Sightings (2 page)

“Think they speak English?” one of the guys asked, propelling us into a heated debate over whether or not Indians could. Midway through Ronald's refutation (“Of course not! They didn't even come from England!”), the one girl powerful enough to momentarily stifle our idiocy pedaled back into our lives.

Georgia Ambler, who each afternoon could be found poolside in her blue and white striped bikini, had single-handedly doubled Pocahontas's male membership just by being there. Ever since school let out, we'd fallen into a routine of baseball in the mornings and pool in the afternoons, a schedule that allowed us ample opportunity to show off the scraped knees we'd earned from our heroics on the field. For several sweltering afternoons, we took turns parading past Georgia Ambler's peripheral vision (our farmer's tans in full bloom), waiting patiently for her to acknowledge our existence.

She didn't.

As seventh graders we never dared call out to an eighth-grade girl during school hours, but in the neighborhood, sometimes one of us felt brave enough to bleat out a crack-tinged greeting.

But not the night the Indians moved in.

Ronald, Jim, and the rest of us huddled beneath the long arms of the oak tree at the end of my drive, tilting the remains of our grape soda cans into our mouths while our eyes focused on Georgia pedaling past on her Schwinn.

Her brakes squeaked, but it was a squeak we'd grown accustomed to from summers past, our pants instinctually tightening at the sound of her un-lubed presence.

Upon hearing her siren call for the first time, the Indians glanced up. The oldest brave (we called him Pony due to his ponytail) tracked her path with his eyes as she rode down Cherokee Lane, two tan legs fully extended.

Like the others, I should have treated myself to the gift of Georgia Ambler's backside. But I couldn't – not with that Indian staring.

Much to Jim Kelp's disappointment, we soon discovered that the Ross family's invasion into our neighborhood did not translate into an increased number of outfielders.

“What do you mean they don't play baseball?” Ronald asked, pounding his fist into his opened glove. “You mean they don't speak English?”

“They speak English,” I said, settling the matter. “They just don't play the game.”

Since I lived closest, I'd been nominated to represent us in our plight for a few more outfielders.

“So assuming they do speak English,” Ronald said skeptically, “what'd they tell you?”

“That they don't play,” I repeated, “and that was pretty much it.”

In the days leading up to my first encounter with the natives, I'd taken careful note of their patterns. For the first few days the braves had dedicated quite a bit of time to their front yard, rearranging their dozen or so lawn ornaments until their mother seemed satisfied with her phalanx of rabbits and squirrels, whose marble eyes followed us wherever we went. My own father called the lawn ornaments “an abomination of man and beast and plaster,” but since the neighborhood association hadn't explicitly ruled against them, there was nothing to be done.

Once their yard was in order, I began seeing a whole lot less of those braves. The only time they ventured outside was when the one we called Pony retrieved the morning paper around 7:30 or so. One day after breakfast I hid inside our opened garage until I saw their door swing wide, the long-haired Indian bypassing a miniature deer and reaching for the paper.

Nothing fancy on my part, just a casual jaunt in his general direction. He was probably two or three years older than me, but I introduced myself and asked if he or any of his brothers wanted to meet us over on the field.

I pointed it out to him, though when Pony remained quiet, my cajoling smile slipped from my face. I tried thinking up talking points, but found myself simply repeating the first one.

“Yup, it's right over that hill,” I repeated. “That hill right over there. That's where the baseball field is.”

Sweat streamed into my eyes like a doubleheader. I was desperate for an exit strategy.

In a voice like water, the Indian whispered, “We don't play.”

“Oh. All right then,” I said, relieved for an answer. “Well, if you ever do . . . or if you change your mind . . . over that hill there . . . like I said.”

I just kept nodding, as if something might change if I kept at it.

The Indian leaned in close, his dark eyes examining me from all angles.

“You look like Huckleberry Hound,” he determined.

I nodded, thanked him for his observation, promising myself to leave that particular detail out of the retelling.

But Ronald didn't even buy the portions of the story I did tell – “Who the hell doesn't play baseball?”

Shrugging, he took his place on the mound, said, “Sorry, Jim. How 'bout taking center?”

One night, after an afternoon spent leering at Georgia Ambler sprawled on her lawn chair – fingering a
Vogue
while a bottle of sunscreen rested wearily against her thigh – Jim, Ronald, and I retrieved our still sweat-drenched gloves and played a few rounds of Pickle, taking turns getting stuck in the middle and finding our way back to base. We were playing in the grassy area between Comanche and Mohican when the ball slipped loose – a wild throw by Ronald – and as I ran to retrieve it, I realized just how dark it had become, how the streetlights seemed to cast longer shadows this far from the yard.

