The Thieves of Sherwood
Timmy was an asshole. Really, he was. Mean-spirited and uncouth, a biting, cussing, spitting, hitting, fighting, pulsing asshole and sometimes his antics would really get those around him into some serious trouble. The worst he did to me happened during a Cub Scout meeting near his apartment in 1988. All of the boys were allowed to finally go to Timmy’s because Julienne Mikal, Cory’s mother, was attending. The Autents lived at the time in a low-rent housing complex in a forgotten back corner of Orlando. Due to the green paint peeled paneling on the buildings, the particular name of the complex as well as the company known to reside there, it was known locally as Sherwood Forest.
The five boys of Den 5 were close, having come through Tiger, Cub and now Boy Scouts together as well as being schoolmates and neighborhood friends. Timmy and Davey were the toughest but their records were so bad they got pigeon-holed early and could never get out of anything else. Eddy and Garic were straight-edged like Cory, destined to go somewhere and really do something with their lives. They knew it, their gifted teachers knew it, the parents knew it and these superiors did not like them associating with the other rougher, tougher formats exhibited in Davey and Timmy.
After an hour or so of Cub Scout knot-tying and pledge banter the boys were restless and wanted to get outside, so the mothers allowed them, enjoying the gossip and stime to have their Hidden Kool and Capri cigarettes while the boys went out front to explore the “forest.” Told to stay right in front of the building, Timmy immediately took off, taunting the others to follow him. It was starting to get dark and four or five sprinting and screaming boys were now dashing in between the long green buildings, jumping soiled mattresses and 40-ounce bottles, moving farther and farther from the caring yet chattering parents.
Rounding a corner, they came face to face with a middle age couple, looking mean and dangerous.
“Stop that hollerin’ right now!” the woman screamed back at them. Everything froze for a moment. The fear was immediate. This woman was not like their mothers’, not like the people they knew at school or the doctors’, real dangerous people with little to lose, on the brink of the abyss with those crazy eyes they had heard about. All halted and silent, they all realized they were in a isolated section of the darkening complex. The lady was disheveled, hair unwashed and askew and stared with a radiating fury at the boys. The man looked to be foreign and his dark beady eyes darted nervously from the woman to the silent and shocked kids, as if he didn’t know what she would do next.
“Get inside this house right now!” she demanded like the mother of all of them.
Since the boys were used to obeying and had never been ordered by a stranger to do something, it was an odd request for a Boy Scout to process quickly. So, too young to stand up for themselves, they single file marched to what could have been their eventual doom. Timmy and Dicky, the street smart and more experienced of the bunch were not so gullible.
“Screw you lady!” They flicked her off, turned tail and ran. The man ushered the three inside as the lady continued to threaten Timmy and Dicky (who were slapping their asses at her as they hightailed around the corner) with screams about calls to their unknown parents and the severe punishment they would receive.
“I’ll have the landlord throw yer family out you rotten little cuss! You come ‘round here again and I’ll wallop you one, I will!” Listening to this, Cory, Garic and Eddy knew they were screwed. Looking at each other quickly with darting glances they could tell they were not in a good situation, they might have to do something they had never been confronted with. To what level was yet to be determined.
After the woman entered the tiny, hazy apartment the man shut and locked the door. Audible gulps were heard throughout the room. The room was dark with tattered tapestries and blankets over the windows making the shadows deep and dark in the corners. Every kidnapping and torture story they had ever heard flooded their memory banks, images from TV of dungeons and chains found in back rooms. How could they not? Bad neighborhood, night time, behind a locked door in the den of some psychos. This is where nightmares really did come true.
“What do you kids think you’re doin’, runnin’ round shriekin’ like a whore on fire? Y’all ain’t got any respect for what others do to be here? How long people work every day just so they can pay to live here? And why? So that ungrateful hellions like y’all can run amuck screamin’ like they’re little girls ‘stead of boys?”
“No maam” Garic somehow spit out.
“Well that’s what you’re doin’ or else you wouldn’t of ended up here.”
“Maam, we’re with Cub Scout Den 5 and we have an important meeting we need
to get to over at the Autent’s…”
“Seems real important, kid. And what’s this meeting about anyway? Learnin’ how to scream like banshees in the night? I hope you’re not lyin’ to me, boy.”
“No maam, I swear…”
“Ooh, don’t go doing that either!” She quickly approached, spittle flecked through her nicotine-stained teeth, “We don’t go doin’ none o’ that ‘round ‘ere!” During this exchange, Eddy was silently standing with feet together, at attention with eyes staring at his shoes. And all at once at that moment, Eddy seemed to come alive, speaking out in his strongest man voice, possibly to exonerate them once and for all.
“Maam, like he said, we’re Cub Scouts and we are allowed to swear, on our honor. It’s called an honor swear and we just hold our three fingers up like this…”
“Can it, kid. In my house, we don’t allow swearin’, on anything. You understand me?” Cory felt it important to protect the generally meek Eddy and to face this strange and possibly dangerous couple with a taste of their own medicine.
“We’re real sorry maam, but we all have parents who need to know where we are and we really don’t want to worry them.” The lady smirked. She wasn’t falling for any nine year old reverse psychology.
“Do your parents let you run around screamin’ all over public property whenever you want?”
“Well no, but honestly we didn’t know it was illegal.”
“It is. Noise Ordinance. That’s what it’s called. That’s the law you boys were breakin’ when I found you.”
“We’re very sorry maam, really…”
“Do you respect your parents word, boys? Do you follow what they tell you to do?”
“Yes, maam, honestly we’re very good. We’re cub scouts, please…” Their was a long moment of silence. The kids knew what Cory was begging for. All were seeing the worst imagery yet pictured on the TV screen in their still forming brains, the thieves of Sherwood collecting children for mincemeat pie on the black market, the back closets and bedrooms filled with dead children wrapped tightly in blue cellophane. The man stood, arms crossed, squarely in front of the door. He was unnervingly intimidating, silent and ready for his orders. After what seemed like a veritable eternity, the unstable woman spoke with an eerie authority and a slimy sense of false sweetness, rattling off these words,
“Boys, I’m gonna let you run home now, quietly! Tell your parents that you were misbehavin’ and that you’re sorry. You are also going to tell them that you love ’em. You should never again disobey or disrespect them. Because that just makes ’em mad and you don’t like it when you’re parents are mad, do you?” The boys couldn’t say “no, maam” fast enough. She wouldn’t allow it.
“Because they’re just looking out for you and you just can’t understand that yet. I imagine they are missin’ you right now. Do you miss your parents?” Eddy was pretty shook up by now. Quivering and cowering, yet somehow still at attention, he softly answered her, “Yes, maam”. A single solitary sob broke through.
But Cory and Garic were still holding out. They weren’t about to show any weakness in front of these possible kidnapping psychos. They were best friends, and imaging the exact same things, the back bedrooms crammed with duck-taped sobbing schoolchildren. Maybe even every missing kid in Florida.
The possibilities were endless, did they only take the weak, if you shed a tear it sealed your doom? They both were considering this and remained calm.
“Alright,” she finally sighed, “run along and don’t forget what I said. I mean it. Behave.”
The silent man slowly stepped aside and opened the door. It could have been the gates of paradise opening. They couldn’t of been happier to see a twilight sky and the sound of the complex.
Once away from the building the three boys huddled and although still quite shaken by the incident they promised to not talk about it or mention it again, ever to anybody. But rather just be glad to be alive. From that day forth, these three lads would have a deeper level of respect for the public during displays of unbridled youth and an even deeper level of understanding of what an asshole Timmy
Autent really was.
