A Little Orange in the Big Apple

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  3: “The River”

  Reynolds suddenly appeared from the house, the screen door slamming as he walked toward his mother and his sister.

  “Now what’s happened? You’re always falling down or something,” said Reynolds to his little sister, shaking his head and sneering at her as always. Despite her brother’s obnoxious greeting, Ali felt kind of special, like a wounded cowboy on a television show, like her hero Hopalong Cassidy who walked with a limp.

  “Mother gave me flowers.” She proudly held them up to Reynolds.

  “She said I was named after them.” Reynolds grabbed his stomach in a big pretend laugh saying, “Yeah, you’re like a flower. Like Flower the skunk in Bambi.” He roared with laughter at that.

  Their mother quickly snapped at Reynolds, “Leave your sister alone. You two don’t see each other for a week and right away, you’re squabbling. For heaven’s sakes, it’s almost Christmas Eve! Let’s get moving and get ready for the big night!” She shook her head from side to side looking at both of them and muttering something about “getting along” as she disappeared through the front door into the house.

  Reynolds looked at Ali, made a face and said, “See ya, squirt”. Same old Reynolds, Ali thought.

  Ali ran into the house, directly to her room that she hadn’t seen for a week. She counted all her stuffed animals and was relieved to find them all there. She picked up her favorite, Smokey Bear, who wore a ranger hat and overalls and held him close while saying, “Only you can prevent forest fires” in her best and deepest, Smokey Bear-like voice. Setting Smokey back on the bed, she grabbed her trusty six-shooter and caps and took off to the river which was directly across the street.

  While crossing the muddy field that led to the river, she would every now and again pull out her six-shooter, pretending to shoot at a “bad guy”, like on television. “Take that you varmint---bam-bam-bam---get out of my Valley and don’t come back,” threatened Ali against her imaginary opponents. Ali was still hobbling like Hopalong Cassidy as she made her way to the concrete walkway that angled down to the river. She wasn’t supposed to go to the river, especially without her older brother Reynolds who was 11 years old. “I have my gun, ain’t nobody gonna mess with me,” she said out loud with more of her cowboy slang learned from watching westerns when she got home from school.

  The river was made of gigantic slabs of concrete with high walls that went for miles and miles through the San Fernando Valley. It was usually dry during the hot summer months, but by the time Christmas arrived, there was often some water flowing down the middle, sometimes a lot of water after a big rain.

  Ali slipped through the gate that said, “No Trespassing.” She knew what the sign meant, but somehow it was easy to ignore. Who knows, there might be badmen down there to shoot and take to jail, Ali imagined. She began inching down the walkway that led to the river with her back against the wall, holding her gun pointed into the air. She was ready for whatever might be around the corner. She jumped out and began shooting her cap gun. “Meow”, howled a stray cat that happened to be sniffing around for crawdads by the water’s edge. The snapping sound of the caps in Ali’s gun scared it. The cat ran low to the ground for a short distance, finally stopping and looking back at Ali, then slowly walking away.

  “Sorry kitty, I wouldn’t shoot you”, Ali said contritely. Ali loved animals. She would love to have a cat or a dog, but with her father gone all the time and her mother working, pets were “out of the question” as her mother would say.

  Looking in one direction, way down the channel, and then the other, Ali didn’t see too much of interest. Some water with a bit of moss, but no craw daddies to retrieve. Some trash here and there, but no shopping carts from the supermarket that somehow ended up in the river. The best things to find were soda pop bottles that she and Reynolds would take back to the supermarket nearby for money. Sometimes as much as 30 cents could be made on a good afternoon. No bottles today. The other neighborhood kids who didn’t go away to a boarding home during the week and lived there all the time, probably already got the good stuff.

  “Ali are you down there?” she heard Reynolds say from somewhere way up along the wall of the river channel. “You’re going to get it from Mom if you don’t get out of there and get home right away,” Reynolds declared authoritatively.

  Ali looked straight up the concrete wall and saw her brother’s head in a glimmer of sunlight and then all of the sudden “splat”, a big gob of spit landed on her forehead. A direct hit.

  “HA-HA-HA-HA----- that was a good one, “ Reynolds said as he laughed wildly. Ali wiped the spit away with her sleeve like any cowboy would do and shot her last few rounds in the air in the direction of Reynold’s voice.

  “Take that you varmint”, she said as she ran with a bit of a limp, homeward.