I tripped and fell, my face smooshing into the mossy, thick, and impossibly sticky mud. I spit the wet dirt out of my mouth and quickly rebounded, rolling the slimy stuff into a ball and flinging it the person who had tripped me as they ran past.
The mud ball hit Chris in the back of the head with so much force that he, too, went sprawling into the mud.
“Score!” I shouted while doing a fist pump as I lay there on my back.
“Nice shot, Chrisie,” Alex commented before he extended his hand to help me up.
“That’ll make ‘em think twice about not wanting you on their team! That puts us up by two points!” This came from James, my younger nephew and the third member of our trio, as he dodged a particularly mossy and disgusting-looking mud ball.
Alex and I quickly went back to work, the two of us standing back to back flinging mud at JohnE, James’ brother and my older nephew, and Chris, Alex’s older brother. While the two of them were busy trying to hit us, James went around behind JohnE and tackled him, pinning him in the mud.
“Get off me!” he ordered, struggling.
“Say ‘mercy’ and maybe I will!” James said teasingly.
Chris rushed to help his partner, only to have me and Alex leap on and pin him, too.
“Oh, c’mon!!!” he exclaimed angrily.
“Say mercy!” Alex demanded, pushing his brother’s face into the mud.
“Alright! You guys win!” JohnE said.
“Say the magic word,” I singsong-ed.
Chris and JohnE looked at each other, then said in unison, “…mercy…”
James, being our team captain, signaled for us to let go. Alex and I stood up, releasing the trapped Chris. James did the same, and JohnE was free, too.
“So, what was that about being able to beat us two to three?” Alex asked sarcastically.
“Yeah, I coudda swore you two said you’d whop us cuz I’m on the team and I’m a girl,” I said, smiling.
“Geez, ya don’t hafta rub it in…” Chris began wiping his face off on his shirt, but it didn’t help much because it was covered with mud, too.
“You could’ve let us win ‘cuz it’s my birthday…” JohnE pointed out.
“Come off it! I got you a present already, so don’t even try that!” James snapped.
The two of them got into one of their frequent arguments. I rolled my eyes and chose to ignore them. Chris joined in on the disagreement (taking JohnE’s side, of course), and Alex, like me, chose to ignore them.
“That was great,” I said, grinning.
“Great? That was the best! Especially when that mud ball hit Chris on the back of the head!” Alex laughed.
We looked at each other for a few moments, and then we busted out laughing. We looked like…well, I don’t know what we looked like, but whatever it was, it was dirty and brown.
Alex’s normally black hair was crusted with drying mud, and I was sure mine was, too, although it was less obvious since my hair was brown already. He also had, in the infinite wisdom of one who is somewhere between the ages of eight and ten, chosen to wear a white tee shirt to this mid fight, although you couldn’t tell that now. Even his skin was the color of the baseball diamond’s mud, and I knew mine was too.
While the other’s continued arguing, we eventually stopped laughing long enough to be able to talk again.
“Your mom’s gonna kill you,” I said.
“Your mom’s gonna kill you, and your dad’s gonna come and kill me if I’m not dead already,” he joked.
My light mood darkened a bit at this. It would be obvious that the boys talked me into this, and it was a well-known fact that my dad didn’t like Alex because he disagreed with Mrs. Brooks, Alex’s mom.
My thoughts were interrupted by the wail of sirens. Confused, I looked toward the road.
JohnE, James, and Chris stopped fighting when they realized the sirens were coming closer, and they, too, looked toward the road.
“No way…” Alex breathed when he saw the cause of the sirens heading right down the road towards us.
The three police cruisers skidded to a halt only a few feet away from us, and a uniformed man started to get out of the first car.
We silently and unanimously decided not to stick around to find out what they wanted; the five of us took off, screaming, not an easy thing to do in the slippery mud.
