Those feelings, those feelings of being doomed, those feelings that were kneaded into me by the cold, methodical, distant hands of my mother, a chain smoking, coffee drinking, prescription “nerve pill” popping junkie, haunted me for years.

* * *

When we moved to Ohio in 1960, there was a park in the center of town, where no one ever played.  It wasn’t that it didn’t appeal to us.  Quite the contrary.  It was full of huge, shady maples, a few tall, skinny elms, perfectly-edged-prickly barberry bushes and a pageant of flowers.  There were hundreds of daffodils and violets in spring.  Then pansies and fragrant pink peonies bloomed during the summer, followed by a parade of bright yellow and rust colored chrysanthemums in the fall.  Tall green pine trees swayed in the breeze along the park’s perimeter and lazily stood guard over all this beauty.

Within the granite shale fence, which enclosed the park there was a goldfish pond surrounded by grassy open space, where we could have played football or batted a baseball, or flew our model airplanes.

            But, we were afraid to go there.  There was something unsettling about the place, as though it were inhabited by angry spirits who teased us with the park’s beauty, yet punished us if we got too close.

            We rode our bikes only up to the edge, taking sidewalks or alleyways, which ran between Main and Detroit streets in Little Chicago, the town where I grew up.  There were gates on either end.  By then, we were forbidden to enter for it had long since been relieved of its duties as a park.

            Some years before it had been converted into a medical facility by a group consisting of the three most prominent doctors in our community, who got the idea of building their offices there.  But, for some reason, which I didn’t understand, the medical center, while it had had a brief heyday, never turned into the bastion of modern medical marvels everyone expected it to become the day our mayor cut the bright, yellow ribbons for its grand opening.

            Instead, it closed abruptly and without fanfare, after only a few years.  One of the doctors, Doctor Schultz, left town.   It was rumored he had run off with a woman who was reputed to be his mistress, who also happened to be my piano teacher.  But, oddly enough, while it was later established that she was not with him in his new home in Memphis, Miss Jackson had disappeared from Little Chicago forever.  There were rumors that Doctor Schultz had done her in, or at least bought her a one way ticket to Tahiti.  But he denied both allegations and the police eventually marked the case closed.  The disappearance of my piano teacher remained a mystery.

            Of the two additional physicians, one retired early and the other, Doctor White, ended up practicing medicine again, but only briefly.  He was still young in years when he was committed to the county mental health facility shortly after the park closed.  The nature of his illness was not disclosed.  Some said he had a nervous breakdown.  Others said he had gone mad.  None of the townspeople really knew.

            Soon after that, the park became idle, overrun with weeds and tall grass.   This all took place over the course of only a few short years.  The structure that had once stood proudly as a beacon of hope to the afflicted was now vacant and boarded up.  We wondered why no one came along and rented it for another purpose.   

            The building may have been boarded up, but the windows were still intact.  One could see the reflection of sunlight in the glass peeking between the slats, tempting us to hurl the first stone.  If we ever got started we all knew that every window would get broken.  We had proven that just a few weeks earlier at an old toyHaH factory that had closed down on the south side of town.  From the clank of the first rock to the clink of the last piece of glass to fall, it had been a colossal celebration of destruction. 

            We felt that way in spite of the punishments dished out our parents that evening, as word of what happened passed from one household to another, first by party-line and then from our friendly, but nosey operators to the entire community.  For weeks the operators repeatedly expressed their disapproval of our behavior by lecturing us every time any of us picked up the phone to place a call.  If I met one of them on the street today, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I got another lecture on the subject.

            A part of each of us, let’s call it the short-on-judgment-curious part, wanted to climb over the fence and explore.  But another part—let’s call that our good-common-sense part--warned us to stay out.  The old Philips Medical Park building seemed to age before its time, like that rare disease where a nine or ten year old can have a beard and see it turn gray before his eleventh birthday.  That’s how old we were at the time—just about to turn eleven, right at the beginning of fifth grade.

            Kenny Clarke was the star athlete in our town, but, God, was he ever mean.  He bullied not only smaller children, but many his own size, and a few even bigger than himself.  We called him—not to his face, of course--Kenny McNasty.  We all had nicknames.

            There was Epar (pronounced Ē'-par), which is “rape” spelled backwards for reasons I never knew.  I mean what could an eleven-year-old kid have to do with rape?  Many of the names had already stuck before I had moved to town and, consequently, I generally knew the origin only through belated explanation. 

