When Boys Were Boys // A Novel -Chapter 1

Well, I suppose, considering what started the whole episode, the end result of our endeavour was rather remarkable. It was a success and a fiasco in one. Our intentions started off as innocent as that of any other group of boys could be, but as is usually the case our plans rapidly spiralled out of control to the point of utter chaos. It wasn’t exactly anyone’s fault, but I guess none of it would have happened if my brother hadn’t had an idea.

As all good stories should, this one began on the first week of the summer holidays. After being cooped up inside by a wet spring, the sun was reuniting itself with the world, and so were we. Jesse, my younger brother, Celvin, my best friend and I, all set off to the beach.

The ‘beach’ was probably a generous title for the sandy strip that lined part of the coast of the small peninsula in the harbour. It was a short walk from our home, down the driveway that ran beside our house, to the base of the hill where land met the tidal estuary. When the tide was full, the beach was a beach, with gentle waves. Once the tide receded, exposing the muddy flats beyond the sands, it was a long walk to the water’s edge, fraught with pits of mud that you could sink in up to your waist.

As our house looked over the beach we could see that the tide was in, making the water deep enough to swim in. We liked it this way, as it made us feel like we had a real beach on our doorstep… not just a stinking estuary. It was Jesse’s idea that we could spend the day constructing a beach shack on the sands. This meant digging holes, using saws, cutting and collecting driftwood. In short — fun.

After a quick raid of Dad’s tool shed for various tools, we set to work. Once the foundation holes were dug and the four main posts had been erected a meter high out of the sand, sticks were bound from post-top to post-top, creating a rectangle frame. The lighter sticks were laid over the roof, as support for the thatching of palm branches. We began to make the walls of our humble dwelling in the same manner, and presently decided it was time to stop for a break.

Jesse, my younger brother by three years, waded into the water. Wearing a pair of shorts he had been gifted for his eighth birthday a few weeks prior, he splashed about, attempting to kick water at Celvin and I enjoying the shade. With a tuft of platinum blond hair and skinny frame, he was the opposite of Celvin who was more sandy-haired, thicker set, and had a great affection for the inside of his mother’s pantry.

The midday sky was blue, and as the breeze blew over the water rustling the palm branches we’d laid across the roof, I laid myself back the cool of the shade and closed my eyes. Celvin (nicknamed “Dubba-Doohickie” for goodness knows why) leaned back into a tussock bush, swigging water from a plastic bottle.

Jesse walked up the beach and perched on a plank to dry in the sun.

I broke the silence. “To tell you the truth, I feel like Robinson Crusoe. Here we are on a beach, in the sun, constructing one of life’s most basic necessities — shelter.”

By the look on Jesse’s face, he was about to ask what the word ‘necessities’ meant, when Celvin interjected, “Who’s Robinson Crusoe?”

“He comes from a book” I replied. “Well actually, he comes from England, but that’s beside the point. It’s a tale about a chap who’s shipwrecked on a deserted island and has to survive all by himself, eating coconut and wild animals to stay alive. He also builds all of these shelters out of trees and bushes.”

“Does he die?” Jesse immediately asked a bit too eagerly.

“Nah,” I replied, “but he doesn’t get off the island for a good ten years. It’s a pretty good book.”

“Mmm, I’m sure it’s riveting,” Celvin said with a tone of utter disinterest. “One man stuck on an island for years and years. There are so many places that story could go.”

Jesse rested his legs on a tree stump that had been washed ashore by the waves.

“I reckon them palm leaves will need something to hold them down so the wind won’t blow them off,” he said.

“We could tie them off with a piece of rope,” suggested Celvin.

“I say it’s a waste of time” I replied. “What you need to do is just let the mud dry so then it will hold it all in place.”

“But ‘wot about in the meantime while the mud is wet? The leaves will blow off.”

“Leave it be”, came my reply. “It’ll be fine.”

And as if nature itself heard, a gust of wind swept over the water, lifting a branch clean off the roof and into the air, sailing out of view.

“Go get it,” they both said to me.

