This is the Story of My Life (Chapter Six)

I live my life like there's no tomorrow
And all I've got I had to steal
Least I don't need to beg or borrow
Yes, I'm living at a pace that kills
Runnin with the devil
Runnin with the Devil
Van Halen 1


                              This is the Story of My Life 2

                                        Chapter Six 3

The party that night was uneventful, except for Tommy Cole clocking his girlfriend, Barbara, and me hooking up with Mary Ellen.  The punch that ended our night happened right in front of me and was really the catalyst for getting Mary and me together. First of all, the party was on a hill that separated the
Heights where Mary lived at the top and our neighborhood, which was spread out at the bottom. The hill was just on the other side of the canal, and we put our claim to because it was on our side. From the very top you could look west and see the Hudson River over the tops of the smaller buildings. A baseball field
was to the left and treeless on that side, and there were just projects to the right.
The trees were trimmed around the bottom and up at the top. They
stretched far up and down the hill, leaving a clearing of about 50 yards in diameter.
We were off the beaten path and not bothering anyone, so the cops
tended to leave us alone. Besides it was a hell of a walk up or down, depending on where you were coming from. 4

Paul and I were standing there with beers in hand, hitting a joint and talking to two girls that were from across the river. We were having a nice conversation when Tommy walked up to us. He was wasted. I think he had been doing mushrooms and crank (speed). That’s right, a nice mixture.
He pulled out a pint of Jack Daniels from his back pocket and passed it around. Then it happened. Barb came out of nowhere looking for Tommy. They were going out and she was worse than him, wasted and stumbling around. 5

She walked up, eyed the two girls and then Tommy, and decided he was doing one of them, even though he had just met them. She went off and started accusing one of the girls, getting in her face. She turned back to Tommy on her tip toes and very loudly asked him, "IS SHE THE FUCKING ONE?" Then, back at the girl, “ARE YOU FUCKING MY GUY, BITCH?" 6

Tommy kept telling her she was a fucking idiot and he didn’t even know them.
The girls, of course, were very uncomfortable and fidgeting. They were in a very hostile situation and not from here. 7

Tommy turned to walk away, so Barb grabbed him and WHAM!! He spun around and sucker punched her dead in her face, knocking her completely off her feet.
Her head slammed the ground directly in front of me. Everybody, and I’m talking about 30 maybe 40 people, went silent. She was out cold and you could already see, if you looked closely, a black eye starting to appear. Paul and I looked at each other and tapped our cups together as I said, “Touché." and then Paul went one way and I the other. We wanted out of there and did not want to be around
when she woke up. 8

I figured it was time to attach myself to Mary Ellen. She was standing there in the center of the clearing with a couple of friends and her sister next to the blazing bonfire that some of the older guys started building. 9

“Hey!" I said, walking up to her, watching her face light up when she saw me, then turning back to utter shock. 10

“Did you see that?” she said, almost in a whisper. 11

“Nope! Didn’t see a thing. Come on, you wanna take a walk? How about I walk you home?” I said. I just wanted to get away from there. Violence against the opposite sex really screwed with me back then having seen it so much growing up. 12

“Ok, but I’m not ready to go home. Let’s just take a walk.” she said. I nodded and off we went, slipping away from the bonfire they had blazing into the night.
We walked up the hill towards Mary’s block and ended up on her front lawn in a couple of lawn chairs. She lived directly across from the Heights.
Her house was a smaller version of a ranch house with an upstairs and a two car garage.
Five foot hedges ran along the front yard and the driveway. There was an above ground pool in the back yard, but I never saw it. Mary went in her house and snuck us out a couple of beers. We sat out in front of her house until about two o'clock in the morning, until her mother woke up and heard us and yelled for her to get her ass in the house. That was my queue to exit stage left, but our relationship had begun to form. It would be a stormy bumpy one. 13

Mary’s parents owned a bar. I know, I know, you can already see the wheels turning here!
Every Friday night I would spend down at the bar until closing,
which was around three o'clock, sometimes 4 o'clock in the morning.
Mary started volunteering to baby-sit her younger brother, Billy, who was mentally challenged.
Her sister and older brother took advantage of the situation, but
she had done this so we had a place to go. Sometimes I would stay with her and slip out the back when her parents came home. Other times I would only stay a couple of hours and then leave because the streets beckoned to me.
Sometimes I just had to be out on them running free. We spent many Friday nights wrestling on the couch, sometimes falling to the floor, with me trying to get in her pants and her fighting like hell to keep me out. 14

One night I had her shirt pulled up and bra unsnapped going at her like a starving boy when she relented and let me pull her pants off, telling me only on the outside of her panties. I, of course, hungrily agreed. I had her so worked up I swear she was going to give it up when we heard a noise. 15

“BILLY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING DOWN HERE?” Mary screamed, pulling herself together as fast as she could and yelling at me to get out. She was ashamed of her brother’s condition and never wanted me to see him. You have to remember this was back in the 70’s. She hurried him out through the kitchen and up the stairs to his bedroom and then came down and started for the bathroom when she saw me. 16

“I thought I told you to leave?” she said to me. 17

“For what?” I said. 18

“I just want you to leave!” she said again, as she went into the bathroom. I just shrugged and, when she closed the bathroom door, I crossed the kitchen and went upstairs. Billy was in the bedroom between Mary’s and her parent's. I pushed the door open slightly to see him sitting up staring at me. 19

