Sixth grade.
The afternoon the neighborhood boys tied me and Mary Lou Mather
to Donny Ralph's father's garage doors, spread eagled,
it was the summer they chased us almost every day.
Careening across the lawns they mowed for money and bikes
they threw down, they'd catch us, lie on top of us,
and then get up and walk away.
That afternoon, Donny's mother wasn't home.
His nine sisters and brothers gone.
Even Gramps, who lived with them, gone somewhere.
The backyard, empty.
The big house, quiet.
A gang of boys.
They pulled the two heavy garage doors down and tied us to them
with clothesline.
And Donny got the deer's leg, severed
from the buck his dad had killed the year before,
dried up and still fur-covered, and sort of poked it
at us, dancing around the blacktop in his sneakers,
laughing.
And then somebody took it from Donny and did it.
And then somebody else, and somebody after him.
And then Donny pulled up Mary Lou's dress and held it up.
And she began to cry.
And I became a boy again, and shouted stop.
And they wouldn't.
And then a girl boy, calling out to Charlie,
my best friend's brother, who wouldn't look.
Charlie, to my brother's friend who knew me, stop them.
And he wouldn't.
And then more softly.
And looking directly at him, I said, Charlie.
And he said, stop.
And they said, what?
And he said, stop it.
And they did.
Quickly, untying the ropes, weirdly quiet,
Mary Lou still weeping, and Charlie already gone.