Madison Ellingsworth

A Miniature Bronze Statue of Theodore Roosevelt Riding a Horse has previously been published in Quirk magazine. You can find it here: https://www.uiwquirk.org/2021-issue

Marky had one eye open and the other swollen shut with blood and bruising. His face was splotchy- blue and purple- and his cast swung back and forth as we walked. When I had opened the screen door that morning to find him standing on my porch, he had said a quick, “You should see the other guy.” 

I had, in fact, seen the other guy. Chuck Swensen had been strolling straight down the middle of my street the previous morning, whistling “Pop Goes The Weasel” and strutting with the sort of swagger that only comes from fighting and beating a boy two years younger than oneself. This was not abnormal for Swensen, as he had no gripes with beating up boys as many as seven years his junior, and had established himself as both the school bully and the town menace. His greasy, rancid mullet and the switchblade sticking out of his back pocket completed his honed image.

Fundamentally, it was Marky’s fault. Sally hangs out at her parent’s penny candy store every weekend, and he had had a fat head about going in and asking her about whether or not she’d want to go swimming at the spring with him this weekend. It is a widely known fact that Swensen had been hanging out with Sally, and it’d be a death sentence to go after Swensen’s girl. Ralph and I had told Marky not to go near her- Ralph’s exact words being “Don’t even think about it, you’ll get killed, you overgrown ape,”- but he had gone in anyway, the bell dinging as the screen door clacked shut behind him. 

And so it was now fitting that he and I were walking together down that same street that Swensen had been strolling, on our way to the candy store across town, because Marky could not go to the one around the corner anymore. 

“My dad nearly killed me last night when he saw my face,” Marky said as he kicked a piece of gravel. “Then he told my mom it was ‘about time’ someone showed me what the world is about, and sat watching the news until he fell asleep on the couch.” Marky was glaring with his one openable eye at the asphalt, and kept rubbing his cast. 

“At least your dad noticed something was wrong,” I tried to cheer him up when he got like this. Marky was one of the few guys in our class whose dad was still living at home, but he rarely realized how lucky he was. 

He shrugged and sighed. “I guess… But it was my fault. I could never blame Sally- she can’t help that she’s so perfect.” 

“I mean, she’s okay, not really that great. You could do better.”

Marky paused to think. “You think she’d say yes if I asked her out again next week?”

While we were waiting for the walk sign across the street from the candy store, Ralph came bowling out with a bag of mixed taffy, his two younger brothers in tow. Walt and Scout have always shared his rolly-polly physique, and all three sprout tufts of red hair on the top of their heads- a red matched only by their pink, freckled faces. Ralph spotted us and dashed across the road, barely swinging his head to check if anyone was coming, his brothers following behind like ducklings. All three brothers stood admiring Marky’s bruises.

“Oh man,” Walt piped, “your face looks like ground beef.” 

Ralph’s mouth smacked loudly as he chewed and poked at the cast. “Not as cool as the one I got last year,” he declared, “It was red and I even got Ms. Debuskan to sign it.” He 

offered us the bag of taffy. “We’re going to go throw rocks at the train. You wanna come?” Since the only items on our agenda had been obtaining candy and avoiding Swensen, we decided to tag along.

The train tracks ran through the outskirts of town, only coming close enough to access at the edges of the small landfill, and the only person who was ever there was Rusty, the owner, who spent his time crushing trash into cubes and watching baseball on the mini television in his lean-to. The ground outside was forever peppered with the stepped-on shells of sunflower seeds and spit-up dip. If he realized we were cutting through or saw what we were doing, he would threaten to sic his dog ‘Rat’ on us. Thankfully, we rarely saw him. 

We collected a pile of rocks when we arrived and waited for the first train. Walt killed some time by pawing through the piles of trash at the entrance, pulling out interesting goodies and shoveling them in his pockets. Almost all of Ralph’s taffy was gone. We stood around smacking and sweating in the heat of the midday.

“Guys, hey guys! C’mere, there’s something crazy in here!” Walt’s tiny, shrill voice pierced.

“We’re waiting for the train, dummy, and stop yelling or Rusty will come,” Ralph hissed back, not bothering to turn around. 

