Why I don’t like a blue cooler, Or, The dangers of making mud pies.

I met my first pedophile when I was eight years old. In Clinton, Mississippi.

I didn’t know what he was, at the time, nor did any in my small group of friends, except Lori, but that comes later. I do however distinctly remember what he did. It’s rather scarred into my memory, as you might imagine.

Oh, now, he didn’t touch us or anything. We were separated by a chain link fence. And, I hadn’t even really thought about it since, until yesterday and I don’t know what it was but something crossed my mind and Wham!: there he was, sitting in the back on top of an old stump of a memory. With that awful, tobaccoed grin.

I then started wondering what happened to the other children. I can’t really remember what they all looked like, entirely, but I do remember some of their names: Lori, a sweet girl, older, blonde hair; Gray, who was red-headed and a twin sister, and then his sister, but I can’t remember her name at all.

We used to have a “hideout,” that I remember.

This was years back during another ill-fated attempt of mine to live with my real mother. But, that’s another blog. A lot of good things came out that brief, horrible experience: I realized my mother really did try; I learned how to doggie paddle; and I also met Jesus, who at the time was a Korean man living in a brown-stained mobile home behind Jitney Jungle.

He was a very quiet man, and I’ll be very embarrassed if, come the Rapture, he’s the one standing at the Gates, but all I ever recall his talking about was tuna.

Of course, that, too, could probably be its own blog. Maybe it will be.

II

Our “hideout” was, in essence, nothing more than some bent tree limbs that had barely survived a storm. They’d curved in a dome-like fashion, and that became the “roof” of our hideout. We conducted extrememly serious business in this hideout. Oh my, yes, I led the charge, myself, as a matter of fact, on the severe urgency needed in that particular part of the woods for mud pies. Bugs and plants were literally starving to death and here we sat, with the minds and the resources to do something about it!

The Law was easily passed, and we set about making mud pies and loading them up on top of a blue cooler for easy transport throught the small copse of trees. Lori led the way.

See, Lori was most of the times, like the King. We didn’t mind that, really. She had found the blue cooler, and though it was dented and caked with filth and detritus, it gave her a sense of authority. She’d claimed to have found on a solo sojourn to the hideout. She’d dragged it all the way from “over there,” and it became a symbol in our little group.

(S)He who had the Blue Cooler, was the King. (We rotated Kingships, anyway, so it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t a Lord-of-the-Flies-I’ve-got-the-conch-sort-of-thing). 

I didn’t believe her when she said she’d found Hustler magazines stacked to the brim, inside the cooler, mainly because I didn’t know what those were. But, ever honest, she wasn’t lying. There they were, still in it. After flipping through several of them, I was surprised she’d kept any. They seemed the sort of thing to me, at the ripe age of eight, that you burn on sight before taking the ashes straight to the nearest altar call, even if the church wasn’t Baptist.

I bet we looked at those pictures for hours. I don’t know that we knew what we were really looking at, but we found it mysterious and alluring and Gray actually stole several of them and took them home with him.

Well, “stole” is a hard word. He just said, Hey I’m taking some these. And why would we care, anyway. Other than that hey made the most perfect wrappers for my mud pies.

As a matter of fact, we were in the very middle of doing just that when The Pedophile arrived.

I think I was probably on my third or fourth batch, I was a hard worker and rather attentive to details and order back then, when I heard a cough.

I looked up, and there on the other side of a thin, chain link fence, behind a Conoco, stood a man who, at the time, seemed 20-feet tall. He had on a plaid shirt, and a green, camouflage vest. His jeans were filthy.

And he had a wad of tobacco in his mouth.

I know you’re wondering, My god, these children were, what, 8 and 9, where were their parents?

Let me put your mind to ease, OK: That is a very good question, and you should be proud that you’ve asked it. Now, let’s move on, shall we?

“Hey there,” he said. Gray took one look at him and then us, and ran off. We should have done the same, but we were there first.

I was at once intimidated, frightened, and absolutely interested in what was happening. I imagine most children would be. I didn’t sense any immediate danger or threat.

Lori was instantly on guard.

“Get outta here.” She was brazen, and I think 100% that it had something do with her pageboy haircut.

He stood there, grinning.

I couldn’t tear my eyes off him. Maybe I felt sad for him. He stuck a finger through the fence and asked us to roll up a magazine and give it to him through the hole.

We stood frozen, not grinning.

“Shut up! Go away!” Lori took a small step back, and I followed suit.

He asked us, point blank, then, if we’d come try to shake his hand, that he was sorry. I wanted to ask him what for, but I didn’t move. Lori said if he didn’t leave, and Right Then!, she was going to start screaming her head off.

She even picked up a rock, as proof.

He called her a bitch and spit through the fence at us, but it fell, stringy on the chain links, instead. He walked off, though, and left us alone. Lori took my hand and said we were getting the H-E-L-L out of there and never coming back.

What was I thinking, staring at him like that!, she yelled, Didn’t I know what that was?

No.

“A petafile.” She said, “That man was a petafile and there’s nothing good about them.”

Remembering how he tried to spit at us, I was inclined to agree.

III

We did, however, brave one last trip to the hideout, the next day: me, Gray, Lori, his nameless sister. Gray was worried he’d left his socks. Lori led the way, as usual, and as we followed along behind her, we fell into chatting, not paying attention.

I nearly bumped into Lori; she’d stopped suddenly.

I looked up and saw why. The cooler was gone.

She turned her head this way and that, up and down, but it was Gray who found it.

It was now on the other side of the chain link fence.

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