When I was ten years old the cool kids in my neighborhood back in Minnesota were Sally, Becky and Jane, who called themselves the Three Musket Ears, which they thought was very clever. One day in the Spring they were going out to the woods to spy on Becky's older brother Sam who was a real-life teenager with a real-life teenage girlfriend. To my surprise, the Three Musket Ears invited me along. I was overjoyed! To be included in an adventure with the coolest girls, to be let into their inner sanctum--well you can imagine the honor for someone like me, who didn't have any friends and wasn't considered special in any way. I didn't even care that my mother forbid me to go into the woods. She would never understand the importance.
So we went in. Jane's little brother, who was a year younger, came along too, which made it seem less special for me to have been invited, I have to admit. When we came to a certain spot, Becky put her finger to her lips, knelt down and hid behind a tree. When we peeked out we could see Becky's brother in the distance, laying on the ground with his girlfriend. Sally, who the most mature of us, said they were "necking" but it didn't look like anything except kissing to me. They did it forever, their lips stuck together for so long I thought they'd gone to sleep. Then Becky's brother started touching his girlfriend and I felt like this was something we shouldn't be watching, but I didn't say anything. The other three girls giggled, but Jane's little brother laid down in disgust and closed his eyes to take a nap.
"Look!" Sally hissed. Sure enough, Becky's brother had slipped his hand under the teenage girl's blouse. "He's touching her ta-tas!" I'm not kidding, that's what she called them. We looked on in amazement, then...the girl put her hand on Sam's stomach and slid her hand into his pants! "She's touching his peener!" Sally cooed. Yes, that's what she called it.
We were amazed and fascinated and watched for what seemed like hours, but it was probably just a minute or two.
"I want to kiss a boy!" Sally said, and Jane's brother's eyes popped open wide. "And touch me a peener!" Her eyes turned to Jane's little brother, who jumped to his feet and ran! And before we knew it, Sally charged into the woods after him.
"No don't!" Jane yelled. "Sally!" "She's going to get me in trouble with Mom," Jane muttered and tramped off after Sally and her brother. Becky and I followed. When we went a little ways, we heard Jane's brother screaming and yelling bloody murder, and then we came across Sally sitting alone on a fallen log, laughing like crazy.
"I kissed him and touched his peener," she told us with glee. "Then I kissed it."
Becky gasped. "You kissed it?"
Sally nodded, and grinned from ear to ear.
I heard sobbing a little ways away. I went past Sally and found Jane's little brother sitting on the ground crying. Jane was next to him, but she didn't dare touch him. Becky and Sally came up behind me and we all watched Jane's brother cry. When he realized we were all watching, his grief turned to anger.
"I'm going to tell Mom!" he screamed. "Then you're all going to get it!" With that, he stood up and marched into the woods in the direction of our houses.
"No, please, no!" Jane screamed after him. "We're sorry! Don't tell!" But there was no reply, just the tramp of his footsteps going away from us.
"I'll take care of it," Sally vowed. She picked up a big stick and ran after Jane's brother into the woods.
"Uh oh," Jane muttered, and the three of us tried to catch up with them. A minute later we heard Jane's brother screaming again, then there was a huge THUD like a watermelon being squashed with a sledge-hammer. We slowed up a little, scared to death, and when we found Sally she was standing with that stick, frozen-like, standing over Jane's brother, who was stock-still on the ground...dead.
Nobody screamed. There wasn't a sound in those woods. I never heard such silence.
"We have to bury him," Jane said finally. "We have to bury him so nobody can find him."
I looked at the other girls and none of them said otherwise. I realized I didn't know them that well. Not well enough for something like this.
"Otherwise, Mom's going to kill me."
"We need a shovel," Becky said, the most practical of us, I think.
"Her house is closest," Sally said, a finger pointed right at me.
"Do you have a shovel?" Jane asked.
I nodded. Out in the shed. I could get a shovel. They needed me. The Musket Ears needed me. I ran faster than I'd ever run before. Through the woods, jumping over logs, diving through brambles, my heart beating like a scared chicken. When I got to my house, I snuck around to the backyard, careful to make sure my mother wasn't at the window washing dishes or cooking dinner, which was a miracle, because the sun was going down and suppertime would be soon.
I grabbed the shovel and ran back through the woods as fast as I could go. It was another miracle that I didn't get lost, since it was definitely dark by now and this was exactly the second time I'd gone into those woods, the first time being only an hour before.
When I got there I found Sally, Jane and Becky sitting on a couple of boulders, all panic gone from their faces, replaced by a dull sadness and gloom. I displayed the shovel proudly.
"We couldn't wait," Becky said. "We buried him with our hands."
"You buried him?" I managed to stammer.
Jane reached back and pulled a tree-branch away and I saw a short mound of fresh dirt.
"The ground's soft here," Becky explaimed. "We just used our hands."
Jane replaced the branch and the three of them didn't say anything for a long time. I wanted to talk, to ask them if they did this sort of thing all the time, what Jane's brother's name was 'cause I never knew, what would happen when he was missed, would there be a search party in the woods, with hound-dogs and everything...what would we say to the police?
"I better be getting back," Sally said, standing. "Supper'll be ready soon. Mom doesn't like me late for supper."
"Yeah," Becky said, standing too.
"Okay," Jane agreed, leaving her brother behind.
I followed them back to the road. I was now completely lost, with no idea where I was in the darkness. I no longer felt any part of them: girls who could kill somebody and bury him and not be late for supper.
"See ya," they said and waved as they split off near my house, to go to their own houses.
"See ya," I replied, but my heart wasn't in it.
I turned toward my house when suddenly...Jane's brother leaped out from behind a car, completely alive (the little jerk) his face and hands painted a ghostly white. He quivered and shook and pretended to be a zombie, wailing: "You kissed my lips and molested my pee-pee! You buried me in the cold, cold ground!" He went on like that, jumping at me, then jumping back, trying to scare me, while the girls grabbed their sides and bent over laughing at the trick they'd played on me. It had all been planned. A big joke on yours truly. They didn't want me for a friend. I wasn't a Musket Ear and never would be. Even Jane's brother, a boy, a whole year younger than us, had been in on it. I wanted to dig a hole in the ground and crawl into it...and that reminded me about the shovel in my hand. So I swung it, and butchered them all, slicing it across their heads and torsos, using it as an ax on their necks, bashing their skulls in, knee-capping them, crushing their bones and internal organs, killing all three bitches and Jane's brother right then and there in front of my house, so all that was left were four big clumps of bloody protoplasm. Then Mom ran out of the house and held me, and told me it would be all right, and called the police, who gave me cookies and milk and let me go when I agreed to counseling, since I was a minor and not responsible and since they'd deserved it, having done such a terrible thing to me.
Okay, that last part didn't happen. I made that up. But everything else is true. After I realized it was a big joke, I just walked away and put the shovel back in the shed. I went in and ate supper and held that pain and anger and embarrassment deep in my stomach for years, and didn't tell anybody till now, when I just told you.
BH
