It’s funny the stuff that you remember most clearly from childhood. For reasons that it would be superflous to explain, a couple of weeks ago I found myself sitting next to my best friend from fifth grade, at a dinner party. Since the fifth grade in question was at a tiny, totally obscure Australian elementary school nine thousand miles from the place I now live; and since I hadn’t thought about, much less seen, Steven Brown since 1979—the year our class at Kallista Primary School all went our separate ways—randomly running into him thirty-four years later was a reality-bending experience. Like me, Steven now has a wife and kids and a head of gray hair. Unlike me he is now a respected gastric surgeon. But the moment each of us registered who the other was, the exact same memory leapt to both our minds—the day Steven Brown and I were frogmarched up our driveway by a large, tattooed and very angry motorist to explain ourselves to my mother.
In 1979 my family lived on a dusty dirt road that wound its way through wooded hills on the outskirts of Melbourne. Lightly traveled, the road followed the path of a small creek, and served a scattering of farmhouses and cottages built up and down the sides of the valley. Like all kids I was magnetically attracted to moving water and as far back as I can remember, spent endless hours playing around, fishing along, or falling in, this creek. It was a small but marvelous stream, with clear water, cascading rapids, slow-moving pools and high, overgrown banks from beneath which a well-cast cricket or worm might coax a brown trout if a small boy was patient. The creek made our house a popular destination with non-creekside-dwelling friends. Steven Brown fell into this category and by the time we were eight or nine years old he and I were spending lots of time fishing, building dams, throwing rocks, helping our sisters fall in the water and generally making nuisances of ourselves.
On the day in question I have to assume that the trout weren’t cooperating because our attention had shifted to every nine-year-old boy’s next-favorite pastime—weapon building. Along the creek there were plenty of sticks suitable for making arrow shafts. We gathered a quiverful then raided my father’s toolshed, harvesting wire coathangers, heavy-duty rubber bands, and a box of nails that we contrived to mount to the business end of our arrows. And just like that, we’d come up with an interesting new pastime.
This is why small boys are dangerous. They get crazy, atavistic ideas into their heads and set about advancing them without ever considering the consequences if they actually work. As mentioned, along the bank above our creek ran a road. Dusty and potholed, this was not a road for speeding along. So rough was the surface where it passed our house that cars would slow down to avoid losing a hubcap. Bedded down in the underbrush at the top of the creek bank, Steven Brown and I spent an agreeable afternoon launching salvos of nail-tipped sticks at slow-moving cars, all of which trundled dustily by, unscathed by our pointless projectiles. But a summer afternoon is long, and while our homemade crossbows were neither powerful nor accurate, the law of averages dictated that eventually, one of them was bound to connect.
If there was one car we shouldn’t have shot at it was the menacing, black, souped-up coupe that came snorting and rumbling along late in the day. One glance at the car, which looked straight out of the movie Mad Max, should have told us that the prudent thing would be to let this one go. Faced with the moonscape of potholes and presumably fearing for his precious rims, the driver behind the tinted glass slowed to a crawl as he passed by our hiding place. Too tempted we fired, and one of the arrows found its mark. It hit the passenger-side fender with a loud ‘thunk” then skittered onto the hood, just in case the driver was in any doubt about where the noise came from.
I can see the brakelights of that coupe and hear the sound of its tires locking up on the road surface like it was yesterday. I will never forget the cold dread of hearing it slammed into reverse. Nor, I suspect, will Steven Brown. We fled down the steep embankment to the creek with Mad Max in hot pursuit. Reasoning that salvation lay on the other side, Steven leapt across. In a panic I fell in, which might have saved me since I had time to flatten myself against the bank, from which refuge I watched Mad Max go sailing overhead in hot pursuit of my friend. Hell hath no fury like an Australian petrolhead with a scratched car and it only took this one a few seconds to get Steven by the collar and be marching him back towards the creek, shouting “Where’s your little mate, then?” Steven didn’t rat me out exactly, but his eyes, flickering to my hiding place, gave me away. Mad Max took the hint, spotted me cowering beneath the bank, and hauled me from the water like the drowned rat I appeared to be.
It was a long walk up to the house so Max could describe our activities to my mother. I can’t now recall what my punishment was, so it can’t have been as frightening as being chased and caught was to begin with. But it hardly matters. As my chance meeting with an old friend revealed, there are some things that, once shared, can never be un-shared. That connect you to people for good, no matter how far your paths diverge. Once in a while it does you good to escape from adulthood and be reminded of the kid you once were. It helps you belong.
