What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Jonathan Farlow

Summer came. Summer stayed for a day or two and then Summer left. At least that's how it felt for Michael Frye. Michael had looked forward to this summer vacation since the last one had ended. He was eight years old. He had the ten acre wood behind his parent's house to explore, a brand new Evel Knievel bicycle, two family trips and exactly two months twenty-one days eight hours and fifteen minutes to do it in. Or so he thought. He had no sooner than chucked this last years assignments into the trash than his mother started fishing through his closet for his book bag to see if anything could be reused the upcoming year. That was always the sign that autumn was about to leap on him like a leopard. Soon they would go for their annual Labor Day fishing trip to Nag's Head. Soon school would start. Soon they would come.

“They” was what Michael called the people that always rented out his parent's two spare rooms for the furniture market in High Point. Just the fact that there were strangers in the house for a week was creepy enough, but top that with his Mom, Anne, getting so antsy the whole time they were there.

"No, you can't eat breakfast in your underwear."

"No, we can't watch Hee Haw. Mrs. So-and-So doesn't want to see that mess."

"Yes, you have to stay home; we have company."

"Yes, you have to wear a shirt to supper." And then when Dad was sufficiently frazzled, she would start in on Michael, who was forced to spend his every waking hour outside so he wouldn't get in the way.

Such was the case when Slobber showed up. The first guest had rolled, actually, he sort of floated in before Michael was even out of bed. His mother had yanked the covers off him, thrown some clothes at him and told him to get up and help bring in Mr. Harold's bags. Mr. Harold, a fat man in a flowered vest and bow tie, sort of sashayed up the stairs making cooing noises into a small wood and wire birdcage while Michael and his mother managed a half a dozen powder blue suitcases. After their new house guest was all settled Michael was again sent outside without so much as a thank you very little.

Michael walked down to the outbuilding trying to imitate the way that Mr. Harold walked, but he stopped when his legs started chaffing. He went around behind the outbuilding to the shelter where his dad kept firewood and, crouching down, looked into a hole in the red dirt up against one shelter wall. It was there that he had seen two big rats sniffing around the woodpile a couple of weeks before. He waited to see if he could get a look at them, but there was neither turd nor track to show that the rats had even been there. He then pulled the old bed sheet off of his new bicycle, which was padlocked to one of the shelter’s wooden supports, and wiped it off. Then he felt the tires to make sure they had air; he oiled the chain again before he undid the lock with the key that he kept around his neck, saddled up and headed around the shelter towards the driveway where he had planned to practice wheelies. He had been at it for about a minute or two when he heard a strange noise coming down the driveway toward the house. It was sort of a high pitched hum, like the toy air plane that he had bought, at the beach and it was getting louder.

Michael’s mother stepped out onto the porch and called him just as a big van flew up the hill and into the yard and stopped next to Mr. Harold's brick colored SAAB. Michael hadn't noticed Slobber as he followed the van by him because he had been concealed in the vapor trail of dust left by it. He pulled up on a scooter stopped right behind the van and, switching off the motor, started taking off what to Michael looked like an old army helmet.

Michael went back around to the shelter, dusted off his bicycle, covered it back up, chained it back to the support and rushed toward the house as his mother was calling him again. When he got there, Harold was on the porch and two ladies had gotten out of the van. One of the women was thin and wore a bright yellow Moo-Moo that sort of flapped as she walked, matching sandals and a floppy white hat with daisies growing off the brim. She practically pranced up to the porch steps while a tiny elf-like woman in a denim jumper, flip flops and dangly earrings slid open the van's side door and started pulling packages and boxes out. Anne directed her son with a snap and a point to help carry stuff. He dropped the first box, a purple makeup case, onto one of the twin beds in the room between Harold's and his own and ran back down like a kid who had dashed to the bathroom during a movie, now that something interesting was going on downstairs. Harold was still standing on the porch and the skinny woman was standing at the bottom of the stairs like a native paying tribute to the king of the tribe.

"My name is Jennifer Wilcox," she was saying, "and this is my sister Dottie." She gestured to the little woman.

"Yes, hello." Harold's voice took on the same condescending tone that it had when he had spoken to Anne earlier. "We spoke on the phone. Is this the artist that you've been raving to my company about?"

"Oh, yes, this is Ambrose." She took the man by the arm and led him from where he stood by his scooter to the steps.

