Johnny’s Dead
“Johnny’s dead,” said Jeffrey.
“We’re all dead,” said Eddie. Eddie was right. Eddie was always right. He stared to cry. He wasn’t crying because his brother had just died. He was crying because he knew that, as the youngest, he’d be elected to tell Aunt Ida.
All the kids in the neighborhood knew Ida Mae Peterson as Aunt Ida. Aunt Ida was the matriarch and Supreme Potentate of an extended family that included her widowed sister and her sister’s six children. “I may be your mother,” her sister once warned the children, “but you listen to Aunt Ida.”
Heaven, Hell, and Earth shook when Aunt Ida spoke, which was often. She ran a tight household and no one wanted to be on the business end of her wrath — that business end usually coming in the form of a head-shot with a wooden spoon.
The never-spoken, open, dirty-little secret about Aunt Ida was that she had a burning love for everyone, particularly the children. Perhaps that’s why they all listened to her. They didn’t fear her punishment; they feared that she’d revoke her love. Hers was that type of love that, if polished, vaulted much more mundane folk into Sainthood.
It is this stern-faced love that was the mortar of a home that became the hub of many worlds. In the late 1950s her home, and the field and woods behind it, became the place where the neighborhood teenage boys gathered and did the things that teenage boys did. One of the things that teenage boys did very well was drool over the two teenage girls that lived under her roof but that, as they say, is a different story.
This story is about boys, Johnny’s death by arrow, and those unfortunate enough to have lived through it.
Johnny was one of Aunt Ida’s sister’s kids. He, his brothers Raymond and Eddie, Charles Tiffnay from next door, Jeffrey Wilson and his good buddy Charles Godfrey, and a couple other hangers-on coalesced at the house one late afternoon in the spring of 1959. They brought with them their bows and arrows and silly-wonder.
Soon a ruckus of only a boy’s sort evolved. “Not here,” Aunt Ida yelled through the kitchen window. “Out in the field!”
With their heads slung low, the gaggle of boys dragged to the field. Charles Godfrey, the most forward looking of the boys, shot an arrow straight into the air. It disappeared into the dusking sky and then reappeared a moment before it THWAATTED into the grassy ground at his feet.
Jeffrey followed, for Jeffrey always followed Charles Godfrey. TWANG, FSSS, silence and the arrow disappeared. THWAAT! Oh, their hearts jumped with glee.
“This is the neatest thing ever,” laughed Johnny. It was at least the neatest thing that day. “How about we all shoot our arrows in the air and see whose comes down last!”
The boys cheered and prepared their bows. “Everybody ready? 1-2-3, NOW!” And, as one, they let loose their arrows. TWANG, TWANG, TWANG, TWANG, TWANG! FSSSSSSSSSssssssssssss. silence.
THWAAT! THWAAT! THWAAT! THWAAT!
Oh, they laughed. All but Johnny who was still looking skyward with delight. “Mine’s still up there,” he smiled. “Wow!”
The boys looked up and then at Johnny. His neck was stretched, his eyes desperately searched the deep blue, and there was an arrow sticking smack-dab out of the center of his forehead. Somehow his arrow landed right in his head. Somehow he didn’t feel it. Somehow he didn’t even see it now. Somehow …
“Oh. Shit,” said Charles Tiffnay.
No one breathed. Except Johnny. “Whaat?” he asked and laughed in that silly way that’s somewhere between delight and fright. He knew something was wrong.
He’d brought his head down to look at his friends. The boys all looked at Johnny, wide-eyed, but no one made a sound. The arrow didn’t move. It was stuck in his head. Sticking straight out of his head. Doubtless lodged deep in his brain.
The hangers-on had already scattered, leaving the core boys alone. In the dark. In the middle of the field. Eddie crying and dead Johnny among them.
No one remembers who told Aunt Ida or even what happened after. Surely hell ensued. Bows and arrows were certainly confiscated. And someone took a wooden spoon off the side of the head, probably Johnny, because that’s how Aunt Ida rewarded stupidity.
Yes, Johnny survived. He’s probably told this story a hundred times to his sons.
I heard it from Uncle Jeff. Uncle Jeff, aka Jeffrey, married my mom’s sister. My mom was one of Aunt Ida’s sister’s girls.
Aunt Ida’s sister is my Grandma; Aunt Ida is my Nan.
Nan raised me.
And this story is part of me.
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Postscript: Uncle Jeff is coming to my house on Thursday for Thanksgiving. He is the family mythologist and has a hundred of these stories. This is my favorite and I do him little justice in the retelling.
Uncle Jeff learned his story-telling craft from one of the old masters, Jean Shepherd. You might know Mr. Shepherd as the author and narrator of A Christmas Story ["You'll shoot your eye out, kid"]. In the ’50’s and ’60s, Shepherd had a radio show on WOR in New York. Jeff made sure he was in the car when Shepherd’s show was on.
Listening to Uncle Jeff tell a story is like being in the backseat of a ‘58 Plymouth going around the block one more time just to hear the end of the show.
I hope he tells this story at Thanksgiving dinner.
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I wrote a little bit more about the house here: The Little Old Farmhouse.
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