CHAPTER FIVE
Real Zombies Don''t Wear Clothes

There were two things Jack and I could usually be found doing, fishing or playing baseball. When we weren’t playing ball ourselves, we would try to find the games on the radio of our favorite major league team, the Saint Louis Cardinals. We would listen to the Cardinals as much as we could find games broadcast on the radio, usually out of a Memphis radio station.

 Decades later I could still remember the usual batting order of the Cardinals in the mid-sixties better than I knew the alphabet. Who could forget the great pitching they had and some who I figured might be in the Hall Of Fame one day. Then there was Harry Caray that every kid loved to hear call the games on the radio. I would pretend I was Caray and imitate his way of calling home runs over and over in my mind… “There she goes, way back, it might be, it could be, IT IS... A HOME RUN,” as I visualized the ball sailing over the outfield fence and landing somewhere in the bleachers.

 The Cardinals made it to the World Series two straight years in 1967 and 1968, after also having won it back in 1964 against none other than the New York Yankees. Back in those days, they played a lot of major league games during the day. I still can remember everyone walking around the school yard during those September months, with a radio on their shoulder, trying to catch the game during school breaks. It wasn’t unheard of for some teachers to be playing the radio during class, with the World Series game on. It was that big of a deal.

At that time, the Cardinals were everything in sports to us, since they were the closest professional team to our little town. The Cardinals won it all in the ''67 Series against the Boston Red Sox, but lost the Series to the Detroit Tigers the very next year in ''68. Baseball was a big part of every kid’s life, and if you asked any kid in our town what they hoped to be when they grew up, most would say they wanted to be a major league baseball player for the St. Louis Cardinals.

 We could barely afford to buy baseballs and bats. The balls could get so bad and worn down to the core string inside, they sometimes looked like they would be more suited for knitting than for baseball. We would use broken bats all fixed with little nails and wrapped in tape until they fell apart. I remember using a bat that practically had no handle and all that was left was a little nub that I could hold in one hand.

 There was nothing like getting hold of a spanking, new white baseball. You almost didn''t want to mess up a new ball by playing with it. Anytime we could get a new one, we had a ritual we would go through. We would hold that beautiful, white thing in our hand, feeling how slick that brand new cowhide cover felt and admiring every single perfectly sewn stitch. We would hold it right up to our nose to get a whiff of that new ball smell. We would form a quiet, little circle and pass it around like the ball was holy water. We put the ceremony right up there with getting baptized in the church. We almost worshipped the ball for a bit before we could bring ourselves to put it to use. Then once we got down to business of playing baseball, we proceeded to beat the holy crap out of it, every time at bat.

 At one point all our baseballs were getting in really bad shape and not very playable at all. I told my little brother that we needed to get a new one and scrounge up the money to buy one. We could get a brand new baseball from a couple of little stores in town for fifty cents. We had heard of some kids, going around collecting coke bottles to sell. So Jack knew what that meant. We would have to ride our bikes all the way to town, spending all day riding, looking for empty bottles.

My little brother Jack said he didn''t feel like riding anymore, especially all the way to town and back. It was really hot and he had something else in mind to do.

"Beanie, don''t you remember, they set up and turned on the irrigation in the cotton field a few days ago close to the house." Right then, I knew what he was getting at, as the water run-off from the cotton fields always made for a way to have some cool fun.

 The irrigation pipes looked like something out of some space movie where aliens had these big walking machine weapons they were using to attack us earthlings, except the alien machines would shoot out lasers or maybe some electronic beam. The irrigation device had all these big pipes hooked together on these stands, with huge wheels that somehow would move around the fields spraying out big, long spouts of water for hundreds of feet. These contraptions could shoot out water that would outdo a fire truck. We knew we could count on having fun, playing in the irrigation ditches that watered the cotton fields. During long dry spells in early summer, it was a great way to cool off and have fun at the same time.

 We always looked forward to the irrigation pipes being turned on. We would get muddy all over, slipping and sliding around the edge of the fields, but we had the most fun playing in the ditches along the roads and in between crops. It was our swimming pool. We could dive right in, swim as far as we wanted, as the ditches were long and seemed to never end. Of course, the water runoff was very dirty and muddy, but that didn’t matter to us boys. Anything would be a relief from the hot, humid air. The times before when we played in the ditches, if we got tired, we just climbed out all muddy and filthy feeling like a million bucks and would head back home.

 It didn''t take long for Jack to talk me into joining him for having fun, playing around in the mud in the fields. Heck, we could go play baseball any old day. So off to the fields we went, jumping in and out of the ditches full of water, slipping and sliding in the mud all over the place. We were having a blast. A short time later, I suddenly got an idea for some more fun.

"Jack, I bet if I take some of this mud, put it all over myself with nothing but my underwear on, walk on out to the highway and stick my thumb out like hitching a ride, I bet folks will think I''m some kind of monster and drive off the road."

"Beanie, you''re crazy! Besides, the mud will dry on your skin and cut off the air to your body and you might suffocate," Jack energetically exclaimed.

 "Well maybe so, but it would be worth seeing the look on people''s faces that drive by," I replied. I started stripping down to my underwear and got Jack to help pile the mud on my back where I couldn''t reach, putting it on as thick as we could get it, until only the whites of my eyes were showing.

 There was one thing I always understand about my little brother. He would take any dare and go even farther, and so he did with my proposal.

Jack said, “To do this right Beanie, you got to take off your underwear too and put mud over your butt and your you know what!”

