The Scar Boys

Thunder Road

"Who the fuck are you?"

An older and much larger boy stood over me, blotting out the sun. 

"You weren't god damn here when we chose up the god damn sides." He was trying on curse words like a little girl tries on her mother's shoes.

The boy wasn't just big, he was cartoon big. He also wasn't alone. He was one of seven snot-nosed tweens surrounding me like I was in the middle of a football huddle.

They had decided to make me a central character in their game of Ringolevio. I had no idea what that word meant and didn't have a clue about the rules of the game, but near as I could tell, it was something between hide-and-seek and all-out neighborhood war.

I don't remember what I was doing just before the "Who the fuck are you?" 

It's as if the entire universe came into being all at once in that exact moment. Earlier memories just don't exist for me. Strike that. They exist but they're buried in a place where I can't find them. 

They can only be reconstructed from the outside. (If you're wondering how this can be, give yourself a pat on the back, because you're asking a really good question. Read on.)

"who the fuck are you?" the boy demanded a second time.

A thick haze hung between the sun and Earth like gauze, trying to choke the life out of everything--even the flies and mosquitoes didn't have energy. It was the kind of summer afternoon that bred patience.

"I don't know," I mumbled back. With no brothers or sisters to properly weave me to the fabric of kid society, I was, at eight years old, mostly overlooked and, and only occasionally tolerated by other kids in our neighborhood.

I was so lost in the excitement of an older boy actually talking to me, that it only took me a minute to realize it wasn't going so well.

"You don't know who you are? Are you fucking retarded, shit-for-brains?" The other boys laughed.

"I'm Harry Jones," I mumbled at my shoes.

"Well then," The older boy said and puffed out his chest like Patton, "You. Harry Shit Jones, have been caught  by the Sharks--that's our team--and you're our prisoner."

The other boys stomped their feet in approval. I'd wandered into the final act of Lord of the flies but was too young to know it. "And whats worse, you little ass head," he leaned in close. 

"You've been caught cheating." 

"I wasn't chea---" 

"Shut up."

"Honest, I wasn't---"

He punched me hard, in the shoulder. I was already too scared to cry, and somehow I knew crying would only make things worse. Maybe if I take my lumps, I thought, It'll all turn out okay.

"Whaddya think we should do with him?" Someone asked.

One of the other kids, a freckled little creep name Timmy, who called me "Shrimp Toast" every time he saw me playing in the front of my house, was holding a length of rope, maybe a clothesline, maybe something else.

"I think we should put him in jail." he said. This was met with laughs and hoots all around.

The jail was small but sturdy dogwood tree, its thick green leaves providing shade, but no protection from the heat.

According to the rules, I was supposed to keep one hand on the tree at all times until a teammate tagged me free. 

But I didn't know the rules, didn't know rope wasn't supposed to be part of the game.