Anthony’s Hill
A Young Man’s Story

Written with Love By Aunt Lin

Today I sat in a park and looked at a hill and wondered if anyone would miss me if I just disappeared, then I met a woman who made me realize that even a 14-year-old boy can make the world a better place.

It was one of those days you get in mid November when the sun shines and the wind is gentle. You walk through the woods thinking you could just walk forever. I heard the leaves as they crunched under her feet before I saw her emerge from the trees. She looked a little startled when she first saw me. Most adults just give you a fake smile and say something dumb then move on, but she didn’t do that. She just came and sat down beside me and looked out at the hill with me for a while before she finally said anything. Her voice sounded kind of funny, so sad and yet not so sad.

“I always call that Anthony’s Hill,” she said softly.

“Why?” I asked her.

“Every time we would go past it, my nephew, Anthony, would tell me that he wanted to sled down it. And every time, I would say, ‘You better be sure the river is frozen solid first.’ And we would laugh.”

“Did your nephew ever do it?”

“Not while he was here,” she replied, and I did hear the sadness in her voice and somehow I knew that she meant not while he was alive.

“Did your nephew die?” I felt a little uncomfortable asking that question, but I wanted to know.

“Yes, just over 2 years ago,” and I could hear the tears in her voice even if they were not in her eyes. She must have loved him very much, I thought to myself.

“It surprised me when I came out of the woods and saw you here, you are about the same age he was when he died. It was just a few months after he turned 14.”

“I was 14 last August.”

“He and I came here hiking and this is the first time I have been able to bring myself to come here. I was thinking about how much I miss him when I saw you sitting here.”

She didn’t talk to me like I was a 14-year-old who didn’t know anything; she just talked to me like I was a real person. I wondered if she had been that way with her nephew. “Did you do stuff together much?” I asked her.

“Yes, and we had made plans to do so much more.”

“How did he die?” I wondered if I should have asked that, but I really wanted to know.

“He made a very stupid decision to break the rules and died in a car accident. He was a good kid, but he made one choice that he couldn’t undo with an ‘I’m sorry’. I didn’t ask what the choice was; I had a feeling she couldn’t talk about it right then.

“What was he like?” I felt like I wanted to know this boy who wanted to sled down the hill.

Her eyes were a little bright and shiny as she started to talk about him. “He drove me absolutely crazy - and everyone else too. He couldn’t touch anything without breaking it and he couldn’t keep his hands off of anything, so he was frequently in trouble. He was very smart, but wouldn’t apply himself in school. He was fun to be with sometimes and drove you crazy at others.”

“I was only here to spend the last couple of years with him. When he was little I would call his mom and he would talk to me for a half hour before he called her to the phone.” She smiled and I could tell that she was seeing him when he was little in her mind.

“He loved Christmas,” she continued, “and wanted everything that he saw. He was spoiled so rotten that he usually got about everything he wanted.”

“Where were you at when he was little?” I asked.

She picked up a twig and began to play in the leaves while she answered me. “A lot of places. I moved to Texas, then to Florida, spent some time in South Carolina, then back to Florida.”

“One Sunday the November before he died, it was like today, so we decided to come here hiking. He loved to try to get the best of me, so we always had to take the most difficult trail – or non-trail as was frequently the case. There was a field that was nothing but mud and he decided we were going to walk through it instead of around it. A couple of times I almost lost my hiking boots to the hungry mud! We both fell a few times, but we made it through the field. Then we both realized we weren’t sure which way would get us back to the truck. Anthony was sure he knew the way to go, but as usual, he was wrong. We ended up spending an extra hour getting out of the woods. Even he was getting tired when we made it up the last hill and could see the pickup down the way.”

“What other kinds of stuff did you do?” It was kind of spooky, but when she talked about him, I felt like she was talking about a friend of mine.

“Well, another time we ended up coming home covered with mud was when we went horseback riding.” She laughed out loud at the memory.

“How did you get covered with mud riding horses?” I could see them stomping through a muddy field here at the park, fighting to keep the boots the mud tried to suck off their feet, emerging with mud from top to bottom – but on a horse????

