The Nicks Mix: Novels and short stories, comic and cartoon and caricature art, music and musings and a kid's corner--from today and the reflective past.
______________________________________________________________
ATTACKED AT THE TRIPLE X
by Jerry Nichols
I see that some guy won a giant sweepstakes the other day. Instantly he went from rags to riches.
In mid-summer of 1949, when I was eleven, I was dead certain something like that had happened to me, to me and to my buddies Gordy and Leroy and Big Spike.
We had discovered oil! Man-oh-man, we were going to be filthy rich!$$$$--as soon as we figured out how to cash in on our discovery. In the meantime it remained a secret in the place we called Triple X.
Each afternoon Gordy and Leroy and Big Spike and I visited our miracle discovery, slyly slipping away from the other neighborhood kids, slyly varying the meeting time, slyly cluing each other during our daily sandlot baseball games. And while we were playing, it felt so terrific to be so secretive and sly that even if a lousy grounder right to you hit one of the three million lumps in your ball field and hopped over your head and rolled for a homer, you almost didn’t even care. You almost didn’t.
Because you knew that later you’d be crouched and hidden in the stand of sumac trees in the field out behind the privy behind the Weber’s big dirty-white ramshackle house; and you knew that when each of the other soon-to-be-filthy-rich conspirators snuck in you’d be so filled with the excitement of slyness and secrecy you’d almost bust.
Now it was the fifth day of the great discovery. And we’d all agreed that today was the day to get a sample of our treasure.
I remember it was a particularly hot afternoon as we entered the woods, our favorite place in the whole world. Following a path we’d know with our eyes closed, we wound our way through summer green until we came to the good old Clinton River. And all the way there we’d dreamed up unbelievable things our unbelievable riches were about to bring.
And now we stood before the secret Triple X, which was made up of three big mounds of dirt that covered the root system of a giant fallen tree and which hung out over a short bend of the river. Beneath the mounds a small amount of the untapped oil (it never once occurred to us that it might merely be dumped-in engine oil) floated on the river surface. You could see this floating ‘black gold’ only if you knew just where to look, or if, say, you were swimming there bare-bottomed and you swam real close, which five days ago is what we were and did.
But today we were after the all-important sample. We climbed onto the fallen tree, made our way down to the secret treasure mounds. Then tall, long-armed Leroy lay between two of the mounds and hung down to the river to scoop some oil into a can.
Then the yellow jackets that lived there, that I swear we’d never seen a sign of before, came swarming out.
They were mad. They attacked. We retreated. We retreated fast.
The yellow jackets stayed right with us, buzzing and stinging like you wouldn’t believe. They split us up, with Big Spike and me racing along the river bank, leaping obstacles, yelling and swatting at stinging attackers. It was without doubt as fast as we’d ever run.
The yellow jackets stayed right with us.
We veered away from the river and jumped across one of its inlets, and finally the pursuit let up. Gordy and Leroy weren’t as lucky—we could hear them in the distance, yelling and crashing through undergrowth and young trees. It was ten or so minutes before we found them. Examining our wounds we discovered that Gordy had gotten stung twice as bad as the rest of us, even though he was the fastest guy in the neighborhood. Giving the yellow jackets wide birth, we circled back to the river bank, soothing our stings with cool mud, plastering poor Gordy’s red-welted back with it.
Then we headed home. Believe it not we were laughing and all excited again, even Gordy was. But now we were all excited about the adventure of flight from the furious yellow jackets, a story that, when we told our other buddies, would take on enormous proportions—while completely omitting mention of discovered oil. As I recall, even among ourselves we never again mentioned the Triple X or the lost fortune. And I’m positive we didn’t swim bare-bottomed anymore near those big mounds.
Years later I heard that somebody or other, the Army Corps of Engineers I think, invaded our favorite place in the whole world and, for some reason or other, straightened out all the bends in the good old Clinton River.
I’ve always wondered if those Corps of Engineers guys discovered any floating oil—and if they did, I hope they were fast runners.
-the end-