I could hear Walt grunting as he strained his little arms into the hole that he had dug in the pile. “But I can’t reach it and I wanna know what it is! It’s all shiny and goldy!” His frustration was palpable.

A snaking, coal-carrying locomotive came chugging around the bend. When it was close enough, Ralph called Walt over (with many mumbled complaints on Walt’s part) and we began lobbing the stones at the sides, producing a cacophony of clanging. It did not take long before Ralph’s brothers began whooping and jumping up and down as they threw with more and more effort, and Marky threw with all the might he had in his unbroken arm. We could begin to see the end of the train, and began throwing with unbridled gusto in order to get rid of our remaining rocks.

The shouting came from behind us, within the center of the fill. “HEY! HEY YOU BOYS! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!” Rusty came rushing out, hiking up his pants, dragging the ancient, mangy Rat by a piece of rope. We began shrieking with a mixture of fear and amusement at the threat of getting caught and scolded. We began to flee the scene and Ralph paused to pick up one last rock- gave it a quick kiss for good luck- and threw it at the last box car. Scout, who had not sprinted nearly as fast as everyone else on his short, chunky legs, had barely passed the back of the train. As the rock whistled through the air it fell short of the target and ricocheted off the rail instead, catching him on his ankle. 

Scout fell and let out a trail of shrieking curse words that I doubted his mother would have ever let him say without being sent into the yard for the switch. Ralph wailed and dashed over to Scout as blood began to ooze from his foot and onto the gravel; it was already congealing in the heat. We had all stopped at the landfill entrance to stare. Even Rusty had paused briefly in his hustle to watch Scout’s snotting, swearing, and generally disgusting display of humanity. Ralph patted his back and mumbled words of apology while trying to usher him up. 

“I’ll never be able to walk– not ever again– it feels like I’ve been shot,” Scout moaned, his face contorted with pain as he clung to his ankle. He was really milking it. “I’m gonna tell mom and then you won’t get to go swimming tomorrow.” 

Ralph did not take the threat lightly. Wrenching Scout to his feet, he began lugging him along, just as Rusty had been lugging the decrepit Rat only minutes before. “If you ever tell mom about this, I’ll tell her about what you’ve been doing in the planters in the backyard, and then she’ll ground you for life.” Scout’s face went crimson, as he suddenly became all too aware of the eyes that were trained on him. He shrugged Ralph off and shuffled next to him, trying to appear as small as possible. Rusty stood, mouth agape, dip slowly making its way out of his lip, Rat laying half-dead on the pavement next to him, as he watched Ralph and Scout’s beet red bodies haul their way out of his landfill. 

The next day I met Marky at the bus stop down the street so that we could catch a ride to the spring. The entire walk my flip flops had been drawing up strands of tar from the asphalt, and I felt like a piece of human beef jerky when I sat down next to him on the curb. He had his trunks on, a towel around his neck, and a tupperware full of grapes. “They’re from my mom, in case I get hungry,” he said when I raised my eyes and looked at them. 

It was hell outside of the bus, but inside it felt like a stove set to broil. The sweat was pooling on the pleather seat beneath me, and I could feel droplets sliding down the backs of my knees. The only other person on the bus was an elderly woman wearing long white gloves with a felt hat and knitted shawl draped around her shoulders. To look at her made me feel faint, and I 

could see the bus driver frown and look her up and down as she got on. The breeze coming through the cracks in the windows smelled like plastic and sunscreen.

Ralph, Scout, and Walt were waiting for us when we hopped off the bus. Scout’s foot had been bandaged with a hand towel and duct tape wrapped with saran wrap but- other than that- he looked like he was back to normal. Ralph was eating french fries off of a tray from the snack bar, and Walt had a fudge pop that seemed to be eclipsing the rest of the world. He ate it voraciously. The elderly woman teetered off of the bus after us and, only feet onto the sand, stripped out of her outfit to reveal a two-piece, polka-dotted bikini. Catching my eye she called out, “Gotta work up a sweat, or else what’s the point?” With a wink, she teetered her way down the beach and shuffled into the water.
“It’s mega murky today,” Ralph chewed, “And so Alan said that he thinks the big gator might think it’s a good day to come out.” Alan Arkanowitz was a notorious liar, and had been trying to get the big gator myth to catch on for the last few years without any luck, except for Ralph. Some days they would go down to the library and photocopy pictures of 

alligators and post hand-written signs on the telephone poles around town– “Have you seen this beast?”

