David : 07 - Pestered by Mario (m/m)

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David : 07 - Pestered by Mario (m/m)

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David's stories
07 - Pestered by Mario
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By David

Tuesday, August 29th 2006 - 11:07:08 PM

Pestered by Mario

"A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." - Longfellow

This happened in 1952 or 1953 when Mario and I were either twelve or thirteen. I remember most of the images and events vividly. The dialog contains a number of phrases that have stuck in my mind, and the rest is a reconstruction of what we might have said.

One morning I was in my back yard building a box trap to catch a skunk that had been terrorizing our neighborhood at night. The beauty of a box trap is that a skunk won't fire off when it's inside, as it has to get away from its own smell. Once I had caught it, I could put the trap with the skunk in a wheelbarrow and cart it a mile or so out of town to release it.

The day was humid and sweltering hot: one of those days when cicadas sing in the trees and puffy clouds hang on the horizon or drift overhead but seldom hit the sun. Even though I had taken off my shirt, and was barefoot, wearing only a pair of cut off jeans, I was still hot. I had one knee on a sawhorse holding a twelve-inch wide board in place while I cut it with a handsaw. That was hard work, and I was sweating and not in the best of moods.

While I was sawing the board, Mario came by looking for something to do, and he stood beside me with crossed arms watching me work. He had a lean tanned body and the dark hair, eyes, and skin of his Italian ancestry. Like me, he was shirtless, and he wore a pair of khaki shorts, low cut sneakers without socks, and a Red Sox ball cap with the bill pulled low on his forehead to keep the sun out of his eyes. (In those days kids were savvy enough to know what the visor on a ball cap was for, and that it only worked when you had it in front.)

"What's that going to be?" he asked.

"A skunk trap," I said. "I'm going to catch the one that's been prowling around here after dark."

"How does it work?"

I showed him how I would nail the top and front into a single unit that would be hinged at the back with a couple of pieces of leather. I would tie some bait like an old steak bone with a little meat still on it to a stick. Then I would poke the end of the stick thorough a hole in the back from the inside so just a little bit protruded. The top would be held open by a string that went over a tall lathe nailed to the back of the trap and down to the protruding stick. I had tied a metal ring at the string's end, which I would hook over the protruding bit of stick.

The skunk would go into the trap and as it tugged on the bait it would pull in the stick. That would release the top, which would slam down and trap him. I had already made a spring catch out of a bent tine from an old broom rake that would hold the trap shut once it was tripped.

"Pretty smart," Mario said. "Did you think that up all by yourself?"

"No. Dad told me how to build it."

"That's not fair."

"What do you mean?"

"Your father and you are ganging up against one poor little skunk, and it's only got about a teaspoonful of brains to begin with." I studied Mario's face, and saw a certain impish look that I recognized well. It usually meant he was contemplating mischief. Sure enough, he picked up one of the boards I had cut and started to walk off with it.

"Hey! What are you doing?" I shouted.

"Skunks have rights too," he said with a laugh. "I am the great Mario, protector of all God's little creatures."

I trotted after him to get the board. "Come on!" I said. "It's us that need the protection. Not the stinking skunk."

I took the board from him and went back to building the trap. He followed and watched me work for a bit, then picked up another board and started to trot away with it. "The Magnificent Mario strikes again," he said with a laugh. I chased him down and got the board. I was hot enough just from working on my trap without having to run after him too, and I was getting more annoyed all the time.

"You do that once more," I said, "and the Magnificent Mario is going to be in a magnificent heap of trouble."

I went back to my work, and he followed me. Sure enough, he swiped another board and ran off. I caught him at the edge of the lawn, but instead of retrieving the board I grabbed Mario's elbows and held his arms behind his back.

"Okay, Mario. I don't know what's gotten into you, but it looks like I've got to take care of you before I can finish my trap." I gripped his arms so tightly that his shoulder blades stood out beneath his tanned skin, and his elbows almost touched behind him. I forced him to walk with me towards our cellar hatchway. He laughed and put up a halfhearted struggle, but I was stronger than him and I brought him down into the cellar without much effort.

