Stretch Armstrong

“Following the completion of its investigation of organized crime, the committee concluded in its report that Carlos Marcello, Santos Trafficante, and James R. Hoffa each had the motive, means, and opportunity to plan and execute a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.”

– The Congressional Committee on Assassinations JFK Assassination Report

I woke up with PawPaw by my side, as usual, and hopped off the couch and scurried into the bathroom and came out dressed. PawPaw was waiting for me by the kitchen table with a mischievous smile, and staring at me with his good eye, the one that wasn’t a glass eye.

I never thought about that eye until after PawPaw would pass away in 2004; that’s when Craig would tell me that at his funeral some of PawPaw’s old navy buddies told him PawPaw lost an eye on a navy destroyer during WWII, though they with different versions of how he lost it. Some said he was working on the engines down below when something exploded and punctured his eye, and some say he ran into something while swiping cans of beer from the officers’s mess hall to share with his buddies down below (something they all said he did probably once a week while they were deployed in the South Pacific). Whatever happened, everyone knew that after he lost an eye he was discharged and moved to Baton Rouge to do what he loved: take care of trees. His right eye was usually slightly bloodshot from all the tree pollen and probably from the stuff that was stronger than Pine Sol he used to clean toilets at Glen Oaks High School, and that light acorn-brown pupil changed size depending on if we were walking in the sun or relaxing under the shade of an oak tree. But the other eye remained white even after a long day at Glen Oaks, and the light pupil never changed sizes or seemed bothered by wind or pollen. When springtime pollen filled the air with yellow tinted dust, he squinted a bit with his good eye and looked exactly like Popeye the sailor man, especially when PawPaw smoked and chuckled and mumbled like the golden age version of Popeye, the one who puffed on his pipe and could fight the big bully Brutus thanks to the power of spinach.

For all I knew back then, PawPaw could have been the same Popeye on our tiny black and white TV. That would have made sense, because Big Daddy was on TV practically every time someone turned on the news, where he also seemed like a tiny black and white version of himself, who was, in person, someone who towered over everyone else in a room the way Brutus was always be the biggest one on the small screen.

When PawPaw looked at me from beside the kitchen table that day, he was holding an unfiltered Camel in one hand and his dented tin-colored Zippo in the other. His smoothly shaven mouth was puckered out, ready to receive the cigarette that he was moving slowly towards his lips.

I shouted: “Hold on, PawPaw! It’s backwards again!”

I rushed over and reminded him that side with the little camel printed on it went in his mouth, not near the flame. He looked at it and chuckled and said I was right, flipped it around and into his mouth with the little camel poking just beyond his lips, and asked: “Like d’is?”

I said yes and he thanked me and told me how smart I was. He used one hand to flick his Zippo open and strike a flame as smoothly as Brian the one handed drug dealer could roll half dollar roll across his fingers. The scent of Old Spice soon mixed with the fumes of lighter fluid, and then the smell of unfiltered Camels completed the Holy Trinity that was PawPaw on weekends.

“You wanna walk wit’ me to d’a store and get some milk and cookies, Lil’ Buddy?” he asked.

Of course I did! I asked if we could climb trees today.

PawPaw said “sho’ we can,” tucked his Zippo into that little pocket in his jeans made for it, and reached down and took my hand.

We walked out the carport door and strolled down the grass and thistles and blackberry bushes along Hooper road. As usual, cars zoomed past so PawPaw smoked with his right hand, the one closer to the blacktop, and walked between the road and me; he did that so I could use my free hand to swat at the thistles and try to snag grasshoppers that jumped off of them and flapped their wings with the thhppt-thhppt sound like I made when riding Brian’s motorcycle.

The walk was longer than it took to smoke a cigarette. When I finally saw my big stately oak tree all covered in Spanish grey-green moss, I surged forward and PawPaw let go of my hand so I could run towards the branch with a natural swing on it.

That stately oak must have been 150 years old, and without anything nearby but the intersection of Hooper and Plank Roads. It was across from the convenience store, and the sprawling undulating branches reached out and covered an area just as big as the convenience store and parking lot on the other side of Plank. Debbie said it looked like a giant octopus, with tentacles reaching away from its trunk; Wendy said it looked like a giant with many arms, and that the swing I liked was the giant curling an arm up to lift me to the sky like Brian curled his arm to heave me onto his motorcycle. I saw it as a tree, just like all the trees PawPaw took care of, except this one was mine and it had a swing and I was finally going to climb it all by myself that day.

I reached the swing and reached up with both hands and grasped the deeply grooved skin of the gentle giant octopus. I pulled and I pulled, jumped up as much as I could and pulled some more, but I couldn’t get into the swing and the giant didn’t reach down to lift me. I pulled and was about to jump off my tippy-toes again when I felt PawPaw’s hands grasp my hips and give me just enough boost that I made it that time. I crawled into the swing and draped my legs over and bounced up and down 30 feet from the trunk of the tree; there was just enough leverage that my weight bounced me up and down slowly, as if the gentle giant were rocking me to sleep.

But I wasn’t content just sitting there. The wavy branch aimed upwards towards the trunk, beckoning me to follow it up higher, like Jack could climb his beanstalk all the way to the clouds. I scooted like a catterpillar more than climbed, and got higher and higher until PawPaw said: “Okay, Lil’ Buddy, d’at far enough. Don’t want you goin’ so high I can’t see you with my good eye.”

