Dad read books and sang songs to me when it was bedtime. He told me it was the favorite part of his day, to sit in the wood rocking chair across from my bed and together get “lost in a good story”, and then “raise our voices in song”.

We finally finished reading the Tom Sawyer book. I was sad when it was done, because I liked hearing about all the things that Tom did. I did my best to keep pretending I was Tom sometimes down in the basement or out in the backyard. I knew that Tom was special because his life was an adventure that was in a book.

“So Coop”, dad asked as he sat in the rocking chair, “What should we read next?”

So much thinking was going on inside my head that I was shy to try to say any of it in words. I wanted something that I couldn’t say the words for, so I said nothing and did not even shake my head for yes or no. Dad looked at me and nodded like he knew what I was thinking and then he got a big smile and his eyes got bigger.

“I almost forgot about the books you got for your birthday”, he said, like that was something really special.

I remembered the books. They had the interesting pictures with all the colors on the front part.

Dad reached over to the dresser next to the rocking chair and opened the door to the top part where there were a bunch of books next to each other the same way the books on his shelves were in his office in the basement. He pulled books out with one hand and put each on top of the other on his other hand. He brought them over to my bed and laid them out on my blanket. Then he picked up the rocking chair and put it next to my bed. He sat back down on it so we could both look at the books at the same time.

I looked at all the books with their words and pictures on the front and counted six of them. The words all started with the “Tom” word, which I knew from the Tom Sawyer book. When mom used to read to me she would point out each word when she said it, so I knew some of the other small words, like “and”, “his”, “in” and “on”.

“Let’s see what you have”, Dad said, pointing at each book as he read the name. “Tom Swift and his Jetmarine.”

Dad pushed his lips together because he was thinking as he looked hard at the picture. It looked like two people inside some sort of tube thing, one of them holding a wheel like you hold to drive a car. They were looking out a window at something with a head and big eyes and a bunch of tails but no body.

“Looks like two guys in some sort of submarine being attacked by a giant octopus”, he said. I had heard those words, “submarine” and “octopus”, before but didn’t really know what they were. I figured the tube thing with the window and the people inside must be the “submarine” and that weird thing with the eyes and all the tails was the “octopus”.

He touched the next book. “Tom Swift and his giant robot”, he said.

I figured right away that the thing in the picture that looked kind of like a person but was gray and shiny with a can shaped head and buttons on its stomach must be the “robot”. The one person next to the robot was scared, but the other one, maybe that was Tom, was not. I remembered seeing older boys talking about “robots” and pretending that they were robots by walking and talking in a strange way.

“Looks like Tom is controlling the robot”, dad said, and he seemed happy about that.

He touched the next book and said, “Tom Swift and his rocket ship.”

I really liked the picture of the long tube with wings and a window with Tom and someone else inside looking out as they went up in the air through the clouds. I had just seen a rocket shooting up in the sky on the television, so I knew that the fire coming out the bottom of the tube was making it go up.

“That’s quite an impressive rocket ship”, dad said, and when I looked at him he looked more like a kid than a grownup, and I could tell in his eyes that he was pretending things.

His finger touched the next book. “Tom Swift and his diving Seacopter”, he said.

It was another different sort of round thing with windows with Tom and someone else inside, one holding a wheel for driving and the other holding some sort of poles. Outside it looked like there were strange fish so I guessed they were going under water. I guessed that the bubbles coming out of the top were making it go down in the water, like the fire coming out of the bottom of the rocket ship made it go up.

“Wow a sea copter”, dad said. “I wonder if it can go up in the air like a helicopter as well as underwater like a submarine.” I looked at him when he said that, and though he seemed to like it, he looked more like a grownup than a kid.

“Tom Swift on the phantom satellite”, he said, touching the next book.

The picture looked like people in silver boots and gloves and bubbles on their heads were running on some strange dark place with a big circle thing above them with lots of holes in it. I had heard some grownups talking about a “satellite” that the Soviet Union, the new bad guys instead of the Germans, had put way up in the sky going around the “Earth”, whatever that was. I wondered if that big circle thing was that satellite and they were scared. Suddenly I felt kind of scared. Dad didn’t say any more about that one and his finger moved to the last book on my blanket.

“Tom Swift and His Outpost in Space”, he said.

There were a bunch of what looked like rocket ships around a small thing that looked like a ball with maybe windows. There were maybe robots with bubbles on top and heads like people inside the bubbles. Some were standing on a rocket ship and others were flying above it. There was a big orange and yellow ball like thing in the back that looked like it was maybe on fire. I stared at the picture trying to make sense of it. Dad saw that I couldn’t figure it out.

“Looks like people in space in spacesuits”, he said, “Outside their spaceships by some sort of space station, orbiting another planet, maybe Mars.”

There was that “space” word that I kept hearing but I couldn’t figure out what it meant. There was space in the closet or the refrigerator, but also way up in the sky above the clouds. And like ships sailing in the sea, spaceships would sail in space and people would wear space “suits” instead of regular clothes. And now people were wearing spacesuits and this space “station” thing.

I had gotten a “space helmet” for my birthday, which I put on my head sometimes when I was playing and wanted to pretend I was somebody special. Even older boys in the park talked about “space” and they were pretending to be a “spaceman”. I knew the word “helmet” because dad said that soldiers wore them in the war to keep their heads from getting hurt. He had shown me pictures from his big red war books of soldiers with those round things on their heads. But they did not have the part in front that you looked through like the space helmet.

“Which one should we read first?” dad asked.

All the pictures on the front of the books were making me think about so many different things, some of them scary, so I felt shy and didn’t know what to say, so I shook my head. I wondered if we would also have to run away from the Soviet Union satellite, but I didn’t say anything because I thought dad might not like it if I said I was scared. He might tell me I had to be brave because he had been brave in the war.

“Okay”, dad said, nodding his head, “What about the rocket ship one?”

I nodded, my head moving up and down really quickly. The picture on the front looked more fun than the “phantom satellite” one.

Dad carefully put the other five books back in my dresser. He was always careful when he did things with books. He moved the rocking chair back across from my bed and sat down on it. I was hoping I would see that look like he was a kid again, but I didn’t see it.

He held the book in one hand and put the fingers of his other hand on the front part and slowly moved them down, finally grabbing the bottom of the front part with his thumb and opening it up. I knew he was looking at the picture of Tom just inside the front part, because I had looked at it before. I saw his eyes move back and forth to look at every different thing in the picture. I remembered that Tom was in a strange looking room looking out the window. There was a toy rocket and a toy boat. There were other toys in the room or maybe they were tools. And on the walls were circle things that looked like the ones in the car around the steering wheel.

“This must be Tom’s laboratory”, dad said, turning the book to show me the picture, “Where he does experiments and builds things.” I had heard those words “laboratory” and “experiment” before because Molly’s dad said them, but I didn’t know that was a place, and a place where you built things.

Dad turned the book back toward him and turned pages. He found the next picture, and his eyes moved again looking at it. I remembered that one too, and I remembered that I could not figure it out. Tom was wearing strange clothes and had one of those bubble things over his head. Maybe the bubble thing was a space helmet but it was different than mine. And Maybe Tom was wearing a spacesuit. He was standing on a circle thing with lots of smaller circles in it, or maybe it was a window.

“Tom’s hanging on”, dad said, “So he doesn’t fall into space.”

So that circle thing might be an opening that Tom could fall through into space. But what were those round things in space? There were so many things that I didn’t know yet!

