As the school bus pulled away, I looked back at my best buddy Bobby and flipped him off. The bus started to pull away, then stopped. Ah shit. The doors opened and the fat German lady bus driver stepped out onto the bottom step, a cigarette hanging from her lower lip.

“Hey, Johnny you little punk. You flipping me the bird? Maybe I should come up and talk to your old man,” she yelled.

“I was flipping Gronkowski off, not you!”

She shook her head and flicked the butt of her cigarette in my direction.

“Don’t be smart with me, kid. Do it again and I’m knocking on your door. Got me?”

“Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again,” I muttered.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“I said I was sorry! It won’t happen again!”

She glared in my direction, got back on the bus, and closed the door.

Bobby cracked the bus window, laughing.

“See you in a few, dumbshit.”

I shuffled up our driveway, now coated with a few inches of fresh snow, and let myself in.

The house smelled like cigarettes. Ma was smoking again and trying to hide it from me. I didn’t understand why, since her whole side of the family smoked and my old man smoked a pipe. I was old enough to know shit was going on that my folks wanted to hide from me, but young enough not to care. I had my own secrets.

Ma was watching Guiding Light or some shit.

“How was school? You have homework?” she asked without looking away from the big-ass tube TV in the family room.

“It was good. No homework. It’s Friday.”

She nodded and waved without looking at me.

“I’m grabbing a snack and going over to Bobby’s,” I said.

“Ok. Be home by dark. And wear your gloves and a hat. It’s going to snow.”

It’s always snowing.

I ran upstairs, changed out of my school clothes into my jeans, my KISS Army T-shirt, and a hand-me-down Buffalo Bills sweatshirt that my uncle got too fat for. I opened my secret drawer and pulled a fresh pack of Bubble Yum from the stash and a box of safety matches. I stuffed them in my front pocket and the large hunting knife my gramps gave me in my back pocket. Ready.

Back down in the kitchen, I opened the snack drawer and pulled out three Ding Dongs. Ma heard the drawer open and yelled for me to leave one for my little sister. I put one back.

In the vestibule, I grabbed my parka, pulled on my puke-green rubber boots.

“I’m going now,” I hollered.

“Gloves and hat!” my Ma yelled back.

Damn it.

I stuffed a knit Buffalo Bills watchman cap and some waterproof mittens in my parka pockets next to the Ding Dongs and headed to Bobby’s.

 

Bobby was waiting for me in his driveway.

“I got us a couple of smokes from my dad’s pack,” he said.

I could care less about the smokes.

“You got it?” I asked.

Bobby patted his parka pocket and nodded. That morning at school, Bobby had traded his brother’s Cub Scout knife for a Hustler from one of the Mink twins.

“Wait till you see it. They show everything!” he said.

I slapped him on the shoulder and gave him a stupid grin.

We headed across his backyard and up the little hill behind the Martins’ place into the woods. The fresh snow covered a few inches of crusty snow that grabbed our boots when we broke through. It was going to take a while to get to our fort, making the anticipation of seeing some fresh, paper pussy all the sweeter.

We were just a few yards up the overgrown trail leading to our fort when we accidentally kicked up a large rooster pheasant. It burst from cover a few feet from us with a loud squawk and thumping wings that flew right at us.

“Fuck!” Bobby yelled.

Startled, I yelped, then we both started laughing.

“Tomorrow let’s bring out your grandpa’s .22 and hunt that fucker,” he said.

I grunted in agreement, both of us knowing there was no way in hell I was sneaking a gun out of the house.

“We’ll blast that damn bird tomorrow and cook it up in the fort,” he continued.

“Hell yes, we will,” I replied.

By the time we got to the fort, the afternoon sun was thin, low, battling with storm clouds, casting melancholy shadows across the fields. We’d built our ramshackle fort earlier that summer from sticks, logs, and dried mud mixed with grass. We’d piled some stones in a corner for a fire ring and left a hole in the ceiling for the smoke. That summer we stockpiled lumber, hid our titty mags, and made it our oasis.

Inside the fort, I pulled some dry sticks from our lumber pile and made a small smokey fire, while Bobby plopped down on a log and began carefully pulling the wet pages of our titty mags apart.

“Ok. Here are the best ones,” he said, handing them to me.

“Man, stop screwin’ with me. Show me the Hustler!”

