Summer Wars

a story about a gang of ruffian orphans

 

 

Summer Wars  

  

 

It’s been a while since I was able to come here. The sandy crook that resided just down the hill from the old house had a space that you could lie down in without getting too muddy. On days when the sun peeked out from behind the white clouds, it became a cool and relaxing place.

            I rested my head against the side of the grassy hill and stared up at the clouds as they floated lazily by on the slight afternoon breeze. I had my shirt off and the breeze felt even cooler as it passed over my body. My shoes were also off, with my socks tucked into tiny balls and stuffed into the depths of them.

Today was the first day of summer, and I was keen to enjoy every last beautiful second it had to offer, it being one of the few days when the other orphans and I were allowed extra free time to roam the countryside or play in the fields where the crickets and other bugs fluttered wildly as the children passed through. However, for the older children, those who had been at the orphanage long enough to be known as seniors to the others, came up here, to the old house some two miles west of the orphanage.

The old house was an abandoned building that had been so for as long as anyone could remember, hence the name, and it had always been a source of mystery within the town, but mostly among the orphans. It was two stories tall and had most likely been very beautiful when it was in its prime, but now stood a measly image of its former self. Its interior walls had faded and dirtied, its outside walls layered with graffiti. A few of the windows were cracked or shattered but most of them were surprisingly intact. The house itself was moderately large but was very open with not even a single door in the entire house. Sadly however, a long time ago, there was a nasty flood and it being in a sort of depression amongst the hills, it had caused a lot of damage, the owners were forced to sell, and due to the swamp-like terrain that the surrounding area had become, it was no longer a suitable environment to live in.

For the rowdy boys of the orphanage however, the old swampy house was more than suitable for a hangout.

I looked up as I sensed footsteps crunch on the grass of the hill above me.

“Dude, it’s almost seven, we have to get back before Momma rips us a new one.”

The voice belonged to Sean Taper, another senior boy who I considered my friend. I shaded my eyes with my hand in order to get a better look at him. He was shorter than me by almost a foot, and had black hair with a messy comb-over and wore every article of clothing he had on as if they were his prized possessions: all pressed, trimmed, and clean.

“Sean, dude, don’t worry about it. It’s the first day of summer, I’m sure she’ll give us a little leeway on the curfew.” I told him. He looked at me with one of those looks that only Sean had that could tell a thousand different things, the generalization being ‘I don’t like this one bit.’

“Don’t give me that look. You know I hate it when you give me that look. Sean come on,” I said, but Sean kept staring at me.

            I watched him a little longer hoping that he would give up, but he kept on staring.

            “Fine, whatever,” I moaned.

I rolled over and pushed myself off the ground, my hands sinking slightly in the mushy ground. I climbed up the slope and found my socks and unrolled them.

“Why don’t you make yourself useful and grab my shirt over there on the tree . . . yeah that one.” I said as I put my socks and shoes on.

Sean walked over to me with my shirt and tossed it at my face, “so, did you figure out an ending yet?” I caught it and threw it on, noticing the strong scent of pine needles on the fabric as it brushed by my nose.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll think of something,” I shrugged.

The shirt was navy blue with collar fringed with white. It was a hand-me-down that god knows how many other kids had worn before me. Fortunately, I would be receiving my new clothes in a month.

St. Catherine’s Orphanage in Richford Vermont required every child to wear a uniform. That uniform was what I was forced to wear. Believe me, the scent of pine is a vast improvement from the usual smell that consisted of sweat and blood. Well, the blood not so much, but it does get in there from time to time. The sweat however, seems to be ever present. It was only after a certain amount of years at the orphanage that you were allowed the high honor of receiving a new uniform. A new uniform symbolized the highest of the highs in what could best be described as a childish form of feudalism. And soon, I would be a king.

Once I had fixed my shirt and brushed off the blades of grass that had stuck on the fibers of my pants, Sean and I set of towards the orphanage.

