Sworded Tales

Gretchen quirked an eyebrow at Donny as he stood there smiling with his hammer.  He had sprinted over from next door a few minutes earlier, all pasty skin and giant mop of platinum blond hair.

“Cap busting?” Gretchen asked, “You know I don’t like guns.”

“Right, right, I got that,” Donny said, “You see any guns?”  He raised his arms and spun.

Gretchen stepped back, avoiding the hammer claw arcing her way at throat height.  Her face dissolved into a frown.

Everyone had been gun shy since the Tina Thompson incident last summer.  The official story was clouded with too many accounts, but some jackass had decided to stick pins through the tips of the standard rubber dart ammunition for dart guns.  Gretchen was sure the genius was Mickey Czernick, but without any proof, little justice could be had.

Tina Thompson wasn’t the only one scarred by the injury.  The doctors said she’ll probably never see out of that eye one hundred percent again.  Guns of any kind became forbidden throughout the entire neighborhood.

Donny pulled a small box of cap gun rolls out of his pocket and shook them.  “C’mon, you’ll see!”  The limber boy disappeared around the side of the house, impervious to Gretchen’s displeasure.

A nine year old eye roll filled the drama quota as Gretchen glanced around and followed Donny around the corner into the back yard.  He was squatted down on the cement slab in front of the shed for only a moment before the hammer raised into the air and then crashed down.

The staccato snap of a gun cap fired off, followed immediately by another as Donny repeated the procedure.  His head swung around with a huge grin on his face to see if the gunfire would summon Gretchen.  His mouth opened in further glee as he saw she was already halfway there.  With a laugh, he turned back to his work, pop, pop!

Gretchen squat-sat on the cement near him, content to watch as he cracked along his merry way.  The occasional dead glunk of a misfire couldn’t stem his rapture.

“Your dad’s hammer?” she asked.

Donny grimaced in indignation at the question, “Hammers are indestructible.”

Both kids sat in silence for a few moments after Donny finished the first roll, listening for the clarion call of trouble.  Gretchen opened her mouth to pop her ears as her cohort fished out another roll of caps.  He offered the hammer to her, but she refused with a sensible shake of the head.

“Fold a few up,” Gretchen said.

“Fold what up?”

“Caps, dumbass.  Fold a few up.”

The light of understanding on Donny’s face was swept away by impish delight.  Nimble fingers could hardly finish their task before the hammer of metal on cement obliterated the gunpowder with an amplified bang.

“”Ha, ha!” Donny’s enthusiasm rushed forth, followed by five caps exploding, then seven.

A smile walked onto Gretchen’s face, hand in hand with the sheer joy exuding from the boy next to her.  Her eyes snapped wide as she saw Donny putting a whole roll of caps on the cement, raising the hammer overhead with both hands.  Gretchen squinted her eyes and leaned away as the tool struck true.

The ballsy report stultified them into an ear-ringing silence.  A two inch flame hovered above the aftermath of the cap roll, and both kids burst into belly laughter at the same moment.  Raucous hilarity filled the back yard in a self perpetuating upward spiral.  Gretchen was almost in tears and squeezed out a little fart by accident, echoing sharply off the cement.  Well Donny almost pissed himself howling and cackling and rolling into the grass.

“Donny Stone!” a voice barked from the boy’s back porch, “What are you about?”

With a muted chuckling and snorting, Donny waved off any words and darted toward his home.  He stopped at the edge of the fence to glance back for only a moment, offering a smile of understanding and appreciation for the moment shared.

Gretchen laying back, propped on her elbows, smiled back.  A long sigh escaped her after Donny had returned home, and her eyes drifted down to the hammer resting on the cement slab, cold and forgotten.  If she had known that the next time she would see that hammer, it would be covered with Donny’s blood, she might have kept it instead of returning it.