            Atlas was self-explanatory, because he had only one testicle, or so it was rumored, as did the Atlas of mythological fame.  Lots of guys claimed to have verified this freak of nature in the locker room, but I was too embarrassed to look.

            Beetle Bailey was one of the most animated people I ever met and a cartoon character in his own right, even if his last name had not been Bailey.  If that hadn’t been his nickname, he would have had to have been called Moon Mullins or Daffy Duck.  There were more of us boys and even one girl, Mudge, who hung out together, but I’ll get to the rest of the gang later.

            Kenny didn’t hang out with us, at least not most of the time.  But he did on this particular day, when we were out of school celebrating Jacob Parrott’s birthday, a local Civil War hero, who was the first U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor winner.  Beetle Bailey, McNasty’s more usual playmate, and like him, a member of the South End Gang, had gone on a trip to Coshocton to bury one of his cousins, who had been hit by a car while riding his bike and killed.  This was the first experience with a kid’s death any of us had ever had to consider.  We tried not to mention it, but we all knew it was on each other’s minds for days, if not weeks afterwards.

            So, there we were—me, Epar, Atlas, Booger (no explanation required on that name), Marsh Rat, Farley, RW (for Robert Wilhelm) and Mudge, whom we all knew would have been called “Smudge” if her little sister had gotten her phonetics right after Rebecca Carpenter took her mother’s lipstick and smeared it all over her face and the living room wall.  I thought she was cute, even then, with her long strawberry blonde braids and freckles, although she prided herself on being a tomboy and could win most fights, should anyone be stupid enough to challenge her right to hang out with us guys.

            It was fall, I remember, because it was one of those crisp, clear Ohio days when you could smell the sharp, ashen scent of leaves burning in the gutters wherever you went.  Most of the leaves were still on trees and formed a colorful canopy from orange and yellow to deep purple.  The sun shone brilliantly and the wind provided a cool, invigorating breeze.  It felt exhilarating just to be alive, especially after what had happened to Beetle’s cousin.

            Usually we didn’t get too close to the park, or even the fence which surrounded it.  Sometimes we would go two or three streets over and ride up Wayne or Cherry Street, when we were going north or south just to avoid passing near it.  If any of us did stop, we would creep up to the fence and sneak a peek over its jagged edge.  We had never been brave enough to go barreling up to it on our Schwinns the way we did that day.  But we had been goaded on by McNasty and our manhood—or tomboy-hood in the case of Mudge--had been called into question.  I can still hear the sound of his voice.  “If you guys don’t ride over to the park with me, you’re a bunch of pussies, just like everyone’s been saying!”

            Our virility at issue, we accepted the challenge and zoomed off like Kamikaze pilots towards the fence.  First, RW, who had the only English bike in the bunch, went sliding on the loose gravel down the alleyway on the north side, just off Main Street and hit his brakes.   We each followed by doing the same thing in rapid succession.  Our bikes skidded into place one by one to form a row.

            The wind was blowing from the northwest that day, which I remember well, because McNasty had queued us up with a fart, which immediately drifted downwind and stunk like holy-be-geezus, even outdoors on a breezy day like this. 

Booger chided, “Your voice is changing, but your breath still smells the same.”

Booger taunted him further by making a similar sound by placing his hand under his armpit and using his arm as a lever.  That was a call to arms, because the rest of us began to belch in a variety of tones, just to assert our manly presence.

            Mudge went out of her way not to appear ladylike, except when it came to the issue of flatulation.  She arrived late and when she figured out what was going on, she screeched her brakes in a loud, piercing sound, but that was as much wind as she was willing to break.  She pulled off to the side and tried to ignore us. 

            Booger put down his bike and walked out in front of us.  So far, aside from McNasty, we had only an arm-pumping-fake fart to contend with.  But we knew we had much more to dread from Booger.  If his nickname hadn’t been Booger, he would have been the King of Farts.  He was the master.  It was like Meadowlark Lemon dribbling a basketball, or Peggy Fleming on ice.  He lifted one leg and cut a huge one.  Oowe, was it nasty!

            Then, he lifted his other leg without anchoring the first and did another—a double whammy.  Then Booger mercilessly fanned it in our direction.  I looked over at Mudge and she had her head hidden under her arm.  Too much boyhood for her.

            We all booed and made catcalls, but we were really cheering inside.  I mean, no kid alive could cut the cheese like Booger Masterson. 