     

The path was easy to follow. It ran over some fields and roads, the only obstacle being a thin branch of the Missisquoi River that ran through the town and divided us from the orphanage. The path through the fields had been beaten so bare from decades of feet pounding along it that you could find your way along it blindfolded, with nothing but the feeling of dead grass beneath your feet to go on.

When we came to the winding stream, we stripped of our clothes and held them over our heads like the army men used to do with their guns, wading in with nothing but our boxers. The water was cool, and in the new summer warmth, the water felt nice even as it rose to our waists. We climbed back up the steep muddy slope on the other side of the stream and were faced with a thick wall of maples and elms. Off to the left, a narrow path wound through the mass of greenery and disappeared within the dense brush.

Sean and I walked down the path, complaining about soaked boxers and watching out for stray branches that could get snagged on our pants.

We exited the woods with minor casualties and walked up to the orphanage.

The orphanage consisted of six separate buildings: a main building where actual adoptions took place, a church for the masses that take place every day for forty five minutes, the nuns quarters, and two quarters for the orphans, one for boys and one for girls. The boys and girls quarters were identical in every way, from the nasty sea green trim on all the windows to the gutters that hung loosely off the left ends of the buildings. Both were three stories tall and simple rectangular prisms with roofs. The nun’s quarters wasn’t all that much nicer. The building looked like a slightly smaller model of the orphan’s quarters, but the paint and trimming were newer. The main building was originally an average house, but was converted into the main building when the rest of the orphanage was built around it. It was nicely sized and had paint matching the other buildings, except, like the nun’s quarters, it was new and crack free. The church was made of stone and was by far the oldest building in town, if not the entire province. It was average sized, with a small bell tower over top and all the bleachers inside were old fashioned elm made from the wood cut from the forest nearby.

All of the buildings faced inward toward each other, and were surrounded by woods on all sides except for a large open field where the children played. The field opened out onto a road that went to into the town one way and straight on into Canada the other way.

Later in the summer, our rivalry with the children in the town would escalate to physical fights and small battles would rage all over the hillside. The rivalry surpassed childish game, there would be appointed generals for each side, we had slingshots made from the wood of the surrounding forests, and we were experts and slinging rocks at lightning fast speed and accuracy. The children of the town were often armed with bee bee guns but were less organized than we were. We had small portable walls hidden the old house that was our unofficial headquarters, and we could use the walls for anything from shields to fortifications. Though not overly violent, occasionally someone would get hurt, and in these cases, any orphan involved, no matter how minor the role would be punished and daily free time for everyone would be taken away for a week or so. We would moan and complain for a while, but ultimately, fighting was simply too fun.

As we walked towards the boy’s quarters, we passed by a small maple decorated with notches in the bark from all the battles that we had one, thirteen in all. I try to be modest about the fact that the majority of those were mine, but word does escape occasionally.

            “Where have you to been?”

Sean and I froze in our tracks as Sister Maria floated seemingly from out of nowhere.

“Crap!” I whispered under my breath.

Sister Maria wasn’t the meanest nun at St. Catherine’s, but she was definitely the strangest. She had this way of walking that made her look like the emperor from Star Wars, all hunched over, also she just seemed to levitate off the ground when she walked. She was seventy years old and despite her arthritis ravaged joints, there was a certain fluid motion to her movements.

“I asked you, Warren Pierce, since I know you’re the leader of this gang of ruffians, where you have been.” She said.

Sean shot me another look. This one said I told you.

I tried to communicate a look that said ‘shut up.’ But Sean didn’t get the message, however, Sister Mary did.

“I will not tolerate trouble makers who ignore the curfew.” She said.

“I just thought, since it was the first day of summer that we might be able to stay out a little longer.” I said back innocently.

“Now you listen,” Sister Mary said sternly, pointing her bony finger at me, “I realize that it is the first day of summer, and I shall take that into account when deciding your punishment, but take this as an example, the both of you. You are not to break curfew, no excuses, no exceptions. Now, Warren,” she said looking at me. “You’re about to become a senior to the orphanage, and with that responsibility comes a lot of . . . well . . . responsibility, bottom line, you need to pay greater attention to the rules around here. You’ve caused enough trouble with your silly wars and rough housing. Now, I want you to both go to bed and you are not to leave the grounds tomorrow.”

