Toadstool and the Dreamer, Chapter 5

Toadstool and the Dreamer, Chapter 4  (13+) In which the boys find an alternate means of travel, but eventually miss their mark. #1644994 by Ben Simon

5.

In which the boys enjoy some hospitality, but Toadstool becomes the butt of the joke.

      Like I said before, not only was I scrawny back in the day, but up to that point I'd never really worked a hard day in my life.  A couple of summers later I'd get a job at a chicken farm just outside of town, which was pretty bad with that chicken smell and occasionally getting myself nicked by some ticked-off rooster, but anything I went through there was nothing like what I went through over the next few hours with that farmer.  I was already bone-tired from everything I'd gone through that day and it was still really hot, even in the late afternoon and on into the evening, and by the time it was all over I was one sopping wet, overheated mound of goo covered with scratchy hay that was just adding to my discomfort.  I didn't do anything to please that farmer who, when he wasn't yelling at me, was just giving me these angry looks and I started to think I was working way too hard for a phone call.  At least they had cold water in the truck and the boy in there didn't mind giving me any, though the old man had to make some sort of crack every time I went up for a drink.  The boy in the truck seemed to be the only decent one amongst them as the two other boys were giving me these evil smiles and laughing and I swear that at least twice Merle on the hayrack threw back one of the bails that I'd thrown up there just to see me chase after it again and have that old man yell at me.

    Finally the sun started going down and they seemed to start to consider winding things down, which was a good thing seeing as I didn't have much left in me.  Toadstool got to spend the entire time in the truck resting and drinking water, which made me jealous and more than a little mad at him.  As we started to slow down, the old farmer seemed really agitated and wasn't happy with any of us when he finally got out of his truck.  I was busy trying to gulp down as much of that water as I could so I didn't really hear him at first, but eventually I could hear his cussing and wailing over the sound of my guzzling.

    "All day at this and we still haven't gotten three-quarters of this field cleared," he was saying in this high, whiny voice.  "If you boys think I'm paying you for what you did today, well, you're just wrong.  You better get to the phones and start calling your mamas, because we're gonna be at this tomorrow, too, so you might as well spend the night here."

    "You gotta be crazy," said Paul, the one with the ever-present smile, only he wasn't smiling so much now.  "There ain't no way I'm gonna spend my Sunday pitching hay for you, I've got better things to do."

    "You're gonna be sleeping off a drunk tomorrow, you know that as well as me.  And you ain't drinking if you ain't got no money, and you ain't gonna have no money if you don't work for me tomorrow.  So it's your choice, go home now and save me a day's wage or stay here and get drunk tomorrow night."

    "C'mon, Paul," Tommy in the truck was saying, "after supper I've got some cold ones out in the old barn.  You can stay here and have a few with us before going to bed."

    "Don't be getting drunk on me before tomorrow," the old man said.  "You've all been pretty useless to me sober; I don't want to have to deal with you when you're hung over."

    "Just a couple, pop.  Just to wind down before we hit the hay."

    The old man started heading back to the truck mumbling to himself and shaking his head and I realized that me and Toadstool weren't even registering in his mind at that moment.  I didn't really want to say anything to him because I'd gotten tired of being yelled at, but the fact was that we had to get home somehow and it had been almost a day since our folks had heard from us, so I made my way over to the farmer as nicely and timidly as I possibly could.

    "Excuse me, sir," I said so low that the old man could hardly hear me, so I repeated myself.  "Sir, we've been gone for almost a day now and our moms are gonna be worried. . ."

    "I don't know why I'd be helping you boys out since you haven't really been helping me out," the old man said without even looking at me.  "Paul over there was throwing five bails up for every one of yours and fatty over there did nothing but sit in the truck and take up my water.  Since we're gonna be working tomorrow I'd say you will be too just to make up for what you didn't do today. 

    “I guess that means I’m gonna have to give you boys dinner tonight,” he said as he started to throw things into the truck to show off his disgust.  “The fat boy will probably eat everything we've got in the house.  You boys get up early with us tomorrow and we can finish this and if you work hard enough I'll consider giving you your phone call.  If not you can start heading down the road.  Maybe I can even figure out something for Porky to do."

