Chapter 1

"Hey Unca Tom, whassup?"

I was eight, well almost eight - actually I was seven years and eight months old, and Lisa-Marie was only six and a half when I first met her. The uncle bit? Well, her new step dad was my oldest brother, Joe. He was older than I was by seventeen years, and he'd married a woman who had a daughter already. A daughter who was almost as old as I was and in hardly any time, she'd become a royal pain in my butt!

Her mother, Pam, thought that Lisa-Marie calling me Unca Tom was cute and she encouraged it, maybe Joe did too. Anyway that's what she called me, all the time, even after she started going to the same school as I did that fall. So to even things out, I'd call her Baby-Lisa, then I'd bend my thumb inside my fist and make smacking and sucking noises as I kissed my knuckle. Even that didn't get to her, she'd just giggle and bat her eyes at me. How could you stay mad at someone who just wouldn't get annoyed with you?

My brother's farm was just down the road from Dad's, so we rode together on the bus to school. The first day she went to school, my brother Joe told me in no uncertain terms that I was to make sure she was okay and to look out for her. Then of course she decided that she had to sit with me which got me teased by all the other kids. Luckily it was only a few days before she made friends with a girl her age and she moved to sit with her new friend. It was funny, I missed having her sit beside me even if she was a pain in the butt at times.

I still had to be her protector though, guys liked to pull her long blonde pigtails and tease her to make her blush. So of course every once in a while I had little pushing matches with some of the guys if either Lisa-Marie or I thought their teasing went a bit too far. Mostly, after a while, the rest of the kids treated us as if we were sister and brother, so it wasn't too bad. At times she'd get dressed up all frilly and she didn't seem the same, that was when I really didn't stick around her much.

It was funny though, she was just about as good as I was at catching tadpoles down at the creek and she didn't mind getting dirty. She even liked to just sit back and look at the clouds as they drifted overhead in the summer heat. And in the wintertime, she liked to flop on her back in the fresh snow to make snow angels or she'd help build snow men. At Christmas and for each other's birthdays, we always tried to get each other the best gifts we could and then pretend that our moms had made us get something nice.

And mostly, once she got through the first grade, she stopped calling me Unca Tom around other people. She reserved that name for times when she wanted to tease me and get me annoyed.

I remember one day when I was fourteen and just going into grade eight. I was talking to some friends when Lisa-Marie came running up with her blouse torn. She was crying, but I could see she was mad too. She told me a new kid who'd just started at the school had come up to her and pushed her into a corner. He'd kissed her and stuck his tongue in her mouth, then his hand had slipped up under her blouse and she'd ripped it getting away from him.

She didn't get a chance to tell me any more. I was already running off to find the kid.

He was bigger than I was and when he saw me coming, he didn't wait for me to say or do anything, he just started punching. He hit me one good lick on the face, then I got my hands on him. I wasn't much of a fighter, but after years of helping out on the farm, I was strong. I just grabbed hold of him, picked him up, and threw him like I would a bale of hay. Then I just keep coming after him. Each time I caught him, he'd hit me once or twice, but as soon as I could get my hands on him, I'd pick him up and throw him again. Sometimes he'd land on his feet, but sometimes he wouldn't and if he fell down, I'd grab whatever I could get my hands on to fling him around so that I could get him into position to throw him again.

After I'd thrown him around five or six times, he was doing his best to get away, but I just kept following him, catching him and tossing him again. Finally he ran into the school and into a classroom. I was acting like a collie dog herding a sheep into a corner with him playing the part of the sheep when a teacher separated us. That's when Lisa-Marie came running up and told the teacher what the other kid had done. Of course both Billy and I were in big trouble, so our parents got called. Lisa-Marie made such a fuss about it that her Mom got called too. All three of us kids had to sit and wait in the principal's office.

Thinking he was safe there, Billy waited until the principal wasn't looking and then he made a rude gesture with his hand at Lisa-Marie and me. I shifted forward like I was going to jump at him, but he squawked and ran for the door. By the time the principal had looked up, it was Lisa-Marie who was on her feet and her right hand was balled into a fist. Of course the principal told Lisa-Marie to quit bullying the kid.

That set off my temper. I showed the principal the gesture the kid had made and the kid smirked when the principal told me that I was being rude. Unfortunately for the kid, the school secretary had seen what was going on in the principal's office through an open door and told him the true story. So Lisa-Marie and I got separated from the kid and were made to sit in the secretary's office to wait for our parents to come.

