No matter what the question, love is the answer.Lost Boys Six

Jason and I shoplifted lunch five days a week at the local grocery store.
You’d be surprised how easy it is. Sometimes a customer sees, but we just open boxes and gobble.

Back at school we smoke stolen cigarettes at the spot there, off property while waiting for the bell, and the other four of us. Once you are sixteen nobody chases you down if you are absent. The other four are sixteen but still hang around for the shop classes with friends from public school.
Jeremy, Jason, Marty, Mattie and Dave pulled up to the smoking stop just off school property, in Dave’s mother’s shit-box Chevy. He had dropped her off at work. Piling in, we head for this night’s party spot, Emily’s house.

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A speedboat with keys and a full tank does not look like a ‘set up’, at the time. Naivety is a stupid reason to die. How long can we expect owners of millions of dollars of yachts to put up with the antics of six little ass holes, like us?   It might seem ridiculous for a seventeen year old to be caught up in the mess like this turns out to be. Fifteen years down here has gives a person some maturity, perspective and insight. The guy in the camouflage blow-up was the second part of the ‘set up’. Putt putting along, we waits for the Whaler motor to cut out and then makes his move.
"Ahoy, ‘sup?" His face is streaked black and his jumpsuit matches his boat colour. "Dude we’re dead in the water here, we don’t think its gas though: ‘Dead in the water alright’. 

Dude says that he is part of coast guard practise manoeuvres that haven’t started yet. He would be happy to tow us back but the blow-up motorboat’s outboard cannot handle that much weight drag. Can we all pile on the paddle boat that we are pulling behind us? Since a couple of us are wet, he will get the Boston Whaler after dropping us back at the marina. We cannot believe our luck. He tosses six life jackets and we hop on the paddle boat.

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     Jason just got back from four days on observation at the local psych hospital, something about suicide. He said it wasn’t bad there. They even had a school. It was short term because Jay isn’t nuts or anything like that. Some girl ditched him. It was all too much for him I guess. Next time he thinks about killing himself he’ll keep it to himself. Jason arrived at the Loony Bin with a full and perfect Mohawk hair style. He used soap from the washroom to make it stick up way high, spending hours in front of public washroom mirrors. Noticing that there was only one hair out of place, the treatment school teacher told him it was, "absolutely perfect". This observation by her seemed to set him at ease and relax him. Some days later he disclosed to this teacher that he had been sexually abused since he was six, by his natural mother. Telling her in a low voice, a calm delivery, it was easy for her to not react to this unexpected pronouncement during a math assignment. Professionals at the observation unit meet every morning and so she was obligated to share this with the team. Neglect and abuse are the order of the day in the adolescent unit, disclosing it to a teacher is rare, at any facility.
     But this teacher knew Jason.   He was a student in her behaviour class, at a local school, a couple of years ago. As a student in a behaviour class, Jason distinguished himself by bullying others, insolence and swagger. He met me in this class. Academically more advanced, I was even more able to waste my time, and the time of others, and still pass. We could hardly wait to quit at sixteen, and we both did.
      Jason’s demons were bubbling just under the surface and his temper was legendary. In spite of despising his mother, he would defend her to the death if anyone said, "your mother". This contradiction drove him even more ‘crazy’ and after the Sycamore chic dumped him, he finally cracked and drove off the pier in the next port town. Pretty bumped up, he survived only to go on to two weeks observation for the stupidity of leaving his seat belt on during his ‘death’ plunge.

     They say suicide attempts are just temper tantrums.   Thanks Dr. Phil and Oz and Opera, for all the insight.

 

Lost Boys Six – treachery thy name is 
Roy Boy 

     Roy Blankley is a six generation New York State resident whose great great grandfather was an old time circuit judge. Their family estate is now a museum along twelve mile creek, twelve miles from the mouth of Lake Mento. Google map shows it on the other side of Blankley Road, near a bushy inlet, with no other houses around.
     Roy was born and raised on the lake. The third of five boys, he always played ‘catch up’ in a birth order that had him as pinned as an insect in a collection of old world has-beens. He has enough money but it is doled out as a trust so often is and so, even though he does not have to work, his deep unhappiness with his life keeps him an unmarried hermit wearing his father’s old clothes and neglecting upkeep of another historic house his parents had left him. He seldom bathed or washed his hair but he figured the creek kept him clean enough. Over the years Roy becomes a more than proficient fishing and gaming guide.
He has a diving license and can fix any broken down motor the marina at the mouth of twelve mile creek calls him about. He even welds underwater.
On the weekends Roy meets with a militia group who ‘murder’ each other with paint balls and all the other Para-military games ‘Lost Boys’ on this side of the lake like to play.
Every year, he and three others circumnavigate Mento and its fellow lakes in a yacht race. The cup is to boat racing what the World Series is to baseball and what the Daytona 500 is to NASCAR. With the Gold Cup in his grasp, for the ninth time Roy hoped for better competition every year.
     The Lake Mento 300 yacht race course is a circumnavigation of the lake that starts at Port Debit Yacht Club, heads east and rounds goose Island, then heads south to Oslego NY where it turns east along the south shore to the Giagara River mark before heading to the finish line at Port Debit Yacht Club. The race is a test of preparation, teamwork, navigation and perseverance.
‘Captain Roy Boy’ leads the three man team to victory every year. The family marina made good from these wins in boat sales, docking, slip rentals, engine repairs, supply sales, launching and hoisting fees.
Blankley Bay Marina, located on beautiful downtown Blankley Bay.

     Roy figured the authorities wouldn’t start searching until dawn. It was four thirty a.m. Re-starting the Zeppelin he quietly pulled the Boston Whaler into Blankley Bay and up twelve mile creek toward the circuit judge’s historic home. He had played, swam, fished, and guided on the creek all his life.
Finding the sheltered cove near the road where he had left his truck several hours later, he debark the Zeppelin, deflated it and stuffed it on the truck. He would leave the other boat and deal with it later.

     Any idea how little changes over two hundred years in a small town? But to make a smaller list, at least one descendant of the first four hundred to settle stays, even if it is a distant cousin. Roy Blankley was a hanger on. In this vein he kept to himself, kept the peace, and was semi-productive. Other cousins, and co-owners of the old family marina tried bossing him but Roy’s engine repair expertise kept them at bay and when he took any boat he wished on a ‘test drive’ upon Lake Mento, which he did quite regularly, they could say nothing.

Heading due south, he arrived in Canada after a twenty minute speed ride, at his family’s twin marina in Bassering Ontario, only fifty miles away. Everyone was in a tizzy and no co-owner wants to witness during a spot check: missing boats, wrecked boats, irate customers, suicidal managers. And then it occurred to him. This was something he could do alone could completely fix with no one the wiser. If years of Para-military exercises had taught him anything it was, “Don’t Tread on Me".