It made sense, what his mum said, but he wasn't telling her that. He did need a new best friend, but who?
There was no-one like Cade, he was more fun to be with than anyone he'd ever known. It was so not fair of his father taking him away. He hated him for that – if he ever saw him again, he'd tell him that too. He would. It was a rotten thing to do and if he was bigger he would – well, he'd do something!
“Jayden? Jayden, wake up! I was talking to you and you're not even listening.”
His little sister's annoying whine brought him back to earth.
“I was too listening!” He protested but she didn't believe it for a minute.
“What did I say then?”
“I forget.”
“Sure you do. I said, do you watch to watch Harry Potter with me?”
“Harry Potter? Again? There are other DVDs, Bri.”
“But they're not as good. Well, are you coming?”
“No, I'm not. I'm sick of Harry Potter movies. It's just the same thing, over and over.”
“It is not! The stories are all different.”
“Not! Anyway, you must've seen every one of them a hundred times. Won't you ever get tired of them?”
“I won't. I love Harry Potter.”
“Don't we know it! I'm going out, Mum – out for a walk.”
“Good idea. You should go too, Bri, get some fresh air.”
“No way. I'm busy.”
“Yeah, right.” Jayden left the house in a hurry before his mother got any more bright ideas. He left by the front door, ran up the path, hurdled the gate and almost ran smack into Jerry Moore who was on the sidewalk outside.
“He-e-ey. Watch it!” Jerry stepped back, just in time. “Where're you going in a big hurry?”
“Running away – like, really running,” Jayden grinned. “What's in the pack on your back?”
“This old thing?” Jerry turned sideways to show the green bag slung over his shoulders. “Dad's fishing bag. I'm going eeling, you want to come?”
“With you? Yeah, okay, why not? But it's a bit early, isn't it? The best time for eels is after dark because that's when they eat.”
“Not true. They'll eat anytime when there's food around. I've got a bottle of blood from the butchers, when I tip that in the creek they'll be everywhere, looking for their dinner.”
“But there'd be nothing there for them to eat.”
“There's not, but they don't know that, so they keep swimming around while we spear them.”
“We?”
“Yeah, we – you said you're coming. It's heaps of fun.”
“Not much fun for the eels.”
“No, but they don't know that either, until it's too late. You in or not?”
“Yeah, I'm in. I already said.”
“'Kay. Come on then. We're going to the creek at the back of Anzac Park.”
They bounced down the concrete steps down the hill and across the small wooden bridge over the creek that bordered the sportsgrounds on two sides.
“The water's running a bit fast, isn't it?” Jayden said. “If you tip the blood in there it'll be gone in no time.”
“Right.” Jerry nodded. “That's why we're not doing it here. Down the end of the park, by the railway bridge, the water is still there, hardly moving at all.”
“I'm not walking over no railway bridge!” Jayden stressed. “That's dangerous.”
“Not. It's only a little bridge and you can jump off if you have to. Anywho, we don't go over it, we're going under, where the eels are.”
“Okay. Sounds good.”
Off the bridge and through the carpark, they went into Anzac Park, around the two-storied pavilion in the centre, through the tennis/netball courts and across the athletics field to the far corner. A train rumbled past as they were nearing the end of the field. It was just a shunting service, slow and small, but big enough and fast enough to make Jayden doubly glad that they weren't going on the bridge.
They waved to the driver, he waved back and gave them a 'blarp' on the diesel's horn.
“Train whistles sound so much better in the movies,” Jerry said.”
“Yeah? You must watch way-old movies!”
“Sometimes, yeah. You seen Stand By Me? It's old, but it's very cool.”
“Is that the one where the kids are getting chased across a bridge by an old steam train. Dumbheads! They shouldn't have been there.”
“Guess not. They got off it in a hurry.”
“They had to and that's why we're not going over no bridges.”
“We're not. I told you, we go under the bridge.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Just through the trees here.”
Jerry pushed into the macrocarpa foilage and Jayden followed. There was a rough track there between the trees, but he would've missed it if Jerry didn't show him where.
It was just a big over-grown hedge really; it was only about two trees deep, and then they were out on the other side. There was a grassed patch, like a lawn that hadn't been mowed since forever, and then the creek – shallow, flat and wide and still-looking.
The water was hardly moving at all, which was not surprising, the tidal lagoon started just downstream from the wooden railway bridge.
“This is it. Cool place, eh?” Jerry took the bag off his back and pulled out a short three-pronged spear and screwed the two halves of the handle together. He then pulled out a very red coke bottle.
“It's cool. I never knew this was here.”
“You wouldn't unless you knew where to look.” Jerry unscrewed the cap from the bottle and held it out. “Want a taste?”
“Eww! No way. That's gross.”
“It's gross. Vampires like it and so do eels, they love it. It looks like tomato juice but it wouldn't taste like it.”
“Tomato juice is disgusting too, but that stuff could poison you or something.”
“You worry too much, you know. Anyway, it doesn't kill the eels, this does.” Jerry brandished his spear like a, short, warrior. “Well, this plus a rock kills them. They're hard buggers to kill and you have to watch that they don't bite you. Once they get their teeth in, they don't let go. Bloody hurts too.”
“Sounds like you've been bitten?”
“Yeah, once and that was enough. They're not getting another taste of me.”