Since the kid lived in town, his mom showed up first and we could hear her from the secretary's office. She started to whine and complain the moment she came in and just didn't stop. She was certain that the whole world picked on her and on her precious son Billy. She was sure that absolutely no one understood what she had to go through, being a single mother and all. She had moved to this town to get Billy away from hooligans like me who beat up on her poor little boy and now look at this mess, it was happening all over again.

Then Billy blew it. He told her to "Shut the fuck up, you silly bitch," but she just ignored him and kept whining away.

I just stared. Sure I'd heard the 'F' word before, but I'd never said it in front of a woman and I certainly wouldn't have said it to my mother.

When the principal told Billy to watch his tongue, Billy really lost his cool. I was actually having a language lesson, one that included words I had never even heard before. Unfortunately, the school secretary put an end to that by closing the door into the principal's office and the sound of his outburst was muffled too much to make out his words clearly.

To make a long story short, Billy got expelled, while I got a three-day suspension from school. It was strange though, that night we had all my favourite foods for supper and somehow, not long afterward I got a brand-new bike. Pam, my brother Joe's wife, bought it for me, telling me it was for a few jobs I had done to help her out, but I was certain it was really for fighting that bully for being mean to Lisa-Marie that day.

My brother Joe and I also got free enrollment in a self defence class that had just started in town. The funny thing was that neither of us had even thought about it and none of our family even knew the place was going to open. We certainly hadn't planned on taking any courses there, but being a bit on the frugal side, we weren't about to turn down a gift either.

The one thing that I had proven to me in that class was that I wasn't a fighter. Well, I did learn that there are better ways to fight a boxer than getting your face beaten to a pulp while getting close enough to overpower him. I guess I did learn to protect myself a bit and maybe that was all that I really needed to learn.

One other thing changed as well, I realised that day that Lisa-Marie was growing into a very pretty young woman. I guess growing up with her underfoot all the time, I just hadn't noticed that she was growing up too. I think she started thinking differently about me as well, although I'm not sure of that. Somehow though, things were never the same between us after that day. In some ways we seemed closer, but in other ways, we seemed to have become more shy with one another.

Over the next three years it seemed we spent less time with each other and yet somehow we got closer. I know, that doesn't make sense, but thinking about it now, what happened was that when we were together, we spent less time teasing and jousting and more time actually talking and listening to each other.

At the same time it seemed that I became more shy around other girls while Lisa-Marie became a tease and a flirt with almost all the guys, yet neither of us was going out with anyone. Oh, we weren't totally abstinent, I did take a girl to what we called 'our junior prom' at the end of the year in grade nine, but that was a total flop and any other dates that I went on weren't much better. I know Lisa-Marie went to her junior prom with someone and I know she went to a few shows and dances with others, but neither of us really got involved with anyone for long nor with real feeling.

The summer before I went into my last year in high school, my Uncle Silas had an accident and was laid up for almost two months. He was a bachelor who lived about fifty miles from us and he needed help, but he lived far enough away that a trip back and forth each day was out of the question.

Since I was on summer holidays, I took on the job of staying with him to help him out and do his farm work. I'd often helped him out in the past with some jobs because he was alone on the farm, but this time I had to do pretty well everything. Until he was able to get around well on his crutches, I even had to do most of the housework as well as the farm work. I got paid for what I was doing because he had some kind of insurance, but he was family and I'd like to think I'd have done the same thing even if I hadn't been paid.

I worked hard that summer and I knew that I was doing as good a job as I could. It was the first time that I'd been away from home though and I think I worked harder than I needed to just to calm the feelings of homesickness that I felt. I think Uncle Silas knew what I was going through, but he didn't say anything. In fact, he never talked much, but he managed to show his appreciation in a lot of small ways and I grew to like him and his farm. Still, I really did enjoy it when Mom and Dad started to show up on occasional weekends to spend a day with Uncle Silas and me after I'd been there a while. When I think about it now, I think they waited as long as rhey did to come visit so that I'd be over the worst of my homesickness before I saw them again.

By the end of that summer, I knew I had changed. I was a lot more confident in myself and yet I felt a lot more cautious in some ways. I think that summer turned me from a boy into a man, but it was strange, the last week I was there was the hardest. For some reason I wanted to be back home even more than I had when I'd been the most homesick. I couldn't put my finger on a reason, but that last week I grew more and more anxious to leave as each day of the week passed.