Cursing the cruel forces of nature as the being the cause of my disturbance, I lumbered off after the branch. The wind had carried the airborne palm down the beach, landing it neatly in the shallows. Picking up the sopping branch, I hurled it further out into the sea, as it was now too wet to be of any use. I was about to turn back when a blur of black and white shot past me into the water, sending up a spray of muddy brine which drenched me from head to toe.

“Molly! Leave the stick alone, you stupid mutt!” I roared after the neighbour’s dog. Her owner was our landlord, and they lived two doors down from us. She frequently ambled around the neighbourhood as though it all was her backyard — I guess it was her backyard in a sense, as it belonged to her owner.

“I don’t want the rotten branch back, you crumby old flea bag!”

But my words fell on deaf ears, as she continued paddling after the branch. Turning my head, I saw her owner’s son Harrison and his side-kick Alex walking along the beach toward me with a few other lads in tow.

Harrison was one of those kids you just couldn’t help liking when you first meet him, and then after about three weeks of his company, you realized he was a two-faced brat, whose daddy had too much money and not enough time to raise a decent human. He was taller than us all, older, and enjoyed pastimes such as vandalism, fighting, and just general bullying. Anyone younger than him spoke his name with fear. To anyone older than him he was just a royal pain in the-you-know-where. He had an open, broad face, which I can tell you now was a deceptive characteristic, one that he used to his advantage; was relatively strong and whose pale blue eyes lacked any trace of human mercy. Alex had darker hair than his accomplice, leaning towards the slender side. They both seemed to wear a permanent smirk and were usually accompanied by a gang of other boys from school.

He was the kingpin, and his gaggle of rabble had a history of making life hard for the other kids in the neighbourhood. Two weeks ago, I heard from a friend that Harrison’s boys had stolen a bike from my friend and rode it off the wharf into the sea. Other kids had been kicked off basketball courts, had been picked on at school and had personal items lifted by of this gang. Not that they had any official title. It was just a rabble of boys who had too much time and not enough real friends. They hung around the neighbourhood looking for public property to damage and preying on kids smaller and weaker for entertainment.

“Ah, here comes trouble,” I called over to my comrades as I returned to the hut.

The older boys arrived at our beach shack. A side glance passed between them (which I knew meant trouble for me), Harrison then turned to address me.

“Whacha’ doing?” He asked.

“Nothing,” I told him.

“What did ya say about my dog?”

“I didn’t say anything about her” I emphasized. “I just told her she was a stupid dog for fetching a stick I didn’t want, that’s all.”

My eyes were met with the cold blue stare.

“I wasn’t throwing the stick out for her to fetch. I was chuckin’ the stick out there to get rid of it.”

“Where did the stick come from,” asked Alex. It wasn’t the smartest question I’ve heard.

Without thinking, Jesse blurted “I’m pretty sure it came out of your butt, Captain Genius”.

A slow look of shock spread across his face. His boldness was clearly as much of a surprise to him as it was to the rest of us. It took about seven seconds for the insult to sink in.

“Actually it came off a tree,” Celvin added helpfully, attempting to rescue the situation. He didn’t rescue it.

Another look passed between them.

“Is that thing yours?” He asked, nodding toward the hut.

“Yeah,” said Celvin. “What about it? What do you want?” The two older boys began to saunter over toward the hut.

“Nothing” Harrison replied over his shoulder.

Jesse began to follow. “Then push off”. He sounded like he meant it.

“We can do what we like” Replied Harrison. “It’s a free country”

“Yes, and we’ll knock your teeth out for free too. That’s our hut. Touch it and you’re a dead man!” Celvin told him indignantly.

Alex reached out his hand

“What… you mean like this?” He lifted one of the wall branches and it fell sideways, as the mud that held it in tack was still wet and weak.

I suppose it was at this point that our day took a rather nasty turn. I picked up a stick.

“We said don’t touch it!”

The older two sniggered. They were obviously enjoying this, and I was not surprised by their sick amusement. They pulled this sort of thing all too regularly with us.

“We asked nicely” I continued, my patience rapidly evaporating. The adult advice to count to ten was not working. “So go away.”

