Running with Monsters

faze any of us too much. We lived out in the desert. There was always something to do. We found a new, more dangerous pursuit. Not far from where we lived was a wash that cut through the desert hardpan. When the flash floods would come from the summer monsoons and the usual winter rains, it shunted off the water. Mostly, though, the wash stayed dry. Miles Avenue cut across it and there was an overpass that provided a perfect place to hide, especially at night. It became our new place to meet. Back in those days, before people became concerned about the environment, the desert was seen as one big wasteland. Have old tires? Old furniture? Rusted-out appliances? Don’t haul them to the dump. You have the world’s biggest dump right out your back door. With a little bit of effort, there was no limit to what a group of enterprising, socially maladjusted kids could find if they didn’t mind a little hiking. Old tires were the big prize to us. We’d find one and kick it hard several times.

“Never just pick them up,” said David Vaughan.

“Yeah, man,” said Tommy Palletti. “There could be a rattler or a nest of scorpions hiding in there.”

You had to be careful when you played in the desert. Just about everything out there had evolved to cause damage. We kids were no different. We liked to break stuff. After we’d find a tire, we’d roll it back to the bridge near Miles Avenue. There, hidden by darkness and the structure itself, we would watch for auto or truck headlights as they approached.

“Here comes one!” Tommy said in a loud whisper.

“Sounds like a Beetle,” David said as we all listened to the low and distinctive chug of that ubiquitous sixties car.

I’d watch the lights approach and calculate the car’s speed against that of a well-pushed tire. When the moment was right, I’d hiss, “Bombs away!” and send the rubber juggernaut on a collision course with the approaching vehicle. We never caused an accident or any injuries, but sometimes there were dents and broken headlights. If we connected, we’d fall back under the bridge and suppress fits of laughter while the perplexed motorist would pull to the shoulder and inspect his vehicle. We’d especially get off if the driver knew the score and yelled something into the darkness. “As soon as I get home, I’m calling the police, ya little turds!” They were fun times for me. I remained leader of our little crew until another city boy arrived in town. His name was Forrest too, only that was his first name. He was the son of a recently hired DJ at the local radio station. He had been around too. First in New York and then San Francisco. He claimed his father had written the 1950s song “Earth Angel.” I have my doubts, but it was a good story and it gave him some credibility. He was a sharp kid too. He knew that if he wanted to call the shots in our little group, he’d need to let us all know who was boss. It took him about two days to come up with a simple but effective plan. It didn’t involve much beyond kicking my ass after school. He did a thorough job and left me a battered mess. There was a new boss in town. I knew that I couldn’t beat him in a fight, so I did the next smartest thing. I ingratiated myself with him. We became buddies. It’s good to be number one, but if you can’t have that, you might as well be second in command. Forrest and Forrest. Mayhem Incorporated. It was all a lot of fun, but I couldn’t stay out every night. Things would get lively at home sometimes with Idie and Helen’s drunken feuding and fussing, but I had an out. I’d escape and find weekend sanctuary with my eldest sister, Jane, who, by this time, had left home to live with her husband, Larry, a couple hours’ drive away in suburban Whittier, California. She and Larry were good, normal people, and their house was a nice change from mine, where Idie played gardener and drank and Helen didn’t know what to do except pick at him and wind him up. A lot of the time, my sister Susan acted as my surrogate mother out there in the desert. Our other sister, Nancy, could be a real handful. Unreliable. Selfish. Manipulative. Always a party person. Very beautiful, but very wild.

It was Christmas when I stumbled upon some interesting family history. I was twelve years old and I had been staying with Jane and Larry in Whittier, and we had all gone to one of my uncles’ house to celebrate the holidays. It just sort of slipped out. My uncle was sitting at the bar in his living room and had tippled maybe a little too much. He was talkative. He put a hand on my shoulder and asked, “So, you’ve been staying with your auntie Jane, huh?”

How drunk is this guy? I wondered. I answered back, “She’s not my aunt. She’s my sister.” I thought I had scored some points with that response, but then I noticed a tense silence had fallen on the room and I saw the looks everybody was shooting my uncle. I knew something was up. Something I wasn’t part of or supposed to know. “Okay, so what’s going on?” I demanded.

Jane and Nancy hustled me into the bathroom to have a little talk. The three of us huddled in there for an uncomfortable moment before Nancy just came out with it. “Bobby, I’m your mother.”

That was heavy.

I’m sure I suspected something like that. I had heard my mom talk about the hysterectomy she had before I was born. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew how to use a dictionary. I had looked up the word. Whoa. How could she have had me? I wondered, but