On the last morning I was at Uncle Silas' I'd woken up feeling pretty darn proud of myself because I knew I'd done a good job of looking after the place. At the same time I knew Uncle Silas was pleased from the way he'd been acting toward me. When I got downstairs that morning, he'd met me at the breakfast table with a smile on his face.

"Tommy, ya done a hell of a job and I want to say thanks." He held out his hand and shook mine. "After breakfast and the chores, I got a little surprise for ya."

Uncle Silas didn't talk much, so when he simply poured me a coffee and put a plate of bacon and eggs on the table, I really didn't know what to expect. However, I was eighteen, I was hungry, and there was breakfast on the table. So I curbed my curiosity and filled my empty belly. After breakfast, I went out to the barn, milked the cow, fed the chickens and did the other little farmyard chores for the last time. Then I went back to the house to wash up and grab my suitcase, expecting Uncle Silas to give me a ride home in his pickup truck.

Instead, he just smiled and led me across the yard to an old shed. Throwing open the doors, he waved me inside. Sitting in the dark shed was something covered by a light tarp, then he grabbed the tarp and pulled it off. There sat a dark blue, 1963 Chevy Impala hardtop. Even though I'd worked around the place for years, I hadn't even known that car was there.

There must have been quite a story behind that car, but I still don't know the exact details. I do know that when Uncle Silas was younger, he hadn't been as careful with his money as he grew later in life. I know now that he'd been dating and had bought this car to try to impress a woman and I can guess that he'd had his heart broken. He had never married after all and I found out afterward that the car had sat up on blocks for about twenty years. Other than that, neither Uncle Silas, nor Dad would tell me anything.

"Bought this when I wasn't all that much older than you, but I ain't had no use for it for years. Dunno why I kept it." He shrugged his shoulders. "Now these days, I figure a young guy like you needs a car. Had a mechanic come and haul it to town to go over it for ya, so I know it's mechanically sound. Got new tires, full of gas, new license and the insurance is paid. The transfer slip is in your name and in the glove box. Here's the keys." He handed them to me and I thought sure I could see a tear in his eye. "This is sorta a way o' showing ya my thanks fer all ya done fer me."

I was standing there trying to stammer out a thank you, but he just waved a hand, then limped away toward his fields. I was left standing there with a set of keys in my hand and they belonged to a car that I'd never seen before. I somehow knew that Uncle Silas didn't want to talk about it and what with the way he was acting, I decided that he probably would feel best if I simply left. I went back to the house, got my suitcase and hopped in my 'new' car. Then I slowly drove the fifty miles that took me home.

On the way I did a lot of thinking, but being young, most of my thoughts were about what a difference this car was going to mean to me. Not only did I have a car, but I had a little bit of money to keep it up and run it. Oh my, was that going to change my life. First off, a car meant I was mobile. I wouldn't have to borrow the truck from Dad to go out. I didn't have to stay home on Friday night if I didn't want to. I wasn't going to have to ride the bus to school every day. It meant I was free. I was mobile. One other thing that I realised was that my dating life would be improved as well.

Well, that's what I expected to happen. But what actually happened was weird.

First off, when I pulled into the yard, Mom and Dad met me with huge hugs, then they insisted that we had to go for a ride in my new car. Of course we ended up at my brother Joe's house. We'd hardly gotten stopped and out of the car when the door burst open and Lisa-Marie came running across the yard.

I'll swear she left the ground ten feet away from me and tackled me so hard that I almost fell over. Then I was being hugged and kissed multiple times as she wrapped herself around me, wriggling and squirming as if she was trying to get closer than it was possible to be. All I could do was hold her and blush bright red as all the rest of my family laughed and teased me. Then they went inside, leaving Lisa-Marie and me alone in the driveway.

Once we were alone, she seemed to calm down in one way, yet at the same time her mouth opened and...

"Oh God it's good to see you. I've missed you so much. Did you miss me? How is Uncle Silas? I wanted to come see you, but I couldn't get away. We've been so busy because we were all doing stuff and you weren't here to help. You must have worked awfully hard. Why didn't you come home at least once all summer? You look so good. I've really missed having you around. Did you miss me? I like your new car. Are you going to take me for a ride in it?" She rattled off, machine gun style, then finally she seemed to slow down. "Are you okay? Has the cat got your tongue?"