“I told him the gator likes it when the water is clear, because then he can see all the little legs in the water, but he thinks the murk makes it feel like human soup. He’s so full of it.” I looked at Marky, who looked at me, and I prayed that he was also thinking of someone who might be full of it. “Let’s go swimming,” Ralph ripped off his stained Beach Boys t-shirt and raced towards the water, kicking sand up into the faces of everyone relaxing within a ten-foot 

radius. Walt and Scout were only a few yards behind, with Scout bringing up the rear as he tottered on his newly wrapped foot. Marky and I made our way down the hill, debating about whether or not Ralph knew how stupid he was, when Marky came to a halt.

“What? What’re you doing?” I asked, pulling his elbow.

“No– wait, look,” he pointed down towards the water. Churning up the waves to the left were Ralph and his brothers, playing chicken with Alan. Splashing playfully to the right was Sally, giggling and chittering with Chuck Swensen. She had on a bright green swim cap that did not quite fit her head, and which had subsequently filled with water to make her head look long and alien. Swensen was wearing the same outfit he had been wearing several days prior: jean shorts and a wife beater. The white shirt had become so saturated that it was almost transparent, and his nipples poked through in an unpleasantly pornographic way. Neither seemed to have noticed Marky yet. 

“Maybe we should wait until they leave?” I offered up. It felt selfish not to propose that we head home, but sweat was making my flip flops come off my feet every few steps and I figured I would die if we did not eventually get in the water. Marky just stood staring at Sally in her weird neon swim cap. 

“She looks so good. Do you think she’s thinking about me? No, wait, don’t answer that. How do I look?” Marky’s dirty blonde hair had become so wet with sweat that it had turned a chocolatey brown and his tupperware of grapes was steaming up from the released condensation. 

“Maybe we should go sit down. I think you could use a fudge pop,” I said clapping him on the shoulder and steering him away. 

The snack bar was run by Mr. Diddle, a thin man with a pencil mustache whose smile was affixed to his face like wallpaper. He played card games with Marky’s dad every Saturday night and always lost. The line for his snacks trailed out around the building with many lone kids clutching change and overweight adults clutching wallets, but when he caught sight of us, he gestured to the front. 

“You’re Marvin’s kid, right, Mark, or Marty, or something?” His teeth were piano keys, his face folding out to make more room for his seemingly infinite mashers. “How about a free ice cream on me? Just tell your dad to take it easy on me tonight at our game, huh?” He reached into the cooler under the counter without breaking eye contact, his hands emerging with two Fudgey’s Delicious fudge pops. 

“Oh… okay. Thanks I guess!” I said awkwardly as I took the pops and handed one to Marky. His eyes were so lost in the world of Sally and her swim cap that he did not appear to have heard a single word. And, as if the conversation was not odd enough, the walk away had to be plagued with the glares of everyone still waiting in line. 

We sat far back on the beach watching Swensen beat the life out of a random kid. All he had done was ask Sally if she wanted to play marco polo after she had wandered away from Swensen and joined up with a few of her friends. Now she sat, oblivious, too busy preening herself on the sand to realize the guy was getting a beating. I could hear the group’s high-pitched squawking as they gossipped. Ralph was standing at the edge of the water, triumphant over a large pile of sand he had created which- upon further inspection- contained all of Walt and Scout’s bodies except for their heads. “Come, big gator! I offer you my brethren as tribute!” He high-fived Alan and they began trying to push the pile back into the water. 

“WHAT’S YOUR UGLY FACE DOING HERE?” Bellowing came from the waterline as Swensen’s gaze locked onto us. Marky dropped his fudge pop on the ground. “I ALREADY TOLD YOU— SALLY IS MY GIRL, AND YOU SHOULD’VE STOPPED HANGIN’ AROUND HER.” What little water had not yet been sweated out of my body had now gone straight to my hands. Swensen started making his way up the beach, his body flexed like an angered pitbull’s. 

