Christopher Green

Josey into Josephine

There is something compelling about this particular part of that pine forest that has stayed with me for years, decades really, when you get right down to it, because I still see it, feel it, when I close my eyes. The funny part is I haven’t been back since to see if the forest is still there, but I guess it would be. Time doesn’t change that much now in Clymer, PA. It was a planted forest, one done long ago when the folks who first settled the area realized that cutting down all the trees on the side of a mountain had a dire consequence attached which, of course , was visited upon them with a vengeance in the form of swift, deadly mud slides.

There was no noise from walking through, no crunch of fallen leaves, just the spongy almost sound you get from stepping on inches of pine needles. And the day light was absorbed, sucked right out of the air so that twilight hovered about from dusk to dawn. Wind barely made its way in. I remember it was kind of hazy, in a gothic sort of way.

The trees were tall so it was easy to make your way through. And you could see clearly ahead for about twenty yards or so, see the rise coming but never the top, until you came right up on it. Then, as you closed in on the peak of the mountain, you saw the bottom of the abandoned fire tower. It glowed with cascading sunlight as it burst through the only portal into the open sky. It was like a shrine. It was our destination.

That was where Josephine, the eldest cousin, took me after kidnapping me that day. She was fourteen, stuck between the rambunctious tomboy days of ten and the glorious finishing school refinement of eighteen yet to come. She was gangly, all arms and legs with just a delicious hint of curvy femininity. That was the summer, that wonderful Fourth of July, when I first fell in love.

Everyone was there for the holiday weekend. All fourteen of the grandkids, the four grown-up children, a great aunt or two and, of course, my stern German grandmother and resigned Irish grandpa. How we all squeezed into that house is beyond me, but there we were.

My grandmother, right after breakfast, had literally chased us out of the house with her broom. Thankfully, grandpa was outside ready for us. He was dressed in one of his old brown suits, even wearing a ratty tie and an almost shapeless hat, smoking a stubby cigar. I never remember him lighting one but when he was outside, there was always a cigar clenched at the side of his mouth. Today, he was going to take us on an adventure; a walk on the railroad tracks.

Here he was, the town dentist, a pillar of the community in this petering out Pennsylvania coal town, walking about looking like a depression era hobo, leading ten kids, spread out in age from six to fourteen along the abandoned tracks that snaked around the town, off into the hills and back to the old mines. It was something, all that wildness closing in on us, for me and my brother, at least, since we lived up in Cleveland and were never this close to nature. Of course it had been fouled by the mines spitting out their sulfur waste and turning all the creek beds a yellowish orange, but there were trees, and mountains and creeks, even if there weren’t any crawfish to be found.

We turned the bend going away from the house and crossed over the main creek on the railroad tressel so that we could join up with another line which headed into the back country. We dawdled on the tressel just because we could look down through the ties and see the water running underneath. All of us had to stop in the middle of the bridge and drop rocks into the creek through the tie gaps. But soon enough Grandpa Hrunmmped us so we all fell in line, except, of course Josephine. She had that certain sparkle in her eye and she gave me a wink before we rejoined the troops marching behind the Hobo Dentist. I didn’t know it then, I should have guessed, but as we headed away from the house and then the town, trouble was waiting for Josephine and me.

Josephine had arrived that Saturday before the fourth, with a cast on her wrist that went halfway up her arm and an announcement that she would no longer answer to the childish name Josey. None of us had ever been injured bad enough to need a cast or a name change so that made Josephine all the more important to us kids. It also took some time before we stopped calling her Josey.

All the older folks were all agog over Josephine’s little sister and I do mean little since she was just a baby. All the Aunts were fussing and my mom, well, she just couldn’t stop with the baby even though all it did was poop and cry.

Anyway, Josephine had told us all last night, as we waited to use the bathroom to rinse away a summer’s day and get ready for nightly Rosary when we all got on our knees, young and old alike, that she had broken her wrist falling off a horse. Earlier, I had overheard her father, Uncle Joe, telling my mother that she had broken her wrist slipping and falling in the basement shower he had just put in. I liked her story better.

Of course we all wanted to sign the cast since that is what kids did to try and grab on to some of the excitement a major injury brings. But she wouldn’t have it, saying we were family and how would it look if all she had on her cast was her stupid cousins. “There just wasn’t enough room,” she said. It was when she was all worked up, waving her arms all around that I saw something I shouldn’t have seen. From that moment on I was mesmerized by Josephine.

So there she was, walking backwards on the railroad tracks explaining all the intricate problems that went along with wearing a cast to us older kids and after we had put some distance (not enough, it turned out) between us and the little ones clustered around grandpa, Josephine felt safe enough to drop what was nothing short of a bombshell.

“You know,” she paused dramatically as she stopped walking to jump up on one rail and twirl around like a ballerina. “The worst part of having a cast on this hand,” I can still picture the moment, the sunlight filtering through her flowing hair, her fair skin sprouting summer freckles, her arms in delicate motion to keep her balance on the rail as she went round and round “is that I can’t touch myself anymore.”

Of course none of us knew what she was talking about and I believe she sensed this as she continued. “You see, children” She had adopted her adult tone so she stopped twirling and climbed down off the rail. “When you get to be my age you have these certain urges. Strong urges that can just drive you crazy if you let them. Now I found out that if I rub myself down there….”

“Where?” quizzed Timmy the cousin two years younger than me.

“Josephine,” grandpa must have been closer than Josephine had thought. “That’s ENOUGH!”

