Zemblanity

Well, warmer times came around and school was back in session but I decided not to return. I spent my warmer times with Jack-o and Benji on or near the dugout, which was shielded from the majority of the snow--it still came down though it was melting fast--and when you were inside the dugout, you were invisible to everyone looking down from the top of the hill where classes were. In the mornings, we’d dump our backpacks under the benches, hide out in the shade of that dugout, and eagerly await the first bell, which would be faintly heard even all the way down here. Five minutes after the bell, the monitors would sweep the campus on their golf carts, giving that...perfunctory glance down at the fields before riding off into the snow-dipped school. 

It was a Wednesday when the most odd thing occurred in the shade of the dugout. Well, it wasn’t odd at first--quite normal, in fact. It was a little cooler that day, hovering around 32 degrees, but there was nothing strange about that. The snow was falling, too, but light, almost watery. The cracks in the wooden roof sometimes leaked and got our caps wet...but that wasn’t the matter either. Something was off, different. I asked Jack-o and Benji, “Sumthin feel weird to yeh guys?” 

Jack-o shrugged. “Why, Lars, yeh scared yer gonna get caught?” Jack-o laughed, and little dribbles of the hot cocoa from his thermos slid down his chin. 

Benji chuckled. “Yeh got sumthin on yer face, Jack-o!” 

“Shaddap!”

I just shrugged. “Dunno, jest sorta bugged I guess.” 

Jack-o passed the hot cocoa to Benji and slid his ass over to me along the bench. “Yeh scared, Larsie boy? Sumthin gonna eat yeh?” 

Benji was still chuckling. “Shut yer fat mouth, Benji!” I yelled at him. Benji just kept chuckling. 

“Haha, Larsie!” Benji giggled. “He--he called yeh Larsie!”

I pushed Jack-o away, but he ended up sliding into the wet, muddy ground below me. “The fuck was that fer, Lars?” 

“Haha, Jack-o’s got mud on his ass!” Benji giggled. Jack-o’s face went instantly red. 

“Y’all dicks. Y’all should jest shut yer mouths,” Jack-o whined as he tried to wipe some of the mud off of himself. “Dunno why I hang with the likes of yeh...assholes. Need me sum better friends.”

“Yer welcome to go back to school, Jack-o,” I told him. Jack-o, still wiping his ass, gazed up the hill to the school, then shook his head. 

“Haha, he told yeh, didn’t he, Jack-o!” Benji chuckled. Jack-o, angry, sat down on the bench. 

“Still--hehe--still, man. I think sumbody’s watching us,” I said between laughs. And right then, the day just got a little bit weirder. Because while the other boys were ignoring me, I happened to look up the opposite hill (because the fields were tucked in a sort of little valley) and saw some old lady staring at the three of us on the bench. “Guys?”

“Whaddayawant?” Jack-o yelled. He had knocked some of Benji’s Magic cards into the mud, which elicited an animal squeal from the fat kid. “Can’t yeh see we’re playing a very important game?”

“Yeah, Benji’s nerd game. But look, asshole. We’re being watched,” I pointed to the old woman on the hill, who was half-bent behind a snowdrift now. Jack-o leaned into me to look through the chain link. 

“Hell, yer right. The hell she doin?” Jack-o muttered. 

“Man, I wanna see!” Benji yelped. 

The old woman wasn’t paying any attention to us at all at this point. I squinted--she was a far distance from us, but I could tell she was digging for something in the snow. 

“The hell she doin?” Jack-o repeated. 

“Lemme see!” 

“Shove off, Benji!” 

“She’s diggin, ain’t she?” 

“The hell she doin?” 

“What’s so exciting bout this woman anyway?” 

“Move yer ass, Benji!” 

Once Benji had gotten a good enough look, and we’d all fallen silent just watching this old woman furiously digging in the snowdrift, I’d had enough. “Let’s go up close.”

“The hell yeh wanna do that fer?” Jack-o hissed. 

“Could be crazy,” Benji added. 

“Fer once, Benji mighta said sumthin smart,” Jack-o said.  

“I jest wanna see what she doin!” I mumbled. “Jest got a feelin.”

“Ain’t nothin gonna make me gonna mess with that lady!” Jack-o huffed. “Could be sum sorta...crack addict!” 

“Not in this neighborhood, dumbass,” I told Jack-o. “Anyway, she an old lady. What harm she gonna do?”

“Man, old ladys be scary,” Benji mumbled. 

“Well, if yeh suckers won’t go, I’ll go myself,” I declared. “Don’t bother comin along.” 

I grabbed my backpack and ran to the edge of the dugout, brushing past both Benji and Jack-o. Snow was falling gently. I could feel it getting trapped in my hair and steaming when it touched my skin. I slid my eyes across the upper part of the hill for golf carts--none at all. Then I ran. 

I was taking a long way around behind some neglected pine trees at the edge of the field when I heard footsteps crunching through the foliage behind me. I slowed and turned. Just Jack-o. “Thought yeh weren’t comin.” 

“Naw, I’m comin. Benji’s behind cuz he’s fat,” Jack-o grinned. I could hear the kid puffing and huffing some distance away. 

“Don’t gotta be such a dick to Benji,” I muttered, but didn’t wait up. 

It was a few moments later that Benji and Jack-o and I were clustered beneath the old lady’s snowdrift. She was gone for the moment, but you could hear her clanging around in her house--the back door was wide open. We all just stared for a little bit. 

“The hell we doin?” 

“I’m gonna go see what she was diggin,” I told the boys. 

“Don’t yeh dare!” Benji hissed. “She gonna see yeh!” 

I didn’t listen to him, anyway. It just took one quick jolt to reach the bottom of her chain-link fence, and from there I pulled myself up so that I was kneeling at the top of the snowdrift, directly in front of the old woman’s open door and above the hole she’d created in the snow. 

“Dude,” I mumbled. “Y’all gotta come and see this.”

“What is it?” 

“I can’t get up there!”

“What the hell?”

“Benji, jest get me yer ruler.”

And thus the plan began. While the old woman was breaking down her house, Benji handed me his ruler and I fished the things in the hole out through a burrow Jack-o dug at the bottom of the woman’s fence. Benji caught the items and deposited them in our backpacks as Jack-o and I slid them down the snowdrift to him.

When I got everything I could reach with Benji’s ruler, we slid back down the hill. Benji handed us our backpacks, and we walked back to the dugout. There, on the wet benches, with the snow falling around us, we emptied our loot. 

A teapot. 

A locket with a soaked photograph inside. 

A wedding ring. 

A family photo album. 

A pair of earrings. 

A few lipsticks and q-tips and broken dishes. 

A whole lot of trash. 

A whole lot of unread mail. 

And when we were done going over our findings, I looked back on the hill and saw the old woman there, watching us, fingers knotted in her chain link fence. 

She turned away and went back inside.