“Do we run? Or do we stand?” I asked Marky, but he had gone sheet white and seemed to be (once again) at a loss for words. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to let him break your arm again.”

Sally had glanced up to see what Swensen’s yelling was about, only to find that he had walked away. When she saw us – half baked in the sun and fully scared out of our minds – with the world’s scrawniest bully lazily on his way to commit Marky’s murder, she stood and double-timed it up the dune. 

Blocking us, she turned to face Swensen. “What do you think you’re doing?” she pointed, her swim cap now drained of water and flopping about like the hat of a gnome. Swensen’s cocky grin drooped slightly. 

He punched his bony fist into his open palm, “This dummy thinks he can get with you— he thinks you aren’t even my girl! So I’m gonna take him down a peg.” 

“Your girl? I’m not your girl! You just asked me to go swimming, and I was gonna go anyway! We’ve only hung out, like, two times?” Sally’s eyes were wide with astonishment. “And I don’t even really know that guy!” I heard Marky moan in his throat.

“Not my girl? But I gave you a tape and you said you’d come over to look at my knife collection.” Swensen’s griping was not impressing anyone. 

Sally scoffed. “I think you should leave.” 

Marky, seeing this as his opportunity to defend himself, decided to jump in. “Yeah, scram, lame-o!” We all turned to look at him. I had to applaud him for trying, but grimaced at how terribly uncool his delivery was. Sally and Swensen resumed their argument like Marky did not exist, but that would not stop him. “Get out of here, and take your stupid haircut with you!” Again, a wince.

Swensen scowled. “I don’t have to go anywhere. But, you know what, I will leave, only so I don’t have to look at that ugly hat thing anymore.” He turned over his shoulder as he made his way down the road to yell, “You’re gonna pay for this you scab– watch your back!” Marky’s face turned a sickly green shade.

My ice cream had been dripping, forgotten, onto the sand next to me. Marky’s had melted and formed a small pool of chocolate, which had flowed onto his shoes and toes. Sally turned to look at us. “You’re the guy who asked me to come here when I was at the candy store, right?” she smiled. Marky was like a turtle stuck on his back, so desperate the look in his eyes. “Well, sorry Chuck nearly beat you up. Thanks for trying your best. See ya around!” Sally flew back down the hill to her gaggle of friends, who had been watching intently from down below. They began chattering away at once.

“WHAAAAT’S UP?!” Ralph roared, having unexpectedly walked up and bent down beside us. Marky let out a shriek and punched him in the thigh. Ralph roared again and fell to his knees, crying out “Whaddya do that for? It was just a joke!” He rubbed the red welt that was growing on his pale, fleshy leg. Marky muttered an apology as I cackled, the stress of it all being released. 

It was only a week before we saw Swensen again. I had been reading comics and eating funyuns (a food that I consider as close to God as food can be) while I was supposed to be asleep when a rock came hurtling through my window screen. Like any sane person would when they are under attack, I threw myself on the floor. After a few minutes, I peered outside of the window to see what was going on, and a freckly round face greeted me through the ripped hole.

“Come on– we’re gonna go to the train tracks,” Ralph whispered, “Walt said that thing he found there looked like it could be a hunk of pure gold, straight out of Fort Knox, baby.” He pointed to the rock on my floor. “Grab that, I didn’t bring any weapons for you guys.” He pulled back to reveal Marky standing next to him. I looked at Marky and got an eye roll in return. 

“My mom’s gonna kill me now. Why couldn’t you guys just knock like a normal person?” 

Ralph huffed like this was the most ridiculous question he had ever heard. “It’s a stealth mission. And we can’t let her get in on the cut- three ways is already two more ways than I wanted.”

“Also, she would’ve called our moms and had them come get us,” Marky added. Ralph nodded furiously.

“But I was reading and Batman’s about to figure out that the Joker is the one behind the bombings,” I whined. In between our adventures I had been making my way through the collection of Batman comics at the library.

“But what if we can sell the thing though?” Ralph said, leaning through the hole, his eyes 

gleaming. “Imagine how much candy we could buy with a bar of gold.” He was drooling.