“They probably wouldn't want to,” Jayden grinned.
“Shut up, Collis!” Jerry grinned back. “We'll get started. I've only got one spear, so you'll have to use your dick.” He climbed down the bank to the water's edge.
“Not happening!” Jayden followed him down.
“No? It'd be too small anyway.”
“Bigger than yours, Mate.”
“Yeah, sure. You ready to see a thousand eels writhing?”
“Writhing?”
“Yep. That's what they do – twisting around under and over each other like they're tying a humungous knot that keeps coming undone.”
“Okay then, show me.”
“Stand back and watch.” Jerry tipped about half the blood into the water. It didn't pour easily so he squeezed the bottle to make it shoot out in blobs.
“Glob, glob!” He passed the bottle back to Jayden and stood, spear in hand, watching the blood spread out in the water. Nothing else was happening, there were no eels there – not a single one.
“Give them a few minutes.” He sat down on the bank and Jayden sat down with him.
“Maybe it's too early.”
“It's not. I've done this heaps of times. They could be all feeding somewhere else, I suppose. We'll just wait.”
“Okay, we wait. Nice day for it.”
“It is a nice day – hardly any clouds, except back there over the mountains. It'd be a great day for flying. Cade is going today, isn't he?”
“Yeah, he is. They left this morning. They're probably there by now.”
“Lucky! Wish I could get out of this town.”
“You do? It's not that bad, is it?”
“It's okay, I guess, but it rains too bloody much.”
“Only on wet days,” Jayden shrugged.
“Shut up!” Jerry pushed against him. “Seriously, you're going to miss him, aren't you? You two were like Siamese twins. It's really strange to see you with Cade.”
“It's really strange to be without him around. Maybe they'll come back, one day. I hope so.”
“You would, but they might not too. You'll survive, you've got other friends.”
“Yeah, but they're all dorks.”
“Shut up or I'll chuck you in the creek and see if that brings the eels.”
“You'll try! Remember that day when you, Richard McGovern and Brandon Kirk tried to throw us into the lagoon over there? I seem to remember that you were the ones who went in, not us.”
“You got lucky, that's all.”
“I was born lucky.”
“You were lucky you got born. If they had've known what they were getting . . . Shush! What's that noise?”
“Noise? Oh. Someone's coming, dammit. Keep down and they might go away.”
The approaching voices stopped, then started and stopped again.
“Who is it?”
“Dunno. Come and see. Don't let them see us – it might be bullies or something.”
“Right,” Jayden whispered. “Wriggle like a snake in the grass.”
They didn't quite do that, but crawled quietly up to the top of the bank and peeked over there. Two older people, teenagers, were standing close together, face to face and with their arms around each other. They were kissing.
Without parting, they sank to their knees and started stripping their clothes off. Wow!
Jayden was not completely ignorant, he'd seen movies that he shouldn't have seen, and he knew that when people were kissing and they got naked, they were probably going to do sex stuff. But – these were two boys. Could boys even do that stuff together?
“Let's jump out and scare them,” Jerry whispered.
“No!” he whispered back, urgently. “They're bigger than us and they'd thump us. Watch and see what they're going to do.”
“Don't you know?”
“Not really. It looks like they're getting all sexy. Can two boys do that together?”
“Sure they can,” Jerry nodded, not wanting to show his own ignorance. “Watch and learn.”
“'Kay. Shut up before they hear us.”
Jerry made a show of zipping his lips shut and they lay there, peering through the long grass at the now-naked couple writhing in front of them. They watched and they learned – a lot. Wow!
Obviously, there wasn't much that two, big, boys couldn't do together. They certainly looked, and sounded, like they were both enjoying it immensely. Jayden's eyes nearly fell out, he was staring so hard.
Him and Cade had done a lot of things together, but they'd never done anything like that! He didn't even know that you could. He wasn't so sure about pushing his dick into someone's bum-hole though. That would hurt, wouldn't it? He'd scratched himself, when he was wiping, once and – yeow! That hurt, it brought tears to his eyes. It was very sensitive back there.
It didn't look like those guys were hurting. They were grunting and moaning a lot, but they were happy sort of moans, weren't they? Yeah, they must be, they were smiling a lot as well, when they weren't kissing.
The floor show, or ground show, was over pretty quick. The one on top thrust hard several times, and then he flopped and lay along the other one's back, panting and gasping like he'd just run a race.
He calmed down after a bit, and then he reached around and under the bottom one, who was on his hands and knees. He took hold of his huge dick and started milking him, like you milk a cow, almost. Almost, nothing! That's exactly what he was doing because milk came out and the bottom one was gasping like the other one had.
They lay down together, kissed some more, and then stood up, put their clothes on and left, back through the trees.
Jayden looked at Jerry and smiled. “That was, umm, well, educational.”
“Education? You don't see nothing like that in school. Dirty Buggers!”
“Dirty? They looked clean to me.”
“They were not clean!” Jerry stressed. “Fucking someone up the poop-shute has got to be dirty, doesn't it?”
“Yeah well, I guess,” Jayden shrugged, just to agree with him. It didn't look dirty to him, it just looked – well, fun.
“They've gone.” Jerry slid back down to the water. “It's past sunset already. I'll tip the rest of the blood in and see if there's any eels now. If there's not, it's time we went home anyway.”
There were still no eels. They went home.