    "But, sir, our moms. . .," I said, but I was looking down and was more or less mumbling.

    "That's my deal, boy, take it or leave it.  But don't dawdle because we've got to get all this hay up before supper."

    Well, being that it was getting dark and there was no way we felt like hitting the road again, me and Toadstool had no choice but to stay with the old man and follow him to his farm.  Toadstool stayed in the truck and I got on the hayrack with Paul and Merle, who were fussing with each other about having to work the next day, and we made our way down the dirt road that ran through the farm to the barn where the hay was going to be stored.  I was still a little thirsty but I didn't dare grab any more water after what the old man had said, so I sat on one side of the hayrack away from the other two and watched the road go by under my feet.  It had gotten a little cooler and, despite the dust that all those farm vehicles were kicking up, the breeze felt pretty good, better than it had felt on the train.  My mom was still in the back of my mind, but I kept telling myself that if we played ball with this farmer, eventually we'd be headed home.

    I was really too tired to do any more work but the farmer wanted the hay unloaded.  However, it turned out not to be too bad because when we got to the barn we created a kind of fire line to unload the hay to the loft, with me and Paul at the top taking the hay from Merle and stacking it, so it didn't really take as much time as I thought it would.  The old man even found a place for Toadstool to help, having him and Tommy on the hayrack handing the bails off to Merle.  Even so, it was dark by the time we were done and Merle and the old man started to put the equipment away.

    "There ain't too much more you boys can do out here," the old farmer said as he climbed up into his tractor.  "Why don't you head up to the house up there with Tommy and he'll show you where to wash up for dinner.”

    As he spoke, he never really looked at us and more or less talked to us like we were bugs, but even so, it was the nicest he’d been to us all day.  Still, the work was done and being as I hadn't eaten anything all day and had worked harder than I wanted to, I was famished.  Tommy led us out of the barn and up the dirt path that lay between the barn and the farmhouse.

    "That was a pretty hot one today," Tommy said as we walked.  "I don't suppose you boys had ever done any farm work before."

    "I did, a couple of time," I lied.  "Never on a day as hot as this, though."

    "Oh, yeah?  You pitch hay?"

    "Naw, just slopped some hogs and such."  I was normally way more elaborate on my lies, but at that point I was tired and really didn't feel like talking that much.

    "Well, nothing makes up for a hard day like the spread mom puts out.  I think she's done pork chops tonight, from what she was saying.  There'll be a whole mess of them, too, so feel free to eat up."

    We went through the creaking back screen door and went off into a little side room where there was one of those plastic wash basins that never run warm water, washing up with some weird-looking yellow soap that was just a glob of something or another.  Tommy then took us through the inner door which led to the kitchen area, where this old withered gray woman who looked like she hadn't smiled in years was grabbing stuff out of the oven and tasting it in an absent-minded fashion.

    "Hey, mom," Tommy said, "this is some extra help that dad got for today.  They're going to be eating with us tonight, ok?"

    The old woman didn't look up but just grunted and went back about her business, like she was used to last-minute dinner guests.  Tommy gestured for us to continue to follow him and he led us into a pretty big living room area with green couches and easy chairs and all sorts of shelves with knick-knacks on them and framed portraits of people, some of them smiling, a lot of them not, most of the pictures looking to be more than twenty years old.  The room smelled like some kind of flowers mixed with disinfectant which mixed with the odors of baking pork from the kitchen, making everything seem nice and comfortable.  Me and Toadstool sat on one side of the couch while Tommy sat in one of the easy chairs, after which the old lady came in with a pitcher filled with tea and three glasses with ice in them, sitting them  down on the cherry wood coffee table without looking at us or really acknowledging that we were in the room.  Tommy poured some tea out for himself and pointed for me and Toadstool to do the same, and that cool tea flowing down my throat combined with all those home-like smells and how weary I was in the first place started to make me drift off.