Epar made the mistake of trying to upstage him.  He was a smart kid, who wanted to be an aeronautical engineer.  But at that age, we didn’t recognize his potential.  I mean, for one thing, he wore a flattop.  No self-respecting kid in town wore a flattop.  We all had butches, except for Atlas, who grew his hair long and parted it like an adult.  But Atlas was “cool,” outgoing and athletic, which in turn meant he was accepted.  I don’t even know who Epar found to cut his hair.  He came from a large Catholic family and rumor had it that it was his mother.  This in turn led to even further devaluation of his image.

He said, “Hey, you guys, wait’ll you hear this!”  He gave a drum roll by thumping his fingertips against his air filled cheeks.  Then, he wiggled his fanny as if he were doing the hula.  Next he paused and lifted one leg, like Booger had done.    But all of a sudden, instead of a bang, we heard the Hershey squirts. 

“Oowe!” we all said in unison.  We knew what had happened.  This was confirmed by the forlorn look on Epar’s face, which very nearly turned to tears.  He tried not to let on that anything was wrong.  Instead he slipped past us, while keeping his backside out of view.  He walked his bike, stepping backwards, the short distance home to change his pants.

Those of us who were left looked at one another and it was written on our faces, once we gasped in some fresh air, that we wanted to go into the park in the worst way.  We were invigorated by the weather, the raucous laughter surrounding Epar’s misfortune and our freedom from school.  But no one had the nerve.  We exchanged dares, double-dares and flung jeers and all known reference to chickens:  “Chicken liver!”  “Chicken feathers!” and, finally, the turn of phrase we had been working our way up to all along, “Chicken shit!”

All of us, that is, except for RW.  It wasn’t that RW was unwilling to trespass.  It was just that he had a sentimental attachment to chickens, given that his family’s livelihood was tied to the raising of fricassees.  He had been taught to revere them.

This was all the more interesting since the union of switch and trouser were more common in his case than for most of us.  If he hated it so much, why did he always end up getting his butt whipped?  I don’t think it was because his parents were stricter than any of the other parents, but had more to do with the fact that once RW gave in to temptation, he reveled in it and soon lost sight of the consequences.

            On this particular day, however, we weren’t drawn primarily by the lure of the glass, such as we had been a few months earlier when we celebrated the closing of the toy factory.  Instead, we were drawn by the prospect of entering the building through one of the doors boarded up by what looked like relatively thin sheets of plywood.  It appeared to us from outside the stonewall that surrounded the park that security was pretty lax. 

Farley, a fat dirty-blond-headed kid, who was named after the postmaster general of the United States because he collected stamps, attended St. Anthony’s Institute, the local Catholic school along with me and two of the other boys.  “Listen, you guys!” he said.  “The nails on that old piece of plywood are already beginning to rust and the wood is rotten.  We could pull ‘em off and be inside in less than five minutes.”

            Farley was considered to be one of the smart kids, which I found myself resenting.  He even skipped from third to fourth grade, which was no big deal, since the two grades met together.  But to be honest, I thought I was just as smart as he was, as were several of the other kids.  The thing about Farley was that he was a smart kid who was willing to admit that he was smart.   The rest of us were more hesitant to own up to anything that resembled even a flicker of native intelligence.  It wasn’t “cool.”

            At Kenny’s prodding, we propped our bikes against the stone wall and climbed over it, nicking and scratching ourselves on the brambly bushes on the other side.  We worked our way through the tall, grassy brush towards the low rise building and got brambles stuck to our pants and shoelaces.  The building joined at an apex and spread out in three directions—one for each of the doctors who had occupied the park. 

We could have gotten in more easily from the Main Street side, which faced the traffic, but our approach lessened the chances we would be spotted by one of our parents or someone who would rat on us.  Besides, no self-respecting kid would have gone in the easy way.  That wouldn’t be “cool” either.  In those days, being “cool” was among the highest priorities.

            Marsh Rat, a light skinned, pudgy kid, sort of a cream puff and the youngest of us all said, “Hey, you guys!  Do you really think there’s ghosts in there?  My big brother says there’s ghosts.”

            We all knew that Marsh Rat’s big brother had dark brown eyes because he was full of shit, right up to his eyebrows.  But somewhere within the confines of our most intimate thoughts, we were afraid he might be onto something. 

None of us wanted to admit that it was fear of the supernatural that made us hesitate, but I for one was relieved when it came out in the open, so the possibility could be freely discussed--sort of like when your mom dismisses the notion of intruders, but leaves the light on in the hallway, just in case.  Talking about the unlikelihood of ghosts living there made the prospect of encountering them seem like much less of a threat.