Dad turned more pages and then stopped and looked at me for a moment and said, “Chapter one. A vanished pilot.” Then he looked back at the book and started reading it…

“Somebody’s flying into our restricted area!” Tom Swift cried as an alarm bell broke the midnight stillness of his rocket laboratory on Fearing island. The blond, eighteen-year-old scientist, tall and rangy, laid two wrenches beside the freshly machined, titanium metal column, the heart of the rocket, on which he had been working.”

There were words that I didn’t know but I wanted to. But I did understand that Tom had a place, a laboratory, a rocket laboratory on an island. I knew about islands from Tom Sawyer and Treasure Island. They were places with the sea all around them or a river all around them. I had drawn islands with chalk on the basement floor or made one out of dirt in the backyard.

So Tom was building a rocket. He was a “scientist”, a word that I had heard before but didn’t know what it was. I knew I was three years old and he was a different years old, and seeing him in the pictures, that was a lot older than I was. That was why he was able to know so much. I knew what “tall” was, mom and dad were tall and I was shorter but would be tall too when I grew up. “Blond” was the color of some people’s hair, Molly’s hair, but not mom’s, dad’s, David’s or mine.

Dad kept reading and I hoped I knew enough to follow the story, and was excited thinking where it might take me. If some parts didn’t make sense I was okay with that as long as there was enough so I could play Tom Swift down in the basement or out in the backyard.

I knew about airplanes from watching and playing Sky King with Molly. So some sort of airplane that was not supposed to was coming to the island where Tom’s laboratory was. So Tom and his friend Ben used their laboratory machines to capture it. But when it landed there was no one flying it. The pilot flying the plane had “bailed out”, whatever that meant, and might get to the island in the water. So “speed boats” from the laboratory went out in the water and “copters” went up in the sky looking for the pilot. Tom and some of his other helpers looked on the beach.

Tom was building a rocket ship to use in a race. Those two words together made sense because a regular ship had people on it and went on the water. A “rocket ship” had people on it but went up in the sky or maybe space. Airplanes went up in the sky too, but they looked different. They had big wings and went sideways instead of up.

So Bud flying in the copter saw the pilot who had been in the plane. Tom swam in the water and got the pilot who was wounded and had to go to the doctor. Then Tom called his dad to tell him what happened. Tom thought it was a “sabotage attempt”. I had heard that “sabotage” word on Sky King but did not really know what it meant. When dad read the word he stopped and looked at me.

“You know what ‘sabotage’ is?” dad asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s when you secretly try to wreck something your enemies are building.”

I nodded.

“Coop”, he said “You can always ask me when you don’t know a word. I’m happy to tell you!”

I nodded again, faster this time.

So Tom had “enemies”. I knew what those were. Like pirates, or Germans, or Soviet Unions. Bud said that Tom was too important to be “bumped off”. Dad didn’t stop to tell me what that meant and I didn’t ask.

Tom and Bud were driving in their jeep and saw another man who had sneaked on the island.

“That’s the end of the chapter”, dad said, looking at me. “Shall we read some more?”

I nodded again, almost without even thinking first.

The story continued. Tom and Bud finally figured out that the man who flew the plane to their island was a bad guy, an enemy. He was trying to steal Tom’s “invention”.

“Do you know what an invention is?” Dad asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s when you figure out how to make something no one has ever figured out how to make before.”

I liked that. I wanted to make an invention. I would tell Molly about it and we would make inventions together. And dad read that Tom had a giant airplane that was a “flying laboratory” that helped him make inventions. I would tell Molly about that too. We could pretend that her bedroom was a giant flying laboratory for making inventions.

Mom was at the door, peeking into my bedroom. “David finally fell asleep”, she said, looking at dad, “I’m exhausted and going to bed.”

Then she turned and looked at me and had a big smile. “You like the new Tom Swift book?”

I nodded, and before even thinking said, “Tom makes inventions”.

“He does, does he?” she said, “I bet you’ll be making inventions too someday”.

I nodded and smiled too.

She looked at me but was not smiling anymore. “You know Coop, if you ever have an idea for an invention, you tell me or your dad and we’ll write it down for you so you won’t forget your idea later.”

Dad laughed just a little bit. Mom turned her head to look at him. “Eric, I’m convinced that bright young children are born with great ideas in their heads that get mostly lost because no one takes them seriously.”

“Got it Liz”, dad said, though he didn’t look like he wanted to get it, like he thought she wasn’t right.

Mom looked at him harder. She could always tell what dad was really thinking, even when it was different than what he said he was thinking.

“So Eric”, she asked, “How does Tom Swift compare with Tom Sawyer, from a literature point of view?”

“Well”, his face got friendly again. He looked at the cover of the Tom Swift book in his lap. “Victor Appleton the second is certainly no Mark Twain, but the story is engaging enough, for pulp fiction.” Then he looked up at her, “But my buddy Walter says the science is pretty good”.

“Hunh”, mom said nodding, her lips pushed together. “You read a lot tonight. Will you be coming to bed soon? I have something I want to talk to you about.”

“Sure Liz. Let Coop and I sing a song first.”

She nodded. Then she looked at me and made a pretend angry face. “It’s not fair. I wish I could carry a tune like your dad, but I always go off key.”

Her hand reached down and found my big toe under the covers and she wiggled it like dad did. “Good night sweetie. I love you!” She left the room and dad watched her. I could see he was doing lots of thinking.

Then dad put his hands on the back of his head and looked up. “I don’t really know any songs about rocket ships.” He continued to look up, thinking. I could see the way he opened his eyes a little bigger that meant that he finally thought of a song.

“How about this one?” He sang…

Off we go into the wild blue yonder
Climbing high into the sun
Here they come zooming to meet our thunder
At’em boys, giv’er the gun
Down we dive spouting our flames from under
Off with one hell-uv-a roar
We live in fame or go down in flame
Nothing’ll stop the Army Air Corps

It sounded like an army song from the war, but it was about flying airplanes. It was like ships shooting cannons at enemy ships only it was airplanes instead way up in the sky. It was what boys pretended to do so they could be brave when they were grown up men and fight the enemy. He continued to sing…

Minds of men fashioned a crate of thunder
Sent it high into the blue
Hands of men blasted the world asunder
How they live God only knew
Souls of men dreaming of skies to conquer
Gave us wings ever to soar
With scouts before and bombers galore
Nothing can stop the Army Air Corps

Brave soldiers never stopped, I figured, until they “conquered” or were killed or at least wounded, though I really didn’t know what “conquered” meant.

Off we go into the wild sky yonder
Keep the wings level and true
If you live to be a gray haired wonder
Keep your nose out of the blue
Flying men guarding our nation’s borders
We’ll be there followed by more
In echelon we carry on
Nothing’ll stop the Army Air Corps

And then he sang in a different voice like he was singing through his nose…

Except the ack-ack

He laughed, looked down like he was remembering something, and shook his head. He looked at me.

“Ack-acks are anti-aircraft guns. They were big guns they used during the war to shoot down airplanes.”

I remembered the pictures in the big red war books of airplanes in the sky dropping bombs. I remembered him telling me that story about what he did in the war. Looking for German “eighty-eights” so his mortars could blow them up. The Germans used eighty-eights to blow up American tanks, but also to shoot down American airplanes. I wondered if the Soviet Unions had eighty-eights too, but I didn’t ask him.

When he finished the song, he wiggled my toe too. He said goodnight but instead of smiling he looked like he was thinking hard.

