Chief Tecumseh

Chief Tecumseh

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Larry and me got our go-kart lined up on the sidewalk so that when the motor kicked on and the centrifugal clutch kicked-in and the V-belt from my dad’s ’57 Studebaker tightened-up on the drive shaft pulley, one of us would go flying down the sidewalk screaming our crazy heads off so fast we’d only be a blur in front of the DeWall’s house where Amaryllis and Belinda, who were twin sisters, were pretending to not notice what me and Larry were doing because they were so busy playing jacks or dress-up dolls or something with the other girls from the neighborhood – Dawn, Helen, Olive (who looked just like a pimento olive with green skin and red lips if you’d ask me) and the new girls with names so long I called them Rose and Reggie because they were twins and had the same letters at the start. And Yolanda. I didn’t like Yolanda.

Mrs. DeWall brought them a tray of cookies and lemonade because it was awful hot in the sun.

“Wanna go sit with the girls?” stupid Larry asked. “Yolanda’s there.”

“No.” I settled that without any arguing. We didn’t have time for the girls.

“Mrs. D is waving at us to come get lemonade.”

Larry had no imagination. He couldn’t see the bigger picture in life no matter how obvious it was. He was shallow as rainwater in the curb and gutter during yesterday’s storm. He’d be good to get started like a flash flood. Ten minutes later he’d run out of water and dry up. Leaving me to finish. I’m a finisher.

“I hate lemonade, especially the kind Mrs. D makes out of real lemons and sugar.”

“I kind of like it. I could tighten the wheels and adjust the V-belt if we can find where we lost your dad’s wrench after we have lemonade with the girls,” he suggested.

Larry was a total dork and my best friend, my only friend, and he just hadn’t caught on that cool guys like us have to do cool stuff, like blast down the sidewalk on a homemade go-kart. Otherwise, we might as well be just girls.

“All I need to do is tighten the front wheels, so the steering board doesn’t flop around when we hit the broken sidewalk in front of the Sampica’s house. Next door to the DeWall house,” I said, in case Larry forgot who lived where on my block.

As the senior engineer for the project, it was my responsibility to think through everything that could go wrong. Larry’s only responsibility was to do whatever I told him. I cranked on my dad’s torque wrench so hard my arms hurt. “This steering board ain’t moving, I got killer muscles now.” I huffed up all proud and turned around for Larry’s approval of my new biceps.

Stupid Larry was already half-way to the DeWall house and Mrs. D was out there with her blue dress and her polka dot apron and a pitcher of lemonade and smiling at Larry with great big red lips like on the magazine covers. My mom said Mrs. D was the prettiest woman in the whole world, and I should look into getting better acquainted with one of her daughters, Amaryllis and Belinda, because some day I’d want a girlfriend. I know she’s teasing me because I have more important things to worry about.

I told her, “No way, Mom. Me and Larry will be racecar drivers someday. Can’t have no girls at the race car track.”

“Larry and I,” mother corrected, because she teaches older kids in junior high proper grammar. “Larry and I and, The rules prohibit spectators in the racetrack area.”

“’s’what I said, Mom,” I grinned at her, wiped my sleeves through the chocolate milk on the counter and flew out the back door just so I could hear it slam when she yelled that I was going to be the death of her. That’s the best part. I had a plan and before long I had the Tecumseh gasoline engine off my real dad’s old reel lawnmower, and me and Larry was building us a crazy-fast go-kart.

In the house behind our house is where the preacher lives for my mother’s church. Reverend Doctor Gamble is his name so we call him Pastor Gumball because his head is round and he doesn’t have any hair, so he looks funny. He has a fake leg after the war. Whenever me and Larry work on science projects behind our garage ol’ Gumball is always working in his garden or fixing the fence between our houses. So, we are very careful to not pee on the fence when he’s around.

“Hot damn,” Larry said once we had most of the pieces nailed together.

Mom heard him say that and sent him home before we could finish. Larry is what mom calls exuberant, and free spirited. Then she gave me the Mom Look, which means that whatever I was thinking I’d sure as hell better not say out loud.

“Thank you, dear neighbor,” Gumnball called out from his backyard, “Such a pleasure to have civic-minded neighbors striving to bring up their children in the proper way in which they should go, namely, allowing no unwholesome words to escape their lips.”

Larry whispered some unwholesome things to me and then he trudged toward home and passed my mom on the back porch. “Sorry, I said bad words. You know my old man is in the Big House and I was raised in an ungodly home by a struggling single mother who doesn’t take me to church the way you do, so I d don’t know no better than to say unwholesome things sometimes. I didn’t have breakfast or lunch so my willpower is weak. I appreciate how you put up with a common boy like me.” Which is how we got to spend the afternoon eating peanut butter and jelly with a big glass of milk. Larry always knows what to say.

Anyway, that’s why we were stuck finishing the go-kart the next morning in the hot sun.