I stopped and looked down and I was taller than PawPaw now. He was looking up at me and I was looking down at him like he did to me when I woke up on the couch. I was so happy all I could do was laugh. I reached over to a patch of moss and yanked it off and held it up to my face like a an old man’s beard. PawPaw reached over and got himself a grey beard, too. We laughed and laughed like two old friends with a day off and nothing to do but play.

After a minute of laughing, PawPaw said we needed to scoot over to the store to get milk and cookies, that MawMaw would be making breakfast and expecting us and the milk. I said sure and dropped my beard down to him and tried to spin around, but frooze in place when I realized how high above the ground I was and how harder it was to go down than up.

“You gonna be fine, Lil’ Buddy,” PawPaw said. His arms were raised high and he said, “I got you in case you fall. Go ‘head and try.”

I tried and I tried, and every inch down seemed to take a year. PawPaw followed me along the way with his hands held in the air and his good eye locked on me. I made it to the swing and the gentle giant bounced me up and down a few times to congratulate me for making it on my own. I hopped down into PawPaw’s arms, accepted my beard from him, and took his hand and walked with him across Plank road to the store.

We reached the big glass door and I saw the man behind his counter who would sell us cookies and milk. I let go of PawPaw’s hand and put my beard back on and held it there with one hand and pulled the long metal handle the other. PawPaw helped, and the door whooshed open and air conditioning blew my beard a bit.

The man looked up and said: “Hey there, Mr. Ed. Who you got with you today?”

“It’s me!” I said and whipped off my beard so he could see.

“Sure is!” he said. “I didn’t recognize you with that beard.”

I put it back on to show him how easy it was. He was impressed.

“You’re growing so much,” he said, “I thought maybe you could grow a beard now. You never know!”

I beamed. Everyone said I was getting bigger. People that knew Daddy or Big Daddy said I’d be as big as them one day.

“Pack of Camels?” the man asked PawPaw.

“Yes, s’uh,” PawPaw said. “Lil’ Buddy, you wanna get da’ milk and cookies?”

I said yes, s’uh and ran over to the food refrigerator and picked up a half gallon of Blue Bell milk in a plastic jug and a tube of cookie dough with the little elves living in a tree on its label. PawPaw went to the beer fridge and got a six-pack of Miller pony bottles. The Camels were waiting for us atop the counter. The man split the bags and gave me the one with the cookies and PawPaw two, one for the beer and one for the milk, as if he knew we’d be walking back and it’s more comfortable to be balanced by carrying one bag in each hand.

“Mr. Jason,” the man said. “I hope you and Mr. Ed have a wonderful day.”

For a black man, he spoke like he was a college guy or something; it stood out because he was the most articulate man I had ever met. I found myself wanting to talk like him.

“Thank you, s’uh,” I said. “I hope you have a wonderful day.”

He thanked me and said he would. We walked away and I think I pushed the glass door open all by myself, though PawPaw probably had a hand in that. I looked both ways before crossing Plank to keep PawPaw safe with his hands full, and dropped my beard off with the tree so it could grow some more.

MawMaw was waiting when we got home. Her hair was in that tall beehive and her bright ruby red lipstick left some shugga on my cheeks but none on PawPaw’s, as if that nonstick skillet kept them off. After scrubbing my cheeks and eating pancakes with lots of Aunt Jamima syrup I washed up again and was checking my cheeks in the big hallway mirror when a giant thumped the carport door and said: “Hey Mr. Ed.”

I knew that sound, it was Kieth, Daddy’s little brother. He opened the door and ducked his head and twisted his shoulders to step inside. He took one look at me and said: “Wow, Jason! Look at how big you got.”

Keith looked just like Big Daddy, with wavy strawberry blonde hair and wide open sky blue eyes. Like Big Daddy, Kieth was always smiling. addy looked like Mamma Jean, with narrow dark brown eyes and a perpetual scowl. They all said the same things, but when Keith said them the room lit up as if he were sunshine coming through on a cloudy day.

“Boy,” he said, flexing his bicep. “Show me how big your muscle got.”

I flexed like Kieth and he practically fell backwards in shock.

“Boy!” he exclaimed. “We’re gonna have to get you to load that wood for us.”

PawPaw said I’d be helping that day, and MawMaw said she’d have cookies waiting for when we took a lunch break. We crawled into the bucket seat of PawPaw’s big Ford F150 with me in the middle. Keith was so big he blocked the view out the window. The back of the truck was piled so high with tree branches from yesterday’s work that I couldn’t see out the back, either. The engine roared to life, and PawPaw backed up and crunched the gravel and took off slowly so that none flew up. It was only about half a football field to the barn and fishing pond where we burned wood.

PawPaw drove through the wide opening that was framed by old rusted metal square bars; the equally rusted gate with was leaning against one of the square frames, but the gate was made from round bars welded horizontally, like a ladder leading up to the same clouds Jack climbed to on his beanstalk. We parked just inside the gate, and Keith did all the heavy lifting of moving logs while PawPaw grabbed branches and let me carry a few sticks to help. The burn piles had been added to every Sunday that month, so they were already big. PawPaw was a little wiry man, only 5’2″ or so, and Keith looked like a giant next to him, especially carrying those tree logs over his shoulder and effortlessly tossing them onto the burn piles, where they’d crash with the force of a 15,000 pound bomb dropped in battle. PawPaw would lay his branches on the piles, and I’d toss my sticks like Keith heaved his logs.