Now alone in my room, in my bed under the covers, I closed my eyes but I was thinking hard too. About Tom Swift the scientist with his laboratory where he built inventions no one had ever built before. About pretending I was Tom Swift with my space helmet. What I would tell Molly about Tom, and where she and I could pretend we had our own laboratory.

Click here to read the next chapter

Mom had shown me that you could “divide” things into four “quarters” by drawing an “imaginary” line across the middle and another one up and down the middle. Where those two lines crossed was the “center”. She said it worked for things that were square or round. She liked doing things like that, thinking with lines and numbers, and writing them on a piece of paper.

So it worked for square things like the basement. When you walked down the stairs to the bottom and turned left, that was my quarter. It was perfect for me because I was left handed and liked to go that way anyway. It had my toys and the shelves mom and dad made out of bricks and boards to put the toys in when I wasn’t playing with them. They never did anything in that part of the basement. I could always play there whenever I wanted to. They called it “Cloob’s area”, though now they were calling it “Coop’s area” because of my new nickname.

At the bottom of the stairs, if you turned right and walked around the big “furnace” thing, that quarter was called the “laundry room”. It had a big white washing machine and big gray sinks, plus a “clothesline” for hanging wet clothes that came out of the washing machine. I liked playing in that quarter of the basement too, because it had all these big metal things with knobs and buttons, though I knew I wasn’t supposed to press them. And the big metal things also had little blue flames hiding inside if you looked really close, and they would make different noises when they started working.

The washing machine made a lot of different noises if you waited long enough. After mom or dad turned the “dial”, it would make a whooshing water noise. Then it would stop and be quiet for a minute before you heard a clunk and then a noise like a car made when it was moving plus a water sloshing noise. Then if you waited longer, the noise would stop again for a minute, followed by another clunk. Then came the best part. It would go crazy with a louder car noise and even shake back and forth like it was going to explode, but it didn’t.

Now instead of turning left or right at the bottom of the stairs, if you kept walking straight past the center of the basement and THEN turned right, that was dad’s quarter. It had a rug on the floor and his desk, special wood chair and shelves like in my quarter. Except his shelves had books instead of toys. He said his books were like my toys. They were what he played with and learned from. His quarter also had a small bed and a “bamboo screen” that hung from the ceiling by the side of the bed to make it darker if he wanted to sleep down there in the daytime. They called his quarter “the office”.

I played there too sometimes when dad wasn’t home. I sat in his chair and made it spin around by pushing my foot against the desk. I counted how many circles I could go before I stopped spinning. I could do three sometimes but never four. I also liked going in the place under his desk because it was like a tiny secret cave that I was small enough to fit into. And I liked the bamboo screen, because it made dad’s quarter seem separate from the rest of the basement, like the furnace made the laundry room separate.

What was left was the fourth quarter, which wasn’t really anything special. It didn’t have anything that gave it a name to talk about it like the other three. It just had a big white wood table with black metal legs, that mom and dad did “projects” on sometimes. Sometimes I would play there too, when I needed more space for what I was doing. Sometimes I put a blanket over the table and turned it into a house or a cave that I could hide and play in. One time dad even turned it over so I could sit on it upside down and play Tom Sawyer on a raft on the river.

But today that fourth quarter of the basement got something new to make it special!

Dad came home from working and said he had a surprise in the trunk of the car. Mom and I came outside with him to see. She was carrying David who didn’t walk or go anywhere by himself. The sky was gray and the air was cool and windy for the first time I could remember for a long time. But it felt tingly and good after all the warm air that wrapped around you and made your skin wet. Mom and I stood on either side of dad as he opened the trunk, David in her arms turning his head to look too.

It was a television. I gasped. I knew it was a television because Molly’s house had one and some other houses we went to had one too.

“Oh my god Eric”, mom said, sounding mad, “We can’t afford a television! What are you thinking? We can’t even pay all my hospital bills from the delivery!”

Dad was quiet and looked up at the sky but his face didn’t look happy. “Liz, I know that!” he said, “The gal that manages the frat house I do work for said they were replacing this with a bigger model and I worked out a trade with her. I’m going to give her writing lessons. She’s a pretty good writer already but she wants to get better!”

“Do you have time to do that, with work on your dissertation and all your odd jobs?” mom asked.

“Sure”, he said, the word just came out of his mouth right after she asked the question without him thinking too much about it first.

Mom looked like she was thinking of more things to say, but then she looked at me and her eyes opened wide as if they were saying that maybe it was okay after all. I nodded.

“Where should we put it?” she asked, not looking or sounding angry anymore.

“Well”, dad did that thing where he pushed his lips together when he was thinking hard. “Maybe in the living room, or in the basement.”

“Not the living room”, she said with a quick laugh and blowing air out of her nose, “There’s no furniture in there to put it on, and I’m not having brick and board shelves in our living room. If we can’t afford any proper furniture I’d rather it stay empty!”

“The TV in Molly’s house is in the basement”, I said, trying to help now that I was feeling a little less shy to talk to grownups.

Mom and dad looked at me and then dad looked at her.

“Then the basement it is”, he said, “We can put it on the white table for now.”

“Just for right now!”, mom said, “I need every bit of that table top sometimes for my various projects, especially folding clothes.”

“I know that Liz, I use it too!” he said, “I’ll get boards and bricks at Fingerlee’s and we’ll put it back beyond Coop’s area against the west wall. You can watch while you’re ironing or doing other chores in the basement.”

“That sounds good”, she said, “There is an outlet back there on that west wall. I don’t want a cord anywhere that Coop could trip on or David might try to touch or chew on.”

He nodded. “I’ll put the bricks for the shelves right in front of the outlet so it won’t be an attractive nuisance for the kids.”

The two of them really liked working together on stuff like this, their “projects”.

Dad lifted the TV out of the trunk, and I followed him, with mom holding David behind me. He carried it down into the basement and set it on the floor. Then he grabbed either side of the white table and moved it over to the wall.

Mom called out, “Eric, let me help you with that!”

“No I’ve got it Liz”, he said, grunting as he moved it against the wall. Then he put the TV on it and took the end of the cord with two shiny little metal things coming out of it and showed it to me.

“This uses electricity”, he said, “It’s very dangerous. Never touch this plug or the outlet I’m going to plug it into. Get your mom or me to help you. Okay?”

I felt a little scared so I didn’t say anything, but I nodded up and down really fast so they knew that I got it.

The thing looked very small sitting there on the big table, much smaller than the TV in Molly’s basement, which was in a wood box with legs. I watched that airplane story, “Sky King”, down in their basement, that Molly really liked and watched with her dad too. We would sit on the shiny black “sofa” that squeaked when you sat on it. Her dad would push the buttons to make the pictures and sounds. She and I had also watched funny talking animals but her dad didn’t watch those with us. Her mom didn’t like the TV and said that Molly shouldn’t watch it too much. I liked it and Molly did too. It seemed very different than everything else and very interesting. I was so excited there was one in our basement now too.

Dad leaned over in front of it to look close at the buttons on the front part.

“Liz. Coop,” dad said, “This works like the radio. You turn it on with this small knob and adjust the volume to make it louder or softer. Then you tune it to the station you want to watch with this bigger knob. You may have to move these antennas on top around until you get a better picture.” He pulled out two shiny silver sticks on the top of the TV. “At the frat house we got four channels… two, four, seven and nine.”