None of us, including Josephine, had ever heard Grandpa shout like that. That’s probably why she decided right then and there that putting a little time and distance between the crime and the punishment was the prudent course of action. For some reason, she grabbed me by the arm and said, “Come on.” We bolted, with me barely keeping my feet on the ground, into the woods next to the tracks.

I had no idea where we were going but, I didn’t care. I was the one she chose to take on her get-a-way. I was the one the other cousins would envy. We busted through brambles and forged onward until we hit the back road leading out of town and into the hills. Thank god I wasn’t wearing shorts.

After we walked for a while on the road, getting further away from town, we stopped and Josephine said “There, up there. Remember last year when your momma took us up there?”

I could see where she was pointing but couldn’t distinguish which place she was pointing to. My mother always took as many of us kids as could fit into her “home” car, the one she left behind when she moved to Cleveland, an old ’54 Chevy, out on little trips around the area to show us all the places that were special to them when they were all growing up. But I nodded my head anyway. I didn’t want Josephine to think I was a little kid and couldn’t remember anything.

We headed on down the road and came to an old clay-paved driveway that had a chain draped lazily across it blocking cars from going up into the forest. From the fresh tire marks on the other side of the chain, it looked as if that barrier only stood against the very timid.

As we walked up into the forest, it hit me; this was the road up to the fire tower. This was where I peed my pants when I climbed up into the tower and froze up far enough to get hurt if I fell but not high enough to see the view. No one could talk me down except Josephine. She climbed right up there and talked me into coming down, never once mentioning the growing pee stain on my shorts.

She must have sensed my sudden change of mood as she reached over with her good hand tussled my hair and said “Don’t worry Squirt.” She paused for a moment to chuckle at her clever joke. “We all piss our pants now and then.”

Of course that didn’t make me feel any better but when she reached over to my hair, I had caught another glimpse. That was all the motivation I needed.

We made our way up passed the leafy trees and suddenly, we were in the pine forest. It was about 20 degrees cooler in there and I shivered a bit. Josephine threw her arm over me and rubbed me long enough for me to get use to the temperature change, inside and out.

“It’s up there. See it?” Josephine said after we climbed for about a half hour and the bottom of the fire tower came into view. “We’re goin’ up to the top, just me and you. We’re gonna take our time and get all the way up this time.”

I had some serious doubts but kept them to myself.

As we got closer, anxiety took hold of me. I was having trouble breathing but I kept going, right behind Josephine. When we got to the bottom step, we had to kick away a whole slew of empty beer bottles, mostly Iron City. Then she stopped, and before she took her first step up, Josephine grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me right in the eye and said, “You don’t have to do this. I won’t tell anyone.”

I just shrugged. I would have followed Josephine to hell and back that day. So we headed on up. I was going to be okay as long as I could watch where Josephine was putting her steps. A couple times we even had to climb out on the metal tubing frame to avoid the few wooden steps that had worn down from neglect or exposure. But she kept on going and I followed, landing after landing. More daylight and July warmth penetrated down as we made our way to the platform where the rangers had watched for fires before planes flew regular over the area.

Right before we reached the top she turned to me and stated as seriously as only a fourteen year old girl can, “I saw you looking at my titties yesterday. And I could see you, out of the corner of my eye, trying to catch another glimpse ever since.”

I was mortified. My skin burned with embarrassment.

She just laughed like it was nothing as she pushed open the trap door that led to the platform. She was on top of the world looking down at me. “Come on, you’ll like it up here. Come on, grab my hand. You can see for miles.”

She pulled me up to where I was able to climb the rest of the way by myself. I wasn’t scared anymore, even though the whole tower would shimmy at the slightest breeze.

“It’s too bad they don’t need these Fire Towers anymore. Can you imagine getting paid to just sit up here and watch the world?”

She was over by the edge. I was completely satisfied to remain at the center of the platform.

“Come on silly, the railing is strong.” She grabbed it and shook it violently and the railing didn’t budge but she did cause the whole tower to sway.

“Come on, you can see their house from up here.”

She had her back to me while trying to coax me across to stand next to her and look out at the world. Me, I was satisfied standing right where I was really proud that I had made it this far.

Josephine turned around to face me and her blouse fell wide open.

“See, they aren’t that much different than yours. They’re just bigger.” Her nipples were erect and I knew that mine would never look anything like that. Right then and there I was convinced that those nipples were going to burn themselves right into my eyes and send both me and Josephine straight to hell.

“They’re just gonna get rounder and bigger” she was dragging a finger across her chest, making small circles around one of her nipples, her eyes locked on mine. “Like a ladies, like my mom. She feeds the baby with them. It’s mommy milk, just like cows.” She paused, took a step closer and asked, in a very quiet voice, if I wanted to touch them. I could barely shake my head no. My eyes hadn’t blinked; I’m sure, for the last ten minutes.

Josephine turned her back on me and was looking down at the vista surrounding the tower. By this time I had crept ever closer to the edge and Josephine was standing there, smiling, enjoying the summer breeze against her bare skin, her blouse wide-open flapping in the wind, happy that I had gotten up the nerve to join her at the railing. I was looking at where she pointed and suddenly felt a wonderful sense of freedom. The view of our grand parent’s house from a few miles up and away was cool enough, but all I could think about was the glory of my cousin’s boobies and was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude and love. She had coaxed me into overcoming one of my greatest fears and treated me like we were the same age even though I was still just a kid. And all I could manage to eek out was a tiny little “oh”.

“Come on Squirt,” she said as she buttoned up her blouse while turning towards me. “Let’s go back and face the music.”