Still, I glimpsed what appeared to be a baseball skipping across the grass, eventually rolling to a halt against the neighborhood teepee. I hustled after it, slowing only upon hearing voices drifting from within the enclosure. I stopped, trying to make out their words, but they were all lost in whispers and half-laughs.

“Hey, Jerry, what's the hold up?” Ronald cried out. “You tugging one out or what?”

I froze as one of the Ross brothers tore open the teepee's canvassed door, a plume of smoke bursting from the opening, burying me in a cloud. I'd smelled smoke before, but never that kind. A peace pipe, perhaps, or a doobie.

The entire tribe seemed to have wedged in there, though once the smoke cleared and I came back into view – my baseball glove tucked around my left hand like a lobster claw – I saw there weren't as many as I'd imagined. Still, the four who were there burst into laughter, their high-pitched yips crystallizing as their tongues clicked the roofs of their mouths.

“Yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!” they screeched, leaping from the teepee, arms raised and bodies spinning. “Yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!”

My first newfound secret power of the summer: running faster than I dreamed.

They broke our treaty that night. It had never been explicit, but after our failed baseball negotiations, my friends and I invoked a strict Indian policy of leaving them to their own goddamned devices. We figured the Ross brothers abided by a similar policy, and our arrangement seemed tolerable until I woke the morning following the “Yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyi!” incident to find toilet paper streaming from the trees outside my home. Dad had woken me with his bellows, demanding that I steady “the goddamned ladder” for him while he climbed “the goddamned trees.”

Our house wasn't the only one to get hit – the houses on either side of us were equally papered – and while I kept insisting to Ronald, Jim, and the others that we couldn't necessarily assume the Rosses were to blame, I couldn't think of any other culprits.

“You don't have to be Sherlock freakin' Holmes, Jerry,” Ronald grunted, bobbing in the shallows of the Pocahontas Pool. “Think about it. Last night we catch them smoking dope in a teepee, and this morning we wake up and find, lo and behold, that
you've
been ‘TPed.' Teepee and TPed, get it? Caught the bastards red-handed if you ask me, but trust me, old Chief Tiny Dick's gonna pay.”

“I wouldn't call that catching them red-handed, exactly.”

“What more proof do you need?” he asked. “What if you wake up one morning to find my scalp on their doorstep? Would that convince you? Would this scalp, right here,” he said, tugging his wet hair, “on their doorstep right there,” he continued, pointing, “help you piece this case together?”

Ronald's speech rallied the others, and he assured us that if we did not take immediate retaliatory action then those “damned Injuns” would think they had free reign of the neighborhood.

“They do act kind of entitled,” Jim grumbled. “Like just because it's called Indian Village they think they're the freaking chiefs.”

Ronald nodded vigorously, offering up various body parts they could kiss or suck.

“There aren't so many of them,” someone pointed out. “Not even a full tribe.”

“You think I care how many there are?” Ronald asked as several of us bobbed all around him. “Even if there were a million . . .”

Ronald paused mid-speech as Jim pointed toward the fence.

It was Pony, his mountainous pectorals and biceps rattling against the chain link. We huddled close like a herd of lawn ornament rabbits.

“Oh, Chief Tiny Dick's just trying to intimidate us,” Ronald shrugged. “Don't pay any attention.”

But we did, we paid a lot of attention.

He kept staring and we kept staring, until eventually, I broke our stand off the only way I knew how – submerging myself, drowning the world away.

Things got worse before they got better. For the rest of the summer, each night we skulked past the teepee we'd hear the familiar yips and screams from our Indian neighbors, which put a halt to all further diplomatic efforts. And in the rare instance we mustered the courage to shout back, our action seemed only to embolden them further. Some nights I'd wake to watch the entire tribe tearing through the neighborhood, capsizing trash bins and spilling their insides out. They were thrill-seeking marauders, except for the nights they weren't, the nights they terrified just by loitering on the sidewalks outside our homes.

One June night I woke to tapping. I could hardly hear it at first – I was still lost in slumber land – though a second round of taps confirmed the first. I didn't look over. I stayed in bed with my eyes shut tight because it was easier. I thought:
Maybe my real secret power is my amazing ability to fall back asleep.
It wasn't. I couldn't. The knocking continued –
tink, tink, tink
– and when I finally rose and headed toward my closed curtains, hand extended, I waited for the sound before pulling it wide.