Hellions

After Pete turned mean he used to come after us kid. One time he got hold of Monica, Fat Georgy’s sister. He grabbed her by the shoulders and started shaking her, yelling in her face with his rotten breath. My uncle Paul chased him off with a two by four. So the first one who saw him coming would yell, “Pete. He’s coming.” We would all scatter hiding until he passed.

He must have come out of his shack at the bottom of the cinder pile in the truck lot across Huron, but we didn’t see him until he was in front of JP Schmitt’s. Somebody gave the alarm and Frankie and me ran to the empty apartments in the white frame building standing up against Pumpilio’s where he lived on the second floor. The second floor had a wrap around, wooden porch on the Peoria street and truck lot side of the building. On the ground floor on the truck lot side in the center was a small closed in porch with and two screen and storm doors, one facing Peoria street and one facing the back of the lot and the Soo Line. From Peoria street you could see right through. It gave access to the front and back apartment. There were dark cold sheds under the house we weren’t supposed to play in. You could see down there from the street where a railing kept you from falling in. On the truck lot side there was no porch and the cinders came to the wall.

When we saw Pete and Trixie we ran in the little closed it porch and I got the back door latch and was fumbling with the latch on the street side when Pete saw me.

“He saw me.”

Frankie had run to the front apartment and was already hiding under the bed. It was a bare, pee-stained mattress, the kind with the pattern of dimples with two short strings coming from each dimple. It was on one of the bed frames with the rectangular steel grating held to the frame by short oblong springs around the parameter.

We lay beneath the bed on the worn linoleum floor holding our breaths. “Maybe he’s not coming,” Frankie whispered.

We heard the door rattle and shake, rattle and shake. I started praying seven-year-old-Catholic-boy prayers, promising Jesus I’d never be bad again. A last rattle and then, silence.

“He’s gone,” I said

“Go see.”

I scrunched up my face for courage. I started to side a way from Frankie. There was another rattle. I shot back over the linoleum. The door screeched open. Trixe’s over grown toenails clattered across the floor. The screen door slammed closed.

“I seen you come in here, you little bastards,” Pete said, his voice ragged and mean, not at al like when I used to bring him leftovers. “Find’em, girl. Git’em.

I redoubled my prayer efforts. I promised not to ever miss church. Trixie came into the room we were in. She was a squat, little, spotted brown mutt. She was either pregnant or like she was now. From under the bed I could she her bruised, swollen tits dragging on the floor. I told God I’d go to church every day before school and I wouldn’t tell that dirty joke we told each other over and over and laughed until our sides hurt.

A cowboy out on the range comes into town on his motorcycle. He parks it in front of the local saloon and goes inside. When he comes out there’s a drunken Indian standing outside where his motorcycle used to be. The cowboy asks the Indian where his motorcycle is. The Indian says, “Me no know, me no tell. Me push button, run like hell.”

My sister gasped in shock when she heard me tell it. “You’re going to hell,” she said. “I’m telling.” I guess I figured it was a good bargaining chip.

Pete came in. We could see his work boots, worn to a frayed sole, and the greasy cuff of his soiled pants. “Find’em, Trix,”

She trotted out of the room. With our ears we followed her taping nails to the other apartment. Pete followed mumbling to himself about the dammed kid having no respect. We heard him moving around and Trixe’s toenails and after a while the screen door slam.

We thanked God up and down for saving us from Pete and his dog and eventually snuck cautiously out from under the bed and out of the apartment. Of course we forgot about our prayers almost as fast as we made them and soon we were ruing around the neighborhood getting into more trouble like the little hellions everybody said we were.