Three deaths on one Sunday afternoon (deaths not included). Page It was a sunny and warm Sunday afternoon. Bob and his sister, Lorraine, were visiting his friend, Ben Hamsher. Every Sunday after church, Ben's parents spent the afternoon visiting relatives, leaving him, his older brother, Andy, and his younger sister, Kay, alone for the afternoon, free to do what they wanted until milking-time. They lived on a large dairy farm, so there was never a lack of things to do. On a previous Sunday afternoon, Ben and Bob had built a deadly air-gun out of an industrial-sized air-compressor, a three foot length of rubber milking hose, and a handful of roofing nails. Despite a problem with accuracy, they did manage to kill a bird with it. Eventually, the tip of one nail penetrated the rubber hose, just missing one of Bob's hands, prompting them to move on other, safer ways to entertain themselves. Like crushing things in the vise (without safety glasses), and burning things with the big torch (without eye protection). One Sunday, four boys from the farm down the road showed up on their bicycles. Someone mentioned softball. Andy went into the house to call a few of his friends to see if they could come. Before long, there were enough players for a game of softball though with only six players per side. Several other neighborhood kids passing by on bicycles stopped in as well, and soon enough, Sunday afternoon softball at Hamsher's farm was an event. A highly unsupervised event. Softball was fun, and it was alright for a while, but by the fourth or fifth Sunday, everyone was tired of the slow pace of the game. Someone suggested riding calves. Bob didn't want to ride calves. The calves had shit on them, as did the floor of the calf pen. He didn't want to get calf shit on his jeans because he had only two pair to his name, and his mother would kill him if he ruined an entire half of his lower-half wardrobe in one afternoon. Also, he was not dumb to the fact that cow shit--any Page shit--on your jeans meant that no girl will want you. The four boys from the farm down the road illustrated this point perfectly as they had shit on their jeans and shoes prior to arrival, and the girls who were looking, pointing, whispering, and giggling at them were doing so for all the wrong reasons. Ben led the way to the big calf pen. When no one volunteered to go first, the boys started calling each other chicken shit and making clucking sounds. Finally, one of the boys from the farm down the road jumped over the gate and hopped onto the back of one of the five calves. Even though the floor of the big calf pen was littered with straw and shit, Bob calculated that if that kid got bucked off, more shit would be knocked off his jeans than would stick to them. The kid had nothing to lose. Bob, on the other hand, had his jeans to think about. And girls! So, in the interest of just about everything in the world that really mattered to him, he decided to just watch. Besides, watching the injuries happen was far more enjoyable than being directly involved in them. The worst injury occurred when, in an effort to impress the bigger boys and smaller girls, the smallest boy attempted to ride the biggest calf. City boy. First, the calf ran along side the wall, jossling the kid up and down and crushing his knee along the way. This was not the calf's first time dealing with an unwanted rider. The kid's knee then slammed into one of the wall's 4x4 vertical support beam as the calf ran along-side that. He finally fell off the calf and hit the floor crying. He got up slowly, and when he saw the shit stuck to his pants, he quickly grabbed a handful of straw and tried wiping it off. After the first wipe, he realized that the straw was kind of cold and damp. It didn't take him long to figure out that it was either rain water from a leaky roof, or slightly aged piss from a calf. An absence of any visible Page wall-urinals seemed to favor the calf-piss theory. Humiliated and frustrated, he dropped the clump of straw and left the pen, doing his best to hide his face. Ben started to run after him to ask if he needed anything, but quickly realized that nothing short of a washer & dryer and a shower would do. Maybe even a doctor. That, or a time machine. Everyone crowded to the window and had a good laugh as they watched him limp off to his always-friendly bicycle and head for home . . . at half speed, predictably enough. So much for impressing the girls. The best he could hope for now was to never see any of them again. And so, as is so often the case when a bunch of unsupervised teenagers get together to have some fun, a good time was had by all . . . but one. Toward the end of the summer, Ben and his sister, Kay, started inviting friends from school over to play softball on those unsupervised Sunday afternoons. These kids were all strangers to Bob, his sister, and the boys from the farm down the road because they lived just the other side of the school-district line. The guys and girls were at that age when hormones and sexual tensions turn nine out of ten guys into stupid, unreasoning proving-machines . . . set on high. The boys from the farm down the road decided to leave early that Sunday. In fact, they stopped coming altogether, as they were in no way dressed to compete with anyone for anything, least of all the attentions of the young, giggling females. They weren't even that good at softball. When they left, no one missed them. It wasn't long before some of the kids ran into the barn and up the ladder to the hay mow where tunnels had been built below the first two levels of hay. They were town kids, and for them, playing tag in Page hay mow tunnels was like being at an amusement park. Though Bob helped to build the tunnels, he actually didn't like them. For one thing, they were pitch dark, just like the grave. They were also totally sound-proof, just like the grave. And there was only enough room for you to be on your hands and knees; a little more space than the grave, but still . . . Plus, all of the Grade A air had long since been breathed out of those tunnels, not quite so much as the grave, but pretty close. So, while six or seven teenagers were playing tunnel-tag in the hay mow, everyone else, including Bob, was outside climbing onto a tractor. Ben's older brother, Andy, was going to take them all for a ride down the bumpy, gravelly dirt road on a small John Deere tractor with a front-end loader. Bob and another kid were sharing what little space the trailor-hitch offered while hanging onto the back of the tractor seat. There were two kids on each fender, and three more in the bucket of the front-end loader. One of the kids in the bucket didn't have time to get himself settled in before Andy popped the clutch and tore out of the driveway and onto the road like a bat out of hell. The fun started when Andy started raising and lowering the boom of the loader while tipping the bucket up and down at the same time. Then came the swerving back and forth, hitting every pot-hole on purpose. Truly, the smell of deisel fumes and death was in the air. Meanwhile, back at the farm, attention had turned to the silos; in particular, the seventy-footer with the dome on top. One of the guys asked Ben if it was scary to climb to the top. Ben shrugged his shoulders and said, "Well, once you've stood on top of the dome, it just ain't scary no more." Another boy, a fifteen year-old named Larry, said, "Holy shit, man! You've stood on the very topof that thing?" "Yeah," Ben said, pretending to not understand what the big Page deal was about. "As long as it ain't windy, it ain't no big deal." "It ain't windy right now. Go ahead and do it," Larry challenged. Ben didn't really want to go to the top of the silo dome. He really had done it before, but he had also never been so glad to be back on the ground again. "Nah," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "it's just a waste of time for me. Why don't you give it a try? If you want, you can always quit and come down if you think you're not going to make it." After staring up at the top of the silo for five seconds, Larry said, "I'll tell ya what, if you go up there and stand on the dome, I will, too." If Melody Hamm, the object of Ben's desires, hadn't been among the spectators that day, he wouldn't have bothered. But there she was in all her over-developed glory. So, without saying another word, he started walking toward the silo.
I don't know what to tell you except to try again when you have more time. It's not required reading. I'm just sharing a story . . . And I already know what I have.