I heard the click as he turned the small knob, and the thing made a crackly noise and started to hum like the radio did. A voice from inside the thing was singing about getting your money back if you bought a car. Then there was a small square of light in the middle of the glass part in the front which got bigger to fill the whole glass part with a fuzzy picture with wiggly lines waving through it. It looked like small pictures of pretend cars moving toward the center. Voices sang…

Roy O’Brien’s got them buying and buying
They come from many miles away
You’ll save yourself a lot of dollars, dollars
By driving out his way today

Dad moved the long silver sticks from side to side until the picture got less fuzzy and the wavy lines went away.

Now on the glass part, dad called it the “screen”, a woman and man inside a house were talking to each other. They both were angry and talking about someone else that the man liked. I thought her name was Mary because they kept saying that.

“This is channel two”, dad said, “Some sort of a soap opera I think.”

He turned the big knob and it clicked twice. There was a shiny gray car with a white stripe on the side and four people sitting at a long table behind it. Other people sitting behind them were yelling and cheering. The four people were each being asked to call out a number. Then one of them screamed and jumped up and down with her hands in the air and a man in dress up clothes and a tie came over and talked to her and walked her over to the car as she continued to scream.

“Game show on channel four”, dad said. “Looks like the lady won a car.” He turned the big knob three more clicks.

Some man with a white cowboy hat was shooting a gun at another man with a black cowboy hat, who was shooting at him too. I could see that dad liked watching this one more. The two men were moving around and trying to hide but still shooting at each other. Finally the man in the black hat stood up and the man in the white hat shot him. The man in the black hat put his hand over his chest, groaned, and fell over. His foot jerked and he stopped moving. The man in the white hat walked up to him and music started playing.

“Western on channel seven”, dad said.

“Eric”, mom said, sounding fierce, “Is this appropriate for Cooper to be watching?”

“I’m just changing the channels Liz to make sure it works”, he said.

“Well I’m not comfortable with Cooper or any kid watching shows like this!” she said.

“Well”, dad pushed his lips together thinking, “It is our history Liz, cowboys and the Wild West. Good versus evil!”

“This is people shooting people, and I don’t think it is appropriate for children. It encourages them to play with guns and I don’t think they should”, she said, “not even toy guns”. Then puffing her cheeks and blowing out air, “You know how I feel about this Eric!”

Dad pushed his lips together again while he was thinking. “Coop’s plastic soldiers have guns”, he said.

“Yes you’re right, and I’ve thought about that too”, she said, now looking at me, I could see in her eyes that she was thinking hard, “But I know Coop loves his soldiers, and they help him use his imagination, so I guess I compromise there. I’m just very uncomfortable having guns in the house, real or toy, or even TV programs about people shooting each other with guns.”

Dad was quiet and looked like he was thinking and did not look happy. “What about when the kids make guns out of their Tinker Toys? Are you going to not let them play with Tinker Toys?”

Mom had a fierce look in her eyes but she smiled. “I see that as different. That is their choice. I don’t like it, but it’s their choice. But a real gun, or a toy version of a real gun, is where I draw the line!”

He said nothing and looked away from her and back at the TV, turning the knob two more clicks.

The picture was more fuzzy, but there were three women lying on the floor next to each other moving their legs up and down at the same time while the woman in the middle told them what to do.

“Some sort of women’s exercise show on channel nine. This is the Canadian station from Windsor, across the river from Detroit.”

Mom nodded. “I’ll pick up a TV Guide at the A&P tomorrow”, she said. She looked at dad and smiled a happier smile this time. “You’ll go over to Fingerlee’s and buy the shelf stuff?”

He nodded with a happy smile as well. They were working together.

She looked down and her face got kind of sad and then she turned her eyes up to look at him. “Sweetheart… I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier when I thought you had bought this. I make myself crazy sometimes worrying about money. You did good here. Now some of my household chores might not be so mind-numbingly boring!”

He nodded while she talked but didn’t say anything. David started moving and making loud noises. She held him up and wrinkled her nose. “This one needs a fresh diaper”, she said, “Excuse me gentlemen, keep up the good work!” and she headed up the stairs.

Dad watched her go up the stairs so I did too. When she was gone he turned to the TV and turned the big knob so it clicked twice. The man with the white cowboy hat was riding a horse in the sand towards a mountain. Then there was more music and there were white words on the glass that moved upwards.

Dad stared at the glass pictures thinking. “I’m looking forward to being able to watch the World Series games on this thing”, he said “I also like the Westerns, but your mom doesn’t care for them.”

He seemed more like a kid. Staring at a new toy and thinking what he could do with it.

“The World Series”, I said nodding, though I did not know what that was, but I had heard grownups and older kids talk about it.

Still looking at the thing he said, “It’ll be your mom’s Yankees against probably the Milwaukee Braves.”

I got it. It was a baseball game. Dad knew a lot about baseball.

And those words “west” and “western”. I was thinking I got that too. It was some special place far away that you went to through the sky where there was sand instead of grass and men rode horses and shot guns at each other and there weren’t any fences. But some women, like mom, didn’t like it. They liked the “east”. Grownups were strange, talking about these far away places that were not here. Molly liked the “west” and I guess I liked it too.

Dad walked back over to his office and sat in his chair. The TV was still making sounds and pictures. A talking tiger was telling a woman with an apron in a kitchen to buy cereal. Then two kids were running across a kitchen floor and there were brown spots from their shoes but a woman cleaned it up and was happy. Then there were lots of shiny cars all in rows and one man stood in the middle and was talking to the sky. It all seemed so different and far away from what was outside our house or anywhere I’d ever been.

“Coop”, dad said from his chair at his desk. “You okay if we turn the TV off for now? I’ve got some papers to grade and it’s distracting!”

I nodded.

“You want to try turning it off yourself?”

I nodded again.

I walked up to the thing sitting there on top of the white table. Behind the voices and other sounds coming out of it I could hear a low hum somewhere behind those other sounds. Since dad said it “used electricity” and that was something to be careful of, I wasn’t sure what my fingers would feel when I touched the knob. But he said I could turn it off so I figured it would be okay, but still.

I touched the small knob with one finger. It just felt like other plastic things I played with. Then I touched it with two fingers and turned the knob and the voices got really loud, and it surprised me.

Dad laughed, “Wrong way. Turn it the other way to turn it off!”

I used my two fingers again and turned it the other way. There was a click and the voices and noises stopped, and then the hum stopped. The glass part went back to a small white square that got smaller and smaller until I couldn’t see it any more.

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I heard the doorbell ring in the living room. Mom was in my bedroom with me helping me button up the special shirt she had bought for me for dressing up. She said it was a “Campbell tartan” because “Campbell” was my “middle name”.

“Jonathan Campbell Zale”, she said. “That’s a name you can run for President with some day!” Her eyes twinkled when she said it. We were dressing in special clothes to go to a party across the street at Molly’s house. Mom was wearing a bright white shirt under a blue “dress”. That was one of those things that only women wore that was open at the bottom, instead of pants or shorts, which was what she wore the rest of the time. She had on the black shoes, “heels” she called them, that made her really tall, but also walk kind of funny. Her lips were very red and shiny.

“Margie’s here!” dad called from the living room.

“Great”, mom called back to him as she buttoned the sleeves of my shirt. It felt uncomfortable to have that tight feeling of shirt sleeves around my wrists. “Show her where we keep David’s bottles in the refrigerator and where his diapers are in the linen closet and how to work that damn diaper pail!” mom said.

“Liz, I got it!”, his voice sounded just a little bit angry, like she didn’t need to tell him that because he already knew.