“No,” Farley said.  “Besides ghosts don’t come out in the daytime.”  Since everyone acknowledged his being an authority on all things intellectual, we were ready to accept his word.

            Then Marsh Rat quipped, “Some of the kids from Espy School got run off from here last Halloween, just when they was about to throw paint on the building.  Someone or some ‘thing’ howled at ‘em!”  A hush came over the group.

McNasty broke the silence.  “You mean they heard wood creak and got chicken shit and ran away.”

Marsh Rat held his ground.  “There’s ghosts in there!   I don’t care what you say, Kenny.  I’m the one who lives right next door.  That building is haunted and it’s haunted both day and night.  I swear it!”

Booger mocked Marsh Rat’s remarks in a high-pitched tone, as if he were a girl.  “There’s ghosts in there all right!  And it is haunted both day and night.”  Then he added in a manly tone, “If you’ve got so much hair on your ass, Kenny, why don’t you go in there and show us that you know what you’re talking about?”

We all paused and wondered if they’d come to blows.  It was obvious that McNasty was considering how to respond.  You never knew quite what to expect of Booger.  He was so erratic that he was capable of just about anything and I’m sure Kenny was weighing the possibility that he would fight back.

But it proved much easier to combat Booger’s words than his farts.  McNasty shoved him in the chest.  “There’s nothing that riles up ghosts more than a fat ass!”  McNasty said.  He looked over Booger’s shoulder, down his back.  “And you’ve got the perfect specimen.  Why don’t you just back in there and that’ll get rid of ‘em?  Or better yet, cut one and gas ‘em to death!”

            Booger replied, “It’s better to be fat in the ass than between the ears, like you, Kenny.” 

            We all knew McNasty couldn’t ignore a direct confrontation.  He turned bright red.  His nostrils flared.  This remark had hit too near the core to be ignored.  I know he was sensitive to his intellectual deficiencies, because I repeatedly had to help him with his algebra homework for which he’d never once thanked me. 

            Kenny raised his clenched fists.  He pulled his arm back to throw a punch.  Just then RW picked up a rock from beside the goldfish pond and threw it at the medical building.  He threw like a girl and none of us thought it would get there.  We stopped what we were doing to watch it.  It kept sailing and sailing, as if it were floating, and went right between two of the boards, smashed into a sunny little pane and we soon heard the infectious sound of shattered glass.

            We were thrown into frenzy.  We fanned out and attacked the building from all sides.  Kenny and Farley and RW and Atlas and Marsh Rat, and the little tom-girl, Mudge, all started throwing rocks at the windows.  Most of them pinged off the plywood, but every third or fourth one struck glass as we moved in closer.  Each breaking pane made a pinging sound.  It was like throwing softballs at the china plates at the Hardin County Fair, only this time it was free, and while there were no stuffed animals to win, the clanging of the broken windows was the only prize we needed.

            Sometime between the time when RW threw the first stone and the moment when every shard of glass lay on the ground, McNasty rode a few doors down and got a crowbar out of his uncle’s garage.  He and Atlas, the tallest kid in the group, were soon at the door, prying the wood loose.  About then Mikey Fernbank pulled up out front, through the circular driveway, where McNasty had left the gate open when he went to get the crowbar.  He sat there in his dark blue Dodge convertible with his girlfriend and honked until he got our attention. 

McNasty looked over to see what was going on. 

Mikey yelled, “Hey, you pussy wimps, get the hell out of there!  This is private property.” 

We didn’t know if McNasty would fight or flee.  The rest of us would have flown, but McNasty was not known for backing down.  Mikey was bigger than any of us, but McNasty was tough, stubborn and prideful.  After assessing the situation in what I pictured as his pea-sized brain McNasty said, “Screw it!  It’s only Fern-dung.  I can take him.  Let’s go on in.”

We were just about to go inside, when Fern-dung upped the ante by revving his engine and giving McNasty the finger behind a book, in such a way that his girlfriend, who was sitting practically on his lap in the front seat, couldn’t see what he was doing.

            “Hey, you little twerps!”  He yelled between tromps on the accelerator to reassert his authority with his belligerent pipes.  “Every one of you’s going to get an ass kicking tonight,” he shouted.  “Even you, Mudgie.”

            Mudge looked away.  She may have been able to hold her own in a fight, but was sheepish when it came to conversation.

            While Mikey revved his engine, Kenny flashed back the finger from a perch on top of the crowbar then resumed pulling off the plywood, hardly missing a beat.