PawPaw asked me to stand by the truck while he and Keith poured diesel, never gasoline, they both reminded me. Daddy’s big burn scar over his leg was from gasoline fumes, they said. You can pour diesel over a fire and it won’t blow up, but just to be safe I had better stand by the truck and wait.

Soon the piles were smoking heavily and blocking out the barn. Having several small piles was better than one big one because of that. They moved branches around to get the flames higher, and tossed more diesel where the thick green logs weren’t burning.

I was bored and couldn’t resist the siren call of that gate. I didn’t see myself as Jack with a beanstalk, I saw myself as Spider Man, the wall crawler who was on The Electric Company and did things like trap trick the abominable snowman by leaving snow-cones out for him to sit on, then flinging a web over him and sending him back to his home near Santa Claus. Spider man could climb bricks and steel, not just trees and beanstalks. And he was raised by his aunt and uncle to be a good person. I could climb like that, too, I knew.

Rusted metal round rung by rusted metal round rung I climbed higher and higher. I was higher up than I had been in the tree that morning, but with the ladder I could always get back down. I kept going. I was taller than Keith and I kept going. My right hand stretched and I grasped the top rung with a wide open palm that barely covered the rounded top; my left hand soon followed. But the rungs weren’t grooved like the tree, and the top few must have still had some slick paint or old oil on it, because when I moved a foot to step up I began to slide off. I held on with both hands and tried to kick my foot back onto the rung, but the other slid off instead, and I dangled there for a moment and felt entire gate began to tip over. My hands slipped next, and I fell from the sky like that giant at the end of the Jack and the Beanstalk story.

I hit the ground and the gate came crashing onto my head, crushing me under it.

I must have screamed loudly enough for everyone on Earth to hear me. I could see the Earth tilted sideways, like PawPaw was in the mornings, but I couldn’t move to right myself up. Then there was smoke and flames and nothing else to see.

Then I saw Keith leaping in giant leaps and blocking out even the smoke. He reached down and lifted that gate and tossed away like one of my twigs, and picked me up in his arms and shouted over my wailing screams:

“Ed! Ed! Come quick! It’s Jason! He’s hurt bad!”

I saw PawPaw leaping through flames and tunneling through smoke.

“Get in da’ truck!” PawPaw shouted, waving his hand at us. “Get in da’ truck! I’ll drive!”

Keith took two mighty steps to the truck and flung open the squeaky rusted door and stepped inside and slammed it shut.

“Oh God! Oh God!” he said. “Hurry Ed! He’s bleedin’ bad”

The vinyl seat’s old butt dimples filled with ponds of blood the color of the 82nd Airborne’s maroon beret, and rivers streamed down the cracks and cascaded over the edge and formed waterfalls splashing around Keith’s feet. The driver’s door opened, and PawPaw hopped in and slammed it shut and didn’t take time to say anything; the Ford followed his lead and roared to life and we whipped around so fast that the waterfalls curved in air and the ponds of maroon spread across the seat.

“Oh God! Oh God!” Keith said again. “Hurry Ed!”

But again, no one had to tell PawPaw to hurry. His little foot floored the gas pedal and that old Ford took flight. We took the turn onto Hooper road and sent a tidal wave of gravel flying behind us and were approaching the intersection of Plank at the speed of sound.

PawPaw clutched the steering wheel with his right hand and stuck half his body out the window and waved his bright white nose-blowin’ handkerchief up and down with his left.

“Get out da way! Get out da way!” He shouted again and again. With one hand straining against that mighty steering wheel with the force of God, he heaved and pulled the Ford in a screeching left turn through the sea of cars that had seemed to have parted to make way for us. We took the turn onto Plank Road so fast that all my blood flew from pools in the bucket seat and filled Keith’s floorboard.\

I don’t remember what happened after I passed out. The next memory I have is waking up with PawPaw by my side, sideways as usual, but in a chair and with his head bent to one side and his eyes closed.

I leaned up and the world straightened. PawPaw’s eyes opened. A spider web of red veins was stretched across the white of his right eye; the left was still white and had a perfectly round brown pupil undisturbed in the middle. His cheeks and chin were a wire brush of black and gray bristles. Dried salt was caked across his cheeks and pooled in the wrinkles under his right eye. He smelled only like Camels, though there was smell of something like Pine Sol but much more mild and coming from everywhere.

He smiled and said: “Hey d’er, Lil’ Buddy. ‘Bout time you woke up.”

He wiped his eye and blew his nose with a stiff and dirty white handkerchief that stood out against the white walls of the room and the bleached white sheets of my hospital gurney that smelled like mild Pine Sol.

I don’t know how long I had been unconscious, or what had happened. But I stayed in the hospital at least a few more days. Because I remember so much before passing out, I may have had a subdural hematoma, slow bleeding deep in the brain that gradually builds pressure and leads to unconsciousness; that would also explain why I don’t remember my time before waking up to see PawPaw beside my bed.

