Chapter 3. The Ass King
The first official day of summer vacation, the Monday after school ended, also happened to be my birthday. We all had summer birthdays, so we would all be twelve by the time our project was finished and we disappeared. Anyway, I had designated that Monday as the official start of the “Big Dig.” We had done a lot of digging already, but this was the first day of an organized routine of all day digging.
Tom insisted that we had to have titles, taken from the movie, of course, so Win was the “Tunnel King,” even though it wasn’t actually a tunnel we were digging, Tom was “Security Chief,” and I was “Big X.” Rollo was upset that we didn’t have a title for him, but we didn’t need a forger, and we already had our scroungers. We would have to come up with something for him.
Jimmy and Larry showed up to help, and Roy came along later. Our routine was that three of us would dig, and the others would carry the buckets of dirt and dump them in the gully. We would rotate every hour, or so. We had Tom’s radio blasting the whole time, and there was a lot of singing along, with “I Get Around” playing once an hour, “World Without Love” still in the Top Ten, and Rollo’s favorite, Dean Martin singing “Everybody Loves Somebody.” There was a new one in the charts, “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena,” which was kind of fun, although there was a lot of speculation about whether Jan & Dean each had the requisite number of testicles for an adult male. How could they sing that high?
Between songs, or when something we didn’t like was playing, Rollo kept us entertained with his nearly constant farting. Rollo was a funny kid, short and round, with a good sense of humor, and he was a champion farter. I mean, he was really good. We all tried, and it was an on-going competition, with every fart rated in baseball terms: single, double, etc., and weak efforts castigated and ridiculed as strikeouts or pop-ups. But in quantity, quality, and consistency, none of us could touch Rollo.
The anal theme of the day became more complex when Win’s brother Jimmy returned from a short walk in the woods and announced that we needed a better latrine. Well, he was right, and it was a problem we hadn’t properly addressed yet. So, when we all sat down on the ledge for our lunch break, we talked it over.
Most of us had brought potato chips and soda; what else? But Rollo pulled a sandwich out of his bag, and when he unwrapped it, there was a God-awful smell, almost worse than a fart.
“What the Hell is that, Rollo?” Larry asked, holding his nose.
“Baloney salad sandwich,” he answered nonchalantly.
“Baloney salad?” several of us said simultaneously. “You mean,” Tom asked, “your Mom actually chops up baloney and mixes it with mayonnaise?”
“Of course; doesn’t everybody?”
No, nobody else did that, and we heaped scorn and abuse on him, his mother, and all things Italian. He simply shrugged, shifted his ass a little, and ripped a long, loud fart. A solid stand-up triple, we all agreed.
Anyway, while we ate, we discussed the latrine situation. The spot we were using for the time being was clearly inadequate; just a log to sit on, and a hole in the ground. We needed something that was going to work for us the whole summer, as well as after. When we were living in the pit, we were going to have to have a latrine that was near enough to be convenient, and far enough away that we couldn’t smell it. Also, we would have to be able to cover it up so that searchers wouldn’t easily find it.
Rollo announced that, after lunch, he was going to go searching for the perfect spot, and that, with the wood Karl had brought us, he could build us something that would be more than adequate. I suspected that he just wanted to get out of his shift with the shovel, but Tom announced, authoritatively, that Rollo’s ass clearly qualified him as the expert on all matters anal, so we should put this project in his hands.
Win and I agreed, when we stopped laughing, so that became Rollo’s special project. When Karl stopped by later to see how we were doing, he laughed when we told him about it, but he said he’d get us a toilet seat; that was easy.
The next day, it was just me and Win, Tom and Rollo. Rollo had found the spot for his latrine the afternoon before, so, with his new-found authority as Ass King, he took one of the shovels and went off by himself to dig. That left just the three of us; two to dig and one to carry buckets. We couldn’t expect all of our helpers to show up every day, but as long as we kept digging, I knew we could get it done. We had already made a lot of progress. Digging the pit was hard work, but simple work. We knew that the rest of the project was going to be a lot more complicated.
Our lunch-time conversation that day was, again, planning the essentials for our time in exile. We had talked a lot about food, and cooking, and the latrine; today we talked about clothing and sleeping gear. We were obviously going to need a few changes of clothing apiece, and we would have to wash our clothes, and ourselves, in the nearby stream, or we would stink ourselves out within a few days. So we would have to add soap to the list of items for our scroungers. As for sleeping, we each had a sleeping bag, but I wasn’t entirely happy with that.
I pointed out again that, ideally, we wanted everyone to think we had not gone camping, so the best thing would be if all of our sleeping bags were left at home. I didn’t know how we were going to manage without them, though.
That afternoon, Rollo began putting together the frame for his new latrine. I had borrowed one of my Dad’s saws; saws were on our list for Karl, but he hadn’t gotten any yet. We kind of took it easy on Rollo that day, other than the routine abuse related to his physique and his heritage. We wanted to see how well he could handle this project before we heaped on the ridicule.
Rollo measured and sawed and hammered all afternoon while the rest of us dug and carried and sang along with the radio. When he was finished with the frame, Rollo asked for a hand carrying it, and Win helped him. When they returned, Rollo was grinning like an idiot, and Win was shaking his head in disbelief.
“Unbelievable,” was all he would say. So, of course, we had to go and check it out.
“It’s not finished,” the Ass King protested, “I still have to attach the toilet seat when I get one.” But we had to see it, so off we went.
He had actually found a perfect spot, less than a hundred feet from the pit, and surrounded on three sides by trees. He had dug a rectangular hole to set his frame in, with a deeper circular hole in the center. The top of the frame was about a foot and a half above ground level, and there was a square hole in the center where the toilet seat would be attached. All we had to do was shovel the dirt he had dug out around the sides of the frame, and find something to cover it with.
Rollo pointed to some nearby trees. “We cut some branches from those pine trees and lay them over the top to hide it.”
“Spruce,” I muttered.
“Yeah, yeah. Pine, spruce, what’s the difference?”
A few minutes shoveling and a few quick cuts with the saw sufficed to finish the job, and we all stood back to admire it. A friendly shout announced the arrival of Jimmy and Larry, and we called them over to admire our new latrine. They loved it, and Jimmy wanted to break it in immediately, but the Ass King was adamant.
“Nobody uses it till I’ve put the seat on, and I get to use it first!”
That was how Rollo won me over as a full-fledged member of the team, although there was still no hint that he wanted to actually join us when we disappeared into the pit.