I heard Mikey’s car door open, then slam shut, and I’m sure Mikey would have come over and pounded McNasty or been pulverized by him, except that Suzie Pendleton, the head cheerleader—a well stacked senior, who was wearing Fern-dung’s bright red and white letter sweater--was growing impatient.

Epar told us, when he returned in dry shorts and clean pants that he had heard her say, “C’mon, let’s get out of here.  You remember what happened to me here, don’t you?”

Rumor had it that she’d been putting out for Mikey and perhaps he had more exciting things in mind than kicking the shit out of us.  He yelled, “All right, you little twerps!  Don’t say I didn’t warn ya!” then peeled out with a deafening squeal, spewing smelly blue-gray smoke.  We stood in a momentary daze. 

None of the rest of us would have gone inside, but McNasty egged us on.  With McNasty in command and Marsh Rat in the lead, we crawled cautiously over the windowsill.  I reassured myself that McNasty could even bully ghosts. 

I was surprised at how dank and dusty it was, even on this bright, clear day.  The nun who taught science at my school had just explained the Brownian movement and we could see the dust circulating like dancing fairies in one shaft of light that filtered through a partially boarded-up window. 

  Once we were inside, we tried to decide which way to go.  RW said, “When I broke my arm two summers ago, I went down this way to get an X-ray.”  He pointed.  “Let’s see what it looks like now.”

I can’t remember where Mudge was, but I know she wasn’t last.  I think that might have been RW, who professed to be having pangs of conscience—second thoughts about getting his butt whipped, if you ask me.

            “Wow, look at this,” Atlas said.  “I remember coming down this hallway to see Doctor White, when I broke my leg sliding into second base.”

            “Are you sure it wasn’t when you came in to get your nut checked?”  Farley asked.

            Atlas was good natured and jovial about his affliction, “You’re right.  It coulda been,” he replied with a bright smile on his face.  His manner routinely deflected ridicule. 

            We reunited at the center of the apex, which was built in the shape of an A-frame and had once been the reception area.  We then headed down Doctor Schultz’ wing.  Even though it was no more rundown, or full of dust and cobwebs than the first wing, it seemed a whole lot more eerie.  We got down on our hands and knees and crawled to feel safer.  This time, Mudge took the lead.

            RW, who by now was caught up in the excitement and next in line behind Mudge turned his head towards us and said in a low voice, “Shh!  I hear something.”

            “What is it?  What do you think it is?” Epar said.  We couldn’t see his face because of the darkness, but we could hear the trembling in his voice.

            “Epar, don’t shit your pants again,” McNasty chortled from the rear.

            “I didn’t shit my pants,” he replied.  “I went home to use the toilet and flush down my favorite turd, Kenny Clarke.  I’m surprised you’ve already climbed back out of the sewer.”  

            We halted.  I don’t know whether we were more scared of the ghosts at that point or the outraged bully in the rear.

           “Wait’ll I get you outside,” McNasty said.  “The minute we see daylight, I’m knockin’ the daylights out of you!”  We all knew he meant it.  It’s a wonder Epar didn’t shit his pants a second time. 

            Just then, Atlas said, “Hey, you guys.  Look over there . . . over there in the middle of those boxes.”  It looked like two chairs covered with sheets.  In the middle of one were two green eyes that seemed to be floating in the darkness.

            If we hesitated coming into the building, we made up for it by rushing on our way out.  We hurried so fast that when the Marsh Rat got to the exit, the rest of us piled up on top of one another like cars in a fog.  We desperately tried to scramble out through the window we had opened, but kept running into one another.  Someone knocked another piece of plywood loose by lying on his back and kicking it with his feet.  We fled out the door.  Then, most of the other guys, including Mudge, beat me over the fence.  I know because I tore my good school pants and cut my knee climbing over and there was no one left to help me.  They were already scattering on their bikes.

            Booger was the last one out, but he didn’t seem to be rushing or at all excited.  “It was just a damn stray white cat,” he yelled, as I rode off on my bike, my knee spewing blood.  It smarted so badly I couldn’t even consider what he had said.  My pants were stuck to my knee with oozing blood.

            Cat, rat, dog, or ghost, we had broken into the park, smashed all the windows, tore off the plywood and been accosted by Mikey Fernbank, who would make sure our parents found out about it.  I had also torn my good pants that I had been told not to wear to play on my day off, none of which boded well for my well being.  True, Epar had two ass kickings coming, but as I lay in bed that evening fretting over the consequences of the days’ activities, it was bad enough to be facing only one. 

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