On the night when it snowed enough to keep us out of school for a week, my older cousin Mason invited me to sneak out with him to sled. This was the first time Mason had ever invited me out to do anything. Usually when he was staying with his mom who lived across the street, I’d watch him and the Pyles boys from the big picture window in our living room tear through our yard on their dirt bikes. Grandma’d always fuss at them for not wearing helmets.
So, of course, when I asked Grandma if I could go with Mason, she said it was a big, fat N-O. And she’d know if I did, even if she was asleep or sitting on the couch with her Thurl Ravenscroft tapes blaring through the fuzzy speakers. I always wondered if Thurl reminded her of Grandpa, but her love for him was something else. What would Thurl Ravenscroft want you to do? she’d ask. If you be bad, he’s going to come straighten you out. I’d listen to his big baritone voice and it’d shake me straight down to my shoes, even sitting in my bedroom with the door closed.
On that night I needed advice from someone else other than Thurl Ravenscroft. So I went back to my bedroom, sat on my bottom bunk bed, and tried to see if I could find some.
First I asked Coach Tubby Smith, who stood at the front of my 1997-98 Kentucky Wildcats Men’s Basketball National Champions poster right behind his signature in royal blue Sharpie. Son, I imagined Coach Smith saying, mind y’grandma and stay in school.
Next I imagined God, or Santa, who probably caught wind of my prayers from God, and he said do you like that brand-new Nitecore EA81 flashlight your grandma got you for Christmas? The best AA-battery-powered flashlight ever invented? Bought with her hard-earned social security money? You want that to be under the tree this year?
Then I went to my collection of quotes from mine and Grandma’s favorite TV show, Petticoat Junction, written on Post-it notes and stuck on the wall above my dresser in rows of five. The only one that stood out to me that night was from good ole Uncle Joe Carson. It said “The trouble with kids these days is we pamper ‘em too much. No wonder so few of them grow up to be President.” I agreed with him but didn’t think he was of much help.
But none of that measured up to what Mason said when he called me. Don’t be a pussy, he had said, meet me out on your carport at 10:30. That didn’t make much sense to me. Had tried to make heads or tails of it since Bobby Luckett called me that and pushed me into the trough urinal at school. If I was a cat, then I’d have an easier time sneaking around or being on time. Maybe I should’ve tried to say get lost, buster! like Grandma told me.
I waited until Grandma tucked me in, told me goodnight, and walked down the creaky hallway to her bedroom. Then I got all bundled up in my blue Kentucky Wildcats down coat, ski pants, gloves, and boots. I stuffed my Nitecore EA80 flashlight in one jacket pocket, and spare AA batteries in the other. I also took a No. 2 pencil and the map of the backyard I had been drawing since Halloween. It covered all two-and-a-half acres. When Ms. Cassell had taught us about America being named after Amerigo Vespucci, a mapmaker, I thought that one of the most patriotic things a boy could do was draw himself a map. I figured it would come in handy.
I snuck down the hallway, boots in hand, so I didn’t make a lot of noise, through the living room and out the side door onto the carport. Mason was standing at the edge of the carport wearing a camouflage Carhartt jacket, holding two orange disc-shaped sleds. The same kind I used to go sledding with my dad down the hill at the edge of the backyard before he got sick. I had named it Papa Slope on my map.
I flicked on my Nitecore so we could see. Mason shielded his eyes with a puffy blue glove.
“Dude,” he said, squinting his eyes. “Turn that shit off.”
“Oh,” I said as I clicked it off. “Sorry.”
Mason shook his head. In the moonlight he looked even bigger than the day before. When I got up close to him, I thought I could even see the beginnings of a mustache under his lip.
“Are the Pyles boys coming to sled?” I asked.
“Those gaywads got grounded,” Mason said. “It’s just us tonight.” I felt a shiver run up my legs that wasn’t from the cold.
“Grab one,” he said, sliding me an orange disc sled and walking out toward the edge of the yard. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” I said, getting out my map. “Where are we going?”
Mason stopped and took a look at my map. I had each point of the yard plotted out, first in pencil to make sure I did it right, then in colored pencil to make it more like the ones in Rand-McNally.
“Here’s where we are,” I said, pointing to where the carport was marked with a rooster-topped weathervane, just like it had on the roof. I named it Car-ck-a-Doodle Port.
But Mason snickered. “We don’t need that pussy shit. We’re just going out there.” He pointed to the telephone pole that marked the end of our property, where the hill in the backyard met Highway 42. I called it Adair County Gas and Electric Tower, marked with a lightning bolt.