He laughed and pulled it from his coat.

“First things first. Hand me the matches,” he said.

I tossed him the box. He pulled out both cigarettes, put them in his mouth, took a match from the box and struck on his parka’s zipper. He lit them and then handed me my smoke.

Bobby had been smoking a while and inhaled. Prone to coughing fits when I tried to inhale, I would just puff on them, faking it the best I could.

We sat there passing the Hustler back and forth.

“I’d pork her good,” Bobby said.

“Look at that bush,” I said. “You think we will ever get the real thing?”

“Shit, we could bring Angela up here and get it now,” he said.

“She’s nasty, but she will only let you finger her,” I said.

“I already did! I think I could get her to go all the way.”

And so went the conversation until we had looked through the entire Hustler and were even more sexually frustrated than our normal pathetic adolescent boy state.

We ate our Ding Dongs, stoked the tiny fire, then burned the tinfoil. It was a typical Friday afternoon. A damn good one.

 

Around dusk, we headed back. When we got just past the place where the pheasant had scared the hell out of us, we heard the sirens. As we broke through the woods into the field behind the Martins’ house, we saw the police car, the fire truck, and the ambulance in their driveway.

“Maybe Old Man Martin had a heart attack,” I said.

“Or that Martin kid killed him. My mom says he’s got problems and is dangerous,” Bobby replied.

“My ma says he’s on drugs,” I added.

Before we could check it out, we saw Bobby’s mom standing at the back door of their house, waving us over.

“Johnny, your mom wants you to head straight home. Bobby, come inside and wash up,” she said.

“What happened at the Martins’?” he asked.

“Something bad happened,” she said.

That was all. No explanation.

 

Walking home, the streetlights clicked on, a soft snow began to fall. I shoved my hands in my parka pockets, put on my Bills beanie, and pulled up the hood. As I walked, I wondered what happened at the Martins’. My wonder didn’t keep me from looking for little pockets of clear ice with air under them in the frozen puddles lining our single-lane street. I stopped at each one I found to stomp on them so I could hear the pop of breaking ice.

It was dark when I got home. Walking through the unlocked front door, the smell of Hamburger Helper mixed with cigarette smoke and burnt coffee hit me from the kitchen. My mom stood backlit in the doorway, facing me. Shit. Does she know about the smokes and the Hustler?

She waited for me to hang up my parka and kick off my boots before she came over and hugged me, her cheeks wet, her eyes red. I’d only seen her cry twice and both times she’d been pissed off at me. I felt a lump building in my throat; my gut did a little backflip.

“What’s going on?” I finally asked. Might as well get this over.

“Nothing… just promise me you won’t mess around with drugs.”

I didn’t know what to say so I nodded. She looked at me and gave me a thin smile then patted my arm.

“Go wash up for dinner.”

 

The next morning, after Scooby Doo ended, my mom came downstairs and called me into the kitchen.

“I talked to Bobby’s mom last night.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

My mind raced. Blame Bobby. His smokes. It was his dirty mag… I didn’t even look…

“Have a seat,” she said.

Oh fuck.

I pulled up a chair at our kitchen table and plopped down, waiting for the fallout. She poured herself a cup of coffee then went to the fridge and reached up to grab the old Folger’s can she kept her not-so-secret stash of smokes in. She sat down and lit one. I began to panic.

Is she going to do that thing where she makes me smoke the whole pack?

She cast her eyes down and stared into her coffee cup. She let out a half-sigh, half groan. I could tell she’d been crying again. She cleared her throat then looked at me.

“I smoke. No reason to hide it. You are old enough to know that… and some other things…”

Not sure where this was heading, I looked at her, waiting.

“Tommy Martin died yesterday. His older brother found him… he had a plastic bag over his head. His face was stuck to it, and he was covered in vomit.”

I stayed silent, imagining the Martin kid like that, not quite sure what to say.

“He was sniffing glue and suffocated. Maybe on purpose… maybe it was an accident. We don’t know.”

She started to cry. Although I’d never done anything to comfort anyone before, I put my hand on hers.

“I won’t mess with drugs, Ma. I promise.”

She nodded and stood up.

“Go get dressed and I’ll make us some pancakes,” she said.

I went upstairs to my room to get dressed, not knowing what else to say or think about the Martin kid. But I understood things were different now.