A and B and C

The summer before eighth grade was one of the strangest of my life. It was before I discovered skateboarding and punk rock and made the friends that I would keep to this very day, but I had become too old for my G.I. Joes and Star Wars toys. My best friend was Mark who had moved to California during the winter, leaving me and Paul to go it alone on our block. Paul was from Thailand and the only thing we really had in common was Mark, but we each had noone else. Well, we had our families, but I only had sisters and Paul only had one sister and some really freaky parents. They had drinking glasses with naked men and women on them and gutted fish in their driveway. Also, when you ate over, they used kleenex as napkins. So, we played catch with the football and looked at the drinking glasses and lamented the loss of Mark and all the games that had now been rendered unplayable with only two participants.
One morning I was bored and wandered down to Paul's house and a tall, angry looking thai teenager opened the door. I asked if Paul was home and he looked at me like I had snot on my face. "Paul? PAUL?" He walked away without a word, leaving the door hanging open. I leaned in and there were two more of them. Also teenaged, also pissed-off looking. Huh. I went around back and found Paul and his mom gutting fish from a pail. I asked who the kid who answered the door was. Paul said that it was his cousin. What's his name?, I asked. We just call him 'A', Paul answered. Does he have a real name, I asked. Paul said that he did but it was long and weird, so they just called him 'A'. At the time, this made perfect sense, but looking back I wonder since these kids were thai and Paul was thai, could the name really have been that difficult for him?
I watched Paul's mom for a while, she would grab, slice, and gut the fish in one fluid motion, a real pro. I was always real curious about Paul's parents. They were obviously horny as hell, but they were also ugly as sin. Constantly sweaty and covered in zits, they were always barking orders at Paul in thai. They didn't seem to like anything, let alone sex, but noone serves Kool-Aid to company in glasses like THOSE unless you were way into sex. The little sister was cute as heck and would develop into quite the little sexpot quickly, making me think Paul's mom musta been fine in her day, but watching her fling fish guts across the lawn I found that hard to picture.
Paul asked me if I wanted to play soccer with him and his cousins. I hated soccer then and I hate it now, but the fish guts smelled rank in the summer heat and we had nothing else to do so I said yes and he trotted up the back steps to get the others while I tried to look down Paul's mom's polyester blouse. She never, ever said one word to me. I don't know if she was physically capable of speech. Every time she had something to say she'd walk over and whisper into their ears. Maybe that's why Paul's horny dad liked her.
Now, when I was a kid growing up in middle America, soccer was a game wimps played to avoid getting hit while playing football, the official sport of our neighborhood. Which was yet another reason to mourn Mark's moving; he was always the pro-football swing vote. I sighed and tied my shoes as Paul and his cousins came trotting down the stairs.
Since we had five players, we recuited Patty to play goalie for our team, agreeing that the two youngest players would be the goalies. What are the other two kids' names, I asked Paul. The middle one is called 'B' and the youngest is 'C', he said. Of course.
I'd never met anyone who was actually good at soccer before, it had seemed to me like being good at lawn jarts or something, but they scored two goals so quickly I had barely moved from the spot on the lawn I'd started in. I caught Paul's mom smirking at us as A banged goals off the fence so hard I thought it would go right through it. Patty dove out of the way, shrieking, and I was super glad not to be the youngest. The ball didn't come near me until we were down four to nothing so I figured I'd better put a little American whoop-ass on these guys and started up the field. I took about three steps up the field and was lining up what would surley be a cannonball of a shot when I got plastered from behind by a lightning-quick B. I skidded into the fence and rolled over as they ran past me, laughing and passing the ball between them, ending with A booming another goal off the rickety wooden fence, actually cracking a couple slats this time. Patty wascowering in the corner, watching the action between her fingers.
It went on like this for a while. They would, push us down, blindsiude us, trip us, laugh at us, and bang goal after goal off the fence like a goddamn wrecking crew. Finally me and Paul joined Patty in the garden, out of harms way, and they got bored and wandered off. I went home and vowed never to play soccer against anyone except Americans ever again.
