Hey guys. So sorry I couldn't post yesterday. I have drama on Wednesdays, and then I stay over at my friend's place, so I can't do anything.
Hope you enjoy this chapter. I worked really hard on it, to try and make up for the lack of posting last night:) thanks again for reading xoxo
6
After another while of joking around, and Teddy glancing briefly yet constantly at my chest, we decided that it was time to get going again.
There was some debate as to who was gonna get the food, so Chris, ever the problem solver, suggested us to flip for it.
Gordie took out the coins and passed them around. "And Khione can have the useless pound."
I laughed. "Thanks Gordie luv. Appreciate it."
Five coins glittered up in the sun. Five hands snatched them from the air. Five flat smacks on four grimy wrists and an abnormally pale one.* We uncovered and came up with four tails.
"Oh Jesus, man. That's a goocher," Vern said worriedly, looking down at his coin.
The others moaned and my face just came up blank.
"Vern-O," Teddy sounded completely exasperated. "No body believes all that crap about moons and goochers. It's baby stuff. Now come on, flip again."
"What's a goocher?" I thought at that moment that I really needed to catch up with my American slang terms.
"It's when you flip coins, and you all get tails, and it's back luck," Vern said, genuinely scared.
I laughed, then sort of regretted it, as his face fell ever so slightly. "Sorry, but really? You find that a major concern? Come off it."
"No man, a goocher, that's really bad," he turned to the rest of the lot. "You remember when Clint Bracken and those guys got wiped out on Sirois Hill in Durham?" they all nodded and he turned back to me. "Billy tole me they was flippin' for beers and came up with a goocher just before they got in the car and WHAM! They all got totalled! I don't like this," he shook his head and looked down. "Sincerely."
"Come on, guys, lets hurry it up," Chris said, placing his coin back on his bent thumb, ready to flip.
We all slapped our hands down on our wrists but Vern. We all looked to him and protested. He reluctantly flipped his coin and we unveiled ours.
The royal arms of England shone up at me. The tail for each of the others shone up at them, but the head of Thomas Jefferson glinted up at Gordie.
Teddy erupted in his rusty nail laugh.
"Gordie's out!" He screeched. "Ole Gordie just screwed the pooch!"
Gordie got ready to stand, then leant in to Teddy. "Does the word retarded mean anything to you?"
"Gordie, go and get the provision, you morphodite."
Gordie had started walking and now he looked back to us. "Shut up, and don't call me any of your mother's pet names."
As if on cue, Chris, Teddy and Vern all grouped together and started chanting. "I don't shut up, I grow up. And when I look at you, I throw up," they shoved a finger down their throat and made a comical retching noise.
Gordie shot them daggers. "And then your mother goes around the corner and she licks it up," and then he hauled ass out of there.
We all made mock oooos, but Teddy wasn't offended in the least. Gordie was fast retreating and then suddenly Vern was clambering onto my lap.
He was half a head shorter than me, but a whole ton bigger. He curled into a ball and started squealing excitedly as Teddy lunged at him.
A bit confused at first, I caught on and realised a fight was breaking out. Not a hard-out brawl, but a play fight.
Chris joined in, laughing his strong yet sweet laugh. He shoved Vern off my lap and lay on his stomach across my lap. Picking himself up, he crawled over and attacked Vern, who ducked to the side. Chris then ended up on Teddy, and Vern jumped up on them.
I just laughed. I laughed and laughed and laughed as they hit each other and yelled and rolled around.
About 15 minutes passed, and I was still laughing. Now on my back, I had a hand on my stomach and my eyes closed. My shirt had come up a little, revealing a strip of my pale skin just above where my jeans sat high on my hips.
Suddenly, a large amount of water cascaded down onto my rib cage, where the skin was exposed. My eyes snapped open and I saw Chris standing above me, canteen in hand, a smile broad on his face.
I leapt to my feet and spun around. Grabbing the canteen from him, I started flicking the water into his face. He started backing up towards the pile of stuff, holding his hands up in a shield.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to find Teddy, whose face had gone morbidly serious. I stopped laughing, and Chris must've seen him, because he stopped as well.
Teddy said nothing, just raised his hand and pointed toward the entrance of the dump. I followed his hand and saw a shed. Next to the shed was a white truck. Getting out of the truck, was a man and his dog.
I turned back to the others, who seemed frozen in time. I put a finger to my lips and the nodded slowly. Well all knew who it was, and I imagine you do too.
I slowly grabbed mine and Gordie's mats, and gestured for the others to do the same. Making and effort to be silent as possible, we made our way back to the fence, inching our way so as not to draw any attention to ourselves.