Mom finished all my buttons and adjusted my “collar”. “You look very handsome”, she said.

She waved me to walk out of my room and walked behind me patting me on the shoulder, which I did not like. When I came into the living room Margie was at the door from the kitchen. She was not a grownup like mom and dad but also not a kid like me. She was wearing a dark blue sweatshirt with yellow letters that I knew said “Michigan” because I had one like it too.

“Hi Jonathan”, she said, “You’re all dressed up. You look very nice in that shirt!” She was about the only person who called me that name, because mom told her to and paid her money.

Mom patted me on the shoulder again. “Tell Margie what’s special about your shirt.”

I really didn’t like it when mom told me what to say.

“So what is the deal with your shirt little man?” Margie said, getting down on one knee in front of me.

“It’s a tartan”, I mumbled. I didn’t want to say it the way mom wanted me to say it.

“A what?”, Margie asked.

I heard mom blow out air and finally say, “It’s a CAMPBELL tartan, Jonathan’s middle name!”

“Okay”, said Margie, still on one knee, smiling and looking at me. “It’s your family colors!”

I felt embarrassed and mad that mom was talking for me.

Margie gave just the littlest nod like she knew how I was feeling. Then she said, “So tonight you’re all grown up going to the party with the folks while I babysit your baby brother!”

I nodded, not saying anything because I was still mad at mom.

Mom said to Margie, “Let me show you where the diapers are and how to work the pail.”

“Liz, I said I can do it”. I could hear the anger in dad’s voice. “You head over to the party with Cloob… Jonathan!”

“Eric”, mom replied, “I just want to show her the trick with the pail.”

“Liz”, he said, “I know the trick with the pail.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “Okay then.” She looked at me, “Jonathan, you can escort your mom to the party.”

I didn’t want her to take my hand, so I walked to the front door and opened it for her to walk out like I’d seen dad do.

“Such a gentleman”, Margie said as she followed dad into the hallway to find out about the diapers and the “damn” diaper pail.

“Thank you young man”, mom said to me, her bright red lips smiling and her eyes twinkling as she walked out the open door. I pulled it closed so it made a clicking noise.

Molly’s house was all lit up and you could hear voices inside talking and laughing. I looked up in the sky and the moon was a big round circle just over the tops of the trees. The street was full of cars all dark and still, and no people in them. But their outsides sparkled in the moon’s light. Though it was dark, the air was still warm and kind of wrapped around me like I was under a blanket. The door to Molly’s house was already open and a man standing by the screen door opened it for us to come inside.

“Jane Zale”, he said, his eyes moving from her face to look down her entire body to her feet, “You’re looking pretty damn good for a lady who’s just had a baby.” His words were coming out in a strange way like they were slowing down.

“Thanks Mort”, she said, putting her hand on my shoulder like she was protecting me, “How many drinks have you had?”

“A few”, he said, “Watch out for the punch, it’s wicked!”

Mom pressed her lips together and made them smile. “Thanks for the tip!”

“Who’s your date?” he said, looking serious and silly at the same time.

Mom breathed in and out. “Morton, meet my son Jonathan.”

He leaned over to look at me more closely and stuck out his right hand. I did not know what to do. He reached farther and grabbed my right hand and shook it.

His eyes were kind of wobbly as he looked at me and smiled. “Your dad says you’re quite the little ballplayer, a lefty like Johnny Podres. Johnny Zale… It has a nice ring to it. Like Tony Zale.” He looked up at mom.

She wasn’t smiling anymore. “His name is Jonathan, Mort. Not Johnny!” she said.

“C’mon Jane, a boy needs a nickname!” he said.

“That may be true Morton”, mom put her hand on his shoulder and looked at him, “But his is not Johnny.”

“Okay Jane”, he said chuckling, “I never pick a fight with a good looking woman!”

“Good thing for you in my case”, mom said, a big grin now on her face, her hand still on his shoulder and leaning towards him, “Because you’d lose that fight!”

He looked up at the ceiling and laughed. Mom gave him a final pat on the shoulder and then patted me on my shoulder with her other hand and we continued to walk into the house. It was full of grownups, men and women, most of them holding and drinking from funny looking glasses filled with what looked like water but was red.

Molly’s mom saw us and came over.

“Welcome you two”, she said, “Look at Cloob… er Jonathan all dressed up! But where’s your other guy?” She was saying her words kind of funny too. Maybe that was what grownups did at parties.

“He’ll be along in a minute”, mom said, “How’s it going?”

“It’s going gangbusters Jane”, she said, “We’ve raised nearly four hundred bucks for Phil’s campaign already!”

“Good for you Joan”, mom said, “I wrote you a check for twenty. Maybe that will put you over the four hundred mark!”

“Jane, you don’t have to do that”, Molly’s mom said, “I know how tight the budget is right now.”

“No Joan”, mom said, “This is probably the most important twenty bucks I’ll spend all year, to help put a man of Phil’s character in the U.S. Senate!” She pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and put it in a big pot on the table in the middle of the room with red, white and blue streamers all around it. Molly’s mom thanked her and gave her a little kiss on the cheek.

Mom reacted to the kiss by opening her eyes wide, saying, “And how many drinks have you had, young lady?”

Molly’s mom laughed, “Who’s counting! The more everyone drinks the bigger the numbers on the checks. And you know I can hold my liquor with the best of the boys!”

“I sure do”, mom said, and she looked at me and opened her eyes wide.

“Anyway”, Molly’s mom said to mom, “I’m dying to introduce you to Dick Sampson. He and I were grad students together in poly sci. He says he knows Eric and wanted to finally meet you. HE ended up getting his PhD and is now teaching.” She nodded slowly as she said it and looked up at the ceiling. “I ended up getting married and then Molly came along.”

She led mom and me over to two men talking very loud to each other in the corner of the living room.

One said to the other, “Look Dick, Kierkegaard said ‘existence precedes essence’, and Sartre and de Beauvoir are just starting with that axiom and taking it steps further.”

“I’m not buying it”, said the other, who winked at Molly’s mom as we approached them, “It’s not an axiom in my book, just an unproven theory! I’m not much for existentialism, I’m a Hegel dialectic man.”

“I don’t want to stop your tete a tete here”, Molly’s mom said, “But Dick, I wanted to introduce you to Eric’s wife, Jane Zale.”

He looked at Molly’s mom and then at mom and his eyes lit up.

“Jane Zale”, he said, “So you’re the girl that finally corralled Eric’s heart. We finally meet!”

Molly’s mom tapped mom on the shoulder and said she would go find Molly, and she headed toward the stairs up to Molly’s bedroom.

“We finally meet, Dick”, mom said, “So tell me how you know Eric.”

“I know him from Michigamua”, he said

“Michigamua?” mom asked.

“Yes. Well. It’s sort of a semi-secret university men’s club. A bunch of guys being guys”, he said. “Half naked. War paint. That sort of thing. The less said the better. Not really for mixed company.”

“Okay”, mom said nodding, “I get it.”

“So Jane” he said pointing at her, “Maybe you can help Lynn and I settle this argument once and for all. Have you read de Beauvoir?”

“I read The Second Sex for a soc class”, mom replied.

“Okay, perfect. I’ve been dying to pose this question to the female of the species”, he said, turning to look at mom, his eyes briefly glancing down from her face to her chest, “Don’t you agree with me that it’s nuts what de Beauvoir said, that ‘one is not born but becomes a woman’?”