 “Now I know you’re crazy,” I emphatically answered. “I''m not taking my underwear off, especially in front of you.”

Jack kept insisting the prank wouldn''t go off as well if I didn''t go all the way. After much chicken calling, I gave in and said, “Okay, I''ll coat my whole body with mud on one condition!”

“What''s that?” Jack asked.

“I''ll do the whole thing naked if you will do it too,” I replied.

Jack said no way at first but finally decided to go along with the fun. Of course, I knew Jack was one who would never back down from a challenge. I often used daring him in stuff, taking advantage of Jack, getting him to do things I was too darn chicken to ever do myself.

 With big extra, heaping coats of mud, as much as we could slap all over the both of us, we started heading toward the main highway which wasn’t too far from where we were. As we slithered on our way, we were laughing so hard, we thought we were gonna shake the drying mud right off our skin. The dryer the mud got, the harder it got to walk, being wrapped up like a mummy. Also, the mud made it feel like we were carrying a hundred pounds on our bodies. As the mud dried, it pulled our skin so tight that it made us slump over with a hunch in our back. We could hardly bend our stiffened arms, so we had to hold them out, away from our bodies, causing us to walk funny. We didn''t have to do much acting to walk like zombies. The heavy dried mud naturally had that effect on our bodies.

Finally, we got to the highway and with bent over bodies stiff from the mud, we were ready to give our prank a try. We were anxious to see what reaction we would get from folks driving by. We got right next to the road, sometimes sticking out our thumbs pretending we wanted a ride. Other times, reaching out to cars, we would hold our stiff arms straight out, waving ''em around like we figured zombies would do. We would make monster-like groaning noises, growling faces and zombie body gestures to any passing car.

 Folks that came along, reacted in different ways. Some would go really slow with their jaws dropped wide open in dismay. They would almost come to a complete stop peering at us, trying to figure out what these silly kids were doing. Others would shake their heads, laughing a little, and we could hear them say, "Dang Crazy Kids." One car full of folks was laughing so hard they almost drove off the road, and we could hear ''em laughing until we couldn''t see the car in the distance anymore.

 This went on for about an hour or so, having so much fun, but we knew it was getting late and it was time to start heading back home. We were tired, thirsty, hungry, and not feeling very well. By now, the mud had gotten so stiff and hard on our skin it was really starting to get uncomfortable, and we figured we better start peeling it off. Well, the peeling wasn''t so easy. The mud was stuck on our skin like some kind of dried paste. We could only scrape it off in little bits and pieces at a time with our fingernails.

 We were slowly making our way down the road, scraping and peeling as we went. We finally got back to the ditch where the irrigation started and were so relieved to see that dirty water again. We jumped right in, and it didn’t take very long to get the mud off. We never thought that a ditch full of muddy water could feel so clean and pure, but boy, it did! We had loads of fun and were finally ‘clean’ again at least by zombie standards and ready now to head on home. However, we had forgotten one little important thing.

"Beanie, where did we leave our clothes?" Jack asked in panic.

"Oh man, I don''t remember, somewhere close to here, but the ditch all looks the same," I now nervously replied.

 Real panic was starting to set in over both of us, so we took off running, totally naked, as fast as we could down the dirt road to get home. Every time we would get close to any house on the way, we would jump down into the ditch staying mostly immersed in the water, hoping not to draw much attention, until we got out of sight of that house.

 We made it almost home, right to the bend in the dirt road in front of our house. That''s when a truck with the Wilson boys, who lived on down the road, drove by and spotted us as we were trying to stay hidden, down low in the ditch. One of the Wilson boys was riding in the open back bed of the truck. He was leaning over the side, holding out our clothes with ‘em flapping in the wind, proudly showing off what he knew belonged to us and shouted,

"We found these clothes up the road a little piece and figured they might belong to you boys, but we think we''ll just keep ''em for a while." We could hear them laughing until they disappeared in the distance.

 Once they were gone, in complete panic we ran to the back of the house and saw that there were some clothes mama had just put out on the clothesline drying in the sun. We didn''t see mama and hoped she had gone inside for something. We thought this was our chance to not be spotted, so we grabbed up some clothes from the clothesline to wear. We put them on so fast we weren''t sure whose clothes were whose.

About that time mama came back out. She stopped and stared at us in those clothes we had hurriedly put on. She knew the clothes weren’t dry yet and also on the wrong person.

With a funny look on her face, she curiously asked, "Why in tarnation are y''all wearing each other’s clothes and why are you both soaking wet like a couple of muskrats?"

We just smiled and innocently exclaimed, "We’ve just been playing down the road mama!"

Mama shook her head and sighed with a demonstrative, "Uh, huh, I bet!"

 By supper time, Jack and I had changed into the proper clothes that belonged to each of us, but by now we were both starving to death. All that hard work, from our effort of having so much fun playing like zombies, had left us hungry.

Then, sitting down at the supper table, Jack for the second time asked mama to please pass the potatoes and he began to help himself to the biggest, heaping serving of those mashed potatoes I had ever seen him put on a plate.

Mama, with a little smirk remarked, "I didn''t know zombies ate potatoes?"

Daddy heard what mama had called us and with the strangest look, peered over at her and calmly stated, "Belle, I’ve heard you call these boys lots of things before, but that''s the first time I ever heard you call ''em zombies."

 Jack and I innocently glanced at dad with a sideways look of our eyes and then looked back at each other, holding back subdued laughter with our mouths tightly closed. We leaned forward and tilted our head down to contain any outburst of laughter and simply grinned!

And, so did mama!