Memories of a golden child

I remember writing about a boy named Jamie who traipsed across the overgrown backyards I lived in which existed among the small-town suburbia of eastern Kansas; Jamie, naked to all, ran up to a waiting ice cream truck just in time to produce an invisible quarter from his invisible pants to a very real man who sat behind the wheel of a rambling, multi-color truck. I still smell the diesel and can see in my mind's eye aluminum soda tabs stuck amongst the gravely, grasshopper ditch. 

"Is this a joke?" the man asked, and Jamie's shoulders fell. Perhaps the shoulders on all of us children that day fell too, still caught we were in the shock of seeing someone in their birthday suit, yet like balloons all of us were filled with high hopes that his plan would work: a manifestation of the impossible. What replaced that hope was greed, because none of us were willing to give up our own real quarters to cover his blatant discrepancy. I suppose that would have been socialism and would have set us up for disappointment the rest of our days. 

No, we learned a real lesson. And yet, why not? If only for once . . .

There's one more memory of golden Jamie that's stored inside my brain, and it's not nearly as whimsical. It was a boring, Saturday afternoon when a rumor went round that Jamie had committed some stupid kid crime such as talking back or cussing, and believe me, a few of us were quite guilty of the latter, and with shock and fear we listened to the story that his father had a metal bar and was going after him in the basement of their house. We surrounded the foundation and a few of us bravely stationed ourselves at low windows--the kind with overgrown weeds and sticky cobwebs. Indeed, at such close proximity, his father's yelling could be heard, and it held a very threatening tone. I was truly scared. 

That toe-headed angel who'd run through the grass with sunlight bathing him was in big trouble--the kind no child ever wants to face. My heart understood. Recently at home, I myself had been part of a silent prison of similar proportions--though no one spoke about it. My father spanked us every day for the sin of touching his bible. I wasn't allowed to watch TV, dance or talk. I even stopped using the bathroom out of fear of making myself known--my life had been a silent morgue-like existence. Luckily, Mother divorced, and things changed for the better. But now, the waves of memory came back to me through Jamie's cries. I believe in every child there is a commune of victimhood. To be little and pliant. To hope and have hope crushed. 

Finally, a neighboring adult was brought in, and Jamie's father--a small, ferret-like, sick-looking man--was confronted. It stopped the assault. But then what happened? I'll never know. They moved. That's what happened. Things changed. Time erased. The new school year began, and all of that summer was exchanged for new experiences. Second grade brought in a love of reading, and also an escapism through afterschool latchkey TV--which I had once been denied.

But one thing I have not forgotten: those moments I sat crouched at a low, basement window, ankles ravaged by chiggers and mosquitoes, the grass brushing against my face as I peered helplessly through dusted, diluted glass, and Jamie's cries somewhere deep inside. 

I prefer to remember the ice cream man.