Time Bandit by Andy Hillstrand Page B

though.”
    We moved with her like gypsies at first to Binghamton, New York, back to Homer, and then to Anchorage, and when she fell in love with Bob Phillips, who soon became our stepfather, we moved to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in the winters. Andy did not take well to the marriage news. We were riding in the station wagon when Bob and Mom told us about their plans. Andy jumped out the back window and ran up into the woods on the side of the road. It took a while for us to find him. To tell the truth, none of us took well to the news, and we reacted differently. My brother Dave started stuttering. With Andy, I developed an unspoken communication, like with an identical twin brother. Neal made himself scarcer. Michael, my next youngest brother, went into his own private world. We had only ourselves to depend on. We stuck together as brothers like never before.
    In Idaho, Mom was religious and Bob was gentle. In Alaska, Dad was not religious; he was profane and he was rough. At home in Idaho, Mom would serve us dinner at the table; during summers in Alaska with Dad, we cooked steaks in the bow of the boat with a blowtorch. Bob tried to understand what we were going through. We were split between a mother and father who lived in two separate places and indeed, inhabited two different worlds. We had two homes and two sets of new parents, and we were uncertain which one loved us. In his way, Bob taught us to be men with solid, dependable natures that our father had never known even for himself. Bob was awesome. He had three of his own sons from a previous marriage, which made us a gang of eight boys in one house. Bob built a bike rack for ten bikes and nine motorcycles. In the house, we lived in a dormitory of bunk beds and dressers. Neighbors looked fretfully out their windows, terrified of what we planned next. We strung rope pulleys between trees. I swung from branch to branch in the tall trees like Tarzan. When we were not outside playing, we turned big appliance boxes into imaginary boats. We used our imaginations to the fullest. We were never bored. One time, when Mom came into the laundry room, we scattered but watched as she opened the dryer door. She jumped back and nearly had a heart attack. She let out a scream. And we were howling with laughter. Andy was going around and around in the dryer trying to break the family record of fifty-two spins without throwing up when he came out.
    Outside in the winters, we picked the steepest hills to sled down and went skiing nearly every weekend.
    One time, I told Bob, “Dad, I found a new trail. Follow me.”
    He asked, “Am I going to get killed?”
    I told him, “No, there’s just a little jump.”
    He followed me, and at the jump he went up in the air past the ski lift coming up the hill and almost landed in the lift chair. He told me he thought I was crazy.
    Mom kept us busy. At her insistence, we took turns cleaning up the bathrooms and our bedrooms. We had a big house, with four bathrooms, but eight teenage boys would have made a crowd in a barracks. With Mom’s approval, we raced soapbox cars that we made with our own hands. With Bob’s encouragement, we skied with skill and daring. One winter we built an ice skating rink. We water skied in the late spring and early fall, raced motorcycles on ten acres of woodland, and on rainy days, played foosball in the basement. Sometimes, we framed houses with Bob to keep us busy with hammers and nails. Bob let us have guns and taught us to shoot pheasants with bows and arrows, and for practice he threw Frisbees in the air as targets. After we became somewhat proficient with the bows, he took us hunting. I would not allow my brothers to kill the birds, even if they could hit them with their arrows. I brought along a cage and a net, like I was fishing for pheasants. To be honest, I never liked killing. Once I shot a seagull that died a terrible death. I felt real bad. It was sick of me to do that.
    I do not hunt anymore. I figure