From Carbonado: Stories and Folktales

Joshua Cabe was a freckled-faced, red-haired teen whose smile could charm the frown off an old-maid schoolteacher. Bright and sure of himself, Joshua did not believe all the local stories about The Notch and Pardou’s Pit. He felt the stories were created by superstitious minds; and these notions did not belong in modern thought. After all, it was the 1920’s. He decided to lay the yarn about Old Ned to rest once in for all.

One day Joshua gathered several of his schoolmates from little Carbonado School around him at recess. He pointed to the rolled-up bedroll of blankets tied to a cord dangling from his left hand. He announced he would spend the night in The Notch. He would lay out his bedroll next to Pardou’s Pit – a vertical ventilation shaft for one of many coal tunnels crisscrossing the underground area. Besides the blankets, he packed a knife and some food. He swore all his friends to secrecy and told them that he would see them in school the next day. He assured them that Old Ned was just a folktale, a figment of peoples’ overactive imaginations.

The school bell tolled at 8:00AM, and everyone took their seats. Joshua’s desk remained empty, but no one breathed a word about Joshua’s plan. However, when there was still no sign of him on the next day, his schoolmates became worried. They told the teacher, and the teacher told his worried parents. They mounted a full-scale search, twenty men with tracking dogs and torches. The trackers found no sign except for his bedroll laid out near Pardou’s Pit.

A few days later, a homesteader at Huckle-chuck, two miles from the Pit, spotted a human shape coiled in a fetal position beneath the roosts in the chicken shed. It was Joshua, looking more dead than alive. His clothes hung in shreds, and his whole body was covered with scratches. When someone tried to talk to him, he drew himself into a ball and refused to utter a word. His mom and dad took him home, washed him, fed him, and put him to bed. In the middle of the night screams echoed from his room. His mother and father burst through his door only to find him wedged beneath his bed making senseless, babbling noises.

Although they pried him from his cramped hiding place, nothing consoled him. He did not venture from his room for weeks. One bright, summer morning his mom found his body hanging from an open beam inside his room. Around his neck, hangman’s style, wound the cord used to tie the bundle he had carried to The Notch that fateful night.

*  *  *  *  *

          During the next month the four musketeers made three more successful ascents of Heap Hill. We followed different climbing routes and changed our starting place each time. Sometimes Charlie led the climbing party. Sometimes I did. One time Brian insisted on being the leader. Each time the trek proved a little easier. Each time the view from the top looked different.

          Once, the day clear and sunny, Mount Rainier looked like a picture postcard – snow fields and glaciers bordered by dark ridges where the snow had melted. On another climb, we ended up settling for the sight of the town below us – the mountain totally socked in by clouds. We were barely able to make out Mountain Heights. Our final climb took place on a typical spring day in the Northwest. If you didn’t like the weather, you could wait fifteen minutes. We began our ascent in brilliant sunshine. By the time we reached the top, the rain beat down on us, stinging our exposed skin like bees, as it bounced off our bodies. We didn’t even check the view. The slippery way down became dangerous as we clung to vegetation to keep from falling. That was the last time we climbed the old slag pile, and the reason wasn’t the weather. It just didn’t challenge us anymore. Besides, the Bear had lost so much weight he took in his belt two notches.

          During this period Brian Erdman decided to adopt my family. The peach cobbler wasn’t the only reason, but it probably had something to do with it. One day after school, as we arrived home, that heavenly smell hit a bull’s eye right inside our nostrils. My mom had just taken the piping hot cobbler out of the oven, and Brian sniffed the air as we entered through the front door.

          “Hi, Nathan.  How are you, Brian?” My mom spied us through the kitchen door.

          “Fine, Mrs. Carr. Gee, that sure smells good.” His eyes lit up, and his mouth began moving, working up a good supply of saliva.

          “Oh, it’s nothing – just Sandra Carr’s famous, award-winning peach cobbler.” She threw a big smile at Brian and said, “You can have some if you stay for dinner.”

          “That looks . . . and smells yummy,” he repeated, “but I gotta call my mom for permission.”

          Brian’s mom wasn’t sure at first. She didn’t want her son “to impose”. But my mom persuaded Connie Erdman that Brian had nothing to do with wheedling an invitation.

          After a dinner of meatloaf, scalloped potatoes, and green beans, punctuated by questions about school from my mom and what girls were chasing us from my dad, dessert arrived. Cutting a huge piece of mouth-watering peach cobbler, Mom plopped it on Brian’s plate.

          Bear lifted his fork, ready to stab his prize, when I spoke up. “Mom, maybe Brian and I should share that piece. We’ve been trying to stay in shape.”

          “Pshaw, Nathan! You kids have been doing so much hiking and climbing recently, you both look as fit as a fiddle. As long as you stay active, it won't hurt to eat dessert once in a while. Besides, you’ve got to keep up your strength.”

          “Hey, that’s what my mom says too.” Brian broke into a big grin. “You moms must be alike.”

          “Well, we do have some things in common,” she said, using her napkin to barely smother a chuckle. Brian missed the humor and kept shoveling cobbler into his mouth.

          Then Mom looked aghast at me. “But if YOU want a smaller piece, I’ll be happy to oblige.”

          “That’s okay,” I managed to blurt out. “It was just a thought.”

          “Yes, and it should have stayed that way.” Mom squinted at me, speaking in an edgy tone of voice.

          My dad, however, was the biggest reason Brian hung around my house. His dad split when he was a baby. He never really knew a father – especially one like my dad. Although serious most of the time, Dad enjoyed joking around sometimes, like one night during dinner.

          “Better eat up, Brian. You’ve got to keep your strength up,” my dad remarked.