Chris grabbed his bike and jumped on, pedaling wildly trying to make the thing go. JohnE cursed under his breath; he had left his own bike on the pitcher’s mound. He shook his head and shot of ahead of us, leaving Chris (who was still having difficulty getting his bike to accelerate), his best friend, behind.
James, Alex and I were running neck and neck through the waist high grass that covered the field that surrounded the baseball diamond. We were shooting for the hole in the fence that was our freedom and salvation.
We had discovered (the hard way) that things lay hidden in the grass long ago, and that you always needed to watch your step. Apparently Alex had forgotten this, as his foot found one of the hidden items and he fell. I saw this out of the corner of my eye and motioned for James to stop and hang on a minute.
“Every man for himself!” he shouted as he ignored me and kept running.
“Boys…” I growled under my breath as I helped my best friend up. “C’mon, let’s get outta here!”
Time seemed to disappear, because we were then at the hole in the fence. I slipped through the opening as quickly as I could. It was only after I was on the other side of the fence that I turned to look back while Alex climbed through.
One of the cops was picking up JohnE’s bike. But that wasn’t what concerned me. I noticed with horror that only one of the three black and white cruisers remained. I felt the bottom of my stomach drop when I heard sirens wailing in the background again, and I went numb with fear as they drew closer.
Alex snapped me out of my stupor by grabbing my hand and starting to drag me along. I blinked and stared at him as though he was crazy.
“Do you wanna go to jail?!” he cried.
“Where else can we go?! You can’t go home looking like that, and I sure as heck can’t, either!”
“…”
Suddenly, an idea hit me. “The pool!”
“Huh?”
“We could just jump in the pool, clothes and all, wash off, and say we went swimming somewhere! C’mon!”
It was my turn to drag him along.
“But--” he began.
“Oh? I thought you didn’t wanna go to jail!”
“I don’t, but what about your parents, Chrisie? What if they catch us?”
“They won’t! Dad’s at work, it’s mom’s nap time, and I’m sure Brother’s asleep, too! Please, Alex!” I pleaded.
The sirens were coming closer, closer, ever closer. At length he nodded and we took off running for my house, cutting through as many backyards as we dared so as not to be seen by the cops. We finally jumped the fence that bordered my yard. The two of us sprinted up the steps that led to my clubhouse. We entered the small wooden structure my dad had built years before, slammed the door shut behind us, and plopped down on the floor; we weren’t going to risk being caught if the police drove by.
Soon the sirens began to fade into the distance, and after a time they were gone altogether. Still, we didn’t move. Then a realization hit me. I began to chuckle, then to laugh.
“What? What is it?” Alex asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Alex, we’re kids! They wouldn’t of taken us to jail! They woudda just yelled at us a little bit, then taken us home!”
Alex was silent as this fact sank in. Then he began to laugh too.
“You’re right! I bet I know who ratted us out, too!”
“The mean old hag that lives next door to the baseball field?”
“Yeah, we prolly interrupted her soaps with all the noise ‘we lousy kids‘ were making!”
By now we were laughing hysterically. After maybe two or three minutes, the laughter died away, and we just sat there once again. We looked into each others’ eyes for a moment, and there was an awkward silence. I decided to be the one to break it.
“Well…” I said while standing up. “How ‘bout that bath?”
He stood up, too, and we went out onto the clubhouse porch, which we often used as a way to get into the pool because the ladder was prone to collapsing. I was about to jump in when he stopped me by putting a hand on my shoulder.
“Yes?” I asked.
“…Thanks for helping me out back there.”
“It wasn’t anything special. You are my best friend, after all.”
Alex smiled in the way that only Alex could smile, then said, “Let’s make a blood-bond.”
“Come again?”
“You know, that thing JohnE and Chris did to become ‘sworn siblings’. Of course, we won’t be real sworn siblings or anything like that…just for fun.”
I looked down at my palm and made a face at the thought. To make a blood-bond, you both had to cut your palms and shake hands. And, even at that age, I was uneasy with the thought of sharp objects.
Alex noticed the face I was making and said, “We don’t hafta use blood, y’know.”