I wanted to argue, but I knew it wouldn’t get me anywhere. So I nodded and started towards the boy’s quarters as Sean bowed quickly and ran after me. Sister Mary watched us go with cross between vague distaste and motherly concern.

As soon as Sister Mary was out of sight, I turned and hit Sean hard in the shoulder.

 “Ah! Jeezes, what the heck was that for?” He yelled cowering in the corner holding a shoulder.

I started cracking up at the sight of Sean’s small frame shrinking even smaller.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

I opened the squeaky screen door to the boy’s quarters and stepped in as I let it slam loudly behind me. The entrance was a small wooden square with to stairways leading off of it. The one to the right led down to the dining area, the one on the left led up to the recreation room. This room was filled with random assortments of toys for the smaller kids who were too young to participate in the battles. There weren’t many kids there, most were new. They just wandered around, either laughing because they were too young to understand that their parents were dead, or shying away in the corner, just old enough to miss the parents they hadn’t had enough time to love.

The stairway opposite led up to the bedrooms, a long hallway with eight rooms on each side, each room containing two bunk beds. Mine was at the very end of the hallway, near the spiral staircase that led up to the attic. It was one of the slightly larger rooms, but was still relatively small. A bunch of origami sculptures hung around the ceiling near the right bunk. They belonged to Chops, a tubby sort of boy who barely opened his mouth except to cram food into it every once in a while. His nickname was given to him pretty early on in his stay at the orphanage. His real name was Charlie Opsseler. He wasn’t much of a talker, but he had a way with fighting that border lined art.   

I walked in a plopped onto the bed. It was a stiff, cheap mattress that smelled like dust. Light filtered in through the small window that overlooked the woods and the fields beyond. Sean walked in a few moments later and hopped up onto the bunk above mine.

“So how’s the story going?” Sean asked after a while.

I rolled over on my side and said “I thought I told you not to worry about it.”

“So you still haven’t finished it?” he asked. I paused and looked up at his bunk as if he could see me.     

“Obviously I haven’t finished it. I just can’t figure out the ending.”

“Jeeze man, haven’t you been working on that thing since you got here?”

I thought about it for a moment. My parents had died in a flash flood in Colorado. My mom died trying to save me, and my dad died trying to save my mom. I was three when they sent me to live with my grandma up here in Richford, but she had heart disease, not to mention she was eighty two. She died when I was five. It was right there, so they placed me in St Catherine’s.

I ended up in a lot of fights because that’s all I thought I was good at. I learned how to read and write at the church school, but that was about it. Sometime after I had arrived, I met a senior named Ben Thurston. His parents were in peace core in India, but were murdered by a terrorist group. The strange thing was, he wasn’t sad, or scared, or even angry about it.

            He told me that whatever happened, happened and you can’t change it no matter how hard you try. He painted a lot. He was a good artist. One day, I asked him why he painted. He smiled and told me that it was what made him happy. He asked me what made me happy.

I didn’t know how to answer.

He laughed and told me it was okay, that I would figure it out eventually. A few days after that he was adopted by an artist who wanted an apprentice. He told me it was the happiest day of his life.

That was the day I discovered I liked to write. I chose to be elusive and dark when anyone came by interested in adopting. Truth was, through all the scolding by the nuns, I liked it here. And I wanted to write.

I started a story about dragons and knights and mythical times. To be honest, it was a pretty good story. It took me eight years to write though. Mostly because I wanted to get everything right. My idea was that every character, no matter how insignificant, would have a story to their name, every landscape would have a history. It took eight years. And the ending is still left open.

The ending; I thought about it while I sat in bed staring at the black wood of the bunk above me. And at some point, I drifted off to sleep.

 

I was roused sometime in the night. I looked up through swollen eyes and blurry vision at Sean. He was wide eyed and was giving me a serious look. I rolled away from the dim blue light that flowed in from the window.

“Warren, Dan’s outside with a bunch of kids.”