Mom didn’t say anything for a minute thinking. Finally she said something.

“I think she’s being provocative Dick. Of course women are born female and men male. But honestly, I don’t think it’s any more natural for me to do dishes and change diapers than it would be for a man like you!”

He laughed. “You wouldn’t want me trying to change diapers Jane, I’d make a mess of it!”

Mom chuckled. “You underestimate yourself Dick. I could teach you in ten minutes. With a little practice you’d be as good as any woman!”

He made a funny snort like an animal. “I’ll pass!”

“Well there you go”, she said with a big smile on her face and some fierceness in her eyes, then touching the side of his shoulder with her hand, “It’s really a choice on your part. Yet it’s supposed to be natural for women like me, though it’s really not. I think that’s what de Beauvoir is getting at.”

He frowned, but also liked mom touching his shoulder, so he smiled again and started nodding. “Okay. I’ll have to think about that one. If I hadn’t had so much punch I might have a good comeback.” Mom laughed.

He looked down at me and said, “This your little Johnny?”

Mom pushed her lips together and her head moved a little from side to side. “His name is Jonathan. My brother is named John. My son is Jonathan.”

I felt embarrassed, like there was something wrong with me that my mom had to try to fix with her words. I never liked it when grownups talked to each other about me when I was there with them.

“Okay Jonathan it is”, he said, looking at me again. But I could tell in his eyes he didn’t think so.

I felt uncomfortable, and when I felt that way I usually stopped talking. But I also didn’t like mom talking for me. So I told him.

“They call me Cloob”, I said.

“What?” He looked at me with wobbly eyes and a funny look on his face. Then he looked up at my mom with that same look.

“Well”, mom said, pushing her red lips together again, “That’s a nickname his dad made up, ‘Clubius’.”

“Clubius… Sounds kind of Roman”, he said, looking up at the ceiling and thinking, “Senator Maximus Clubius addresses the Forum.”

Mom nodded but didn’t say anything. I could see in her eyes she was doing a lot of thinking instead of talking.

Most of what they were talking about I couldn’t figure out. But that was what grownups did. I looked around the room for Molly. I saw Molly’s mom over by the front door talking to dad and pointing towards mom and me. She then went upstairs and dad came over to where we were.

“Eric”, Dick said, “I’ve known you for what, four years, and only tonight I finally meet your better half. She’s already wounded me in a philosophical argument.”

Dad tried to smile, nodded and chuckled. Finally he said, “Good to see you again, Dick. Congratulations on your doctorate!”

“Thanks Eric”, he said, “You started on that dissertation yet? Cardinal Newman?”

Dad shook his head, losing his smile, blowing air out between his lips. Mom shook her head too. There was that “dissertation” word again that they were always talking about.

Molly appeared from behind dad. She was wearing one of those dress things on the bottom part of her body but no socks or shoes.

“Coob”, she said, “Want to play in my room?”

“Now there’s the best offer I’ve heard all night!”, Dick said and laughed. Then looking at me, “You better say yes my man or I might instead!”

Molly’s mom appeared behind Molly and put her hands on Molly’s shoulders. “Dick you’re too much. I ought to cut you off from the punch.”

“Oh god Joan, anything but that!” Then looking around. “Where’s your hubby?”

“He’s around somewhere”, Molly’s mom said, “Maybe down in the basement showing some of his work buddies our new television.”

“Oh my”, he said, “So you’ve succumbed to the boob tube! You of all people Joan! It’s like a virus spreading! Commie plot to rot our brains!”

Molly looked at me and rolled her eyes. I knew she wanted me to go upstairs with her. I nodded and she ran towards the stairs and I followed.

“Like a moth to the flame”, I heard him say as I followed Molly up the stairs to her bedroom. Even from her room we could hear the talking and laughing below.

Molly said she wanted to play “Sky King”. I helped her move the two big puffy chairs so they were right next to each other, both facing one of the windows looking out across the street. She had a plastic toy thing with buttons on it and a steering wheel to fly the plane. She also had a black plastic box, with a button and a red light on top. Then she went over to the wall and turned off the lights. She sat in the one chair, the steering wheel thing in her lap. I sat next to her in the other chair, the black plastic box with the red light between us.

When the lights were on in the room it was hard to see out the window because you saw the inside of the room too, like a mirror. But when the room got dark that all changed. Our eyes were able to see what was outside the window. The shapes of houses, and cars in the street shining from the moon. Light from inside those houses coming out the windows, including our house across the street where David and Margie were.

“Okay. Ready to take off?” she asked.

“Okay”, I said. I would go anywhere with Molly and I knew she would go anywhere with me.

“Roger”, she said, and she pushed the button on the black box and the red light started to flash. She grabbed the steering wheel and pushed other buttons. “Taking off!” We saw the houses and the cars below us as we flew over them. We could still hear the voices and laughing of the grownups at the party below us, but now it seemed farther away. I turned my head to look at her and every time the red light flashed, it made her face look strange and scary. Like the light was showing the inside of her rather than the outside. Seeing her in a way that wasn’t the regular way. We were both quiet and continued to fly over everything together.

Far away I heard the door to Molly’s room open. I heard the voice of Molly’s mom saying, “What is going on in here?” I returned to the room and opened my eyes and saw three faces in the flashing red light, looking down at Molly and me. They were all smiling and their eyes happy, though their faces looked strange like Molly’s had.

“These two”, Molly’s mom said. She was talking slow and funny like the other people had down at the party. “Our little adventurers”, said dad. “So dear”, said mom. Mom and dad were talking that funny way too. Molly’s mom pushed the button to turn off the flashing light. Molly was still asleep.

“Joan, thanks again for hosting a great party”, mom said, “It’s been forever since Eric and I have been out together with adults.”

“It certainly has”, dad said. Then all three of them started to laugh.

“I may be jealous of Dick getting his PhD”, Molly’s mom said, “But I wouldn’t trade anything for getting to be Molly’s mom!” She stroked Molly’s hair and Molly opened her eyes, rubbed them, and stretched her arms.

“The feeling is mutual”, mom said.

Dad looked at me and his eyes were wobbly and he spoke very softly. “You want a ride home on my back, Cloob?”

“Eric dear”, mom said, “You’ve had a lot to drink, you better not.”

Somehow I knew to shake my head no.

“Okay. Okay. Okay”, dad said, nodding. He ran his hand through his hair and took a deep breath and blew it out.

“You two okay?” Molly’s mom asked them, “I think I’m going to tell Jack to put less vodka in the punch next time.”

“I think we’re okay Joan”, mom said, “We just need to get home and let the babysitter go and put this guy to bed. It’s pretty late. It was a wonderful party! Thank you so much for hosting it!”

As mom, dad and I walked out of her room Molly said, “Good night Coob.” I looked at her one last time and nodded. I didn’t want to say good night to her with all the adults watching and thinking that was so nice.

When we got out of Molly’s front door, mom put her arm around dad’s waist and pressed her body against him. “Mmm… you feel good”, she said in a slow calm happy voice.

Dad put his arm across her back and said, “You too Liz, it’s been a while!”

“It has”, mom said, “Hopefully David’s asleep and will stay so for at least a few hours.”

Their words and feelings seemed strange to me. They were not the way they usually talked to each other. Other grownups at the party had been talking that strange way. More like kids than grownups.