I was in Baton Rouge’s Our Lady of the Lake Medical Center, which I’d soon be disappointed to learn didn’t actually have a lake where I could go fishing, much less a lady who lived there. PawPaw got cleaned up again and must have gone back to work at Glen Oaks, but MawMaw took his place most days and PawPaw would usually be there after Saturday morning cartoons. He told me he’d take me fishing in the pond and maybe even a trip to False River as soon as I got home, which would be any day now he kept saying.

There was no lake for fishing, but Our Lady of The Lake did have a color television in the children’s recovery ward playroom, the first color screen I had ever seen, and it was a monster bigger than MawMaw’s refrigerator at home. It was so big they had to cut into the wall to hide the bulbous back, and the front was almost flush with the wall and had a screen bigger than the hallway mirror at home, the one where I could stand and see myself head to toe. The only mirror I had in the hospital was a handheld one a nurse carried around and looked just like what MawMaw kept in the bathroom by her hairspray. The nurses would use hers to show me my head wrapped in bandages like some kind of swami on TV, and again between changing bandages, when I was as bald as PawPaw’s jowls on a Saturday morning.

The TV was what stuck in my mind the most, though. I got used to my new look quickly and forgot I ever looked different. But the TV changed every few seconds, bright, full color flashing cartoons and commercials that kept my eyes and the eyes of all the other bandaged kids – even the one with one eye bandaged and the other who had eyes but had to be walked in and out because he couldn’t see – glued to the screen and locked on to the sounds emanating from it. The screen was so big that a gaggle of us kids in bandages could gather around and watch it all together and see cartoon characters practically as big as we were, except for that one kid who just sat there and stared blankly but seemed to enjoy all the sounds. A few kids just rode around on the foot-push scooters, the ones that moved like Fred Flinstone’s car, and I’d play with them when the television wasn’t on, but mostly I just sat on one of the scooters and watched cartoons with the blind kid and the kid with one eye.

I was at the misnamed Our Lady of the Lake long enough to watch cartoons with enough regularity to know that Saturday mornings were for the Super Friends, and I remember that’s where I saw Batman teach Robin and the other kids in the room and me a magic trick one time, and Aquaman taught us another on a different episode.

Batman showed us how to pretend to be strong by rolling up a newspaper and showing that Robin couldn’t break it, but then easily breaking it (the secret was that he somehow had a cup of water hidden behind him, and when Robin was busy trying to break the rolled up newspaper in half, Batman dipped his fingers into the water, and when he took the newspaper from Robin he made it wet and could break it; I never could get that to work, and never did figure out how to have a glass of water hidden behind me).

Aquaman showed something that I still use to this day, and is one of my favorite things to teach kids; he sat at a table and made an empty glass disappear under a crunched-up piece of paper, like a stiff napkin or newspaper (the secret was to start by saying you’d make a quarter disappear from under the glass, then cover the glass with paper and whack the top and lift it to see; everyone would look at the quarter, and Aquaman used that as misdirection to let the glass fall into his lap; when he put the paper back over the coin to try again, it was already gone but he pretended it was still there, and then slapped the top and showed that the glass went through the table instead of the coin; later in life, I’d then pretend to pick up the quarter, but send it sliding into my lap, and hold up my fingers and pretend I was holding a coin, then make it go through the table, too.)

I also saw the first commercial I remember, one for Stretch Armstrong that showed a bunch of happy kids playing with Stretch and pulling him like an exercise band. According to Wikipedia, that would have been 1976, the year Stretch Armstrong was released and marketed heavily on Saturday morning cartoons. At that time The Fantastic Four was popular and had that one serious guy who stretched and was boring; and there was Plastic Man, the funny stretching guy with sunglasses. Kids in the cartoon stretched Stretch Armstrong and had so much fun playing together and getting big muscles from the exercise that I couldn’t help but want one more than anything I had ever wanted before. I told MawMaw and PawPaw that every time they visited, and again after I got home and I saw the same commercial on our black and white TV the size of a dinner plate and with rabbit ears instead of the hospital’s cable system. The commercials weren’t as interesting on our TV, but the image had been bored into my brain so deeply that just hearing the name Stretch Armstrong and seeing the tiny black and white kids stretching something in their little hands made my mind’s eye see the glory of owning my own Stretch Armstrong.

But it never happened, and soon I was focused on other things. A few weeks after I returned to PawPaw’s, my hair had mostly grown back, and I was at the kitchen table with PawPaw’s old oil stained and weathered brown leather tool belt he gave me, adding a Lone Ranger cap-firing six shooter pistol to one side, like how that police officer had carried his, and some of PawPaw’s tools to the other side to make my own Lone Range Batman Utility Belt. The baggy leather pocket PawPaw used to hold handfuls of nails held a hefty plastic cup MawMaw gave me after I broke a few of her glasses practicing Aquaman’s magic trick and dropping the glass to the floor instead of catching it in my lap.

Scattered across the table was a scatted mess of different sized drill bits, screws, and nails. I had shown PawPaw the 1972 Kennedy half dollar with the square hole in the head that Brian had given me, and he told me I was so smart I could probably figure it out if I played with all the nails he used to keep in that loose leather pocket. MawMaw had bought me some play dough from the fancy toy store in Cortana Mall next door to the Dillards where she bought her lipstick, and the different colored canisters were arranged around my workbench. PawPaw said all of that should help me figure out how to make a square hole. The drill bits fit inside the hole, but when I shoved them into flat cookie-sized pieces of playdough, the holes were always round.

