Excerpt: A Simpler Time

June 15, 1973

“Let go, Artie!”

“SAY IT!”

“Can’t…breathe!”

“SAY IT!”

“Oscar the Grouch…”

“Go on!”

“Better…”

“Better than who?”

“Big Bird!”

One quick noogie later, I gave my little brother Jeff a brusque shove onto the patchy front lawn of our family’s ranch house. “Don’t forget it!”

Three sluggish raps through a navy blue-trimmed window pane clued us in that we were making too much noise. It was a little after ten in the morning. Our stepfather, Simon, just started working graveyard shifts at Walt Disney World. That meant he worked all night and slept through the day, which wasn’t such a bad deal during the school year. But Mom worked too and school was out. Mom had taken us to Mrs. Willett’s house for babysitting for a couple of years, but we’d managed to get her fired a few weeks back. Mom couldn’t afford day care on top of all the other family expenses. So, Simon was stuck with the thankless task of trying to keep an eye on us while also trying to get some rest.

“They’re just going to run around and make noise all day,” Simon complained. “I’ll never get to sleep.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Mom said, “but no one else will take them after what happened with Mrs. Willett.”

“Why? That was all HER fault.”

“Simon, the cops got involved.”

It all sounds very sinister, I guess, and maybe you want to know more about what happened with the old widow on Hamilton Street. I’ll get around to it. Right now, it’s almost summer and we’re rough-housing in the front yard over Big Bird and Oscar.

I was in second grade at Bouganville Elementary School. Jeff had just finished kindergarten. And we had that same stupid Sesame Street argument - or some variety of it - at least once a week.

Jeff sat cross-legged on a sand patch surrounded by yellowed turf and crabgrass, rubbing the back of his neck. He was a chubby-cheeked kid with curly brown hair. Mom liked to put him in dresses when he was just a toddler. She‘d run him around the TG&Y in a stroller and people would gush about what a cute daughter she had. It cracked me up. Jeff just loved the attention. “You liked Big Bird last time.” He glowered at me, but kept his voice low.

“That was last week,” I said, shrugging.

He rolled his eyes. “What now?”

“Not sure.” It was a nice day, for Florida - a humid Friday morning under blue skies, the sun not quite ready to broil us and the inevitable drenching afternoon showers still hours away.

About this time, we heard the faint squeal, hiss, and growing rumble of a white Blue Bird bus as it turned onto Stevens Street from Clendening Road. Many of the windows had been opened, so we could hear the excited chatter and laughter of kids our age inside. Jeff cocked his head, brow furrowing. “School’s in?”

“Don’t think so.”

The bus creaked to a stop by the battered black mailbox in front of our yard. Dark blue letters stenciled on the side read: BERNADETTE BAPTIST CHURCH. With a hiss, the door slid open. A gaunt, gray-haired man with sparkly blue eyes wearing a white shirt and powder blue slacks came to the bottom step of the bus. “You boys goin’ on the picnic?” he asked.

Sure, Mom had warned us never to talk to strangers. But he seemed nice enough, and that bus full of kids made me think he wasn’t some kind of crazed killer who might harm Jeff or me. So, I stepped toward the bus and crossed my arms. “Picnic?”

“That’s right,” the bus man replied. “Jellystone Campground. Putt-putt golf too!”

Jeff got up, brushing sandspurs off his shorts, and wandered over to stand next to me. “Artie?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re going, right? I’m hungry.”

If we stuck around Stevens Street, we might get lunch around two before Simon left for work. Lunch would be corn flakes, Cool Whip, and chocolate syrup on Wonder Bread. I’m pretty sure Simon just liked getting us hopped up on sugar in time for Mom to come home.

“We gotta eat,” I agreed.

So, with that, I led my impressionable little brother onto a bus full of total strangers. Most of them were kids, though. They didn’t seem like monsters, either.

Jeff and I settled into a green-upholstered seat near the back of the bus. It smelled like cotton candy and sweaty socks. A dark-haired, buck-toothed kid across the aisle wore a green JESUS SAVES T-shirt. He stared right at me, picking his nose. He shrugged and then went back to looking at the back of the seat in front of him, which had been plastered with an IMPEACH NIXON bumper sticker. Actually, the sticker read EACH IXO, as someone had tried with great determination to scrape the stubborn proclamation off the metal. But I recognized the red letters on the white background, having seen them all over the place in the last year or so. The Watergate hearings on Capitol Hill had been a big deal in the spring. The networks interrupted Mrs. Willett’s soaps to show the real-life political spectacle. She resented the intrusion into her routine. I, on the other hand, found it damned fascinating television - even better than Tennessee Tuxedo and Underdog.

