Anna's Hill

There are days I wish I had a normal brain. Rellys say that I was "born to hang."

Cattail weeds; did you have them in your area where you grew up? In the spring, these were tough green stalks headed by the seedpod. In summer, they’d slowly get taller and thicker, the leaves getting longer and longer. In autumn, they’d be hardened by the sun, the stalks still supple, but desiccated into a triangle stalk like an epee blade. The leaves used to whittle bark off small twigs. When the wind blew you could hear them rattling like vegetable copperheads.

I grew up by a swamp. Billions of cattails grew every year. I remember the smell of dried marsh and hearing the weeds banging together in the wind- the hot sun of an Indian summer pulling every element of gold out of the air. We used to take our bikes to the top of the hill by Anna’s place. By the bottom of the hill was the swamp; looking down it looked like an army of cattail pike men.

This was the time of motorcycle daredevils and Starsky & Hutch. I had my trusty red Schwinn, brave in its banana seat and monkey-bar, stingrayesque fenders and “slick” back tire.

It is important to point out that Anna was a girl I really, really liked. A lot.

Anna’s place was next to a “tail hill”. For those of you who didn’t grow up in Dog Patch the way I did, a tail hill was a few thousand tons of assorted sand, rock, gravel, and general former lakebed left over from when a lake is drained (turning it into swamp) for which to create a place to build housing for folks who don’t make a Hell of a Lot of money. Over the years, this gets compacted into a sort of sandy pebbledash concrete.

I was infatuated with Anna. O boy, golden curls, big eyes, and had a certain element that I couldn’t identify other than she seemed to smell really good, if you know what I mean.

It was inevitable. We were talking (Miggsy and me) at the top of the hill, and Anna came out to see what we were up to. We had been talking about Evil Kineval. Daring stunts. Before long, under the gaze of those eyes, I told Miggsy that we should see if we could coast down the hill, and see if we could stop before the cattails. “Not daring enough!” says Miggsy. He suggests we do it one handed. I ask what we do with the other hand. He says that we should grab wrists to keep us from “cheating”. Fabulous!

So as dear Anna looks on, we start back from the edge, grab wrists, and peddle like mad to the edge of the hill.

As the front tires went over the edge, Miggsy’s hand ripped free from my wrist, there was a cloud of dust and rock, and something that sounded something like:“owowwowowowowwowowoWAAAAAAAA!Thuff Thuff Wrrrrrrrk ClanketaclanketaKLONG.”

Then, a few whimpers.

But I never have been sure, as I had problems of my own. See, I couldn’t stop peddling. So down the cliff of a hill, I was accelerating.

Schwinn made good bikes. Even though my bike was never meant for the speed at which it was traveling, indeed flying as sometimes-more than once-both tires were no longer on the ground, the frame only sustained minor magnetization from air friction. I somehow made it to the bottom of the hill in a semi-erect fashion, although it was hard to tell from the cloud of detritus I had kicked up.

Even as a child, there was some little man in my brain that stayed on duty while the rest of my thought processes were out hiding. Two words occurred to me. “Coaster Brakes.”

Actually, how it came to my head was 'Oh, Ben, if you love me, BACK her! Quick, Ben! Oh, back the immortal SOUL out of her! ‘(I’d been reading Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi” for the umpteenth, but seemingly at that moment, last, time).

My feet stopped going one way and reversed. Alas, the slick tire on the back had about as much grab as melted butter on an old grease rag.

The cattails of my memory are gloriously lit under a cobalt blue sky, their golden stalks pointed and gleaming. I can feel the heat of the sun on my bare arms, the feeling of my cut-offs of soft washed denim –my sunburned skin only beginning to prickle a bit against them…and then there was the feeling of being thrown into thousands of angry cane whips. All I could see was a cloud of white fluffy seeds and exploding cattail heads, all I could feel was every stalk, every razor-edged leaf, and the soft loam kicked up by my suddenly horizontal bike.

All was at last, blessed silence.

Eventually I staggered out of the weeds, bike in tow, and looked up the hill. Miggsy looked like the “after the Crucifixion” paintings popular in our Sunday school. I looked as though I were covered in snow, as if a down comforter had exploded with me on the bull’s eye. Napoleon's soldier, retreating from Moscow.

Anna looked…amused, horrified, something. It was hard to tell, she was sitting at the top of the tail hill with the oddest look on her face. It was a sort of realization of unknown power.

Anna's family moved away a month later. Their house was abandoned for about a year, and then one night it caught fire and burned down. I don't know what ever became of her, but I feel that somehow, she's alright. I sometimes wonder where she is now.