The dump suddenly had all resemblance of a happy sort of play ground ripped from it. It was not a death trap, and there were mines everywhere. Or that's how it felt, anyway. The speed at whish we had to travel was painful, and all I wanted to do was sprint and volt over the fence as fast as I could. But it was better for all of us to remain stealthy.
We finally reached the chain link fence and started to climb slowly up it. It was incredibly difficult, as at the slightest touch, the wire would rattle and clink. But we did it.
Just as Vern heaved himself over the top, I caught sight of Gordie, walking freely through the middle. He stopped at out previous location, and saw we weren't there. Looking over to his left at us, he realised what was going on. Just as Milo Pressman yelled out to him.
Gordie jumped about a foot in the air, then started running frantically towards us, his arms and legs pumping furiously.
Milo was still yelling at him. But then another name came out.
"Chopper, sic 'im boy. Chopper, sic 'im!"
Gordie misheard him. He told me later that although in retrospect he knew it was just sic him, but at the time, he heard something much, much worse; Chopper, sic balls.
A bone-chilling scream came from Gordie's wide open mouth, the shape of a capital D turned 90 degrees anti-clockwise. He leapt up onto the fence and barely waited for a good foot-hole before scrambling to the top.
He launched himself off the top, and landed with a tumble just as Chopper threw his body at the fence.
I was expecting a Rottweiler, or something equally frightening. Maybe a pitbull. I think we all were, really. But what greeted us, was a golden retriever. A lap dog, at most.
Teddy laughed at the ludicrous discovery. He turned his back on the dag and rubbed his ass against the fence, taunting Chopper and calling him the strangely demeaning version of his name Choppie.
"Kiss my ass, Choppie," he said, and Chopper took the invitation with enthusiasm, latching his teeth onto the hem of Teddy's grungy green shirt, only to have it torn from him.
Milo, a large man in his forties at least, came puffing up to the fence, clearly very angry. "Hey, hey you boy. You stahp teasin' that dawg, yah hear me? Stahp teasin' that dawg!"
Teddy simply laughed, knowing that an old lump like him couldn't get over the fence for his life. "Sure, why don't you come over here and get me, fatass!"
Well all laughed and it was all fun and games, until Milo came back with something. I didn't quite catch what he fully said, but he called Teddy's dad a loony. And that didn't fit well with Teddy.
His face went serious and hurt and offended. "My father stormed the beach at Normandy," his tone was calm and even, which was more terrifying than when he got angry.
"Your father was crazy," Milo said, smiling. He knew he'd hit a soft spot. He knew it all too well. "A loony, up in Togus."
Teddy's face started twitching slightly as he tried to keep it straight. "You call my dad a loony one more time, and I'll kill you."
"Loony loony loony loony loony loony loony," Milo said sardonically.
That was when Teddy cracked. That was when I saw a side of him that I never saw again. It was then and only then that I saw the true torment inside of him boil to the surface.
He sprang like a coiled spring that had been under too much pressure and hooked his fingers in the chain link. "I'll rip your head off and shit down your neck!"
I reached forward in distress, and the other lads followed suit. We grabbed onto his shirt and lugged him off the fence.
Milo kept saying all this shit about Teddy's dad. I'd been told about Teddy's dad, how he had post traumatic distress, and how he was pretty much bat-shit crazy. I'm sure Teddy had thought of it before, late at night when the moon was shining through his open window. At that dark time in the middle of the witching hour when it seems sleep will never reach you. I'm actually certain it had crossed his mind in that void of restlessness, when all the bad thoughts came to light. But to have someone say it aloud, to his face. It must've killed him.
"You come ovuh here. You get ovuh here right naow," Milo said angrily.
"Sure, he'll go over there an' fight you," Gordie now stood up for his friend. "You only out-weigh him by about 500 pounds fatass!"
"You," Milo said, poking a finger through one of the gaps. "You're Lachance," he looked across to Chris and Vern and I. "I know all your names. Your fathers'll me gettin' a call from me," he smiled evilly at Teddy. "Except for the loony up in Togus."
Teddy ran at him again, but we held him back.
We dragged him away from the fence. He needed out of there. It was too much. He kept yelling at Milo that his father had stormed the beach at Normandy and Milo kept yelling for him to get back over there, but we ignored him.
We hauled him up to the tracks and took him back through the forest. We were all exhausted. As Gordie says, we were too tired, and too much had happened. And that's exactly how it was. We were all wiped out and the dump experience had completely ruined the mood to our trip.
Teddy kept crying, his head hung down. Chris and I had an arm each around his shoulders. I tried stroking his arm opposite me, and kissed the side of his head, through his thick blond hair. It was all very awkward, none of us knew what to say. So I just kept on stroking his arm and pressing my lips to his temple.