The door hissed closed. The bus man settled back into the driver’s seat, looked into the mirror so he could smile at the passengers, and said, “Off to Jellystone!”

“With our pic-a-nic basket!” all the kids cheered in unison. Well, not all the kids. Jeff and I just kind of peered disdainfully at each other, our recent animosity forgotten in the face of a common enemy: Total conformity.

In that moment, I considered popping open the emergency door in the back of the bus, taking Jeff by the hand, and hopping onto the potholed pavement in front of our house. Then my stomach growled.

“Putt-putt golf and a picnic,” I told Jeff. “It’ll be fun.”

The driver slid the bus into gear. The wheels started rolling. Too late to turn back now.

Across the aisle, the JESUS SAVES kid wiped his gooey index finger on the mangled bumper sticker. He caught my grimace. “You don’t go to Bernadette,” he said.

“Nope.”

“It’s kinda for church kids.”

Jeff volunteered: “We don’t go to church.”

“No shit?”

“No shit,” Jeff confirmed. My eyes got a little wide. I twisted to look over at him. I’d never heard him cuss before.

“My folks signed me up for this dumbass picnic three weeks ago. I didn’t know Pastor Roddy would stop for people.”
“Pastor Roddy?” I asked. “The guy with the blue pants?”

“Yeah.”

“It surprised us too. I’m Art Tunny.” I jerked a thumb over my shoulder at my brother. “He’s Jeff.”

The kid in the T-shirt introduced himself as Hank Brown. “You got money?”

I shook my head. We’d lost our meager allowances after the Mrs. Willett incident. “Not a dime.”

“Shit,” Hank replied. “Well, the picnic’s free, but the putt-putt costs a little.”

Jeff pouted. I shrugged. The bus turned from Ross Road onto State Road 50, westbound. “Guess we’ll just watch.”

“Like hell,” Hank said. “I’ve got enough. I’ll cover you guys.”

That got a big grin out of Jeff. I sighed. “Well, thanks.”

“It’s cool. Where do you go to school?”

“Bouganville,” I said.

Hank chuckled. “Boogerville!” Under the circumstances, it seemed impolite to suggest it was a bad idea for him, of all people, to make noises about nose-picking, so I kept my mouth shut. “I go to Orange.”

“Orange you glad?” Jeff asked.

Hank smirked. “Hell, yeah. Beats Boogerville with a stick. What do your folks do?”

“Mom works for a guy who makes malls,” I said.

“Dad works for Mickey Mouse,” Jeff said, beaming.

I bristled. “His name’s Simon. He’s not our Dad. He’s our stepdad. He married Mom last year. Our Dad makes the phones work.”

Jeff frowned. “I only want one Dad. Simon.”

“My Mom stays home,” Hank said. “Dad sells cars.”

“No stepdad?” I asked.

“Nah. My folks like each other okay. Why’d your folks split?”

I shrugged. “They didn’t like each other okay.” This was putting it mildly. I remembered the bitter arguments over money - he’d spent a lot on other women while he was sleeping around. It was money that should have put food on the family table and clothes on his children. After the divorce, he was supposed to pay child support. We hadn’t seen any of that money so far. Mom had tried getting the judge to put Dad in jail for delinquency, but His Honor reasoned: “If I put him in jail, he’s no more likely to pay child support, now is he?” The courts didn’t do so much for mothers in divorce cases back then.

“Still see your Dad?” Hank asked.

“Sometimes for dinner,” I said. “Sometimes for the weekend. It’s a court thing. Judge said.”

“Dad’s a jerk,” Jeff said, crossing his arms. “The judge is a jerk too.”

I really couldn’t argue either point, but one thing Jeff could never quite comprehend was the bond that I shared with my biological father, even if he was the world’s greatest asshole. Jeff was barely two-years-old when Dad and Mom divorced. Back then, I was four going on five. The affairs started after Jeff was born, so Dad spent less and less time at home. He never really connected with Jeff. So, when Simon came along, it was much easier for Jeff to forge a father-son bond than it was for me.

I didn’t like what my father had done to my mother or our family, but he told me that he loved me and I loved him, so that was that. I wouldn’t let some new guy just walk into my life and take his place. I couldn’t.

“Sounds rough,” Hank said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

The bus rumbled on.