Joey and I clustered in the back of our 1st Grade Classroom and were feeding orange Crayons into the pencil sharpener when Pepper Freckles Face snuck out of his desk and sinned, and Pepper Freckles was the preacher’s son.
Fridays at 11:30 was workbook hour, and as our peers wiggled in their chairs and scribbled, Ms. York did rounds explaining difference between ‘knight’ and ‘night.’ Freckles lifted his bum out of the blue plastic chair and maneuvered towards our vacated desks.
He came to Joey’s desk and faltered like a calf on ice, his hand skimmed the desktop and suddenly Joey’s Cotton Candy Hubba Bubba disappeared from the corner. Freckles sulked off with his hands in his trousers.
We watched him the whole time, Joey especially, feeding a crayon into the sharpener, such an unrelenting a glare in his eyes that I turned and thought Joey might accidentally run his finger through.
“What we gonna do, Joey?”
He thought for a moment. “Sunday School,” he said, turning to me. “For the wages of sin is death, boy.”
At church, during the hymns, Joey didn’t even bother with the hymn book. He stared at Freckles two pews up and to the left. Freckle’s mouth didn’t match with the words. He was chewing something.
The preacher creaked across the stage and booted all kids from the service. We filed out of the pews and down the aisle into the hallway, and exiting through the Sanctuary doors behind us was Freckles, his jaw firing like a jackhammer on Joey’s Cotton Candy Hubba Bubba. He was even smacking. Sounded like he’d pasted Vaseline to the roof of his mouth and his tongue was splashing in it.
We entered the spacious corridor and Joey strode over to Freckle’s and stopped in front of him and stamped his heel.
“Where’s your Bible, Freckles?”
“Uh, I don’t have one.”
“Yeah right! You the preacher’s kid, man!”
That seemed to stump him.
“I want my Hubba Bubba.”
Now, there’s something different about this Freckles kid—something demonic about the preacher’s son. One corner on his lips perked up, as if starting to twitch. His chin tilted in. I think Joey realized it, too, because he unfolded his arms.
Before our teacher came and broke it up, Freckles had Joey pinned to the ground and had sent a long wet curd of gum into his mouth.
Monday arrived. Joey and I clustered in the back of the class and were feeding orange crayons into the pencil sharpener. Suddenly, Freckles stood. He sauntered over to our vacated desks, where Joey’s dark chocolate cookies lay in a Ziploc bag. Freckles didn’t stumble this time. He wanted us to see him, that imp, he smirked his ugly face at us and swiped the cookies. Peeled open the bag. Waved one chewy circle in front of his nose then chomped.
The torment captured on his face was glorious. First, his cheeks knotted. Then, his fixed glare loosened, perplexed. A second of silence. Freckles suddenly starting hacking up crumbs and saliva and spitting all over his sweater.
That’s why you don’t steal, folks! Because one man’s possessions are still his treasures, and if you steal them, well, you mind discover that his treasures were actually creatively decorated crusty cat crap.