Mom looked up at the dark sky. “You know”, she said, now looking down at me with her big friendly eyes, her other arm grabbing my shoulder and pulling me against her. “You need a proper nickname until you’re old enough for people to call you Jonathan. “Clubius” is cute and we all love it, but it’s more of a baby name, and I think the kids in the neighborhood are going to tease you if you don’t have a more normal nickname.”

Her big blue eyes reflected the light from the moon. She looked both happy and sad at the same time. She didn’t seem so much like a grownup, which made me want to say something.

“I like the ‘Coob’ name that Molly says”, I said.

“Hmmm”, mom said, sounding more like a grownup now.

“Liz”, dad said, “There’s that sax player from Stan Kenton’s band, Bob Cooper, that they call ‘Coop’!”

“Coop! Cooper!” mom said, “What do you think, young man?” She squeezed my shoulder.

I still liked Molly’s name for me, but I nodded.

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This morning dad told me that mom was finally coming home from the hospital with my brother that had been inside her. He took me over to Molly’s and then he drove off in the car. I still did not know what was really going on, so it worried me. I had seen a baby before but it just cried a lot. Why did we need to have one of those at our house?

Molly and I had been playing up in her attic bedroom when dad and Molly’s mom came to tell Molly and me that the baby inside mom had come out and was now my brother. Dad had asked me if I wanted to go and see my new brother at the hospital, but I didn’t say yes or anything else, so I stayed at Molly’s house.

Earlier that day, Molly and I had hidden in the spruce tree and didn’t tell mom where we were. Mom got mad and said angry words to me. Then her body started hurting because the baby inside her was ready to come out, and dad took her to the hospital, and I went over to Molly’s.

Mom had told me a lot of times about having a baby inside her that would become “part of our family”. It might be a boy like me or a girl like Molly, but mom didn’t know which one until it came out. Where it would come out of her I did not even dare to ask. What she did know is that she would have to go to the hospital when it was ready to come out. The whole thing made no sense to me or to Molly. I already had Molly so why did we need anyone else.

After it got dark dad finally had come back to Molly’s house and taken me home, but mom wasn’t there. He said she had to stay at the hospital until she and my brother were ready to come home.

This morning he asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital with him. I still wasn’t sure what this all meant and how it might affect me, and I did not say anything. So he took me over to Molly’s again.

I was still thinking about all those things that had happened, when Molly saw from the window that our car pulled into the driveway of our house across the street. She and I looked out and watched as dad got out of the car and walked around to the other side to open the door for mom. She got out carrying something all wrapped up in a white bundle. I could tell that that thing was what this was all about.

Molly said, “Let’s go see it!”

I looked at her unsure and worried.

She looked at me and figured out what I was thinking. “You can stay here if you want”, she said, “But I’m going to go see it!”

I said okay, but I didn’t want her to go. But when she headed out of the room I decided to follow her. I was having trouble thinking of anything except that I felt strange.

When we got down the stairs to the front door, Molly called out to her mom, “Coob’s mom is home and we want to go see it!”

“Oh my god”, Molly’s mom appeared from the kitchen, climbing up the stairs into the living room, “This is so exciting! Yes, let’s go see Cloob’s little brother!”

She opened the front door. Molly ran out down toward the street.

“Whoa there Molly Wheeler”, her mom yelled out, “Watch for cars before you cross the street!” I could see Molly jerk her body to a stop on the edge of our street, swing her head to either side, and then run across. Molly’s mom puffed her cheeks and pushed air out of her mouth and shook her head.

“C’mon Cloob”, she said, taking my hand, “Let’s see your brother!”

She and I walked across the street. Molly had already disappeared inside the front door of our house.

When Molly’s mom and I walked in the front door, mom and dad and Molly were standing around this basket thing with legs that had appeared a few days ago in the living room. All three of them looked at me and smiled, but I was worried.

Mom patted dad and Molly on their shoulders and came over to me and took my hand, looking down at me.

“Cloob”, she said, making her biggest smile but her eyes looked sad. “I really want to say I’m sorry for yelling at you yesterday. I just was so scared that something had happened to you and Molly when you didn’t say anything and you were right there hiding in the spruce tree. I need you to tell me you’re okay when I ask you!”

I nodded my head. The things she said always made sense like that. Her face got less worried.

“But now I want you to meet your brother David”, she said.

She took me over to the basket thing and there was a wrinkled little face with big blue eyes looking up at me. He was unwrapped from his little white blanket and was wearing tiny blue pajamas. His little pink fingers grasped at the air and his legs kicked. His eyes moved around like he was trying to see things and they finally saw me. He smiled at me and seemed happy to see me. I could tell in his eyes that he wanted me to like him, so I felt better. The grownups all seemed happy, and Molly too, so that made me feel better too. I wasn’t sure yet it would be okay, but it was okay so far.

Looking at me and then at Molly’s mom, dad said, “The doctor said it was an easy delivery, and Liz did well.”

“Jane’s a trooper”, Molly’s mom said. Then she looked down at the baby and she made a funny expression with her mouth. “He’s a beautiful boy!” Dad nodded. Molly looked at me like she didn’t know what they were talking about. I didn’t either.

Mom nodded too, “He is Joan. It still seems like such a miracle. Just like when Cloob was born. It changes your perspective on things.” She let go of my hand and rubbed my shoulder and neck.

“So Cloob sweetie, what do you think?” mom asked.

Since I started talking she liked to ask me what I was thinking. And if I said something, she liked hearing it. But I didn’t want to tell her I felt worried, but I felt I should say something because everyone else had said something, even Molly.

“He looked at me!” I said. That seemed okay to say.

“He did sweetie, he’s looking at all of us, trying to connect with us”, mom said looking down at him and touching his face.

David looked at me again and smiled. I smiled back.

“Can he talk?” I asked.

Mom laughed. “No not yet sweetie. Not for a while. He’ll cry and make other noises too. But he’ll be doing a lot of listening and watching, like right now.”

“He’s so precious!”, Molly’s mom said. Molly pushed her lips together and made a face.

We all continued to look at him and touch him and say things about him for a while and then mom said she had to feed him. It still all felt strange to me. The kid Kenny across the street, who lived in the house next to Molly’s, had a “little brother”, that Kenny didn’t talk about much, but when he did, seemed not to like. xxx

“Let me fix up his formula!” It was the first thing dad had said and he seemed glad to say it and do something other than look at the baby. He went into the kitchen.

Molly’s mom said she needed to go home to do things. She put her hand on mom’s shoulder and said, “He’s beautiful Jane. You have a beautiful family. Please let me know anything I can do to help. Any time. Anything you need, just call me, I’m right across the street.”

I thought it was funny that she said that last thing because we all already knew that they lived across the street. It was one of those things grownups did, say things you already knew. Anyway she said that Molly could stay and play with me and that made me happy. Molly’s mom said goodbye to dad and “congratulations on your growing family”, and told him too she would “Help out any way I can, if you or Jane need me”. Then she asked him if he would make sure Molly looked both ways before crossing the street to come home and then left.

Molly wanted to see how my mom fed the baby, so we went into the kitchen to watch dad make the “formula”. Dad figured out that was why we were there looking at him and started to tell us what he was doing. He was using a “measuring spoon” to take the “powdered formula” out of a box with letters and a picture of a baby on it. He mixed it with the big wooden spoon in a pot with water heated up on the stove, hot enough to “dissolve” the powder, but not too hot or it would burn the baby’s mouth. Molly and I peeked in the pot as he stirred it, and watched the powder disappear and make the water white and look like milk. He carefully dipped his little finger in the pot to “test” if it was hot enough, but not too hot. As soon as his fingertip dipped in the milky liquid we both looked at him.