"Hello." Harold spoke in that same strained sounding voice. Ambrose just stood by Jennifer Wilcox and nodded his head. He looked as thought he hadn't had a shave in a week and his salt and pepper hair was slicked down to his head from wearing his helmet. He carried the helmet in one hand and held a half empty trash bag against a substantial gut with the other. He didn't speak for a few seconds and, when he did, no one acted like they heard him save Michael, who hung on his every word.

"My name's Slobber. I liked to be called Slobber."

"So this is our great find. Your diamond in the rough."

"Oh, yes. He's done one piece that we're particularly proud of, an oaken headboard with a motif that's based on a Japanese myth."

"Hmmm," said Harold, his interest peaked.

"It's Godzilla." Said Slobber, but the only one who seemed to hear him was, again, Michael.

"And Ambrose has informed us that the legend is circa 56 A.D."

"That's 1956." Again, no one seemed to pay attention to Slobber except for Michael, who was so engrossed in the conversation that he stood there beside the van holding a Pepsi box full of paperwork until his Mother slapped him on the back of the head and got him moving toward the house.

As Michael’s mother was entertaining her guests, his father was sprinting around a dilapidated single-wide while simultaneously vaulting over the engine block of a 69 Camaro and spraying maise over his right shoulder in a feeble attempt to slow the pursuit of a 67 pound pit bull named LeAnn. The trailer, the engine block and LeAnn belonged to one Jay Vern Jones, to whom Officer Grady Frye along with his partner Leon Schaler were trying to serve a warrant for his arrest. They were somewhat distracted, however, by the sight of LeAnn coming at them from the backyard, dragging a rather large chain. Jones had been arrested for stealing a neighbor’s self-propelled push mower and attempting to ride it up Old Rail Yard Road to the Pantry to buy beer. He had violated his probation when he brought a sample to a mandatory drug test and turned up pregnant. When his subsequent court date rolled around, he turned up missing.

While Grady and Leon were at his trailer, Jay Vern was hiding in an old deer stand two miles back in the woods, listening to LeAnn barking as she cornered the two policemen on top of their squad car until Animal Control could arrive.

Michael was sitting at his desk in his pajamas the next morning working on a model of the Battlestar Galactica. The window was open and the old fan that Mama had rescued from Grandma's yard sale was sitting just inside it, the metal blades sucking in the fresh, rain smelling air from outside. Mama made him work on his model by the window because of the glue fumes. She didn't want him to get loopy.

He had just put a generous helping of glue onto the last piece, getting a lot on his hands as well, when a big, white bird streaked by him like a rocket and flew into the fan. Anne was coming up to her son's room that very second to see if he wanted any breakfast and found him frozen where he sat and covered with white, downy feathers, which were also lying over the desk and the floor and lingering in the air around him.

"What in God's name!" she shrieked as she ran to him and started frantically plucking feathers out of his hair.

"Was that a bird?" As Michael spoke, a feather flew out of his mouth.

"Oh no! Did it kill it? We have got to get that bird back!" Anne went to the window and looked down into the yard just as their neighbor's black lab scooped up the still quivering bird into its mouth and trotted triumphantly back towards home. "It's one of Mr. Harold's doves: Fluff, Powder, I don't know its name. It's what he keeps in that cage. Goodness Gracious!"

All she could do was stare in horror as the huge black dog's tail disappeared through the bushes. She practically yanked Michael out of his pajamas as he tried to pull loose the feathers which were stuck to his fingers with model glue. She dragged him to the bathroom and turned on the shower. "Thank God they're at market, but you need to wash off every one of those feathers. I'll clean up your room. I guess we'll have to tell him; I'm dreading that. After I get all those feather's up, I'll try to call your father and see what he says."

A good hour later when Anne tried to ring her husband, he was away from his desk. He was balancing on top of a small riding lawn mower just outside of JayVern Jones' bathroom window. JayVern had been in a real good mood ever since he had out-smarted the police the day before and had even come back to his trailer for some clothes, what was left of his pot and to take his monthly shower and shave, having spent the night at his sister-in-law's. He had just tilted his head back and looked down his nose toward the mirror to get his upper lip when he saw Officer Frye's face pressed up against the window screen. He dropped to the floor, but the policeman was able to spot him as he hugged the toilet in his underwear, shaving cream still on his face.

When Anne was hanging up the phone from the police station, she was startled to hear the television on in the next room. She glanced around the door facing and saw an old re-run of My Favorite Martian playing and Slobber sitting in her husband's easy chair watching it with the serious manner of a politician counting votes. The blankets and sheets were still on the couch from where he had spent the night there.

