Vacant Lot
Theo holds a machete over his head. The hot June sun glints off sparse bits of what bare metal remains—like twinkling stars in a rusted night sky. He stares at the underbrush separating him from the mysteries in the deep, dark heart of the jungle. He loses his grip on the cracked leather handle as he swings. The tall grass makes way for the flying blade, bowing with utmost civility before returning unshorn to its dance with the breeze. The machete wedges upright in the loam.
Lonnie hollers a “gimme that” and grabs the blade and pulls it from the earth. His first swing sends clinging clumps of clay through the air. He ignores Theo’s whining protestations—shouts about how it’s still his turn; how it’s his daddy’s machete. Lonnie gleefully cuts down the approaching undead horde of scrub and pine saplings, slicing through gnashing mouths that seek to devour his living human brain. Theo sulks over to where they dropped their stuff and starts rooting around the pile. He makes sure neither Lonnie nor Dylan are looking, then shoves a whole Hostess cupcake into his mouth. He stuffs the incriminating cellophane and white paper square into the pocket of his Lee Dungarees.
Lonnie finishes the last of the undead vegetation with a flourish, decapitating the last standing sapling with a whirlwind spin. He stops to catch his breath. The vacant lot vibrates with insects invisible and menacing. He looks around for Dylan but the scrub brush is too tall.
“Hey bossman,” shouts Lonnie, “where’m I cuttin’ to?” He wipes sweat and dirt and vegetative detritus from his brow and slings it off before cleaning himself proper with his t-shirt. The stinking miasma lands on an anthill, wreaking biological havoc on the unsuspecting fire ants.
“Toward the big oak yonder” come a cry from the bulrushes.
“And where exactly’s yonder?”
Dylan emerges from the reeds, red-faced and sweating. He walks over to Lonnie with purposeful steps. Normally they’d spend their Summer vacation running down winding trails through the woods, but this year Dylan convinced the gang to blaze bike trails in the vacant lot behind the Pentecostal church. While the chapel was being built, the construction crew got overzealous and cut a good half acre past the church’s property line. They stopped once the mistake was discovered, leaving behind half-secured stacks of downed trees still clinging to red violent life between twisted, gnarled roots and piles of red Georgia clay. The vacant lot laid bare and red like a wound on the earth left to scab over.
Dylan puts his sweaty, sunburned arm around Lonnie’s equally sweaty, sunburnt neck and points off towards an ominous-looking oak at the mouth of the woods.
“There’s yonder.”
Lonnie laughs and pushes Dylan away. Fat globules of sweat fall off Dylan’s lank hair and crash with cataclysmic results for the red ants below. Dylan walks down the trail they blazed earlier. Uneven stalks of grass stick out from the ground. Dylan takes what was once the swing from his backyard and puts it over the short grass. The plank is dry-rotted and gray—the woodgrain juts out in sharp relief. He puts his right foot on top of the board and takes up the ropes on either side and pulls them taut. He pushes down, forcing the sharp lip of the board into the earth. He drags the board along the path, digging up clumps of roots and dirt.
Dylan looks past the blaze and sees how the rainwater cut trenches into the piles of earth that snake and wind around downed trees—wind and erosion softened the red hills down to soft slopes of loam. He tried pointing this all out before but it was like they were looking at different things. Lonnie and Theo didn’t understand what Dylan was talking about, but he has the nice bike—with pegs on the front and back wheels—so they go along with it.
The omnipresent hum of mosquito wings vanishes and the cicadas grow silent. The air, hot and fragrant with honeysuckle, grows chill. Lonnie’s arms go goose-pimply as the skies open up and the onslaught begins—fat raindrops plummet from crystal clear cerulean skies, stinging the sunburned boys with each direct hit. They make a break for shelter on footpaths ancient and eternal that run like varicose veins through the forest. They huddle under the ominous oak. Theo takes out a bag from Cub Foods and passes around ham sandwiches with mustard and American cheese, and boiling-hot Capri Sun pouches. He opens a bag of Doritos and puts it between the three of them while they wait for the storm to pass.