I shoved a nail about the size of a pencil through the dough, and it made a round hole, too, though PawPaw had said it was the magic nail that could make a square hole. He showed me that the hole wasn’t perfectly square, it was more like two squares that met in the middle, but that only confused me because I wasn’t old enough to keep both sides of the coin in my mind at the same time; I could only see one side at a time, and could only think about one way to go through the coin. The tip of that big nail was squared off, shaved flat to make four sides that met at a pyramid shaped point, and I clenched it in my hand like holding a pencil, and would probably would have slid that pyramid into the half dollar and seen that it stopped with the tip just poking through the other side and filling a square perfectly, but Linda called my name and asked a favor.

“Jason,” she said. She was by the stove and holding one of her cigarettes, the all-white kind with a filter like Debbie and Wendy smoked. It was unlit. Ingredients for pancakes were behind her, and the pot of coffee had a bunch of brown-stained white mugs bunched around it.

“Would you help me, please?” she said. “Take this to PawPaw in the bathroom.”

She put the cigarette in her mouth facing the right way the first time, which was remarkable because PawPaw never seemed to get that right and I always had to correct him, and lit it and took a quick drag and held it by the filter with the smoking red end pointed at the ceiling. I hopped off my chair and took it from her, handling it as carefully as she did.

Linda was my big sister, or at least it felt that way. I had known her since some time the first few weeks I was born. She was Linda White, PawPaw and MawMaw’s only daughter, and Wendy’s best friend in high school. When the daycare center a few miles down Hooper road from PawPaw’s house called one evening, saying Wendy hadn’t picked me up and had left Linda’s number as my emergency contact, she told PawPaw and he dropped whatever he was doing and rushed to get me. I had lived there ever since. I had my own room for a while, but then Linda and Craig Black moved in and she had the baby and they took her room back and the living room became mine, the only room in the whole house with a television and it was all mine (though everyone said I was nice to share and I did that all the time). Craig and Linda would sit around that TV with me and PawPaw and MawMaw and hold the baby and joke say we all lived in a Black and White household.

“Be careful,” Linda said. “PawPaw’s feeling sick and has been in the bathroom all morning. Take that to him and see how he’s doing.”

I said I would, and I walked away focused on holding the cigarette upright and moving slowly enough so that the smoke went straight up instead of into my face; after lots of practice I was becoming a professional cigarette walker. I crept towards the bathroom, focused like a tight-rope walker spinning a plate on a stick while balancing high above the crowd.

I saw myself in the hallway mirror and stopped and faced full-on with the cigarette held in my right hand. With my short spikey hair growing back, I looked just like crowned Statue of Liberty, illuminating the path to freedom with her flaming torch.

I held my torch high and rubbed my fuzzy head. I kept my gaze on my hair and rotated my head as far as I could, but I couldn’t see the scar. I reached back and it was still there; I could feel the skin that was exactly like PawPaw’s smooth face after he shaved, and I could feel the bumps along my scalp just like I could feel the ridges in his wrinkly face, but I couldn’t see back there. MawMaw had shown me the scar once, in the bathroom, by sitting me on the sink and using her nurse’s mirror and some kind of magic trick I could never figure out. It was huge, as big as my head, and I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t see it in the big hallway mirror.

PawPaw told me I would figure how to do that, too. He said I was super-smart now, that I was in the hospital so long because doctors put a second brain inside my head. I’d be twice as smart as adults if I practiced using both brains, the same way I’d get as strong as Keith if I exercised my muscles. I trusted PawPaw on that. My mind may not have been able to see both sides of the coin at the same time yet, but it could see the scar on the back of my head even when my eyes could not. PawPaw said it was the biggest cut the doctors had ever seen, and that it took 82 stitches to close up. MawMaw showed me what a stitch was by helping me sew up some of my torn clothes when I got home. We went back to the doctor and they made me go to sleep somehow and I woke up with them removed, and ever since then any time someone visted I showed them my sewn up jeans and said I had 82 stitches like that in the back of my head. Now I know now that PawPaw exaggerated; the scar still feels like his slick just-shaven face with the same bumps, but the 5-inch scar only has 11 bumps spaced every centimeter or so; many doctors – or nurses or physician assistants instead of doctors, in most hospitals I’ve seen since – would put stitches together every centimeter and pull the skin tightly, adding an extra stitch or two per bunch to reduce force on the skin holes and to add redundancy in case one tears, just like MawMaw had sewed PawPaw’s torn leather tool belts, so I probably only had 20 to 30 stitches, not 82. But I said 82 every time, and that may have been a subconscious influence on me when I would join the 82nd Airborne 12 years after getting those stitches out and trying to see the back of my head while standing there like four year old little Statue of Liberty.

I felt like a grown up. Without thinking about why I was doing it, I lowered the cigarette and rotated it and took a deep drag, as if I were taking a deep breath before jumping off PawPaw’s boat and into False River.

That was a bad idea.