"Oh, I didn't know anybody else was still here," Anne said thankful it wasn't Harold or one of the Wilcox sisters.

"They said they wouldn't need me there today." He said, never taking his eyes from the television. "That queer fella said that he didn't want me there so I just stayed here. What's with all the feathers?" Anne had been staring at the floor and looked up to see him studying her hand, full of Fluff/Powder's remains. "Y'all slaughter your own chickens around here do you? Stuffing pillows?"

"Umm, no." Anne pulled her hand back behind her but, for some reason, she blurted out the truth. "One the queer...Harold's doves flew into the fan upstairs. We were just trying to figure out what to do." Slobber registered it for a second and then let out a sadistic sounding cackle which seemed so out of character for him that Anne had to chuckle herself. Then the laughing stopped just as suddenly as it had started and he went back to watching television just as he had been doing when Anne had come into the room. She just rolled her eyes, threw up her hands and turned to leave when he called her back.

"Say, what was you gonna do? 'Bout the bird I mean?"

"Well, I guess that we'll tell Harold the truth. Face the music," Anne said as he stared back at the T.V. for a few seconds.

"I wouldn't do that. I mean he's so high strung anyway. Anything happen to those birds, he will throw a hissy. Might drop a gasket and keel over right there."

"But I don't see as we have any choice." He thought for a few more seconds, rubbing his chin, and then got up and switched off the T.V.

"How ‘bout I get something to put in its place? You said those birds're doves. You got woods, fields around here, don't cha? I could probably catch you something to pass for the real thing at least until he's gone."

"I don't think that we have white doves running wild around here."

"Well, you got a pet store in town? I'll just ride up there and get one. No big deal." Anne had short conversations with the angel on her right shoulder and the devil on her left, which did little to ease her mind. In the end she simply looked into Slobber's dark, blank, staring eyes, shrugged her shoulders and said: “Thanks.”

A little later on back up was called to JayVern Jones' trailer and an ambulance hauled Officer Leon Schaler to Randolph Memorial Hospital to treat wounds to his buttocks received when struck in the hind end with a double shot of rock salt from JayVern's shotgun. JayVern barricaded himself in his trailer and demanded three cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon, ten-thousand dollars cash, a brand new T-bird, and free passage to the Mexican border.

Mid-afternoon Michael was messing around in the woods by the creek and heard a bottle of Coke calling him. When he had left the house Slobber was still not back and his mother was so nervous that she had put flour in her coffee. She had told him to go outside, but he wanted to hang close to see what Slobber brought back and if it would fool Harold.

When he got back to the house, Michael just laid his bicycle down in the driveway and dashed in for the Coke. Slobber and his mother were whispering when he walked into the kitchen and Anne looked relieved to see that he wasn't any of the other guests.

"Everything okay?" he asked his mother.

"Looks good," said Slobber. His mother simply shrugged her shoulders and opened her mouth to say something as the sound of a car roaring into the driveway was followed by the sickening sound of metal scraping metal and similar tones of Harold cursing in the driveway.

"Who in the hell left a bicycle in the driveway!" he said as he tore into the kitchen.

"My bicycle," was all that Michael could choke out before he felt his chin start to quiver.

"Well, you shouldn't have left it in the middle of the driveway! You've just succeeded in tearing up the bottom of my car. Oil's leaking everywhere. Why don't you use your brain next time!"

"Wait just a minute," Anne broke in stretching herself to her full five foot two inch height. "That's my son....."

"I don't care if he's the Prince of Wales," screamed Harold as the Wilcox sisters hurried in behind him. "He's ruined my car! My company is paying you a substantial amount for me to stay here! More than you'd get from anyone else for the simple reason that my bringing my babies prevents me from staying in a hotel! My car repairs will be docked from the final fee; that is, if you get paid at all and I'll see that you don't if I continue to be treated in this manner!" He stopped for several seconds, face red, chest heaving like he was trying to calm down and, when he spoke again, his voice was quiet, strained, ominous, Clint Eastwood quiet. "Now, what is going to happen now is that I am going to go upstairs, get packed and arrange for repairs to my car. Miss Wilcox, you and your sister will drive me into town if need be and then take me to High Point so that my company can still salvage a showing with furniture bearing comic book characters and a center piece with a carving from a bad monster movie.”

"Godzilla's actually been in 15 movies so far," Slobber stated, apparently oblivious to Harold's tirade.