    I came to after a couple of minutes and Paul and Merle had come in and were sitting on the floor and the old man was reclined in the biggest easy chair in the room, each with a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in their hands.  They were all staring at the big console TV at one end of the living room, on which Buck Owens and Roy Clark were pickin' and grinnin'.  Everybody was pretty much ignoring each other and lost in their own little worlds except Paul and Merle, who were giggling like schoolgirls about something, and you could tell that the old man was being annoyed by them but he just didn't seem to be in the mood to say anything about it.  About the time the Cornfield County folks were singing goodnight the old lady came in and croaked that dinner was ready and everyone slowly got up and headed towards the dining room.

    I'll say this, for as rude as that old man was, Tommy had been right about the spread he laid out at the end of the day.  They had a big dining room table that could've seated fourteen, covered with one of those checkered tablecloths that you'd expect from a country kitchen.  There was a huge platter in the middle of the table piled up with enough pork chops to feed a football team and large bowls of mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, green beans, rolls, sweet potato casserole and macaroni salad.  Paul and Merle had already started piling things up on their plate before they even sat down and both grabbed another Pabst from the old Kelvinator refrigerator while everybody else but the old lady sat down and started piling up their plates.  Other than Paul and Merle giggling everybody else was staying quiet and we didn't even say grace.  I was feeling awfully uncomfortable there in a strange place getting ready to eat someone else's food, but in the end I was completely starving after every thing I'd been through that day and I ended up loading my plate up a couple of times before I finished.  The only one who really didn't eat, besides the old lady, was Toadstool, who seemed distracted and withdrawn and I started to wonder if he was a little sick, but I figured he'd tell me if he was.

    After awhile most of the pork chops had been done away with and all the bowls sat about ninety percent empty, then everybody just started to stand up and stretch a bit without anybody really declaring they were done.  Paul and Merle snatched one more Pabst out of the Kelvinator, though the old man growled when they did so, but even Tommy went over and gingerly grabbed a beer out of the icebox.  Only me and Toadstool stayed in our seats, staring down at the grease on our dinner plates with no clue as what they expected us to do next.

    As the old woman started to pile up the dishes to take to the kitchen, the old man pulled a pack of Camels deadheads out of his shirt pocket and started to talk to me and Toadstool.  "You boys are gonna have to get some rest if you're going to be any good to me tomorrow," he said.  "We ain't got no room in the house, being that the boys are staying here tonight.  There's plenty of room out in the barn in the loft, though, and it's a warm enough night it won't be too bad for you.  Tommy, before you head up there why don't you show these two where to stay."

    Tommy had been headed out through the living room door trailing Paul and Merle and you knew he had better things in mind than traipsing a couple of punk kids out to the barn, but, like I said, Tommy was the friendly one of the bunch and seemed to be willing to do anything his old man asked of him with a shrug and a grin.

    "I hope you guys will be alright out here," Tommy said as he ambled on ahead of us down the dirt path to the barn.  "The thing is, we only have the two bedrooms, and Paul and Merle are going to be sleeping on the floor in my room, and dad sleeps on the couch in the living room on account that mom can't handle his snoring or his smoking.  But it ain't bad out here.  Heck, on a night like tonight, it's a little stifling but it's alright, I'd maybe prefer to stay up here.  I did it enough times when I was a boy, I'll tell you."

    Tommy kept talking all the way into the barn, even while we climbed up the ladder to the loft, something that Toadstool had a problem with because of his bad leg and his fatness.  He got up there eventually, though, and Tommy went to one corner and grabbed a couple of big, green horse blankets.

    "Tell you what, the hay out here is scratchy as anything all by itself, but if you take one of these and wrap yourself up like one of them Mexican burritos, it's about as soft a night's sleep as you'll get.  As hot as it was today, you boys'll probably be out in no time anyway.  If you gotta go take care of business just do it outside, the animals won't mind.  Dad'll be ready to go pretty early in the morning so I'd get some shuteye right away if I was you.  See you in the morning."