I erupted into a fit of coughing and dropped the cigarette. It landed on the peach colored vinyl flooring beside a brown crater from when someone else had dropped a cigarette there long ago; the floors around the house were pot marked like that, and I knew MawMaw didn’t like them, so even though I was still coughing I acted faster than Flash and reached down and snatched up the smoking cigarette.

“D’at you, Lil’ Buddy?” PawPaw called from behind the bathroom door.

I couldn’t answer, I was coughing and trying to reclaim my Statue of Liberty pose. Linda came rushing over and kneeled down and asked if I were okay. I coughed and coughed, but smiled and nodded, and she laughed and told PawPaw I’d be fine. She pushed open the door for me and rushed back to the pancakes that were already making the house smell like burnt Bisquick; for all her care for the baby and cleaning up around the house, Linda never quite got the hang of making pancakes without burning them, probably because she always had to run away from the stove and see why someone was coughing or crying.

I walked up to PawPaw, who was sitting on the toliet with his pants around his ankles and was pale as the porcelin throne under him, more palid than I would have thought possible with my usually sprite PawPaw. I was covering my mouth with my left fist and still coughing a bit when I held him the torch of liberty.

“D’ank you, Lil’ Buddy,” he said as he took it; as if by magic, as he spoke to me his face transformed into the PawPaw I knew and loved, beaming a smile at me from eye-level, and holding the torch I had carried all the way from the kitchen. He took a drag and spoke without exhaling.

“But just because your PawPaw and Linda smoke don’t mean you should,” he said. “We not as smart as you. You want to grow up and be big and strong, you take care of d’at body.”

He exhaled smoothly while keeping his smiling gaze on me, and I nodded and coughed and didn’t need anyone telling me not to smoke; I felt worse than any of the doctor visits to take out my stitches. I didn’t understand why everyone else did that.

I shut the door and walked back to the kitchen table just as MawMaw walked in with a shopping bag from the convenience store. She rushed over to Linda and told her something about how to make pancakes that was probably to use more Crisco, walked over to me and gave me quick shugga on the cheek, and was putting cookie dough and milk in the refrigerator when we heard the roar of an engine that wasn’t like a truck’s thump-thump, it was more constant. Gravel crunched and then stopped and the roar cut off. MawMaw went to the carport door and peered through the small square window.

She frowned. “Hmmph!” She muttered.

“Ed,” she said in her loud serious voice. “You better come in here.”

She stepped to me and draped an arm over my shoulders an arm around my shoulders. PawPaw came out, tightening his thick leather belt around his baggy brown worker jeans, yanking hard to tighten them around his waist, which had probably shrunk from not eating for a couple of days while he was sick. He was wearing his hefty tree climbing boots, but he wasn’t in any condition to climb trees that day.

A fist pounded on the door. PawPaw opened the door and I hear Daddy’s voice boom: “Hi Mr. White. I’m here to see Jason.”

PawPaw said: “It ain’t your day, Ed.”

“I don’t care what day it is” Daddy’s voice says. “He’s my son. Let me see him.”

PawPaw said: “Ed, please. Next week. You know d’ rules.”

“Goddamnit, he’s my son, and I’ll see him whenever I want!”

“No, Ed. You know d’rules. Next week.”

“Bullshit!” Daddy boomed. “He’s my son and I don’t care what Judge Pugh said. He’s my goddamn son and I’m gonna see him.”

Daddy stepped into the carport door, but he didn’t have to duck his head or rotate his shoulders like Kieth did. But still, compared to PawPaw’s little frame he might as well have been a giant.

PawPaw was about to say something, but Daddy held up a fancy paper bags with a rope handle like the one from Cortana Mall, where MawMaw went to buy lipstick at Dillards and we passed that expensive toy store, the one where she bought me the wooden train set I kept in the living room; it had come in a bag just like the one Daddy was holding.

Daddy said: “Hey Justin – Goddamnit, I mean Jason – I brought you something. Do you want to see it?”

PawPaw looked at me and saw me looking at my dad with anticipation. He stepped aside. MawMaw lifted her arm and I rush to see what Daddy brought me.

Daddy stepped inside, between PawPaw and me, and kneeled down and looked at the bag and smiled at me sheepishly and said: “I think this is what you wanted.”

I peer in the bag, and it’s a Stretch Armstrong! I exclaim something and pull the unopened box out of the fancy bag. I see the green face and pointed ears and bald head, and instantly tell him it’s not Stretch. Stretch looks like Keith, with white skin and blonde hair and big muscles. This one’s Evil Stretch, the green villain with ears like Keebler elves; his ears were the giveaway, because though I had seen him green on the hospital’s big color TV, he was light black on our small box. It’s hard to hide those ears, no matter what color he was. Even though he’s Evil, I know he still stretches, so I’m happy and I fumble with the box, trying to open it. My dad says we can go to the mall next week and I can pick out what I want. I’m stoked! That means I’d have Stretch and Evil Stretch! He asks if I’d like that, and I exclaim yeah!

“Okay Ed,” PawPaw says. “Thank you for d’ gift, he says, but you know d’ rules. You gotta go.”

Daddy stood up and boomed: “Fuck the rules, Mr. White! We got court comin’ up, and I’m gonna get Justin – I mean Jason – back.”