I followed him out past the two biggest oak trees in the yard—named Thurl Ravenscroft and Roy Orbison after Grandma’s two favorite baritones. Grandma even told me how she ranked them. It went
- Thurl Ravenscroft
- Roy Orbison
- Roy Orbison
So Thurl got the bigger one, of course. I had written that down on an index card and put it away in a cigar box. That was too important to put on a Post-it note.
From there only Mom’s Meadow stood between us and ACG&E Tower. It was the flat space between the highway and Papa Slope. It had no trees, so dandelions would spread all over it in the early summertime. But tonight it looked different. The snow drifts looked like waves on a big fluffy white ocean. Only Mason’s footsteps broke the perfect snow cover. I got out my map and scribbled in those drifts to remember them.
I named it Mom’s Meadow because of something Grandma said. When she first moved in after mom moved out to that special home in South Carolina, she told me never to walk out there barefoot because mom was liable to have thrown her dirty old needles out there. That didn’t make much sense to me because she never took her sewing kit outside.
The one time I went out there, I remembered following Dad out like I did Mason, dragging those orange sleds, Dad wearing his bright red Rumpke Waste and Recycling toboggan with a white fluffy ball I always tried to grab. Got it for driving a dump truck for ten years. Hardly ever took it off between October and March. He put it on my head before he sat me in the orange saucer and pushed me down the hill.
I held onto that toboggan all the way down, even as powdery snow flew in my face. But when I got to the bottom of the hill, a gust took it right out of my hand. Dad never got mad at me much, but that night he had a hard time telling me that’s alright, son.
When we got to ACG&E Tower, Mason sat his sled down.
“Hey Mason,” I said as I sat mine down, pointing at the jagged lines marking the bottom of Papa Slope on my map. “Make sure you ditch the sled before you get to the bottom or you’ll run into the treeline and that rusty old barb wire fence.”
“Whatever,” Mason muttered. “It’s not like I’m going to piss my pants over it or anything.”
But to my surprise he didn’t get on the sled. Instead, he knelt down at the top of Papa Slope and started packing scoops of wet snow into snowballs.
“Why’re we making snowballs, Mason?” I asked. We didn’t need snowballs for sledding. But maybe I had been doing it wrong all along, like Bobby Luckett always said to me.
“Give me a hand,” Mason said in that same voice he did on the phone, slapping his hand hard on my shoulder. “Make some.” I knelt down and got to work.
In a couple of minutes, we had made about ten good ones apiece. And they were good snowballs. The snow was wet and they packed together hard as a rock.
“Okay,” Mason said, barking orders like a coach. “Watch me. And get down.” I did just that.
We waited until a pair of headlights peeked around the corner of Highway 42. Mason grabbed a snowball.
“Just watch me,” Mason said. “Wait until it passes the oak trees.”
“You mean Thurl Ravenscroft and Roy—”
“Shush,” Mason said. “I need to concentrate.”
When the car sped past Thurl Ravenscroft and Roy Orbison, Mason launched a snowball like he was pitching in the World Series. I heard it smack lightly against the bumper as the car sped off.
Mason fell over in the snow laughing and clutching his side. He was laughing so hard I thought he’d start rolling down the hill. I wondered why the heck he wanted to bring those sleds in the first place if this was what we were going to do.
“Was that cool or what?” he said.
“Yeah,” I slowly said. “That was pretty cool indeed.”
“Your turn,” Mason said as he slapped a snowball in my hand. It was hard, heavy, and wet. I let it sit there for a moment. It got even wetter sitting in my glove, and it started to dampen my palm.
“What about Grandma?” I asked.
“C’mon,” he said. “She’s all the way over there asleep, dumbass.”
Another pair of headlights appeared around the highway. The beams were bright and high, and the engine rumbled—I knew it was a truck for sure. Mason put his arm on my back and pushed me down into the snow. I clutched the snowball tighter, hoping it would fall apart and I’d just have fluff to throw at the highway.
“Wait for it,” Mason said.
Instead of looking at the car, I stared at Thurl Ravenscroft the oak tree, standing tall and watching over the yard. I heard the sound of a winter wind blowing through its treetops in a deep, baritone groan.
“Throw it!” Mason cried, and he gave my arm a little push. That extra push made the snowball come out of my hand high, making a perfect arc, just like how Coach Tubby Smith taught Jamaal Magloire to shoot a perfect hook shot. And like a Coach-Tubby-Smith-taught hook shot, it fell right on its target—the front windshield of the truck.
Brakes slammed and kicked up brown water and salt from the road.
“Shit!” Mason cried.
“Shit!” I cried. It was the first time I had said something like that unprompted by a PG-13 movie.
“Sleds,” Mason said. “Let’s go.”
We each grabbed an orange disc and took off down Papa Slope, Mason in front, me in the back.
