Footloose

My brother and I were close friends, best actually.

David was two years younger than I. He lacked a little in the smarts category while young. But, then again, he was younger, so maybe that explains some of the insane activities I, his older, read wiser, brother, encouraged him to participate in. What he lacked in brains, he made up for with guts.

My dad was intimidating. Still is. Gruff voice, quick belt whippings, stress levels through the roof most of the time, he was the picture of tough love. He came home from work at night, drained and wore out, usually destined for my parents’ bedroom where he would lounge for a couple of hours in his briefs, reading a book, before going to bed. Little time was laid aside for us boys, even less for stupid questions or unrealistic requests. Never stopped my brother.

Most of the time, the idea would be born out of my conniving mind. Dropped into conversation without pomp, I would let it fester in my brother’s mind before suggesting that he go ask Dad. My mother was a waste of time on this front because her response (and get out of jail free card) was always, “Ask your father”.

I would stand in the back of the hall, just outside our bedroom door and peer down the hall to where my brother stood, tapping on my parents’door. Barely higher than the doorknob, his knocks just loud enough to echo back towards my hiding spot, I quivered with fear and excitement, waiting for the deep bass of my father’s voice to confirm the fearful thoughts of negativity filling my mind. It was always a “No”, or maybe that is just time magnifying one or two times into a universal. Regardless of the truth, it never deterred David from taking the bait the next time. And the baiting and suckering continued from asking favors of my father to wild dares in the neighborhood.

Our neighborhood was like every other one in Chandler and Chandler was just like every other town in the area: Run down and tired little towns, clustered outside of Evansville, Indiana. The people were redneck, untouched by higher education or hygiene. Our town reflected its population: poor, stubborn to change, and smelling of manure.

Down the hill from our house, stood a house similar to every house on our block. It stood on the corner of 5^th Street and Miller. Brown brick with matching brown siding, the façade didn’t reflect the terror inflicted by that house in the minds and dreams of my brother and I.

It may be that all children do what we did: create a boogie man (or in our case, a boogie house. Which, when put in those terms, hardly seems scary.) We needed something to be interesting. Something to pass our time of summer boredom. Something to keep us wary and on our toes when the sun began to wear away our anti nap resolve. Something to dominate our nighttime stories. Something to fear.

As I pedaled up the block one day, a large black car was parked outside the house. Two days later, in a story retold for the neighbors that we played baseball with, the car was a hearse and there was an organ that played, without a player! And though I had made up the lies to amuse my friends and myself, that night, clutching the covers over my head, they became just as real as my name or anything else in my world. There was a hearse down the road! And that organ was playing a funeral song! Oh Jesus!

That summer the terror-filled stories about that corner house grew to the point of absurdity. First it was just a mortuary, then a hangout for witches, soon after a den of vampires, until finally the stories grew so large that they became laughable. Our fear had stretched and stretched, until, at some point, we realized that the stories were no longer working. Rather than scaring us, they had become boring. Like so many things in my childhood, the usefulness of an item was passed and it began to gather dust in memory.

In front of that “haunted” house stood a tremendous fir tree, at least 10 feet in diameter. It towered above the entire lawn, killing most of the grass with its shadow. If the house was indeed our boogie house, than that tree was our chicken dance.

Chicken involves two moving vehicles competing against each other to see who will swerve first to avoid collision. For us, chicken was a bike and that tree. Down the hill, we would peddle as fast as possible on a collision course with that massive fir, than swerve and brake at the last moment, sending up dirt and tufts of our neighbor’s yard, then peddle like hell to get away from the creepy shadow that loomed in front of the haunted house.

Andy, Robby, Stephen, and I spent every afternoon trying to be the least chicken, barely escaping the pointy branches of the tree. Sweat would sting our eyes as we gritted our teeth and prepared for the crash to come, but each time, just before impact, we would swing aside and avoid destruction. My brother watched us, listening to us egg him on. We laughed at him, pushed him, eventually shrugged off his lack of a deathwish, calling him a wimp. At that, a nerve was struck, he put his feet on his rusty pedals, took a deep breath, and told us to get out of his way.

My brother’s bike lacked brakes.

Whether or not this fact slipped my mind or I just ignored it, I cannot say, some 20 years later after the fact. I do know, however, that my brother careened down that hill without reservation. Across Stephen’s yard, past the driveway that would leave a scar on my hand from a similar stunt, blurring in the distance, he hurtled into the yard that would be his landing pad. His wheel turned. His feet attempted to lock back onto his brakes that did not exist. And into that fir, bike and all, he flew.

It took my older brother, Ben, to pick him out of the tree. Dave was bleeding from his leg, but beaming with pride.

“Did you see that!”

And we all stood there, staring as he was carried up the hill to the house. Yes, we did see that. My brother had not only won the game of chicken in a way that none of us could top, but also conquered the boogie house. Bloodied and bruised, he had faced the worst the house, the tree, and momentum could throw at him, and emerged victorious.