"Will you please shut up! You have done enough and I will not tell you again to keep your trap shut! Now," he said turning towards the Wilcox’s, "I will be ready to go in an hour. I advise you to be ready!"

Michael went outside to Harold's car and, stooping down, looked underneath at his bicycle. It was badly bent at the fork and broken half way up the suicide bar, one end of which was sticking in the bottom of the car. Leaking oil was covering it before running off onto the driveway. He had hardly reached underneath and taken hold of the tire before Harold's voice shrieked down from the upstairs window.

"You get the hell away from my car. Don't you think you've done enough damage for one day!"

Michael crept around the corner of the house and crawled underneath the big magnolia before he started crying. In a few minutes his Mom reached in and handed him his backpack filled with sandwiches, potato chips, a Coke and all the stuff that he commonly carried when he went on a long exploration into the woods.

"If you want to knock around in the woods, you can. Okay?" She took his silence to mean yes and then went back inside.

Michael felt better before he even got to the creek. He carefully crossed it on a large rock and then crossed the stubble field on the other side. He pushed his way though some thick brush and then drank the Coke as he weaved through the trees where the woods got thinner. He stepped out into the parking lot of an old curb market that set along side the road that they usually took into town and sat down on an old whitewashed tire to eat his lunch. He had just finished the sandwich and opened the bag of potato chips when Slobber pulled onto the gravel on his scooter.

"Y'allright?" He asked, switching off his scooter. Michael could only nod as he looked down toward his feet. "Those women told your Mama that they would pay for your bicycle." Michael nodded again and Slobber simply sat on his scooter quiet for a minute or two and then popped up the kickstand. "So, uh, I’ll see you later." As he started the scooter, Michael looked to him and blurted out a question that had suddenly come to mind.

"Say, did you find something to replace Harold's doves?"

"Sure did."

"What?"

"A big ol' wharf rat that I found out behind your shed. Stuck some feathers on him and put him in the cage today before he got back." Michael stared at Slobber, not knowing whether to be shocked or die laughing, as Slobber started the scooter and pulled out onto the road right in front of the Wilcox sister's van. Jennifer had to swerve into the other lane to miss Slobber and she hit a good sized pot hole. The resulting bump not only loosened the fillings in their teeth but also loosened the latch on the bird cage and allowed the still feathered rat, who had been terrorizing Fluff since Slobber had first put him in their cage, to slip out along with the bird, and onto the floorboard.

"You should have hit him," snapped Harold. The sisters glared at each other but kept silent. Michael, who walked to the shoulder of the road to watch them go, noticed that the van slapped on its brakes just as it reached the crest of the hill and then accelerated dramatically as it disappeared over the top. That would have been when the rat chased Fluff up Jennifer Wilcox's left leg and got in a fight with him about three inches south of her belly button.

"Good Lord!" Jennifer screamed, hit the brake with her left foot, floored the gas with her right and then released the brake to stomp her foot on the floor in hopes of releasing the buzz saw that was rolling around on her girdle. The result was a mile-long skid mark and a heart-stopping squeal as the van hit ninety at the bottom of the hill where it passed the city limits sign and proceeded to dart about the downtown area like a top from Hell. Over the next twenty minutes they committed every moving violation on the books for the city of Randleman, the county of Randolph and the state of North Carolina. Had all the police not been at JayVern Jones' trailer in a vain attempt to flush him out, they surely would have been caught and charged. They flew through a bank drive-through the wrong way, the drive-through at the Jitter Burger in reverse and a car wash sideways. They ran the town's stoplight, took out the Civil War Memorial and crashed into, through and out of the ABC store. By the time they had gotten to Rail Yard Road, they had slowed to a mere eighty. They passed the train and then crossed over the tracks in front of it, clearing the cowcatcher by a mere foot. Then they crossed back over the tracks, missing the front of the train by a mere inch before launching off the embankment that overlooked the Avalon trailer park. In the brief second that they were in the air and the sound of the road under their wheels had been replaced by the wind whistling past their window, Harold did an excellent impression of Little Richard in soprano, Jennifer put her Lee Press On's through the hard plastic steering wheel and Dottie said a single word that aptly described what Fluff the dove was doing on her head at that moment.

No one was hurt when the van crashed through the back wall of JayVern Jones' trailer. JayVern was sitting beneath a front window, hugging his shotgun, dreaming of half naked brown women and alcoholic drinks with umbrellas in them when the back wall pushed in like a trap from a Fu Man Chu movie and squirted him out through the front window in nothing but cut off jeans and a flip flop.