    Tommy made his way down the ladder, and after that me and Toadstool really didn't have that much to say to each other being as bone-tired as we were, so I did what Tommy said and took one of those big, heavy, smelly blankets and surrounded myself in it and he was right, once you got over the stench it was really comfortable despite the fact that it felt just a little damp.  The air had gotten a little cooler so that the blanket wasn't too hot, and a slight breeze was coming through the open window in the loft which smelled like hay and fertilizer and animals, and somewhere in the back of my head I heard the sounds of the insects and the frogs and some of the snorting and shuffling of the barn animals but my head had already gone into another place and before I knew it I was gone to the world.



    It was sometime later, I've got no idea how long, and I was having one of those sleeps where you don't really dream, or if you do you don't remember it, where somewhere a sound came and interrupted the emptiness in my head.  At first I ignored it, and I wasn't even really sure of where I was or what I was doing, but the sound kept coming and eventually my head revived enough to where I realized that the noise was Tommy's voice.

    "Hey," he was saying in half a whisper, and he'd been shaking my foot, "hey, wake up."

    I woke up, but it still took me a whole minute to work my way out of the fog and reacclimate myself to my situation.

    "Hey, you boys okay up here?" he asked, and even in my fog I wondered why somebody'd wake somebody else up to ask them such a question.

    "Yeah," I mumbled, "yeah, we're fine, I guess."

    "Hey, you boys drink any beer?" he asked, and from the slush in his voice he knew that he did.

    I hesitated a minute, rubbed my eyes and got my bearings a bit, then lied, "Yeah, on occasion."

    "Well, we got some downstairs if you boys want some.  Just come on down."

    "Well, I might," I said through a yawn, "but Toa. . . I mean, Joey, here, I think he's really tired."

    "Oh, c'mon, you're never too tired for a beer.  Hey, Joey!"

    I don't know if Toadstool didn't know to answer to that name or if he was so out of it he couldn't hear Tommy, but the blanket that was covering his big mass wasn't moving.  That didn't deter Tommy, though, as he made his way the rest of the way up the ladder and stood over Toadstool, nudging him.

    "Hey, Joey.  Hey, you up?" Tommy said in a voice that was pretending to be quiet.  A sound came from beneath the blanket that didn't exactly sound as if it was human.

    "Hey, we got some beer outside if you want some.  C'mon, why don't you come down and join us."

    Another grunt from the blanket, which sounded kind of angry, but Tommy, who seemed like he was a little shaky at the moment, wasn't having any of it.  He hounded Toadstool for what seemed to be the next ten minutes, and as tired as Toadstool had to be, there was no way he was sleeping now.  Finally, and I'm pretty sure it was just to get rid of him, Toadstool groaned that he'd be down, but Tommy wasn't even satisfied with that.  He stood there and waited for Toadstool to start stirring, badgering him the entire time and finally cow-herding him to the ladder.

    It took Toadstool forever to move his big injured mass down that ladder, but when he was done me and Tommy made our way down in no time.  Tommy kept talking the whole time, and the more he talked the more obvious it became as to how inebriated he was.  When we got out of the barn we could see the glow and shadows of a small bonfire that was burning behind the barn, as well as hear the giggling and guffawing of Merle and Paul, who were trying to mute themselves but not succeeding too well at it.  When we got around the barn, we saw that the bonfire had been surrounded by four or five hay bails and that Merle and Paul were sitting on a couple of those on the other side of the bonfire, a blue and white cooler by their side, laughing away at something that they must've thought was the most hilarious thing on earth.

    "Hey, I thought I'd told you guys to knock it off," Tommy said as he got to the cooler and pulled out three cans from the water and ice inside it.  "Dad hears you guys and we'll all be dead."

    "That old goat could care less," Merle said before he threw his head back and downed the last contents of a 12-ounce can.  "As long as we're up in the morning, that's all he cares about."  For some reason Paul found this really funny, and started laughing hilariously.

    "Sorry, we ain't got no Pabst.  We pretty much have to live with what dad's got stashed in the back room, and this month they had a big sale on Busch."

    "Busch's okay," I said, and I sat on the hay bale furthest away from where anybody else was sitting.  As Tommy was standing in front of one of them, that left the bail just to the left of Paul for Toadstool to sit down on, something I don't think he was comfortable with, particularly since it meant sitting beside Paul, he was glaring at him with that stupid, silly, big grin of his.