I had a pair of real handcuffs in the cellar that I had inherited from my older cousin Gilbert who had grown beyond the age of cops and robbers. I steered Mario to the shelf where I kept them. While I held his elbows locked behind him with my left arm, I clicked one of the cuffs on his right wrist with my right hand.

A steel jack post stood in the middle of the cellar, and I dragged Mario over to it and cuffed his other wrist behind the post. All the while Mario was still laughing and struggling, but not too hard. "No handcuffs can hold the Magnificent Mario, Master of Escape," he said. "And when the Magnificent Mario escapes and strikes again, he'll run so fast you'll never catch him."

He had a point there. Although I was stronger than Mario, he could run faster than me. I figured I had caught him that last time because the board he was carrying hampered him. But maybe he really wanted to get caught.

"Well then, I'd just better chain you to that post a little better." I got a thick leather dog collar with a chain leash on it, buckled it loosely around Mario's neck, and tied the chain around the post behind him. It was really more for looks than anything, as I didn't want to run any danger of choking him. I also got a pair of leg irons that I had made for our games when we used the cellar as a dungeon.

"What do you say now, Mister Magnificent? The handcuffs, that collar, and these leg irons should keep you here until I finish my trap. I told you you'd be in deep trouble."

"Oh well," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "At least it's cooler down here than out in the sun."

I knelt at his feet and attached the leg irons to his ankles with the chain going behind the post. I had hammered the irons out of pieces of an old barrel hoop. Each shackle consisted of two semicircular halves with drilled flanges that were held together by nuts and stove bolts that I tightened with a screwdriver. The inside bolt on each shackle went through an end link of a 12-inch chain.

"Okay protector of skunks, lets see you get your butt out of that!" I stood up and slapped him hard on his behind, and he laughed. I left Mario chained to the post and went up into the yard to finish my work. All that remained was to cut the final board, assemble the top, and hinge it to the rest of the trap. Mario would only be chained to the post for ten or fifteen minutes.

I peeked in through a cellar window a couple of times to see how Mario was doing. The first time I watched him squirming around, trying to squeeze out of his handcuffs. Even though I had not cuffed him tightly, I knew Mario was engaged in a hopeless struggle because he had quite narrow wrists compared to the size of his hands. The second time I peeked in he just stood very relaxed against the post while his lips moved continually. I couldn't hear, but I think he was singing a song to himself.

When I finished the trap a short time later, I brought it down into the cellar. I unbolted the shackle from Mario's right ankle and untied the dog chain from the post, but left the collar still buckled around his neck. Then I got the keys from the shelf and unlocked one cuff to release Mario from the post, but I immediately cuffed his hands behind his back again. "Okay, I'm taking you outside now."

The leg irons dragged along behind Mario's left foot and clinked on the cement steps of the hatchway as I led him by the dog leash out into the light and heat of the lawn. There I had him lie on his stomach on the grass and I put the leg iron back on his free ankle, passing the chain around the one on his handcuffs and drawing his feet up close to his hands.

My Aunt Denise was in her back yard hanging out a load of washing. When she looked over and saw me chaining up Mario like that, she called out, "Hey Mario! What are you going to do if your nose itches?"

Mario laughed. "Don't say that!" he called back. "Now it probably will."

I returned to the cellar and locked the hatchway door from the inside so Mario couldn't get at the trap once I released him, and then I went up through the house and out the kitchen door to the yard.

I looked down at Mario as he lay quietly on his stomach on the lawn with his wrists cuffed behind his back and his feet drawn up behind him by the ankle chains. His head lay to the side facing me, but his eyes were closed as though he were sleeping. I knelt on the grass beside him and unbuckled the dog collar from his neck. "What's the matter?" I asked, pinching his nose. "Can't the Magnificent Mario escape?"