“I doubt it’s a bar of gold.”

“A golden knife with powers.”

“Doubt that, too.”

“A limited edition, gold-cover Batman comic book, not available at the library?” I huffed and pushed his face out of the hole. After throwing on my sweater and picking up the rock, I fumbled out of the rip. 

The night was loud with the summer sounds of bugs, the hissing of charcoal in grills, and the squeals of kids left out for too long. It had been a few days of rain, and the clear sky in the evening had drawn everyone out to bond and stare at the stars. The many downpours seemed to have tempered the neverending heat that often settled over the town. Marky had his new sneakers on and was stomping them hard on the pavement in the hopes that we would notice, but Ralph had not seemed to and I did not want to give him the satisfaction of mentioning it. They were- more likely than not- the main reason why he had bothered to tag along. 

“I was gonna bring Scout and Walt, but that’s two more ways of splitting the prize,” Ralph said, shaking his head. “Also they might have told my mom, and I barely got away with hitting Scout with the rock last time.” 

After we had left the spring, Ralph told us that his mom had interrogated Scout within an inch of his life about how he hurt his foot, but he (thankfully) stuck to the story that he had cut it on his bike pedal. The only problem with the excuse was that Scout’s bike tires were so flat that the bike was impossible to ride and thus had been laying untouched underneath their porch for the last several years. But, as much as he feared his mother’s wrath for his lies, he feared what she would do if she heard about what he liked to do in the planters in their backyard more.

The walk to the landfill was quick, made only a bit longer by Marky constantly making us stop so he could check that his new laces were not dragging, or rub a corner of his spit-covered sleeve on an invisible streak of non-existent grime. It was a tense and nervous arrival; the towering cubes of waste looked like robotic beasts looming over us, and the faint snoring and TV static coming from Rusty’s shack made it feel like we were breaking and entering, rather than foraging around in a trash heap. Ralph set his rock down and began directing. “Okay, I’ll stand guard, and you guys check out that pile on the right. Then, if it isn’t in there, we’ll rotate to the next pile.” 

I nodded and began my digging. The inside of the heap was steamy and rank with the smell of rotting trash, and the deeper we went into the pile, the more difficult it was to determine what an object was supposed to be. Shards of pottery, torn apart tapes, and stuffing from disemboweled teddy bears comprised most of the bottom, but we continued to paw until we reached compacted dirt. Marky called out and poked his head above it all, waving around a brass candlestick that had been broken in half. “Could this have been what he meant?” The metal that had not yet oxidized gleamed in the light, but it felt like a stretch to suggest that this would have been of any interest to Walt. 

“Let’s move to the next pile- Marky, you take watch,” Ralph declared, as he hauled himself to the top of the mound beside ours. I started at the side and worked my way in. Marky immediately bent down to check over his sneakers to confirm they were scum-free and shining. Ralph and I met inside in the middle, showing one another our prizes: several tossed house keys, a rusted brass bucket, a cracked yellow watering can, and an empty tin can, its label ripped to illegible shreds. But Ralph still held something behind his back. 

“What have you got?” I questioned, but Ralph shook his head. I pulled at his arm and yanked it into view. “C’mon, lemme see!” A miniature bronze statue of Theodore Roosevelt riding a horse emerged, shining with gold. It was beautiful. “That has to be what Walt saw, it’s perfect. We can go home and sell it tomorrow, I bet it’s worth a ton.” 

“Yeah, but I found it,” Ralph argued. “It’s mine, and you guys wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t bring you!” He clutched the figure closer. As I began to argue back, we heard a commotion outside.

“Shut up, shut up, or I’ll squeeze harder. What’re you even doing here?” A bone-chilling chuckle. “Well I guess you can’t answer, can you? It’s your unlucky night isn’t it, pipsqueak?” I peeked over the top, and saw Marky’s face turning maroon in the chokehold that Swensen had locked on his throat. I elbowed Ralph. His pudgy face was now flecked with sweat and his eyes were saucers. 

