The big boy held his hand over my hand while I held the dogwood bud firmly between my fingers.
“See you wait until you see the front and let it go. By the time it gets under us the bud will drop onto it. Do this one with me.”
He held his hand in place and we waited. I focused. I hardly breathed. We waited some more. I heard the growing sounds of an approaching car. I could tell it would soon be at the top of the hill on Cherry Creek Highway, and directly below us, perched high in the dogwood tree that overhung the road.
Everything slowed down. I could feel his hand move, releasing the bud; my mind floated with it in a perfect dive onto the middle of the windshield. I could sense the impact even before I could hear the dull “thwack”.
I had been trained to stay very still in case the occupants of the car pulled over. Some assessed damage, some scanned the roadside for causes or culprits. Once in a while a one of them would look up into the tree. Reactions varied.
At times, if the lead car of a group was hit, the following cars had to be careful to brake hard enough to avoid the cars ahead. The big boy and his friends had trained me to appreciate screeching tires.
This time the car slowed, but continued down the road. I was eager to try again. I plucked a fat bud from the branch above and waited, listening. The next car was on the wrong side of the road, but I used it to mentally time my drop, which I practiced again and again in my mind, in real time, while I waited. I wasn’t waiting long.
A long red sedan came into view at a good speed and I switched into auto pilot. The bud was away before I knew what I had done. My belly warmed upon impact, a flush of warm woozy pride floated to the top of my head and I had to re-grip my branch. “Good one,” whispered the big boy, while I pressed my lips together in pride and lay very still.
*****
It seemed like every kid in Morgan Crescent wanted to try. Suddenly, I was an expert. I wasn’t sure about the protocol involved in this enterprise. It wasn’t my game, I had only just learned it. But if I could learn, so could others, they reasoned. What could be the harm in having six or eight boys dangling from a tree over a highway pelting car windshields with dogwood buds?
Behind our house in north Port Alberni (Alberni it was called then) was a small forest between us and Cherry Creek highway. We knew every tree, trail and hiding place, and it seemed enormous to us. If we hid during a good game of Kick the Can, there was a good chance we would never be spotted. We owned the space, we felt safe there. While my school of sniper trainees found vantage points to observe and learn, I climbed the tree. They knew to keep still, and instinctively sensed that being on the ground during this phase of an operation meant they were more vulnerable.
|It became apparent that my skills as an instructor were greater than I could have imagined. My first drop was successful, and seconds after the car had gone the boys were scrambling up the dogwood tree and, when it became too crowded, the maple tree that grew beside it. They couldn’t wait to get in on the action.
The next car passed without incident; so did the one after that. The third car was lucky that the boys in the maple hadn’t yet figured out that dogwood buds would be hard to find there, so they had to let the third car pass without a toss, and the neophytes who had buds hadn’t yet calculated drop rate yet.
More time passed without a car. Impatience grew.
The maple tree gang had time to scramble down from their perches, fill their pockets with low hanging dogwood buds, and resettle into their nests. Impatience grew further. “Dropping” was the name of the game I had learned, a patient, scientific (and apparently solitary) enterprise. The game was quickly morphing into “Hurling and firing” amongst the majority.
After a few near misses and some outright misfires everything came together at once. A long, white-over-yellow sedan reached the top of the gentle hill, and was met with an enthusiastic volley of dogwood buds. The effect was immediate.
Two large and angry men exploded from the car. I froze and lay still as I was trained. Bill just below me did the same. We were the only two who followed protocol. A stream of little boys scrambled down the trees and bolted the trails with a good head start on the two large men. Bill and I watched as the two men passed below us, ran into the woods towards the pack, yelling obscenities, and shaking their fists.
Bill began his descent when they had passed us and their backs were turned. I followed close behind, trying to climb quietly but quickly. At the bottom of the tree I headed to the highway and ran past the dogwood and the maple before doubling back into the woods. Bill was not behind me.
I panicked and crawled up the little hill on the side of the road to see where he was and peek in on the action. Bill was running as fast as his four year old legs would carry him, straight down the trail, in the most direct route to home and safety. His path was within ten feet of one of the large men, who turned and, to my horror, scooped up my brother and dangled him from his shorts. I rose from my hiding place and started walking slowly towards my brother. I could see some of the Morgan Crescent kids still watching from their hiding places, others were likely nearly home by now.
“You kids are gonna get it!” the man hollered. “If I catch you doing this again I am going to boot your ***** up to your eyeballs!” Bill dangled, but turned to listen politely to the man, who gently set him down. Without looking back he continued his run down the path towards home. I joined him.
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