“Then what do we use?”
Alex looked thoughtful for a moment. Then his expression changed as an idea hit him. It would’ve been a good face for a cartoonist to stick a light bulb over.
“Mud. We’ll use the mud on our hands!”
After thinking about it for a second, I thought, Why not? It couldn’t hurt anything.
So I nodded, smiled, and said, “Sure.”
We both got our hands wet (the mud had dried), then we shook hands.
“I swear, on this bl--…mud…that I will be your friend forever, and that I will always be there for you, no matter what,” Alex said. Then he chuckled. “…That sounded like something from some movie…”
“And I also swear, on this mud, that I will be your friend forever, and that I will always be there for you, no matter what.” I said, repeating the phrase Alex had made up seconds before.
After shaking hands one last time, I said, “Let’s get cleaned up.”
* * *
It was a warm spring evening, and I was sitting on a stone that had someone’s address engraved on the front of it. I was rocking back and forth nervously. Would he come? Would he care?
I heard the sound of an approaching bicycle, and I looked up in time to see Alex hitting the brakes and skidding to a halt.
“I got your message…” he panted as he dismounted.
“…you came…”
“Chrisie? What’s wrong?” Alex asked, sensing the pain in my voice.
Chrisie. The pet nickname my dad used when I was a kid. If anyone called me that now, I would deck them…anyone except Alex.
I looked into his eyes with tears in mine. “I’m not supposed to be here right now…I’m still supposed to be with my gramma…”
Alex said nothing, so I continued, “My dad thinks your mom was the one who called Child Protective Services on me for being home alone at night…”
Alex looked flabbergasted. “That can’t be! She wouldn’t! She’d be a hypocrite if she did!”
“…I know. I know my gramma was the one who called them…but you know dad…he’s paranoid as it is, and he never liked your mom…”
“That may be so, but so what? What’s that got to do with us?”
I looked away from him as I said, “And he thinks you’re the one who told her he was never home.”
“That’s not true!”
“I know it’s not, but you know what happens if I tell dad that he’s wrong!”
Silence.
I looked down at the ground. “…he told me that if I ever spoke to you again, he would send me to the Home of the Innocents.”
Another silence.
At length, he said, “Your dad can go to hell.”
I quickly looked up at his last remark. Alex? Cussing?
He smiled the way only he could smile and said, “I ain’t breakin’ the mud bond. I don’t care what he says. If he puts you in that place, mom and I will come get you.”
The what? What was he talking about?
I made a noise somewhere in the middle of a sob, a laugh, and a choke.
The memory came flooding back to me: the apocalyptic mud fight, the cops, the handshake that made us ‘sworn siblings’.
“…you…you remembered that?” I said in a whisper.
“If I forgot, I’d be breaking the bond. I swore to always be there, no matter what. Even if your dad don’t like it, I’m here to stay.”
I sobbed and began crying.
Alex came over to me and put his arms around me, told me everything was going to be okay, held me while I cried.
We just stayed there like that for a while. My ‘oldest’ friend, my best friend, my sworn sibling and ’mud brother’, just held me in his arms while I let the tears flow. I remember thinking that I felt cherished, cared for, and loved. And I have never felt that way since that twilight in spring.
We have to sneak out to see each other now. He looks out his window to see if my dad’s truck is there in our driveway, and if it isn’t, he calls. We only stay on a few minutes at a time, and I have to erase his number from the caller id before dad gets home. We sometimes meet up at the nearby convenience store (which we call Rusty’s, even though it got bought out a long time ago and changed its name to GNK’s), where we talk and drink Jones Soda. To date, we haven’t been caught.
What is friendship? How do you put such a pure, true, and powerful thing, such an immense concept, into words? I believe that friendship is a bond, a bond stronger than any material thing man can create, a bond so strong that time, distance, and restrictions leave not a scratch. I also believe that this bond can be made of anything, whether that thing is respect, affection, blood…or, in my case, mud.
