Love Street - Little Chad

By Liz Zuercher

Little Chad and his family live across the cul de sac from Eddie Petrocelli.

Eight year old Little Chad Grissom, who had pretended to be sick to get out of going to school, stuffed a pillow under his bed covers, tiptoed down the stairs and slipped out the back door.  He crept across the back yard dirt and climbed over the wrought iron fence that separated his yard from the slope behind.  His mother, Jessie, was busy yelling at his baby sister Sukie for spilling her apple juice and didn’t notice that he had left the house.  He liked to go out exploring like Indiana Jones and he carried his snake whip and wore a floppy camouflage hat to shield his eyes from the sun. 

Today, he wanted to make it all the way along the back of the houses to the end of the far cul de sac and down the slope behind to the dry creek bed below.  Beyond that was a clump of oak trees that looked like it would be good for a fort.  Maybe he’d have to fight a coyote or a mountain lion along the way or maybe he’d come across a pit of snakes and there would be a treasure there or a stacked naked woman tied up that he could free. 

That’s what his dad, Big Chad, called women with big boobies – stacked – and Little Chad had noticed his dad taking long looks at stacked women.  Little Chad liked to look, too.  They had that in common, along with their name.  Chad Michael Grissom.  Big Chad and Little Chad.  Two chips off the same block.  There was no doubting they were father and son, with the same broad face, blond crew cut and stocky build.  Sometimes people called them Big Chunk and Little Chunk or Double Chunk.  Little Chad hated that, but he liked that he was named after his father and he tried to be like him every chance he got.  Still, he wasn’t so little any more and he was thinking of dropping the Little Chad and insisting on being called something else.  He just hadn’t figured out what he wanted his new name to be yet.

Little Chad sneaked along the concrete drainage ditch behind the houses, keeping alert for signs of people who might notice him.  He wanted to go undetected.  He was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to be back here, but that hadn’t stopped him from his explorations before.  He got to the end of the houses and crouched down at the top of the slope, trying to decide the best way to make it to the bottom.  He could have zigzagged along the drains, but thought it would be a lot more fun to run headlong down the hill.  With a flourish of his whip, he catapulted himself over the edge.  Geronimo! He yelled to himself.  Halfway down the hill his foot caught on a sprinkler head, tripping him up and sending him rolling and bouncing to the bottom.  Man, that was awesome, he thought, as he stood up and brushed himself off.  His hat was gone and his whip hadn’t made it down the hill but he was in one piece.  Awesome!  That called for a piss, so he unzipped his pants and peed on a dry bush before continuing on his adventure.

* * * * *

Jessie Grissom cleaned the apple juice from the vinyl kitchen floor, wiped Sukie’s face and hands and lifted her out of the high chair.  Sukie’s legs straddled Jessie’s pregnant belly and her little foot bounced back and forth against the six month tummy as Jessie walked across the room to the playpen and dumped Sukie down inside it.  The playpen was full of little rubber toys that Sukie proceeded to examine and squeeze and methodically throw out of the pen into the family room.  One of them hit Jessie square in the back, and she turned to glare at the baby.  For a moment Sukie glared back, then stooped to pick up another toy, a grotesque shocking pink Michelin Man creature with a clown face and a big red smile.  Sukie scowled at her mother and sent the pink man flying across the room toward her.  Jessie ducked to avoid the toy, but she misjudged and it hit her anyway, right in the middle of her pregnant belly.  She doubled over and the baby inside kicked furiously.

“You little bitch,” Jessie yelled at her daughter, who had found another round of ammunition to launch at her mother, this time a purple dog with a tuft of bright yellow hair.  Jessie grabbed Sukie from the playpen and carried her upstairs to her bedroom and threw her down into the crib.  “See how you like that,” she said and slammed the door on her way out. 

