The Emptiness of Revenge
Armand's nose never stopped running. He was a gross kid always swiping his sleeve under his clammy nose. During the occasional truces we'd have to play baseball against the Pawtucket Rats no one would use Armand's glove and you always wiped the bat clean of his boogers if you came to bat after him. I swear he had a booger pitch where his slimmy nose goo was used like a spitball. I can't confirm his use of the illegal booger ball.
There would be no truce after the fort was burned down. We wanted revenge, blood, a pound of flesh but there's only so much the 8 to 11-year-old age group can muster. The rats had their own fort but it was a piece of shit, hardly worth our effort. They had built walls up under the Route-1 bridge so the 4-lane bridge surface was their roof with walls coming down. They had route 1 overhead and the trains rumbling by only 20 yards away. Like I said, even the idea was a piece of crap.
We wrecked their fort by throwing bricks and large rocks, tearing the walls down and making a mess of it. It's really strange how you can remember something 35 years later and recall a slight emotion. We stood over the mess we made of the rat fort, the thumping of cars passing overhead, and I felt empty because this revenge was so damn weak. We had nothing, no retort. Burning our fort down could not be outdone. The rats had won.
Our tree was close to the RR tracks. The fence that separated the track bed from the neighborhood butted against one side of the tree and continued on the other. You had to climb on the fence to reach the first rung of the ladder. Anyway, Armand was one of those kids that bad things happened to. I think his dad was abusive because the kid was always bruised. My friend Ralphie's dad beat the snot out of him over every little issue. Long before the rats burned us out Armand was in the fort during one of our cease fires. He was horsing around and fell out of the tree. He was not a bright kid. He landed on the fence, a leg in one side and a leg on the other. I leave the image and male pain to your imagination.
He fell over stiffly like a tree onto the track side, cried for a moment rolling around on the rocks, picked himself up and limped home. Yes, we were laughing and doing a little rolling around ourselves. I wonder what became of Armand. I never saw him after age 12. I don't envision great success.