A couple days later I was at the beach with my sisters when we ran into a couple kids I knew from school. They asked if I knew these chinese kids that had beaten them up. Yes, I do, but they're thai, I said. Apparently they'd caught Tom outside of Spot-Lite, a local mini-mart type place we went to for candy and baseball cards and shit, and had beaten him up and took the money right out of his pockets. I felt lucky to have gotten off just having my ass kicked on the soccer field.
That's how it went for the rest of the summer. A and B and C would wander the neighborhood, beating up local kids for no apparent reason, jabbering at them in thai and stealing whatever they had. Apparently my friendship with Paul had bought me some kind of immunity. I'd see them riding by on someone elses bike or eating someone elses candy and they'd just glare at me. I never said a word to them, just looked down at my shoes until they were gone. Then one afternoon, my little sister Corinne came home and told me they'd stolen her bike while she was swimming at Battershall beach. Shit. I was gonna have to face them for sure. I spent the rest of the day trying to devise a plan that would result in getting the bike back without getting destroyed by A and B and C.
That night I went over to Paul's after dinner and asked if he wanted to play catch. We hung out in the front yard while A and B and C watched TV, ignoring us. They had zero interest in every sport except soccer and ass-kickings. When it got too dark we went inside and hung out in the basement drinking Kool-Aid out of naked lady glasses and watching the A-Team on TV. When I was leaving I made it a point to leave through the garage and unlocked the side door on my way out.
I went home and Corinne asked me if I'd gotten her bike back yet. Not yet, I told her, just be cool. She was a little girl and was never cool and she told me if I didn't get it back soon she'd tell dad and then I'd really be in trouble, both for being friends with a family of theives and being too much of a wimp to stand up to them. I assured her I'd handle it.
That night I lay in bed waiting for everyone to fall asleep then waited a half hour and climbed out my bedroom window and shimmied down the drainpipe as quietly as I could. It was a Wednesday night and deathly quiet on the block as I crept down the street to Paul's house. I hid in the shrubs outside and listened for signs of life. I could her the angry yammering of Paul's dad, but not A or B or C, so I figured he must be talking to his mute wife. I decided to make my move. I crept around to a side yard and hoped noone had noticed I'd unlocked the door. I grabbed the knob and turned it as gently as I could and it popped open. I slipped into the garage and saw Corinne's bike and wheeled it carefully to the door, making sure not to bump into anything. I set it on the lawn outside and closed the door without taking a breath.
I jumped on the bike and was about to ride away when I heard voices coming down the street, peering around the corner I saw A and B and C in the streetlight. Shit! This was bad. I was caught between houses and they'd see me for sure when they went to the front door. There was only one way out. I picked up the bike and threw it over the fence into some bushes, then jumped over after it, trying to be as quiet as possible. I ran through Paul's backyard and threw it over the next fence, then jumped over again. I did this the whole way down the block, hopping the fence, tossing the bike, hopping the fence again. I moved quickly so if anyone heard me I'd be into the next yard before they got to their window. I reached the end of the block and looked around the side of the house I was next to, and saw the trio entering Paul's front door at the opposite end of the block. I raced back up the street to my own house and snuck in the back door, stashing Corinne's bike under a tarp in the yard so I wouldn't wake my parents opening the garage, then snuck upstairs to bed, exhausted.
School started soon after, and just as quickly as they'd appeared A and B and C disappeared. I didn't see Paul much after that, my birthday was right around then and my parents got me a Variflex skateboard. I just didn't have much to say to Paul after that. I started hanging with a crew of guys from another block and running the streets more. One night towards winter I was skating home at dusk when I went past Paul's house and in the front yard were three teenaged thai girls playing jumprope with Patty. Hey Patty, I hollered, who are those girls? Oh, she called back, they're my cousins, A and B and C. I laughed and pushed on home.