“Hot damn,” we both said with soon-to-be fifth-grade exuberance. (That was a year ago, so I know now how immature I was back then.)

“Boys,” my mother warned through the screen door. “Maybe you don’t remember what happened yesterday when you talked like that.”

Ol’ Gumball snorted at us from his side of the fence.

I knew it was a bad word. I just didn’t know how bad. Now I know.

“Sorry, Mom. Larry was being exuberant again.” I rolled my eyes, and Larry didn’t mind because his mom didn’t mind. You shoulda heard what she said one day.

Anyway, we moved the kart out to the front sidewalk, out of mom’s hearing distance, so we could finish in the safety of the sidewalk in case of more exuberance.

That was when we saw the DeWall twins, and Dawn, Helen, Olive, Rose and Reggie, and Yolanda. Amaryllis and Belinda are the DeWall twins, in case you forgot, on the porch. In the shade. Laughing and giggling and drinking real lemonade with cookies and stuff I like a lot. That made me mad.

It was Larry who thought we should fire up the Tecumseh engine and hook a garden hose to the exhaust and run the garden hose onto the porch where the girls were so they’d all get sick, and we would steal their cookies and they’d think we were cool. Larry was like that. He had all the good ideas.

They caught us sneaking across the lawn carrying the big motor and a hundred feet of garden hose borrowed from the Terwilliger house.

Next, we decided to put the engine back on the go-kart and have it break-down in front of Amaryllis and Belinda’s house. Then we’d start it up and make lots of noise so they’d leave.

We weren’t sure this was such a good idea, because Mrs. D would phone my mother and that would be the end of it because mom would want to know where we got the Tecumseh engine. I would tell her and then we’d have a fight that would make her cry all over again. I hate it when she cries because she cries all the time because it’s all my fault.

Like I said, I got the front two-by-four fastened down so tight the bump wouldn’t move the wheels when I discovered Larry was doing his Elvis Presley stroll on the sidewalk in front of the DeWall house. He was going to talk with Amaryllis and Belinda and the other girls. Especially, Yolanda. Stupid Larry liked talking with Yolanda.

Well, I was mad because now I was left to do all the hard work in the hot sun.

Larry had left the engine flopping around on the V-belt as a speed control. Up is faster. Down is slower. So, I was mad and then I got exuberant and tightened it all the way up.

“Hey, Larry,” I hollered at him, but he didn’t even turn around. “I think it’s ready.”

All the girls looked my way, but not Larry. Not my best friend and my senior mechanic, the one kid I’ve known the longest. He didn’t even turn around because Yolanda was talking to him, and he was wiggling his hips doing what he says is crooning.

I didn’t know what to do. I’ve had a long time to think about it over this past year. But on that day, I didn’t have time. All the girls were laughing and giggling.

It was too hard to start the engine and then jump into the driver’s seat. The go-kart would be a mile down the road before I got climbed in.

I decided to back up real far and run at the thing. I’d hop over the engine and land in the driver’s seat and the engine would start up and I’d be flying’ down the sidewalk.

Things went pretty good, because I was wearing my new high-top Keds shoes and I was super-fast ever since I got them for Christmas. I ran up behind the kart and jumped over the engine and got my feet both landed. But before I could sit in the seat the engine fired up and the clutch engaged and the back wheels went crazy fast and suddenly the go kart was going like sixty down the sidewalk, but I was like standing up, so I started screaming for everybody to watch out.

“Here I come. Look at me,” is what I was yelling.

Me and the kart got all the way to the girls’ house, and I was still standing up when I stuck my thumbs in my ears and wiggled my fingers like a hippo.

I heard the two-by-four break first when we hit old Mr. Sampica’s house with the big cracks in the sidewalk where his old oak tree roots are.

My mom came out screaming and Mrs. D dropped the lemonade. That’s what they told me later. What I remember is being upside down and everyone was screaming to don’t move or you’ll die.

Larry, my former best friend said, “That was cool. You really done it this time. The steering board is broke. I don’t know how we can fix it without stealing some more boards. If you die I’ll take care of the Tecumseh for you.” Then he looked at my mom and said, “I think your leg is busted. I better go home.”

Before the ambulance finally came, I was feeling like I would die right then and there. But instead of crying, I said, “Hot damn, that was cool.” Amaryllis gasped because she was about two inches from my face. Her eyes were big as the go-kart wheels, only with no spokes in her eyes. But I didn’t care because I was grinning so bad my face hurt.

They got a big beach towel and covered me so they wouldn’t have to look at my dying, and I was shaking all over.

My mother was crying and telling Mrs. D that I only talk that way because I was delirious. She said I’m really a good boy. Moms know a lot, but not everything. I heard my leg bust in a million places and Amaryllis was staring at me like I was dead and her mouth was moving but no words came out, just squeaky sad sounds. Hot damn, I was exuberant.