I sat up so quickly I knocked my head hard against the bunk above me. 

“Jeezes,” I said gripping my forehead. “What the hell do they want?” I asked.

            Sean shook his head and said “I have no idea, but he’s probably looking for a fight. You know Danny.”

 I did, that’s why I agreed with Sean. Dan Mills was a townie, one of the fighting kids who lived down in Richford. Dan loved to fight. The majority of the battles that were fought on our turf were led by him. He wasn’t a particularly large boy, but he was smart and knew how his way around the battle field.

I got my war shirt out from under the bed, Sean already had his war shirt on. The war shirt was just a plain white t-shirt with blue numbers painted on the back. The numbers were just like in sports, they symbolized placement on the field, and the color specified townie or orphan. I took my uniform off and put on a pair of shorts and the war shirt. The shirt was dirty and smelly, and more wrinkled than Sister Mary’s face.

We woke up Chops who muttered something about being hungry, then got up and threw on his own war shirt. We went through the hallway knocking three times on the doors of a few fighters we would be taking with us.

 

A few minutes later, twenty kids including me, Sean and Chops were gathered in the recreation room. Everyone had their war shirts on and were ready to go.

 “Alright, first things first, I need someone to go get Tawny.” I said when everyone was looking at me. I saw one of the younger kids named Riley headed downstairs, where the lock on one of the basement windows facing the woods was broken.

“Alright, second thing,” I said. “Danny boy’s outside with a couple of his bunch. I expect he wants a fight, but I’m not sure.” Everyone was beginning to mumble to each other

“Aye! Shut up!” Sean yelled.

I looked at him and nodded thanks. “Alright,” I continued. “Now, were not sure if he really does wanna fight, so were just gonna have you guys on standby.”

Everyone stood staring at me, so I clapped my hands together and made for the stairs.

The basement windows were about six feet off the ground and were about a foot tall and two feet wide. Just enough to crawl through.

The broken window was second from the left, it had a crack in it, and as we shoved a table against the wall, it pushed open easily. We crawled out carefully with Chops being last. This was because last time he went out first, well, let’s just say the two feet by one foot was not enough for Chops.

I stood up and brushed some dirt off my shirt as the other kids filed out around me. When we were all out-- including Chops with some difficulty-- the younger boy, Riley, returned with a dark haired, fair-skinned senior girl named Tawny.

 I was about to say hi when she came up and slapped me hard in the face.

“Jeeze, what the hell was that for!?” I said rubbing the sore spot on my cheek.

 “Nothing, I just felt like hitting you.” She said back.

Tawny had a way of acting that was so impulsive it was scary. Often times she wound up hitting me at odd times like during mass at the church or she would walk from across the field just to knock me in the skull then calmly walk back to her friends without so much as a word. She was the only girl tough enough to accompany the boys on our rampant journeys.

I gave her a quick rundown of the situation, then the twenty one of us ran around the back of both quarters, hugging the edge of the woods as we watched out for any of the nuns who often made their way to and from the church, the nuns quarters, and the main house, not to mention the wandering eyes of those in the windows.

It wasn’t too hard though. The sky was near pitch black and the small sliver of moon did almost nothing to light up the shadowy landscape of the fields, and soon, we were off to make noise in the night.    

 

Author's Note

This is really old. Don't bother critiquing it because its not going to change anytime soon, just say if/what you like about it.

Reviews

[WriterSki7]

Needs work. Good description, but you've come a ways from the time this was written.

[Dutch Jr.]

I love your writing style, very mature and ahead of your time. I like the storyline in this little piece too. I think you should write more on it.

[The Analog Kid]

This could easliy continue. Real nice description and dialogue!

[James Watts]

Not bad. A few issues here and there. Actually you should pick his one up again. Has a lot of potential for something bigger.

[L.I. Black]

Well, even though it is old I do hope you add more. The idea is interesting as are the characters, I'd really like to find out more about them. I really like Tawny, haha, she reminds a good deal of someone I know.
It's a very good story and would make a good book, in my humble opinion anyway.