“We gotta do something, he’s gonna kill him!” I whispered. Marky was wheezing and his tongue lolled out of his mouth. Swensen was personified revenge as he continued to jeer, saying that it was his fault Sally didn’t love him and other such lies. Ralph looked at his rock, which lay forgotten on the ground below. He turned Teddy Roosevelt over in his hand, sighed, and threw him with all of his might at the back of Swensen’s head. With a revolting crack it collided with his cranium, leaving a gash and taking out a hunk of mullet. Swensen wailed and fell to his knees, grabbing at his skull. Marky flopped to the ground and heaved in breath like a fish out of water. Swensen’s meat bled freely as he cried out and tried to gather the lost strands of his greasy mane. 

“WHAT IN GOD’S NAME IS GOING ON OUT HERE?!” Rusty hollered, slamming open the hinged piece of plywood that served as his door. He was greeted with Swensen’s bloody hands grasping at the ground, Marky’s desperate gasping, and Ralph and I peeping out from inside a pile of trash. Rat heaved himself out of the hut and lifted his leg to begin urinating on it. “Chuck?” Rusty rushed over and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Chuck what’ve you done?”

“Pops, please c’mere, I’m not feeling too hot,” Swensen burbled, paling and wringing his shreds of hair in his hands. 

“I thought you were in bed– you aren’t supposed to be out after dark.” Rusty turned him around and peeled away his hair to look at his slash. “We gotta get you out to the doctor’s, you numbskull. And forget about the hair, it ain’t gonna go back in, no matter how hard you try.” Rusty steered him towards a doorless truck parked outside of the fill. “Wait in there while I call the doc.” He turned and huffed back towards us, his eyes narrowed. 

“If I ever see you boys again I’ll have Ratty show you what’s what, and then I’ll give all your mothers a call, you hear?” Rat, at the sound of his name, rolled over, exposed his flabby stomach, and began whining. Following a choir of “yessir,” Rusty disappeared inside for a few minutes. Ralph and I leapt out of the trash and sprinted to Marky. 

“Marky, Marky you okay?” Ralph shook him and slapped his face. 

“Stop- STOP! I’m FINE!” The shaking continued. “REALLY I’M–” A sudden bout of coughing, followed by an equally loud bout of laughing. And just as suddenly as we had all 

panicked, we were all laughing, and Rat was flopping down near us begging for belly rubs, and 

Rusty was hiking his pants up to his car. 

“Don’t you move, Ratty. Watch those punks!” He shouted at the dog. Rat rolled back onto his belly but continued whining.

Marky sat up. “At least if I had died I would’ve been wearing my new shoes, which you guys still haven’t said anything about, by the way. But I guess I’m still glad you somehow got him off of me.” Ralph and I turned to look at the ruined Teddy Roosevelt statue, which had dented and cracked when it fell on Ralph’s rock. 

“We could’ve made millions, trillions even,” Ralph said lustfully. “I could’ve gotten so much candy.”

“But saving Marky was way more important,” I chimed in.

“Well, yeah, duh. But the candy… Maybe we can come back when Rusty isn’t around and look for another one?” 

Marky rolled his eyes. “I’d rather wet myself in front of Sally than have to come back to this dump again.” 

“It could be the opportunity of a lifetime,” Ralph begged, then paused. “Also, wait, so Rusty is Swensen’s grandpa? Are we gonna talk about that? I mean, it explains a lot but…” 

Marky shrugged. “At least one of his relatives isn’t too bad,” he said, giving Rat some pats. He then pushed himself to stand. “Let’s head home, I think I’m done with going on adventures for a little while.” Ralph picked up the now-defeated Teddy Roosevelt. We carved out a small hole in one of the piles to toss him into; Ralph said some nonsense about his dreams for the future, and Marky thanked the former president for saving his life. After letting Rat back into Rusty’s, we headed out of the exit. 

By now the streets were serenely quiet. We walked home in a warm silence, reflecting on the night’s events, as well as those of the summer thus far. All of the day’s playing had since ceased and the grills had been extinguished until the weekend arrived again. The chirping and clicking of bugs had been replaced with the tweeting and fluttering of birds as they picked worms in the morning dew. The sky began to lighten, and the temperature set about its steady ascent, as the sun announced the dawn of a new day.