“Hey, little guy, what’s up?” When I addressed him, he began to bounce up and down making an ummmmmm sound, but he was smiling. Attention. He was getting attention. 20

Billy was nine years old. He had dark brown hair that fell to his just above his eyes, and hung to the middle of his neck in the back.
He had a slight overbite, but it didn’t bother him because he didn’t talk, he just made sounds.
I walked over, sat down and pulled a Hershey bar out of my pocket. I broke it in half and gave him half and I sat and ate the other. He started to reach for mine when he had finished his and I held him back, which started us wrestling.
He began to laugh, which alerted Mary Ellen, who was charging up the stairs. 21

“Billy! What are you still doing up? Now go to be…" Her words froze in her mouth when she burst through the door, finding me there rolling around with the kid and him laughing hysterically. 22

“What? What are you doing here?” she said, with a look of shocked surprise on her face. I didn’t answer. I just reached up and pulled her down into the middle of our little tango and soon we were all laughing and wrestling.
Honestly, I probably didn’t realize it at the time; no, in fact, I know I didn’t, but I was having the most fun. I wasn’t out on the streets wolfing it.
I was doing something I really never did before, playing and laughing with no thought to looking cool or being tough. Our relationship grew that night and we became very close. 23

As you might guess, everything went south one morning at school. Mary would bus in from the Heights and she would come to the south parking lot where we all hung out. On one particular morning, Davis, Buzzard and I, along with a few people from Albia, were standing around smoking a joint.
She and her girlfriend, Joanne, joined us, so we lit up a couple more. We weren’t there more than five minutes when a car pulled up 10 feet from us and out popped Fat Freddy.
Fred Case was a school monitor and much more. Rumor was he had an
opportunity to go to a big name college on a football scholarship, but blew both knees out, which ended that. So he hung around school and became the principal's right hand man, scouring the halls looking for juvenile delinquents like me. And we had our run-ins! 24

He used to tell my youngest sister, who was older then me, that he was going to get me one day. Freddy stood about 5’ 10" and weighed in around 280 pounds, but man, could he run! It wasn't long,
however, before I discovered the secret.
Yes, he could run, but only in a straight line. If I zigzagged on him, he lost speed trying to make the cuts. He never had a chance of catching me after I found that out. I would run through the school, up the stairs, through the doorways, down another flight of twisting stairs and leave him behind. 25

Anyway, Freddy took one look at us, sniffed the air and started to shout for every one of us to come to him. Yeah, that was going to happen.
People immediately started to split up and everyone was going every which way except towards Fat Freddy.
I glanced back quickly to make sure Mary was following me
but, to my utter amazement and shock, she was just standing there as if a dear caught in headlights. 26

“MARY! COME ON!” I yelled to her, but all she could do was turn and say, "He sees me. I can’t run." Her friend, Joanne, was right beside her. 27

“Mary! Come the fuck on! So what if he sees you. Make him catch you.” I said, still backing up watching Freddy. 28

His eyes were locked on me and I was smiling back at him. “Come here, you little fucker!” he yelled at me. 29

"It's time to earn your money, fucker!” I said, as I continued backing up. He stopped right at Mary and Joanne and grabbed both of them by their elbows and escorted them into the school. 30

“Go ahead and run, but you can’t hide.” were his parting words, as they disappeared into the high school. 31

“SHIT! SHIT! SHIT! Man, this is not good. Her parents are gonna bug!” I said to myself as I headed down between the shop and football field. 32

I caught up to Davis and told him how she froze up and now was in the principal's office. We hung around school for about two hours trying to avoid Case and trying to hear something, anything about Mary and Joanne. 33

After hearing nothing, Chap, Davis, Buzz and I started home. We didn’t attend much school, but here is where it all went bad. Apparently, all they (the school) could get a hold of was Mary’s father and he came right up to school to get her. 34

Mary told me what happened later. They were driving home and he was really giving it to her. She wasn’t getting out of the house for a long time and she would be lucky if he didn't beat her ass when they got home. He was going on and on how embarrassed he was as he was a retired fire chief... you know, all the usual stuff, and then suddenly he went deathly still. She looked over at
him and his knuckles were white from gripping the steering so tightly. They had stopped at a red light. 35

“Dad, are you ok?” she asked. 36

“And him! You stay away from that little bastard!” he said, through clenched teeth.
Following his gaze Mary said there we were, Chap, Buzz, Davis and myself , clowning around, pushing and shoving each other, running around and over parked cars, walking home. 37

“Without a fucking care in the world! See? See? He doesn’t give a shit about you! Stay away from him. He‘s no fucking good!!” He was berating her while I, in my blissful ignorance, was laughing and playing a sort of street tag, making him madder and madder.
Mary said she sat there watching us thinking ASSHOLES!
Finally, to Mary’s relief, the red light changed and they had to drive on. He was pissed! I didn’t see Mary with the exception of in school, but I wasn't around school much for about three weeks. Man, she was pissed too!
Hey, when you're young and have the legs, RUN! Make them catch you! Just kidding. Be good. 38

Mary was grounded and my parents didn’t even know about the incident, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Hell when I was sixteen, I once spent 4 days in jail  they never knew about.39

To be continued... 40