Sightings Read Free

baseball field, we found our bases flung to the trees, third base dangling from a low hanging maple, while home plate was recovered two pine trees over. The field, too, was covered with trash, the remnants of TV dinners and cake mixes and eggs shells scattered along the baselines.
    Things had turned personal – they’d desecrated our home – and it was suddenly clear that Ronald had been right about retaliation.
    â€œIt’s psychological,” Ronald said, explaining his plan a few nights later while filling a bag with dog shit just outside the Rosses’ perimeter. “They call this guerilla warfare.”
    Several of us had gathered near the oak tree in preparation for the assault. Jim thought it a good idea to dress up like Indians ourselves (“You know, like how they did for the Boston Tea Party!”), but in the end, he was the only one among us to don the war paint and feathers.
    Ronald distributed our explosives – black cats and cherry bombs, mostly – before ordering us to fan out on all sides of the Rosses’ residence and wait for the signal (a piss-poor owl hoot, courtesy of Ronald). Clutching our matches, we did just that, spidering across the street in perfect silence, our heads down and running heel to toe, which Jim (the closest thing to an Indian we had) had heard was how the real Indians used to do it during horse raids.
    We all reached our drop zones, but after a few minutes of silence, we began wondering if maybe we’d missed the signal. The plan seemed simple enough: Ronald was to light the bag of shit, chuck it against the door, and then let sound the owl screech.
    But there had been no screech – nothing even close to a screech – so Jim plucked one of his headdress feathers and pointed it toward the other side of the house, indicating that I should check on Ronald.
    I began army crawling along the edge of the house, and in one instance, accidentally peeked inside the living room window to find the Ross family deeply engaged in a game show. Some of the younger brothers sat on the floor (Indian style, no less), while their parents and the older ones littered themselves on the couches. I glanced at the front steps (not a flaming bag of shit in sight) and so, continued crawling until spotting Ronald on the opposite side of the house.
    He was in reconnaissance mode, his unblinking eyes pressed tight to the basement window.
    â€œPsst,” I hissed, “hey, Ron. You gonna give the signal or what? These black cats are burning holes in my pockets.”
    He didn’t hear me.
    â€œPsst.”
    This time, his head swiveled just enough to reveal the sunburned bridge of his nose.
    â€œWhat?” I asked.
    He motioned me toward the basement window, and upon peering in, I witnessed something remarkable by the light of the hanging bulb – Pony pressed hard against the orange flowered couch and a topless Georgia Ambler grinding against him. On the floor beside them were the remains of her now bunched blue and white striped bikini, but all we could see was her body thundering against his like some great rebellion, sweat beading from the tops of her breasts and sliding through the canyon that separated.
    I thought all sorts of things, but the last thing I thought was the strangest:
    Some day she will be old.
    Ronald tapped my shoulder, breaking the spell, whispered, “This was never part of our plan.”
    Moments later, a cherry bomb cracked through the night (also not part of our plan, though Jim’s itchy fingers had gotten the best of him), and as the sound echoed past the trash bins and telephone poles and two car garages, it eventually bounced back to Georgia. She pressed herself to Pony’s shoulders as that Indian’s ink eyes turned toward us.
    We ran, tripping over Georgia’s bicycle.
    We were nothing but shadows by then.

    The rest of the summer felt like we were down by seven in the bottom of the ninth – we all just