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It was two summers before I would put my thin-
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If you parted the heavy coats between the raggedy
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penny bus token in the slot and ride the Fifth Street
|
35 mouton that once belonged to my father’s mother,
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|
trolley all the way to the end of the line to junior high.
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who, my father said, was his Heart when she died, and
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Line
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Life was measured in summers then, and the
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the putrid-colored jacket my father wore when he got
|
5
|
expression “I am in this world, but not of it” appealed
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|
shipped out to the dot in the Pacific Ocean where, he
|
|
to me. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it had just the
|
|
said, the women wore one piece of cloth and looked
|
|
right ring for a lofty statement I should adopt. That
|
40 as fine as wine in the summertime, you would find
|
|
Midwest summer broke records for straight over-one-
|
|
yourself right in the middle of our cave-dark closet.
|
|
hundred-degree days in July, and Mr. Calhoun still
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|
Then, if you closed your eyes, held your hands up
|
10
|
came around with that-old-thing of an ice truck. Our
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|
over your head, placed one foot in front of the other,
|
|
mother still bought a help-him-out block of ice to
|
|
walked until the tips of your fingers touched the
|
|
leave in the backyard for us to lick or sit on. It was
|
45 smooth cool of slanted plaster all the way down to
|
|
the summer that the Bible’s plague of locusts came.
|
|
where you had to slue your feet and walk squat-
|
|
Evening sighed its own relief in a locust hum that
|
|
legged, fell to your knees and felt around on the floor
|
15
|
swelled from the cattails next to the cemetery, from
|
|
—then you would hit the strong-smelling cigar box.
|
|
the bridal wreath shrubs and the pickle grass that my
|
|
My box of private things.
|
|
younger cousin, Bea, combed and braided on our side
|
50
|
From time to time my cousins, Bea and Eddy, stayed
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|
of the alley.
|
|
with us, and on the Fourth of July the year before,
|
|
I kept a cherry bomb and a locked diary in the
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|
Eddy had lit a cherry bomb in a Libby’s corn can and
|
20
|
closet under the back steps where Bea, restrained by
|
|
tried to lob it over the house into the alley. Before it
|
|
my suggestion that the Hairy Man hid there, wouldn’t
|
|
reached the top of the porch it went off, and a piece
|
|
try to find them. It was an established, Daddy-said-so
|
55 of tin shot God-is-whipping-you straight for Eddy’s
|
|
fact that at night the Hairy Man went anywhere he
|
|
eye. By the time school started that year, Eddy had a
|
|
wanted to go but in the daytime he stayed inside the
|
|
keloid* like a piece of twine down the side of his face
|
25
|
yellow house on Sherman Avenue near our school.
|
|
and a black patch he had to wear until he got his glass
|
|
During the school year if we were so late that the
|
|
eye that stared in a fixed angle at the sky. Nick,
|
|
patrol boys had gone inside, we would see him in his
|
60 Eddy’s friend, began calling Eddy “Black-Eyed Pea.”
|
|
fenced-in yard, wooly-headed and bearded, hollering
|
|
After Eddy’s accident, he gave me a cherry bomb.
|
|
things we dared not repeat until a nurse kind of
|
|
His last. I kept it in my cigar box as a sort of memento
|
30
|
woman in a bandanna came out and took him back
|
|
of good times. Even if I had wanted to explode it, my
|
|
inside the house with the windows painted light blue,
|
|
mother had threatened to do worse to us if we so
|
|
which my mother said was a peaceful color for
|
65 much as looked at fireworks again. Except for
|
|
somebody shell-shocked.
|
|
Christmas presents, it was the first thing anybody
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|
|
|
ever gave me.
|