PawPaw started to say something, but Daddy stepped towards PawPaw and poked his finger down and said: “He’s my son. I don’t care what the fuck Judge Pugh said.” His finger was thrusting with every syllable and emphasizing the curse words with extra strong jabs.

“He’s fucking dead and that serves him right,” Daddy said. “He never should have done what he did. Justin’s my son, and I’ll see him whenever I want.”

At that last word, Daddy poked his finger into PawPaw’s chest and PawPaw tumbled backwards. He caught himself against the deep freezer and balanced himself against it. MawMaw moved to his side, and said: “Ed, you got to go.”

My dad booms some explicatives that I don’t recall, and Linda and Craig walk into the kitchen and stand between MawMaw and PawPaw. Craig was almost as tall as Daddy, but thin as a twig. Daddy inflated his chest as if about to blow Craig over. Craig has his stoned eyes and stared at Daddy, but said nothing and did not move. My dad brushed Craig aside like a blade of grass blocking a path, and reached down and grabbed my right arm and yanked me to towards him, but MawMaw clung to my other arm and I jerked to a halt and lifted in the air. I was stretched between them like two kids stretching Stretch Armstrong on TV.

Linda jumped to MawMaw’s side and grasped my forearm and shouted at Daddy to let me go. MawMaw was shouting, too, and Daddy was louder than all of them. I was being yanked back and forth and up and down. I felt a stab of pain and cried out, but no one was listening. Everyone except Craig was still shouting something.

PawPaw stepped towards my dad, and my dad shoved PawPaw with his free hand. PawPaw flew backwards, and Linda let go of my arm and lept onto my dad, flaying both her hands like a cat fighting against being shoved in a sack.

My dad shoved her away, and PawPaw lept in the empty space between them. He shouted, in the loudest voice I would ever hear him use, that he would call the police again. Daddy shouted something back so loud that ears rang, and that shout must have waken the baby, because her shrill cry echoed through the kitchen and drowned out even Daddy’s shouts.

Linda rushed to the bedroom. Craig strolled after her. Except for the baby’s crying and my sobbing and PawPaw panting, the kitchen was silent.

Daddy let go of my arm, and everyone stand there for a few moments. The baby stopped crying.

“Let me say goodbye to him outside,” Daddy said.

“Five minutes,” PawPaw said. “Stay in d’ carport.”

I held up my left arm and told all of them that it was bleeding.

MawMaw said someone’s fingernails must have scratched it. She said she’d get a Band-Aid and bring it out to me. I say okay.

Daddy takes my hand and we step into the carport, past the crickets and PawPaw’s truck, and he sets me on the front bumper of his new sports car, some type of white one with a squared off front. The hood was still warm from him racing over. Daddy smells like a dead skunk on the blacktop.

“Justin – I mean Jason – you know I love you, son? Right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

His smile widened and his eyes softened. He whipped out his big Buck folding knife, the one just like mine that I can’t open, and fills both of my hands when I hold it closed, and effortlessly slice open the box and pulls out Evil Stretch. I pull it out and instantly try to stretch him. I can’t. Daddy takes him and stretches him farther than I had been stretched a few moments before, and says that one day I’ll be big and strong, just like him.

MawMaw stepped out with a Band-Aid, and she and I fret over getting it just right. It wasn’t a bad scratch, but I had grown to like the attention I got from my head bandage and all the other bandages I seemed to need now and then. We get it just right. MawMaw said I’m brave; I beamed.

MawMaw walked back inside and left the door open. I could see the kitchen counter now. I heard her and PawPaw talking, but I couldn’t make out the words.

Daddy says next week we’ll go to the mall and buy whatever I want. I said something about the real Stretch Armstrong and ice cream, and and he said of course, I’m his son and he loves me. He said we can go fishing in False River at Mamma Jean’s and Aunt Mildred’s, and I say that would be fun and we talk about Big Daddy’s fishing rod beside the cricket cage, which Daddy says is the finest one you can buy.

MawMaw walked out with a plate of cookies and told my dad he could take one to go. PawPaw was standing in the doorway, and I could see the freezer and kitchen counter behind him.

Daddy took a cookie and asked if he can show me his dog in the car. PawPaw says yes, and he and MawMaw waited by the door. Her beehive made her a foot taller than him and seem bigger than she was, and the look on her face was fierce enough to bake cookies without an oven. Daddy took one of my hands and I clung to Evil Stretch with the other. He opened the passenger door of his squared off white sportscar, and a big ketchup colored dog leaps out and wiggles and runs around us. He tells her to sit and she does and he tells me she’s an Irish Setter named Anne. A hunting dog. She’ll fetch ducks the next time we shoot some, he says. She’s at my eye level and sticks her wet nose onto mine and licks my face and I giggle and fall in love. I ask when we can go duck hunting with her, and Daddy says next week.

Daddy said he has to go, but that I can play with Anne all weekend next week. I thought that sounded like the best day ever. He lifted her into his truck, hugged me goodbye, and told me he loves me. I told him I loved him, too. I run back to MawMaw and the plate of cookies, wave goodbye. Daddy’s car roars to life, and he zooms backwards, sending gravel flying into the carport that rattles against PawPaw’s truck.

