I heard no whistle that day. My father had the loudest whistle around Packanack Lake, a small lake community in northern New Jersey. The other boys could hear him from the other side of the lake. If they could hear him, so could I. And if I wasn’t home when he whistled, I faced a battle between his brown snakeskin belt and my bare back. As it traveled through the air, it hissed as if it wasn’t killed and skinned.
The fuchsia sun embraced the lake, turning it from the familiar blue to a red haze. I walked along it, returning home in time for dinner. My black high top Chuck Taylor showed distress from the previous school year. The soles fell from their bindings and scraped the cement of the street. They were at the awkward stage between school years; my parents could only afford one pair a year for my five other siblings and myself.

Smoke from my front yard blended into darkening sky and my mother’s car wasn’t parked outside. She must be passed out at my uncle’s bar by now.

“S***,” I cursed myself. I was supposed to mow the lawn and burn the grass. I got closer to the house. I was about to get a hiding from Father. The house was smaller than the two next to it, the only house on the block to maintain the original lake house model, while the neighboring ones spread out like the ones on the East side of the lake.

“F***,” I yelled at myself. I sprinted closer. I sucked wind quickly. More than half of a pack a day of cowboy killers would do this to any thirteen year old. My Chucks pounded the ground and my arms cut through the summer breeze. Father lost all control of the fire. His body consumed – only his legs remained exposed to the sunset. His body was eaten by the oxygen hungry fire. I ran up to the lawn, grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him from the mouth of the fire. His face was smothered by the flame. The distinctive nose and cheek bones we shared were now unrecognizable. His tattoos he got after Korea were gone, along with the rest of his peachy skin.
***

The sun peaked through the venetian blinds and met my half open eyes. The bed next to mine was empty and the jersey sheets tossed to the floor. The clock blinked eleven fifty three. My head rang from the party down by the lake. Glen walked in the room and flicked on the light switch. My hand flew up to my eyes as they were flushed with lights while my other one fished for my pack of Marlboro Reds that sat on my nightstand. The first morning cigarette was overdue and it would help my uneasy stomach. I left the room and passed the dining room to find Father in the kitchen eating breakfast over the counter.

“If you’re gonna take your little brother out, make sure he doesn’t throw up on the front yard,” my father said without looking up from the counter and walked away. Father wouldn’t fight with Glen. Even the craziest jarheads knew not to f*** with someone practically two times the size of them. Glen weighed almost three hundred pounds. As the star center of Wayne Valley’s football team, people would hand me drinks when they found out the two of us were related. I lit a cigarette. It eased my cracking bones. The smoke was an ocean. It filled my lungs and when the tide left, it left its debris in my chest.

Glen and I sat quietly in the dining room, attempting to keep our cereal down.

“I need your car,” Lee said. “Mom took Dad’s this morning.”

“Nah,” he replied and an argument quickly broke out. He needed to go to Paterson, we all knew why but he wouldn’t say it out loud. She would have to walk three miles to work at the Pet Store that hired high school students over the summer. The hill she would hike up was the same one we walked up to elementary school. It seemed like a mountain. We walked up it through rain, snow or hail and on the hottest or coldest days. When the colder months arrived and Mother Nature blew in snowstorms that hill became a playground. All five of us, even the oldest Lee, would steal garbage can lids from unsuspecting neighbors and sled from the peak onto the frozen lake. But when Father whistled, we ran home. One winter my friend, Jeff, and I skidded onto the temporary frozen tundra. The March sun shined on the ice and began melting the ice. Unknowingly, we reached the lake and the ice broke from under our metal lids. We plunged into the abyss.

I stood up from the table and went to meet Jeff at his house.

“Morning Pauly, Jeff’s still asleep,” I met his mother at the door. She only wore a pink bathrobe and you could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra. At all the class parties in middle school, Charlotte was the youngest mom and attracted the teachers and even the boys who started puberty.

“Mom put some goddamn clothes on for Christ’s sakes. Paul doesn’t want to see that,” Jeff said as he approached the door. She kissed him on the head as he barged past and gave him two cigarettes. He put one between each ear. We walked down to the lake where we would wreak havoc on the elementary school kids. While the parents and highschoolers worked, we were left to be the sharks on the beach. Jeff and I would take their money and push their heads into the sand. Their hairless legs kicked as I pushed their heads deeper into the beer can polluted sand. Jeff laughed deep from his stomach and the lifeguards scoffed as if we were monsters.

Jeff and I walked along the shore until the lake came to a point and waited by a footbridge that crossed the shallow, murky waters end of the lake.

“Hey faggots,” a mob of kids, who wore their blue and white junior varsity football jackets all year despite the heat, screamed as they approached the opposite side of the bridge. I flicked my lit cigarette into the lake, but Jeff continued to smoke his to the filter. He ripped off his leather jacket and tossed it to the grass and started towards our end of the bridge. I couldn’t breathe. My torso tightened and my heart beat through my ribcage. I followed Jeff to meet the kids from the East side of the lake. My hands shook as Jeff took the first punch. The kids swarmed on Jeff when he hit the ground. Jeff was small -too small to play football or basketball. Jeff and I would work on his mom’s car and smoke Marlboro Reds while every other guy went to practice. They were on top of him like a pack of wolfs, who just recently found a doe they injured. I clawed him under the varsity jackets that still swung their fists. I grabbed one by the collar and pushed him against the handrail of the bridge. With two punches he went limp. He flipped over the barrier and his body smacked against the mucky water.

His friends scrambled to get him out of the water. Jeff lay curled in a ball. Bloody and swollen, I picked him up and walked him back to his mom’s. She wasn’t home. I put him in bed and opened a window. I threw my pack of cigarettes and a lighter on his nightstand. He’d need them more than me.

The sun began to set and I knew Father would whistle soon, so I began my walk home, only wanting to tell my dad of the day.