"Of course I can," he said, opening his eyes and grinning at me, "but it's too hot to make the effort. I think I'll just lie here till the chains rust away."

"Or until I let you go?"

"That would work too."

I took the chains off Mario's ankles, and then uncuffed his wrists. He tackled me to the ground immediately and grabbed the handcuffs. "You have thwarted the Magnificent Mario in his quest for justice," he shouted. "And now you must be vanquished!"

"You read too many comic books,said as I grappled with him lazily, for I was too hot and tired to wrestle with him strenuously. But Mario kept it up and shortly I felt a steel bracelet circle and lock onto my left wrist. Then he dragged my shackled hand behind me. At that point I gave in, and lying quietly on the grass I let Mario cuff my hands behind my back.

"Gotcha", he said as he buckled the dog collar around my neck. "I'm taking you down to the river where it's cooler." He helped me to my feet and then picked up the handcuff keys that I had dropped on the grass and put them in his pocket. He also got the leg irons and the screwdriver.

He led me by the dog leash as we walked across the back lawn to the path that led through the narrow strip of woods to the Lemon Fair. On our way we passed close by where Aunt Denise was just finishing hanging out her washing. "Look, Mrs. LaBrake," Mario called. Her head poked out between two hanging sheets.

"Like this." Mario scratched his nose. I held my cuffed hands out to my side so she could see them as I grinned a little and shrugged my shoulders.

She smiled and shook her head, then went back to her work. As she disappeared behind the sheets, she muttered something in French that I didn't quite catch, but it had "boys" and "devils" in it.

Mario led me down the trail by my leash. As I walked behind him with my hands cuffed behind my back, the damp earth in the woods soothed my bare feet, and soon the breeze that drifted off the Lemon Fair cooled my body.

We came to where our canoe lay overturned on the bank. It was a secluded spot hidden by the undergrowth and covered with thick grass: a place that smelled wonderfully of mud and river water and ostrich ferns.

I sat on the grass in the shade and Mario fastened one of the leg irons on my right ankle. I watched him bolt the two iron halves together, with one of the bolts going through the end of the chain. He tightened the bolts with the screwdriver, and the shackle was just as good as locked onto my leg. Without a tool, I could not get it off.

Then he pushed me over so I lay on my stomach and he shackled my other ankle, linking the chain over my handcuffs so my legs were drawn up behind me, just as I had done to him.

"There," Mario said. "The villain is in chains and Marvelous Mario, nemesis of all evil, has saved the world again."

"I thought it was the Magnificent Mario."

"That too." He flopped onto the grass on his back, knocked his Red Sox cap off, and stared up at the sky. Fair weather clouds drifted overhead and he pointed out the shapes of all the animals he had saved by capturing me. I rolled onto my side so I could look up at the clouds too.

I felt the chain from my leg irons tug down on my handcuffs. I was stockier than Mario and not as flexible, so my bent legs pulled harder against my wrists.

I lay there in the shade, collared and chained hand and foot, Mario's helpless prisoner. We talked for a while about the clouds, and then about baseball: Piersall and Parnell and Williams, and what the chances were of the Sox winning the pennant that year, (not very good if I remember rightly), and why every Yankee fan in New England was a traitor. Then we argued hockey. I was a Canadians fan and idolized Butch Bouchard, but he was all for the Bruins and claimed Schmidt was the greatest. Finally I noticed a tingling in my fingers. "I think my hands are going to sleep," I said.

Mario rolled over beside me and unlocked my handcuffs, then tumbled back to his former place on the grass. I had to use the screwdriver to get the leg irons off my ankles. We continued to lie in the cool shade by the river, sometimes talking, and sometimes in those long periods of silence that are never awkward between good friends. Then the noon whistle blew at the factory and we had to go home for dinner.

Those were innocent times, and we enjoyed our rough and tumble games where being held captive by a friend was fun and exciting. We knew deep down that although we were helpless, we were as safe as houses.

I think I can still get back into my head from that time, but the time itself has vanished.

David

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