          “That’s just what the women say, Mr. Carr, like my mom and your wife.”

          “Yes, but they don’t say it for the right reasons,” Dad pursued.

          “What d’ya mean?”

          “You’ve got to keep up your strength to fight off all those girls. Especially if they’re ugly. If they’re pretty though, like this one here,” he said, pointing at my mom, “I don’t suppose you’d really want to fight.”

          My mom cuffed him on the shoulder. “Dave, now watch what you say to these boys. They might take you seriously.”

          “I certainly hope they do,” he replied, keeping a straight face.

          I was used to Dad’s humor, but Brian wasn’t. He started “ha, ha, hawing” in that wheezy, breathy way until all of us couldn’t help ourselves and laughter surrounded the table.

*  *  *  *  *

          Jason visited whenever he could get away from his dad. With three boys in the house, it sometimes got crowded. That’s when a lightning bolt idea struck me.

          Behind our ranch-style house in the corner of our yard stood an old storage shed painted beige with T-111 siding. The previous owners used it to collect a little bit of everything. When they moved, they abandoned a lot inside: boxes of newspapers and magazines, half-empty cans of house paint, old, rusty tools, a grass catcher to a push mower and so on.

          I suggested a plan one evening after dinner as my dad forked spoonfuls of lemon-meringue pie, his favorite, into his mouth.

          “Hey, Dad,” I began, a little timid. My mother, still seated at the dinner table, could act as a peacemaker if necessary. My dad stopped chewing long enough to listen. “You know that shed out back?”

          “Yes. You mean the one filled with junk?” He knew I was getting ready to ask a favor.

          “Yeah, you know, with Bear and Jason spending so much time here, my room is getting a little crowded.”

          My mom nodded with sympathy. “Looks like we’re getting into a privacy issue. Yes?”

          “Yes.” I echoed Mom's words, “It’s hard to have any privacy in such a small house. And, as loud as Brian can be, I’m afraid all the noise will bother you and Mom. Anyway, if Bear, Jason, and me cleaned out the shed, could we use it as a clubhouse?”

          My dad shrugged. “Is that all you want? For a moment I thought you were going to ask for the keys to the car.” Then, his face lit up with a big grin. “I don’t see why not. Just clear the place out – I mean, everything. Then salvage what you can use, and we’ll haul the rest to the dump. After that, you can even be in charge of decorating.”

          “Thanks, Dad. We’ll get started on it right away.”

          He looked at Mom and said, “Nathan must be your kid. He thanks me for giving him permission to work his butt off.” His words just glided over my head.

          Saturday morning, Bear and Jason showed up bright and early. 10:00 a.m. is early for a Saturday. Dad borrowed Mom’s 1959 Chevy for the day and left his pickup for us to use as a dumpster.

          We tackled the job with all the pent up energy of healthy thirteen-year-olds, but with an equal amount of poor organization. First, we hauled out the paint cans. We must have found at least fifteen or twenty, most of them ancient. On some, the dried paint glued the flecks of rust together to keep them from leaking. We handled them with care, not wanting to cause a miniature environmental disaster. We kept a newer can, labeled Snowdrift White, just in case we wanted to brighten up the inside of the shed later.

          Tall stacks of magazines and newspapers came next. That’s when the dust storm hit. Picking up the piles of ancient paper stirred up swirls of grit. Lit up by the sunlight streaming through the open door, millions of dust motes danced through the air. We could see what we were breathing. When Jason started wheezing, I pushed him outside until Brian and I cleared out the rest. We tied handkerchiefs over our noses, making us look like Old West bank robbers. The masks came off only after we dumped the paper and swept the floor. 

          After the paint cans and newspapers, we worked on some easy stuff like the grass catcher, a broken garden rake, a broken fishing pole, and a useless pump sprayer, probably used to kill weeds. We stacked a half-dozen two by fours against the side of the shed to set them aside to use later. Then Brian made a discovery in the corner of the shed.

          “Hey, guys,” he gasped in a hoarse whisper. “Look what I found.” Jason and I followed his pointing finger to a stuffed cardboard box to see dozens of girlie magazines – Playboys and Penthouses and some I’d never heard of. Feeling a little guilty, I pulled some out of the box. Some were so old and mildewed that they nearly fell apart when we tried to open them. Bear plucked out a few in decent shape, and we turned the pages with rapt attention. The pictures of naked ladies were one thing, but other sexy pictures showed off things I was positive my father had never seen.

          We huddled shoulder to shoulder as I sat in the middle and turned the pages. Our eyes examined each picture, taking in new views of the human female body. As some of the mysteries of sex unraveled before us, Brian became more agitated with each page turn, and he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Man, I’ve never seen them doin’ it before. Wow, how can that whole thing get so big?”

          Not feeling like explaining anything right then, I was experiencing my own problems. The front of my Levis started sticking out, and I reached into my pockets to adjust them until the bulge wasn’t so obvious.

          Jason just kept mumbling with a far off voice, “Mighty fine. Wow, look at the size of those . . .”

          “Nathan! Boys!” We froze as my mom’s voice rang out. “Time for lunch!” We all relaxed.

          “Okay, Mom! We’ll be right in!” I shouted.

          Bear turned to us with his eyes wide and mouth hanging open. “Do you guys mind if I take some of these with me?”

          “I don’t mind,” I told him. “I think I’d feel better if they were gone. My mom has a way of finding things.”

          “Me too. I don’t mind,” chimed in Jason. “My dad has enough of this stuff laying around his bedroom.”

          So, it was settled. Bear stuffed about a dozen magazines, the pick of the litter, into a paper bag and parked it in the corner of shed until we finished the job. We jammed the rest into a black plastic garbage bag and buried it in the back of the pickup.