Once inside, I sit at the table, trying to stretch Evil Stretch, while PawPaw fixed his belt by punching extra holes through it with the nail and a small ball peen hammer that was next to his rusted wrenches and screwdrivers. He said his belly had gotten smaller being sick that week, so his pants kept falling down and he needed more holes in the belt. But I wasn’t really listening, I was too focused on my new toy and wondering why I couldn’t stretch him like the kids on TV could.

Later that evening, after mac and cheese and fish sticks with lots of ketchup the color of Anne, I sat at the table and try to stretch Evil Stretch again. I can’t, no matter how many times I try. I grow irritated, frustrated, or some other word I don’t know yet. I point my finger at his face and tell him I’m bigger and stronger than he is. He says nothing; that makes me feel more irritated. What good is a Stretch if it doesn’t stretch? It’s his fault, I tell him. He remains silent, goading me with his pointy ears and evil stare. I pick up one of PawPaw’s flathead screwdrivers. It’s as big in my hand as Big Daddy’s knife is in his, bigger looking than my dad’s folding Buck, if only apparently so because of scale in my hand.

I put it to Evil Stretch’s rib cage, rotating my wrist so the flathead is sideways, so that I can pierce between rib bones and not bounce off, something I had heard Big Daddy telling his little brother one day; like Kieth, Uncle Doug was as big as Big Daddy and looked just the same, and was also good with a knife. They said that the ribs of a deer protected its heart and lungs, which is why we shot there and then gutted from the soft belly to field dress them, but that if had to finish it off with a knife we should aim through the ribs, not the belly, because it could still kick us if it hadn’t bled enough to die. I thrust the screwdriver against Evil Stretch’s side, but the rubber resisted and I had to lean in with all my weight and push hard with both hands. His skin gave away and the screwdriver slid deep and I relaxed, satisfied, happy to be the stronger one of us.

I pulled out the screwdriver and Evil Stretch’s wound dripped a snot-colored milky goo that clung to the tip of the screwdriver without forming drops. I was mesmerized, having forgotten that I intended him to bleed and curious what the bloody goo was. I squeezed, and Evil Stretch’s wound poured goo. He wasn’t moving. I realized I had killed him, like one of the deer we’d field dress and cut up to carry back. I began to sob.

I heard PawPaw behind say: “What wrong, Lil’ Buddy?”

Between sniffles, I tell him that I stabbed Evil Stretch, and now he’s bleeding to death.

PawPaw picked up Evil and inspects his wound. He said we’ll be like doctors and fix him up. He picks up some super glue from the kitchen table toolbox and tries to close the hole in Evil’s ribs, but the goo oozes out when we handle him; it’s all over the table now.

Before we put the blood back in, PawPaw said, we have to get him to stop bleeding. PawPaw’s hand carefully holds Evil horizontally, without squeezing him, and we step over to the refrigerator and PawPaw opens the top freezer, moves things around, and rests Stretch on a flat spot. He said something about the cold making the goo flow less. He shut the door and we chatted about things I don’t recall while he smoked a Camel. After a second cigarette we finally open the freezer. PawPaw was right, the goo wasn’t flowing any more. We try super glue again, but it fails again. We try to make a bandage out of duct tape from, but it won’t stick, either. I’m distraught, but PawPaw says something about waiting and seeing, and we put Stretch back in the freezer and plan to check on him in the morning.

Super glue and duct tape didn’t work the next morning. It wasn’t PawPaw’s fault; he was a good doctor, but Evil Stretch didn’t had a chance with the lung stab I put in him. Not only was PawPaw a good doctor, he was right about super glue; though I didn’t know it then, its chemical name is cyanoacrylate, and it was originally designed as a wound-sealing dressing and the sterile forms are still used as that in hospitals all over the world and the first-aid kits I carry with me to this day; the commerical use came after scientists kept sticking their fingers to clip boards in the lab, and thought there could also be a use for cyanoacrylate home, though they’d have to come up with an easier name to market for it, and super glue was perfect. PawPaw knew all of that back then and did his best, but everything dies and on my second day of owning Evil Stretch it was time to say goodbye.

It turns out that he wasn’t that evil, it was just how he was drawn on TV, and I was the one who was evil for killing him.

“No, Li’l Buddy,” PawPaw said, wiping away my tears. “You can do no wrong. You just learnin’, d’at all. You practice here, safe in da house, and you get better in da real world.”

We took the deflated Evil Stretch to the trash can by the cricket cage, and PawPaw slid over an inverted plastic milk case like the ones stacked by the convenience store. I stood on it and held Evil Stretch on my open palms. I said I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. The crickets chirped a sad tune, I looked up, PawPaw nodded, and I drop Stretch into the trashcan and stepped down.

PawPaw told me I’m the nicest Lil’ Buddy in the world, and held my hand and led me back inside to clean up. MawMaw was making cookies and said that would cheer me up, but I saw the screwdriver on the table by the pile of screws and nails and wasn’t in the mood. PawPaw picked up the screwdriver and said we didn’t need it any more, and he dropped it in the kitchen trashcan. It had paper towels super glued all over it, so that was probably the best thing to do.

I washed up and quietly ate some cookies with my heart still in the trashcan, beating from within and reminding me how much power I had with a screwdriver in my hand. Like Spider Man’s uncle said, with great power comes great responsibility, and I finally realized what he was talking about.

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