Ignoring us, the two idiots started up a conversation between themselves. Harrison lent on one of the poles supporting the roof frame, making the half the palms cave in from the ceiling. Branches flew everywhere. Our hard work was reduced to a splintering mess before our very eyes.

Needless to say, that pushed three tired, sandy dehydrated boys over the edge — way over the edge.

Objecting at the top of our voices, using every foul word known to us(and even a few that weren’t), we launched ourselves at the two intruders. my shoulder met Harrison’s chest, and he fell backward into the sand. Alex, reaching to defend his partner in crime, tripped over Celvin’s strategically placed foot, and collided with Jesse, both of whom then had a sudden appointment with the ground. Harrison stood up and delivered a sweeping kick into my thigh, causing me to stagger into Celvin, and we fell in a heap.

The brawl didn’t last for long, and to tell you the truth, it wasn’t much to see. It finally resulted in Celvin, Jesse and I in a heap, with Alex brandishing a log and Harrison grinning at our pathetic attempts to fight back. As I staggered to my feet, Harrison flung a handful of sand into my eyes. Tripping over the stump of wood, I fell back into the ruined beach shelter, temporarily blinded, defeated and flush with rage. Harrison and Alex decided to make their departure, leaving the three of us in the destruction of our hard labour.

We sat in the gloom of the basement. We called it the lab because it had been the planning room for many ambitiously devious acts done in the name of science (i.e. explosions). We had left the hut as it was, too tired to rebuild it.

Celvin stared up at a spider hanging from the rafters of the basement ceiling, which supported the floor to our living room.

“Four hours” he mused. “Four hours of back-breaking labour in the sun, only to have it …” he searched for the right words. “Broked up by two…”

Another pause as Celvin’s brain tried to catch up with his mouth.

“Idiots” I silently mouthed to Jesse behind Celvin’s back.

“Idiots” completed Celvin, unaware and still engrossed in staring at the spider dangling from the ceiling.

“I’m so sick of them!” Jesse was furious. “First it was just at school: Name calling, starting fights and them blaming us, then it started after school.

“I suppose we owe them something” I said, adding that what they did not deserve we should give them anyway.

“And what might that be?” asked the bitter Celvin.

“A payback,” said Jesse through gritted teeth.

If it had been any other day Celvin would have pointed out that he didn’t have any money to pay them back with, and even if he did he didn’t owe Harrison and Alex anything, thus objecting to my suggestion. But by some unknown cosmological force, the gift of comprehension rested upon him in that moment and his eyes narrowed in focus.

“Revenge!” he spat, a flame burning in his eye. “The rancid spawn of hate that livith within the wretched forever!”

Jesse and I looked in shocked at Celvin, unsure how to respond to Celvin’s sudden statement.

“What does that mean?’ Jesse asked cautiously.

“No idea,” said Celvin, unwrapping a sherbet. “But it sounded pretty impressive. I think its Shakespeare.”

“Right…” I eyed him off steadily. “Any ideas as to how we are going to do it?”

“I dunno…” Jesse replied

“Throw things at them” suggested Celvin.

My response, and I don’t mean to elevate my intellect any more than necessary, was a little more analytical.

“We need to formulate a plan” I told them. “Something along the lines of an ambush in a set location.”

“You mean like baboons, no wait… I mean like the guerrillas in South America?” asked Jesse

“I didn’t know they had any gorillas in South America. I thought they were African,” noted Celvin.

“Yes. Like the Guerrillas in South America.” I was glad someone was on the same page. “We wait and then pounce, using the element of surprise.”

“We are going to do as they do,” Jesse explained to Celvin, attempting to be helpful.

Clearly Celvin had had too much sun. “So… in that case we sit up trees, eat bananas and scratch ourselves all day long? I’m sorry, but I don’t see how that will help us get revenge.”

I could see that this discussion was going nowhere, so rather than sit there and listen to Bert and Ernie attempt to unravel the secrets of the universe, I gave them a piece of paper and told them to design a system of attack. The question was how?

New chapters published weekly.