    "So, how'd you guys get all the way out here?" Merle asked as I opened up my can and took as small a sip as possible, which still didn't help me cope with the cold bitterness of the beer.

    "By accident," I said, keeping my voice as low as possible because I didn't want to be noticed and, oddly enough for me, really didn't want to be the center of anyone's attention.

    "What kind of accident would cause somebody to fall off a train all the way out here?" Tommy asked.

    I took another sip of beer, a longer one this time, not because I liked it but because I was uncomfortable as everything.  "To tell you the truth, we were running," I lied.

    "Oh, yeah," Merle asked, leaning a little into the fire.  "Who were you running from?"

    "A couple of thieves," I said before taking another drink, this time a full-out gulp.

    "Thieves?  What're you guys, some sort of cops?"

    "They're a couple of junior detectives," Tommy said with a smirk in his voice.

    I began to feel myself flush a little bit because I hated it when somebody didn't believe my lies, even though it happened all the time, so I went on, "No, we're not, but we were witnesses.  We saw a couple of guys rob the Ben Franklin at home."

    "So, what, these guys chased you onto the train. . .?"

    "No, they've been following us around for awhile now.  We're always able to find somewhere to hide on them, this time it was a train."

    "So, you're running away from some crooks who stole from a five-and-dime and decided that a moving train would be a good place to hide?"  Merle and Tommy were taking turns grilling me, and I could tell there was a little bit of mocking in their tone, just as there was a lot of alcohol in their speech.  For his part, Toadstool just sat there like a big lump of blubber, staring blankly at his open can of beer without taking a hit off of it, Paul staring at him with that crazy smile the entire time.

    "It wasn't moving at the time," I said.  "We thought it was just one of those sitting trains, you know, one that was disabled.  We were wrong I guess."

    "So, why didn't you just jump off when it started moving?"

    "They were waiting outside for us.  They'd have seen us if we jumped off and we had nowhere to go."

    "And you stayed on it for several hundred miles because. . .?"

    "Well. . .we fell asleep."  I saw no harm in throwing in a little truth.

    "Oh, man," Merle said, in a mocking-dramatic way, "that must've been really scary to go through.  You guys've been through what they call an ordeal."

    "Hey, Merle, give 'em a break, these are our guests," Tommy said, and I think he was actually half-serious.

    Merle ignored Tommy anyway.  "So, tell me this, why didn't you go to the cops about this?"

    By this time I'd finished and entire can of beer, and, believe it or not, as scrawny as I was and as unaccustomed to alcohol as I was, I was feeling the one beer.

    "They're connected.  One of the guys has a cousin who's a sheriff's deputy for the county, plus I think his uncle's a judge or something, so calling the cops would just get us in more trouble."

    "Hold it," Tommy said, and he could scarcely hide the skepticism in his voice, "what town is this?"

    "Garen.  Garen, Illinois."

    "Remind me never to go to Garen, Illinois," Tommy said, looking at Merle with a big, stupid grin on his face, and I think the fact that he was mocking me was getting me really bad.  I might've expected that from Merle and Paul, they were obviously a couple of knuckleheads, but Tommy had seemed to be a pretty straight-up guy until then.

    "So, this still doesn't make any sense to me," Merle said.  "If these guys are connected, why even worry if some dumb kid saw them or not?  I mean you guys can accuse all you want, all these guys have to do is go to their cousin or their uncle or their step-cousin or whatever and get it all taken care of?  I mean, what are you guys gonna do to bring 'em to justice?  Call in some vigilantes?"

    "Get a posse together," Tommy chimed in.

    "Rally all the good citizens of Boondock, Illinois together to fight the terror of the five-and-dime thieves?"

    Tommy couldn't hold his laughter, even though he still had good enough manners to hand me another beer.  I took the beer and opened it, but I was feeling hot all the same.  My tongue never did have the good sense to stop even when my brain knew that it should, so after I took another swig of that cold Busch beer, which seemed to go down easier all the time, I continued.

    "Well, when me and Toadstool. . ."

