Joey Gossmer was just four years old when his dad brought that trampoline home one evening after work. Had it piled in the back of his truck, he did. Almost immediately the cry of springs filled the neighborhood with its Shweek! Shweek! Shweek!

Some people—like Mr. Spellman next door—didn’t appreciate the noisy intrusion on the once-quiet tree-lined street. “How’s a guy supposed to even think?” he’d often say to anybody foolish enough to lend ear to his frequent complaints. But Mr. Spellman, he complained about a lot of things—most notably the Wisicki’s poodle, who often traipsed through the Spellman’s backyard on its way home from early morning wanderings, leaving little piles in its wake.

That trampoline, though, that’s what really riled the old man to no end.

“Let it go, Max,” Mrs. Spellman would tell her husband. “He’s just a little boy.”

“He’s a young hoodlum, you ask me. I mean, just listen to that infernal racket.”

Shweek! Shweek! Shweek!

The din would not be ignored.

Mr. Spellman hollered at the youthful offender from his own side of the backyard fence, thought to put a little fear into the unruly lad, maybe intimidate him into avoiding that stupid contraption altogether.

That boy, though, young Joey, he’d taken after his mother, a stubborn girl who’d grown up in this very neighborhood.

“I ain’t scared of you,” he hollered right back at Mr. Spellman. “Mom says you’re just a miserable old man.”

Max bristled at the rebuttal. “Oh! I am, am I?” He’d show that silly little brat the very definition of miserable. “Keep up with that racket and we’ll see what happens!”

Shweek! Shweek! Shweek!

* * *

Max Spellman called the police four times that first week, laid claim to the taxpayer’s right to be free from harassment and thuggery. Nothing ever got done about it, though; the troublemaker remained free to upset the natural balance of the way things ought to be.

Shweek! Shweek! Shweek!

It was a simple idea, a bold stroke of genius that struck Max Spellman during one of his afternoon power naps.

“I’ll show him,” he said, rushing toward the shed in the backyard.

The garden hose reached to the fence; the sprinkler would certainly toss water on that worthless contraption—and it would soak that little blond-headed tyrant as well.

And it worked, too—for a day. The boy’s father, he got wise to the plan that evening and moved the trampoline to the other corner of their yard, far away from the deepest reach of Max Spellman’s garden hose.

But that sound—sound carries, dammit!

Shweek! Shweek! Shweek!

“It’s not nearly as loud as it had been, Max,” Mrs. Spellman told her husband.

Oh, but the man could still hear it. That’s all it took to put him on the road to crazyville.

“I’ll go over there after dark and dump gasoline on the thing and set it afire!” Max promised.

His wife had other notions, though. “You’ll do no such thing, Maxwell Jordan Spellman!”

That was that. Defeat filled the old-timer’s head.

Beaten by a child.

Shweek! Shweek! Shweek!

* * *

Sirens yanked Max Spellman from his afternoon power nap. The urgent shriek tore into that brief moment of silence when the boy would be down for his own midday doze.

“Where’s it at, Margie?” Max hollered from his room.

Margie Spellman, the girl he’d first fallen in love with nearly sixty years earlier, settled into the doorway, that look of loss splashed across her face. “It’s an ambulance.”

“I didn’t ask what it is,” Max answered, pulling himself from his bed, “I asked where it is.”

“Up at the top of the street,” she said, laying each word softly in its proper place.

The Milfords, Max thought. They’d been in the neighborhood nearly as long as the Spellmans. And that Nita Milford, she wasn’t exactly the healthiest soul to be found. Of course, it didn’t have to be Nita. It could very well be Stanton Milford; the old geezer had to be pushing eighty years by now.

But Margie shoved those notions to the side. She said, “The Milfords are on vacation in Florida this week.”

* * *

Joey Gossmer was just four years old when he died. He’d been hit by a car whose driver assumed she could handle a quick text message while passing through the neighborhood. She ended up on the sidewalk, though, she, and that car of hers.

And Joey, the little boy from right next door, he’d just been riding his bicycle, giving that trampoline a rest, allowing Mr. Spellman a bit of afternoon peace.

* * *

Max Spellman sat up in his bed, unable to capture his usual midday power nap. Sleep of any sort had eluded him since that awful day two weeks earlier.

“It’s too quiet in here, Margie,” he hollered into the air. “Just too dang quiet.”

Mrs. Spellman’s shape filled the bedroom doorway; her head bobbled a nod. “Don’t seem right, all this silence.”

Max Spellman tossed her a nod. “No, ma’am; don’t seem right at all.”

**END**