Her feet got out of control, and the momentum moved up her body, ending with her head, which smacked against the swing set at about the speed of sound. Remarkably, the soft part of her temple connected exactly with one of the swing set bolts, which entered her head as if it had been made of butter. She had required stitches, and now the side of her head was all a greeny-yellow bruise, and she refused to leave her bandage on, so the stitches were crawling across her temple like a black bug.
After bragging to great excess, and for many years, that I was immune to poison ivy, I had contracted a deadly case of poison sumac while camping the previous weekend. It was, apparently, a rare form of creeping rash, because it had begun in the bend of my elbow, had crawled all the way up my arm, my shoulder, and my neck, and was currently inflaming the left side of my face. I told all the white trash kids in town it was leprosy, which made them run inside to their fat mamas.
Rose was so deeply worried by her dog bite and Maggie’s head injury that I didn’t know what to suggest we do. My boredom and her quietness were both so acute that I started to feel spooked. Maggie was sitting on the swing, not really swinging, because her head insides were still wobbly.
Rose’s house was bordered at the back and on one side by alleys; across the side alley sat an abandoned house. It was a good-looking house, as far as I was concerned, although it had occurred to me that I coveted nearly every house in town, and spent a fair amount of time imagining living in them. This one was large, wooden, and had a variety of shapes, like a house a witch would live in. At the back was an enclosed sitting porch that had floor-to-ceiling windows with so many small panes that they had probably been cleaned once in the past century, and then by someone conscripted, as atonement for acts of public indecency. The sitting porch was the only part of the house I had explored — the rest was too frightful even for someone as intrepid and with such low standards as myself. What stopped me in the living room, in addition to the general metric ton of detritus, was a pair of men’s overalls, lying spread out in the doorway as if their occupant had simply vanished while crawling into the house. Something had eaten a hole clear through the bottom and into the crotch, and I was deeply afraid, not of the hole or the crotch but of the Something. The sitting porch, however, was about as civilized as some parts of my own house. There were some metal chairs still arranged, by accident, as if to accommodate a long conversation over lemonade. The floor was covered with broken Ball jars. Walking on them created a noise that was akin to a whole, dreadful lifetime of tooth grinding. I enjoyed it. There were some intact jars in there too, blue ones and green ones that had bubbles right in the glass, and old whiskey bottles. I considered telling my dad about them, but it was a private place, as far as such things went.
Sitting in Rose’s yard that day, I could see her cat Snowball coming and going from the house, sometimes languorous and sometimes agitated. He went in through a broken basement window and came out through a hole in the back door. He sat on the porch licking one paw and rubbing his eyes with it like a sleepy baby; looked up at the sky as if he had just remembered the single most important event in his life, then turned his attention to his butt. I lost track of him for a few moments while looking at Rose, and then heard a scuffle coming from the basement. Snowball made furious hissing and screaming noises, followed by what sounded like a football being thrown against the door of a clothes dryer. Rose and Maggie and I ran out the gate and into the alley as quickly as our plagues and punctures and sutures would allow, just as Snowball emerged from the basement carrying in his mouth the broken body of a yellowish-white rat fully half his size.
The three of us skidded to
After bragging to great excess, and for many years, that I was immune to poison ivy, I had contracted a deadly case of poison sumac while camping the previous weekend. It was, apparently, a rare form of creeping rash, because it had begun in the bend of my elbow, had crawled all the way up my arm, my shoulder, and my neck, and was currently inflaming the left side of my face. I told all the white trash kids in town it was leprosy, which made them run inside to their fat mamas.
Rose was so deeply worried by her dog bite and Maggie’s head injury that I didn’t know what to suggest we do. My boredom and her quietness were both so acute that I started to feel spooked. Maggie was sitting on the swing, not really swinging, because her head insides were still wobbly.
Rose’s house was bordered at the back and on one side by alleys; across the side alley sat an abandoned house. It was a good-looking house, as far as I was concerned, although it had occurred to me that I coveted nearly every house in town, and spent a fair amount of time imagining living in them. This one was large, wooden, and had a variety of shapes, like a house a witch would live in. At the back was an enclosed sitting porch that had floor-to-ceiling windows with so many small panes that they had probably been cleaned once in the past century, and then by someone conscripted, as atonement for acts of public indecency. The sitting porch was the only part of the house I had explored — the rest was too frightful even for someone as intrepid and with such low standards as myself. What stopped me in the living room, in addition to the general metric ton of detritus, was a pair of men’s overalls, lying spread out in the doorway as if their occupant had simply vanished while crawling into the house. Something had eaten a hole clear through the bottom and into the crotch, and I was deeply afraid, not of the hole or the crotch but of the Something. The sitting porch, however, was about as civilized as some parts of my own house. There were some metal chairs still arranged, by accident, as if to accommodate a long conversation over lemonade. The floor was covered with broken Ball jars. Walking on them created a noise that was akin to a whole, dreadful lifetime of tooth grinding. I enjoyed it. There were some intact jars in there too, blue ones and green ones that had bubbles right in the glass, and old whiskey bottles. I considered telling my dad about them, but it was a private place, as far as such things went.
Sitting in Rose’s yard that day, I could see her cat Snowball coming and going from the house, sometimes languorous and sometimes agitated. He went in through a broken basement window and came out through a hole in the back door. He sat on the porch licking one paw and rubbing his eyes with it like a sleepy baby; looked up at the sky as if he had just remembered the single most important event in his life, then turned his attention to his butt. I lost track of him for a few moments while looking at Rose, and then heard a scuffle coming from the basement. Snowball made furious hissing and screaming noises, followed by what sounded like a football being thrown against the door of a clothes dryer. Rose and Maggie and I ran out the gate and into the alley as quickly as our plagues and punctures and sutures would allow, just as Snowball emerged from the basement carrying in his mouth the broken body of a yellowish-white rat fully half his size.
The three of us skidded to
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