    "Hold it," Merle said, his head twisted in a weird way to one side.  "Toad-who?"

    "Toadstool, here."  For the first time since we had sat ourselves down at that bonfire I saw Toadstool move and I could almost literally see him flinch when I said his nickname.

    "Toadstool?  What on earth is a Toadstool?"

    "It's what we call Joey here," I said, thinking nothing of it.

    "Why do you call him Toadstool?"

    "Well, doesn't he kind of look like an upside-down toadstool?"

    All three of them laughed hard at that, and somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that maybe things might be getting out of hand, but I was just happy that the spotlight was off of me.  But then Paul, who had been sitting there the entire time with that stupid smile on his face, spoke, and I had an inkling that things weren't going to go so good.

    "He don't look so much like a toadstool to me," Paul said, a giggle in his voice.

    "Oh, no," Merle said, "what's he look like."

    "I don't know.  Something jelly-filled.  He looks like a big old Jell-O-mold, the way he jiggles around and all."

    Toadstool just sat there staring into the fire, his face completely emotionless except for his eyes.  His eyes were terrified.

    "Hey, you think this Jell-O mold jiggles if you poke it?"

    Like I said, up to this point, I thought Tommy was a pretty straight-up guy.  He had been friendly and polite and helpful, even when he was dragging us out to drink beer that we really didn't want.  But what he said next completely made me change my attitude towards him.  Y'see, he had the ability to stop this all then and there, it was his dad's farm, Merle and Paul were just workers, we were there as guests, even though we didn't want to be.  I think he probably thinks to this day that he's the kind of guy who always tried to do the right thing.  Instead, he pretty much showed what he was by what he said next.

    "Why don't you poke him and find out?"

    Paul took the suggestion without the slightest bit of hesitation, poking Toadstool hard just below the ribcage.  "Hey, look, it does jiggle just a little bit."

    "Really?"  Merle asked, getting up off of his hay bail and walking to the other side of Toadstool.  "Let's see.  Well, I'll be, all that Jell-O does move."

    "The further down you poke, the more this stuff moves," Paul said, an audible giggle in his voice.  Toadstool occasionally made moves to swat their fingers off of him, but they batted his hands back roughly and kept poking.

    "If that's true, you know where there's got to be a whole lot of jiggling going on?"  Tommy asked, still on standing on the other side of the fire.

    "That big old butt of his has got to move like the Atlantic," Merle said, moving in closer to Toadstool.

    "We can find out," Tommy said.  "Grab him and bend him over one of those hay bales."

    Paul and Merle complied readily, grabbing ahold of Toadstool and turning him around.  For his part Toadstool did almost nothing to fight back, which I know is hard to believe but that was Toadstool for you.  It still took some time for them to get his heft turned around, and when they were done both Paul and Merle were huffing and puffing.  Tommy had gone into the barn while they did this, and when he came out he was holding a two-foot-long two-by-four board in his hands.

    "Get those jeans down so we can see how badly this stuff really jiggles," Tommy said from behind the fire, and from where I was sitting, with the shadows from the fire playing off his face and all, he looked a little bit like Satan.

    "How much material you think they put in these pants?"  Merle asked as they pulled down Toadstool's jeans roughly, not even bothering to undo his belt.

    "This must've taken Levi-Strauss a year to make," Paul said, then he laughed maniacally at his own joke.

    You'd have thought that Tommy might've held back a bit, being that Toadstool was injured and all, but no sir, he let go with that two-by-four and gave him a full whack on Toadstool's bare bottom.  The sound was a wet, sick smack, and Toadstool cried out about as loud as I ever heard him, but that was almost drowned out by the three of them laughing like hyenas.

    "You see that stuff move?" Paul said towards Merle with that dumb grin on his face, like he'd just made some big scientific discovery or something.

    "I think I got that too much on the left cheek," Tommy said, sizing Toadstool up again.

    "You think the right one might jiggle just a little more?"

    "It does seem a little fatter."

    "Well, then, go for it."