The woman looked off into the distance as she started to tell the story of the day they went horseback riding and came home a mess. “It was the first weekend in May when he was 12, just before his 13th birthday. Anthony had grown up mostly in the city and had never been horseback riding so we decided to go the first weekend the stables were open here at Kickapoo. Saturday dawned chilly and rainy. He didn’t care if we got rained on so we decided to come on over. I didn’t realize that he had never even been close to a horse until we arrived at the stables and they brought his horse over by us. Her name was Princess and she was a pretty black horse. She stuck her nose out to him and he stepped back. ‘Will he bite,’ he wanted to know. I assured him that she would not bite and he could indeed pet her. He was pretty tentative about rubbing her nose, but then he got over his fear as they helped him up on Princess’ back. I was the only one in the group who had ever been horse back riding before so they gave me the biggest horse of the bunch! Now you can see I am not all that tall, so my legs were almost straight out from the horse’s side as we rode, which Anthony found quite funny and delighted in making fun of me over. The path was already under water and the horses managed to splash water and mud up as we rode through the rain. It really was so much fun. Then suddenly Anthony spotted a doe lying beside the trail. She was so used to the horses that she didn’t even bother to move as we rode by. He was so excited and yelling at me to look. By the time we got back to the stables there was only one dry spot on either one of us and we were sitting on it!” She laughed as she told me the story and I could just see her sitting high on the big old horse while her nephew poked fun at her.

“I wish I could have known him,” I said. It sounded strange because I was starting to feel as if I was getting to know him just sitting here talking to his aunt.

“I wish you could have to. He touched more lives in the few years he was here than many adults do in their entire life. Little kids loved him because he truly loved them. He was not afraid to say ‘I love you’. When his mother was young, she was my special sister and I love her very much. Anthony grew up knowing he was loved because we told him frequently. Even when I was in Texas and Florida before we hung up the phone I would say ‘I love you’ and he always said, ‘I love you too, Aunt Lin.’ Do you know how much those 3 little words can mean to a person?”

“No one has ever asked me before. I know I feel warmer and safer when my mom comes in and tells me good night and says I love you before I go to sleep, but I never thought about how she might feel about it.” I usually just said something dumb and rolled over so Mom wouldn’t know I liked it.

“Sometimes when I am sitting alone remembering Anthony, I remember how he would kiss me goodbye and tell me he loved me when he got out of the truck after we had been someplace. Not long before he died we went to a family reunion together. It was poring down rain that day too! We were on our way to Georgetown to the park and the windshield wiper kept coming loose so I would have to stop under an overpass to fix it. Anthony wanted me to let him lean out the window and grab the wiper blade to fix it instead of stopping. Needless to say, I refused to allow him to do any such thing! I told him he’d probably fall out the windows and then I wouldn’t just have a windshield wiper flapping in the rain, I’d have a nephew too.”

Suddenly I realized that it was getting late and my mom would be coming to pick me up soon. I told the lady that I had to go. For some reason, I asked her if I could see her again sometime and hear more of her tales about Anthony. She smiled and said that she would like that very much. “Perhaps you would like to come over and meet some of the rest of the family too,” she said. I admit I was curious about a boy my age that seemed to have affected someone so much. She pulled a pen and a piece of wadded up paper out of her backpack, wrote down her phone number on it, and said to call and we would set a time.

I walked slowly back up the trail to where I was suppose to meet my mom. I thought about how differently I felt coming back than I had when I went down. I was wrong, a 14-year-old boy can make a difference and he can make the world a better place, today I had meet one that did. Mom was just pulling into the parking lot when I arrived. She pulled up beside me and I jumped into the front seat. She looked very surprised when I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek and said, “I love you, Mom.” but I could tell she was very pleased by the smile she gave me.

“What brought that on?” she asked.

“A new friend I meet today who I will never get the to see.” Then I started to tell her about the woman I talked to on the hillside and the boy who was so special.

I PLAN TO FILL THE STORY IN WITH THE STORIES FROM OTHERS AND THIS IS THE TENATIVE CONCLUSION TO THE STORY:

It was a very cold day in February; I struggled with the sled as I trudged up the hill. There had been a big snow the night before. They said the river was frozen enough to skate on so I figured that I could sled down the hill now. My mom didn’t really understand why I had to take this ride. She was sure that I was going to break my neck, but she helped me pile my sled in the back of the truck and drove me as close as she could get to the foot of the hill. She asked me if I was sure I wanted to do this for about the tenth time. I was sure I wanted to, I wasn’t sure I could. As I looked back at the tracks my sled and I were making fresh white snow, I thought, “Well, this one is for you, Anthony.” Finally I reach the top of the hill and looked down the hill in front of. I looked up, got ready, and said, “OK, Anthony, let’s go.”

The End