" My Father's Magazines "

Two anxiously nervous boys, dressed in their blue Cub Scout's shirts and yellow bandannas, waited at the doorway to my parents bedroom as I fumbled through the closet for a box. The room was unusually warm for early October that afternoon. Tyler, Tommy, and I had decided to stop at my house on the way as we walked home from our weekly Cub Scout's meeting.
"Hurry up before your parent's get here," Tommy said as he looked toward the front door.
"Don't worry about it," I calmly stated, rooting through coats and shoes.
"They're in Scottsbluff. They won't be back 'til about 5:00 or so." They were there shopping. It was about a half hour to forty five minute drive from our house in Torrington, Wyoming.
Tyler, Tommy, and I were all about the same age, seven, and we were all three in the Second grade. Tommy had very dark hair with olive skin and lived next door to me. He was a little taller than me but about the same weight; which meant he was also small for his age and very thin. Tyler lived one house over and behind mine. He was slightly taller and heavier than Tommy and I. His skin and hair were very light.
"Come on, Timmy! My dad will kill me if they find out!" Tommy was always very afraid of getting caught at anything because his father was very strict. He crept over to the large livingroom window to see if anyone might be about to enter the house and break up our little party. By the time he re-entered my parent's bedroom, my father's cardboard box was on their bed.
"It's about time," Tyler said, as he leaned over the bed to look at its contents. He always seemed like he was older than Tommy and I, or at least he liked to think so, anyway. He usually seemed annoyed with us; especially Tommy.
I reached into the cardboard box and picked up a hand full of magazines, giggling with nervous excitement. My excitement grew as I thought I heard one of the covers tear. The adrenaline made me almost pull the covers off while I hurried to the good parts. The fanned pages spewed musty, closet smells, telling me to put them back. The smell of ink made my heart beat faster and faster. I gazed briefly at each picture, trying to absorb every detail. Tyler jumped next to me on the bed and bent over to look. Tommy stayed standing on the floor, looking over Tyler's shoulder.
"Wow!"
"Oh, Man!"
"Look at her."
Tyler grew impatient and got his own supply from the box.
"We better put them back now!" Tommy exclaimed in a high squeaky voice.
"Shut up, Cry Baby!" Tyler yelled, as he pulled the centerfold's pages down, exposing her nudity for all to see.
I don't think any of us really knew what we were looking at exactly or what it really meant (if anything). Back in the mid Sixties, the magazines did not show nearly as much as they do now. At our age, we were mostly just trying to prove that we were not a chicken. This event probably only occurred due to someone's bragging anyway. These magazines of my father's had been in the same place for a long time, but this was the first time I had ever looked through them.
Just when we had most of the magazines out, we heard car doors being opened. The sound of my parents voices approached us from the drive way.
"Oh, Shit!" I barked, madly throwing the magazines back into the box. Tommy and Tyler ran out the back door into our back yard without helping me put them back. They were probably at home thinking they had escaped safely before I had even finished picking up the magazines. With all the magazines thrown helter skelter in the box, I shoved it back into the closet. The bed was a mess, the closet door was open, and the magazines were hanging out of the box, with the pages openly displaying my carelessness. Without thinking of the consequences, I ran for the back door. The house was a blur as I bolted through the door into the yard. My body buzzed with nervous excitement. I stopped at the alley and wondered where I was going to go or if my folks had seen me. Even if they hadn't, there was enough circumstantial evidence left in that room to convict me. All of my senses were completely aware of everything around me. Nearly an eternity latter, I went back into the house through the front door, pretending to have just gotten home from Cub Scouts. No one said a word to me, not even during supper.
Latter on that evening, I was sitting in the livingroom with my Mother and Father, pretending to be reading my school work. My younger sister and brother were in bed, asleep. The comfort of thinking I had made it began to sink into me. I wondered if Tommy and Tyler were sweating it out, jumping every time the phone rang.
"Were you looking at your father's girlie magazines?" My mom said to me with a firm, rhetorical voice.
"Yes," I squeaked, quietly, bracing for impending doom.
"Well," my father said from behind the newspaper he was reading, "He's getting about that age."
Although I did not receive any disciplinary action, I never tried showing off my father's magazines again. In fact, I don't remember ever seeing that box again. I wonder if maybe Dad was the one who got into trouble.