    Tommy let go again and the smack was a louder, along with the laughter after it, but this time I could actually hear Toadstool crying after he was hit.  Now, me and Toadstool had our share of arguments over the years, and I'm ashamed to admit that I'd wished some pretty awful things on him, but I never ever wished him the kind of punishment he was receiving from those farmboys that night.  I knew that I had to do something pretty drastic, but I also knew that if a wimp like Gerd Franklin could kick me around, then these farmboys could kick my butt from here to Timbuktu.  So I did what I did best in the world, the one thing that always got me out of a jam.

    I ran and hid.

    Now, let me explain this, and this is no lie.  Running and hiding wasn't just something I did, I had made an art out of it.  I had to.  When you lie as much as I used to, some of your lies occasionally end up hurting other people, and those people tend to want to hurt you in a more physical manner.  I was small and really couldn't stand up to very many people, so I made a habit to know how to elude capture.  And while I did occasionally get beat up for what I'd said, I really should have gotten beaten fifty times more than what I was.  I actually was able to elude Julie Mathers, who was three years ahead of me in school, for two years, and the fact that she chased me that long probably says more about her than it does about me.  See, Julie was this athletic girl with a hot temper and, even though she was a cheerleader, you didn't want to get on her bad side.  So I got on her bad side one summer day when I was in seventh grade by starting a rumor that she had a crush on Dave Ruff because I was bored.  The thing was, she really did have a crush on Dave, which made it all the worse that I was spreading the rumor.  For two summers she chased me every time she saw me, through parks and swimming pool locker rooms and creek beds and parking lots, any time she saw me and there wasn't any adults around to stop her, she'd chase after me.  And I got away every time.  If there was a crawl space under a house or a storm cellar, I knew where it was and, as small as I was, I could fit anywhere.  Two summers and she never caught me.  Then, the first day of freshman orientation she caught me and smacked me upside the head hard enough to draw blood.  She wasn't even that mad anymore, she just wanted me to know I hadn't gotten away with it.  But that was okay, I could still always brag that it had taken her two years to catch up with me and I still do, to this day.

    Anyway, these boys were all twice as big as Julie and there was no way I was going to stop them from doing what they were doing to Toadstool without drawing their attention to me, which I did not want to do.  So, as soon as I thought their full attention was on Toadstool, I made a break for it.  About fifty yards behind the barn there was a stretch of woods that went either way as far as you could see.  Fortunately for me, besides being small and fast, I had pretty good eyes and the dark didn't bother me that much, so I made it to the woods pretty quickly with a minimum of stumbling.  Once I got there I was able to find a dry creek bed with some overhanging vegetation, which I moved aside and made myself at home with the bugs, trying to keep my breathing as quiet as possible.  I waited there for what seemed to be forever, and after awhile I thought they'd forgotten about me and decided to focus all their attention on Toadstool, but finally I saw some streams of light break through the trees and heard the farmboys crashing through the woods, their drunken voices louder than they should've been.

    ". . .your old man ain't gonna care what happened to that kid," Paul was saying, that giggle still in his voice.  "He probably won't even remember he was here."

    "He'll care if something happens to that kid and the cops are called out here.  Hey, kid!"

    It felt like they got kind of close to the creek bed, and I was anxious for half a second, but they pretty quickly moved away, probably figuring that I'd have kept on the thin path that ran through the woods and not jump into the creek bed.  Anyway, as soon as I saw that their light had gotten pretty far away and I couldn't hear their voices really good anymore, I jumped out of the creek bed and doubled back to get Toadstool.

    He was still at the bonfire, having pulled up his pants, sitting on one of the hay bales hunched over and just staring at the fire, and I could see that his eyes were wet.  I was scared that the farmboys would come back any minute, though I could see the light from their flashlights well into the woods, and I wanted to get me and Toadstool out of there as fast as I could.

    "Psst," I whispered as loudly as I could.  "Toadstool!  C''mon, we've gotta get out of here!"   

    He didn't look up, or really notice me at all, but just sat there at the bonfire, motionless like some huge glob of gelatin.  I thought that maybe he didn't hear me, so I picked up some pebbles from off the ground and tossed them at him but even though a couple hit him square in the head, he didn't move at all.

