The Harmless Hours

Ever wake up in the morning and have the feeling that this is goin’ be a really weird day. Well, that's the way I woke up. I just laid there for awhile, thinkin'. I opened my eyes a little and the smokey gray light told me it was about 6:30. Then I heard the birds. You can tell by listening to them that birds really love the dawn. You never see them, but they sure let you know they're there. I always figured they were talkin' to each other. The sparrows always got everybody goin'. Pretty soon the whole woods chimed in; the robins, the larks, the jays, and then came the crows. God I loved to hear those crows. What a racket they made. "Caaaaa. Caaaaa. Caaaaa!" Which meant, "Shut up you assholes, we're tryin' to sleep for christsake!"

I loved those crows. They were the Hell's Angels of the woods.

I was wide awake now, but I just laid there awhile kinda feelin' the morning. This was the first morning at my family's cottage. Me, my twin brothers and my cousin Jimmy all slept on a long screened-in porch at the back of the cottage.

The screens made it. They went from the floor to the ceiling on three sides of the porch. You were inside, but you felt like you were outside. My grandfather had built the cottage on a bunch of hills. The first hill was the front yard. It curled down into a flat space where the cottage was built. In back, the hill dropped down again and the porch hung there on its edge above a whole flock of trees that grew all the way down the hill until they stopped at an old weed-choked canal. In the morning you had the birds to sing you awake, and every night a million frogs croaked you to sleep.

I pulled back the covers and slipped out of bed. The June morning was cool and I shivered there in my underwear. I took a few quick steps over the cold wooden floor until I stood right in front of the screen at the foot of my bed. I stood there for a few seconds just thinking about it all; the birds and the woods and the frogs and the canal. Then I pulled out my penis and urinated through the screen.

"Mom's gonna be mad," I heard my brother Bobby say from behind me.

"I know," I said, enjoying the sound of urine splashing on the grass thirty feet below.

"She says that wreaks the screen," Bobby continued.

"She won't know for a long time," I reassured him, "come on, get up Jimmy," I said to my cousin, "we got a lot of stuff to do."

I knew my cousin had been awake for awhile, but as soon as I spoke he shot out of his bed, leaped to the screen and let fly a stream of urine that quieted even the crows.

"Mom's really gonna be mad, now," Bobby said again from his bed.

"Your mother asked me to do this every morning," Jimmy replied without even turning around, "she said it adds nitrous oxide to the screens actually making them stronger than when they were first manufactured."

I liked my cousin Jimmy a lot. He was a year older than I was but about a million times smarter, mainly because he lived in the city. There was a huge difference between living in the city and living in the suburbs like I did. Living in Detroit Jimmy learned everything way before I did, but being my friend he taught me about everything he knew. And I mean everything; sex, smoking, swearing, how to fight, all kinds of stuff. Half of it I didn't even want to know, but I figured if Jimmy knew about it I'd better catch on quick.