Sukie started screaming at the top of her lungs, but Jessie ignored her.   She stopped at the door to Little Chad’s room and called into him.  “You gonna sleep the whole damned day, Little Chad?”  She was sure he’d been faking this morning – she’d been pretty good at that herself when she was a kid – but she gave in to him anyway.  One less thing she had to worry about this morning, getting the kid to school.  Why he couldn’t walk to school like she had was a mystery.  Kids were such marshmallows these days.  Usually Big Chad took him to school, but he was out of town on a business trip and she was on her own again.

“Little Chad, you awake?” she asked.  When he didn’t reply she opened the door and looked in to see the lump of his body under the covers.  Well, at least one of her kids was being quiet, she thought, and closed the door.  She decided to let him sleep a little more while she had her morning coffee and watched The View.  She loved when those women started arguing with each other, all of them talking at the same time.

Back down in the kitchen, she poured herself a cup of coffee and doctored it a little bit with some whiskey she kept in the pantry.  Lighting up a cigarette, she clicked on the television, sat down on the family room sofa and propped her feet on the coffee table.  Now she could watch her show in peace.

* * * * *

Little Chad struggled to climb back up the big hill, then sat down in the middle of the drainage culvert to rest.  A man was walking around on the hill behind Little Chad’s house, so he decided to lay low here until the guy finished whatever it was he was doing.  He watched the guy digging around on the hill and thought that would be a fun job and that maybe later he’d go see where the man had been digging.  Maybe there was some hidden treasure there that the man missed.  Little Chad felt a little sleepy after his big climb, so he closed his eyes for just a minute.

He woke up with a start to the sound of a man’s voice.

“Hey kid, what are you doing here?” The man’s voice was very deep and sounded angry.

“Nothin’,” said Little Chad.

     

“Well, you shouldn’t be out here.  It’s not a playground.  You could hurt yourself, and you could damage something here,” the man scolded.  “Where do you live?”

    

      “Just down there,” Little Chad pointed away from his own house.

      “Why aren’t you in school?” the man asked.

       “Holiday,” Little Chad lied.

“Sure,” the man said, like he didn’t believe Little Chad.  “Well, I should report you to the cops, but I’ll let you go this time.  You’d better get on home now, and don’t let me catch you out here again.”

“Okay,” Little Chad said, getting to his feet and brushing himself off.  “What are you doing out here anyway?”

“Testing the hillside to make sure it doesn’t fall down,” the man said.

“Is it okay?” Little Chad asked.  “It isn’t gonna fall on me is it?”

“Not today,” the man said.

“Tomorrow?” Little Chad asked.

“Probably not.”

“Good,” Little Chad said.  He wanted to get off the hillside now.  He was getting a little nervous about getting buried by all that dirt.  “I gotta go.  Bye.”

“So long,” the man said.  “Remember – this isn’t a playground.”

“Okay,” Little Chad said and took off running down the culvert.

When he got to his yard, Little Chad peeked between the fence posts to see if his mother was still in the family room.  He couldn’t tell, so he climbed over the fence and crept along the side block wall until he got to the French door that opened into the family room.  He could see that the television was on and his mother’s feet were propped up on the coffee table.  She was slouched down in the sofa cushions, so he couldn’t tell if she was awake or if she’d fallen asleep like usual in front of the television.  He eased the door open and heard his mother’s snore.  He quickly slipped inside, closed the door behind him and tiptoed upstairs to his room.  Taking the pillows out from under the covers, he climbed into bed. 

He was pretty tired after his adventure and he closed his eyes, meaning to take a little nap.  But sleep wouldn’t come.  Instead he kept seeing the hillside behind his house crumble and big clods of dirt and boulders and plants were rushing down the hill into his back yard, burying his house.  And the houses up above fell down the hill and he was running and running as fast as he could, but he couldn’t get away.  Little Chad wasn’t afraid of much, but he was afraid of that hillside now. 

He should tell his mom, he thought.  But that would mean admitting he had sneaked out of the house and wasn’t sick at all and she would tell his dad and Dad would take the paddle to him and he didn’t want that.  Maybe he’d just wait a few days.