“You goddamn kids!” a deep voice trailed from the top of the hill. Then I heard footsteps crunch in the deep snow down toward us.
The bottom of the hill started approaching fast. Snow and cold air brushed my face making it hard to keep my eyes open. But the woods and that barb wire fence was up ahead, and Mason was still riding hard.
“Mason!” I cried. “Ditch your sled!”
“What?”
There wasn’t enough time to explain why. So I ditched my sled—not to the side like dad and I would—but I lunged forward and tumbled into Mason, knocking him off his. We both rolled to a wet, chilly stop at the bottom of the hill. The orange discs raced the rest of the way down the hill, then slid underneath the barb wire and into the woods.
“Get back here!” the guy screamed as he ran down the hill, his deep voice now echoing through the trees right in front of us.
We got up and I led Mason over to where the rusty barb wire was mangled enough for us to crawl under. After that, I wasn’t sure where to go. This was unmapped territory. I looked over the area and quickly spotted one of our orange sleds sitting by an embankment dropping down to a snow-filled creek bed.
“Mason,” I whispered. “Come on.”
I went down the muddy embankment first, shoving my snow boots into the steep ground and climbing down it like it was a muddy cliff, getting mud all up and down the front of my blue coat and ski pants. There’d be no way Grandma wouldn’t notice that. Mason came down next. He tried to take to the embankment like it was a particularly steep downhill slope. He wound up sliding on his butt all the way down to the bottom.
“Hey!” the man screamed as we hid up against the muddy wall. Then I heard the rusty fence creak and boots thump in the snow closer into us. Mason bunched up closer to me.
“Come out here!” he cried again. “You little shits!”
I was still. The wind rumbled just like Thurl Ravenscroft did from my room. A gust of wind blew through the treetops, and all of them let out this baritone groan that made my hands shake. Maybe this was what Grandma was talking about. Maybe Thurl was going to come teach me a hard lesson.
But as I started to accept that, I smelt something odd. Mason was shuddering in his thick camouflage coat, and the wetness in his eyes wasn’t because of the cold. And I smelt something stale and warm coming from his pants.
The footsteps stopped in front of the embankment. Snow fell right in front of us, and the twigs above us crunched. Then the man screamed something in a voice that would shake even Thurl Ravenscroft to the bone, with such colorful language that Roy G. Biv had nothing on him. I held my breath, and held a finger up to Mason to shush and quit his whimpering.
We waited for what seemed like forever. The man grumbled and cussed, but eventually the footsteps went away. After a while I climbed up out of the embankment. The man was nowhere to be found. There was only the cold snow, the wind groaning through the trees, and the smell of Mason’s pee.
Mason looked to be with wide eyes and a white face. “What do we do?” he said.
I reached into my pocket and flicked on my Nitecore EA80. Its 2,000-lumen beam lit up the branches and treetops, and made the snow on them gleam. It looked like we were lying under a Christmas tree.
“Go get the sleds, I reckon,” I said.
I helped Mason up and he went to grab the other sled that had slid a little further into the woods. I grabbed the sled closest to me and took this moment to catch my breath and draw a new spot on my map. I pulled it out and the dulled tip of my No. 2 Pencil hovered over a spot just beyond the barb wire fence. I had no idea what to call it. So, I watched Mason come back dragging the sled and kicked some snow around with my boots.
Then on the ground where I kicked, I saw something bright red. Too bright red to be any kind of mud. I reached down, grabbed, and pulled.
My dad’s red Rumpke toboggan. The thing was still red like a fire engine, even though it was mostly muddy and worn. It looked like the edges of it had been chewed away by some possum. The white fluffy ball on top was now only a couple of dirty, tattered strings. Still, I held it tight in my hands and shoved it into my chest.
I decided to name that spot Rumpke Hollow. I wiped my cold eyes with the dirty toboggan.
We put the sleds up, and I went back home. The guy screaming woke Grandma up, and she was standing in the doorway with her arms crossed so hard I could see the veins that weren’t from old age. She took me to my bedroom and spanked me on the butt ten times with the yardstick. What would Thurl Ravenscroft think? And I sat down and thought about the question, like Grandma would want me to. Then, after Grandma went back to bed, I decided to look up Thurl Ravenscroft on my Encarta 97 Encyclopedia on our Packard Bell computer and found he had died just last year.
Originally from Bedford, Kentucky, Beaumont Rand holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he studied with Pinckney Benedict. His fiction has appeared in Switchblade, and he works as a videographer, podcaster, and narrative audio producer. His background in storytelling extends to longform fiction and sound-rich nonfiction, with one of his shows, Brain Buster Boys, running for over 100 episodes with a peak listenership of 2,000 per week.
**Featured image credit: Ekaterina, Pexels