    "Hey, c'mon, man," I whispered, half-pleading, "we've gotta get out of here before they get back."

    The thought of those farmboys coming back and doing whatever else they might do to him must've been too much for him, because he got up pretty quickly and started moving towards the barn, but with that bum leg and all and the ordeal the farmboys had just put him through, he was moving pretty slow.  I looked back and saw that the boys' light could still be seen up to the north, so I decided to go towards the woods as far south as I could.  I started out ahead of Toadstool but I could hear him stumbling and falling behind me and I knew that if I was going to get both of us out of there, I was going to have to stay behind him.  I half-pushed and half sort-of carried him to the woods, where the moving got really slow and Toadstool couldn't help but sounding like a herd of elephants in spite of himself.  Every five feet he was stumbling over something in the brush and I thought for sure that any minute the farmboys would be all over us, but they never came.  They must've decided that two kids weren't worth the chase, or maybe all that beer finally got to them, because they never did show up. 

    Now, here we got lucky twice.  First off, we miraculously didn't come across any coyotes or any other kind of wildlife in those woods, because if we had we'd have been in for a whole different kind of trouble.  Secondly, just as I stopped worrying about the farmboys and started thinking about how far we might be in those woods and whether we'd be able to find a way out, we came across a clearing in the woods that led to somebody's bean field, with a county road not more than a couple of hundred yards away.  With a final push, I was able to move Toadstool out of there, and we both tumbled out of those woods and onto the soybean plants.

    "God, you're a load," I said, breathing hard but feeling a little safer.  "Why do you have to have so much lard in your butt?"

    Then, Toadstool did something that was kind of weird.  As tired and hurt as he was, he jumped on me and started wallowing all over me, kind of crying and kind of screaming at the same time, but the sound he made sounded more like a wounded animal than it did any sound that a human being might make.  He tried hitting me but it was never really hard enough to hurt me.  On the other hand there was no way I could move his heft off of me so I just laid there while he wriggled all over me, covering me with his sweat and spit and I swear I felt snot somewhere in there.  Finally, he just seemed to run out of energy and the wriggling stopped, and after a few seconds more he rolled off of me and just laid there in the middle of the bean field, breathing really hard.  I laid there too in the midst of all those beans, covered with Toadstool slime, kind of mad but not really knowing what to say and, for once, my better nature must've taken over, because I didn't say anything.  I began thinking that it must be pretty late at night, that there must be a town somewhere along that county road and if we started walking now we might get close to one before morning.  At some point, while I was plotting just what we were going to do next, the world went away and I drifted off into sleep.



    Sometime later, it was still dark and I woke up like you do sometimes in the middle of the night and found myself on the rough, hard, cool ground in the middle of one row of beans and saw that Toadstool was in the row next to mine.  I could tell from his breathing that he'd calmed down quite a bit but that he wasn't sleeping, so I peered through the beans and saw him lying there on his back, staring straight up at the stars.  He must've seen me move, because he started talking.

    "You ever look up at the sky and think about how big everything is," he asked without taking his eyes off the stars.

    "Yeah, I guess," I said, turning away from him and laying on my side on the hard ground, using my arm as a pillow.

    "See that big red star up there?"

    "Sure," I said without looking.

    "That's Betelgeuse.  The light from it takes over two hundred years to get here and nothing but light moves that fast.  If we tried to go to that star it would take us fifty lifetimes to get there."

    "That's great."

    "The thing is, they consider that a close star.  It's local.  As far away as that star is, the universe is like a million times bigger.  And we live on this stupid rock down here and think that everything we do is so important but the fact is that, in all reality, whatever we do doesn't mean anything to the universe, our life or our death doesn't affect anything at all.  The best of us are no more than the kings of viruses."

    "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've heard all this before," I said, just wanting to hear nothing but silence.

    "Then why do they think they've accomplished something so great when they make one of us feel so small?"

    After that, Toadstool didn't have any more to say, and I got my silence.



   

Toadstool and the Dreamer, Chapter 6  (13+) In which the boys receive a little religion. #1781674 by Ben Simon