“Litle bit more”, he said, continuing to stir the pot. “It’s like making cocoa, except the water turns white instead of brown.”

Grownups were good at using words to explain things, if they wanted to.

Finally the formula was warm enough and dad poured it from the pot into a clear glass “baby bottle”. I liked those baby bottles because they were thick clear glass with sides and edges. When you held one it was heavy and you could feel those sides and edges. If you looked through it, what you saw on the other side was kind of broken up by the edges. Then as you looked through and turned the bottle, different parts of what you saw shifted and were broken up.

Dad then put a “rubber nipple” on top of the bottle. He gave the bottle to Molly and asked her if she wanted to bring it to mom. Molly nodded, and when she took the bottle she slowly and carefully walked back into the living room, holding it in front of her with both hands. I thought it was funny because she usually ran everywhere. I followed her into the living room.

Mom was sitting in the rocking chair next to the basket thing with the baby in her arms. She took the bottle from Molly and said thank you. She showed us how she dripped some on her arm to test if it was the right “temperature”. Then she put the nipple part between the baby’s lips, and his lips closed on it and the baby started drinking. Mom looked at him while he drank, I could tell her mind was doing lots of thinking.

“So Eric”, she called out to my dad in the kitchen, “Did you talk to the Hutchinson’s about their crib?”

Dad appeared at the kitchen door. “Yes. They said we could have it. It looks like it is in okay shape, may need a little work. Could use a coat of paint too.”

Still feeding the baby she said, “Well we still have half a quart of that oil-based white that we used on this bassinet.”

Dad nodded and smiled. His eyes sparkled. He and mom liked working together on things like that.

Then he frowned, “It doesn’t have a pad or a mattress though.”

Mom frowned too. “Could you get a piece of foam, cut it to size, and cover it somehow?”

“Schlenkers has foam and will cut it to size”, he said, “Then we could cover it with one of the flat sheets. I think we have an extra one.”

The baby coughed. Mom pulled the bottle out of his mouth and a bunch of white stuff squirted out and down his cheek. Mom took the cloth from her shoulder and cleaned up his face. She lifted him and held him against her chest with his head over her shoulder and gently patted his back. She smiled at Molly and me.

“David needs to burp I think”, she said, “It’s been three years since you were born Cloob, and I’m still trying to remember all the tricks of the trade!”

I couldn’t remember ever being a baby like David and not being able to do much of anything except look at things and suck on a bottle. David made a noise. Guess that was a burp.

Mom looked away from us at dad. “We’re lucky David is a boy because we have that box of Cloob’s old baby clothes somewhere right?”

Dad frowned and looked up at the ceiling. “I think we gave those to the Drakes for Henry.” Then back at mom. “He’s over a year now, he may be done with them!”

“Yeah but…”, mom shook her head, “You can’t slap a coat of fresh paint on ratty old clothes. We’re not going to dress him in rags.”

Dad puffed out his cheeks and blew air out. “Well, I could do a couple evenings at the fraternity. Those frat boys’ rooms and laundry are not going to clean themselves! Otherwise I’m going to have to rob a bank Liz!”

She looked back at him very seriously. “Eric, how many different jobs do you have?”

He looked up at the ceiling again thinking. “Five… six actually if you count the proofreading.”

“You get paid for it right?” she asked, “That counts!”

“Well”, he scratched his chin, “They give me free books.”

“That counts!” She said, taking the baby off of her chest and back down in her lap. “But at some point it becomes penny wise and pound foolish. If it slows down you getting your dissertation done, it delays you finding a real job that pays and has benefits even.”

“Well”, he said nodding his head, “I told you I’m close to starting on my dissertation!”

They were always talking about his “dissertation”. He had tried to explain it to me that it was something he had to write to get his “PHD” thing so he could work as a “professor”, but it didn’t make much sense.

“Eric”, her voice was a little bit angry, “You didn’t tell me that! That’s a big milestone isn’t it? You need to talk to me about these things. It helps…”, she rolled her hand around in a circle in front of her, “Keep me going.”

“You’re right Liz… sorry!” he said.

Molly finally looked at me and I knew she wanted to do something different.

“Let’s play in the backyard”, I said.

“Let’s play Sky King”, she said.

“Let’s play pirates and Sky King”, I said.

“Okay”, she said, and she ran into the kitchen and out the side door. I got up and followed her. I could hear mom and dad and Molly’s mom chuckling at us as I left the room following Molly.

I liked to hide. I liked to be in a place where no one could see me or find me until I wanted them to. A place where no one could tell me what to do, or even say that they liked or didn’t like what I was doing, like grownups did. I liked it the most when, from where I was hiding, I could see and hear other people but they couldn’t see me. Then I could watch them without worrying about them watching me back. If another kid was hiding with me, that was okay, because they didn’t count. Especially Molly. I never wanted to hide from her.

Molly’s mom brought Molly over to play with me. Molly’s mom always wanted to talk about the baby in mom’s stomach.

“Jane”, she said, “You look like you’re ready to pop any day now!”

Mom nodded, rolled her eyes and said, “Joan, I’m a week from my due date. I’ve had some contractions, but my doctor says they’re not real labor yet.”

“They say the second one generally comes quicker than the first!” Molly’s mom said. She was always trying to tell mom things like that.

“I’ve heard that too”, mom said, “I’d be happy if it was quicker this time. Cloob…”, she paused and made a funny face like she wasn’t sure what to say next, “I was in labor with Jonathan for twelve hours! I’m counting on this one being a lot quicker.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. She had used that word “labor” before but I was afraid to ask her what it meant. It seemed like something that women talked about with each other but not with men because men would think it was yucky. If I asked, I was afraid that she would think I was being bad, or that word I’d heard, “naughty”.

“So know that Jack and I are always ready to take you to the hospital if Eric can’t do it for some reason”, Molly’s mom said, “You have all our phone numbers, right?”

Mom pointed down at her foot. “I do. You and Jack are sweethearts! I keep the list in my sock all the time, since these damn pants don’t have any pockets! I’d show you but I’d have to bend over.”

Both of them laughed. I started to laugh too but I didn’t know what we were laughing about. Molly didn’t laugh, and she looked at me and made a funny face.

Molly’s mom took mom’s hand and looked at her very seriously. “Jane, I appreciate you watching Molly while I do the shopping. It won’t be more than an hour. I’ll be at the A&P if you need to call and get them to find me there. You know I’ll watch Cloo…” she paused then said, “Jonathan anytime you need me to. And when your time comes, call me or call Jack and we’ll drop whatever we’re doing and take you to the hospital if you need that, or watch this guy”, she said pointing at me.

Again I didn’t like it because they were talking about serious things and I felt I couldn’t do anything. I wanted mom to get that baby out of her really soon so things would be regular again.

Mom got that look where her big blue eyes got kind of watery and she made a sort of pretend sad face. “Joan, that means so much to me! And make sure to tell your Jack that he’s a sweetie!” They squeezed each other’s hands one last time and Molly’s mom went out the front door and walked across the street, got in her car and drove off.

Mom looked at the two of us and smiled. Then she looked at Molly like she was thinking what to say to her.

She said, “I’ve been telling Jonathan that I’m going to have a baby any day now and he’s going to have a younger brother or sister. Your mom said she talked to you about it?”

Molly nodded and said, “Yes Misses Zale”, like she was using words someone else told her to say but not her own.

Mom made her biggest smile and said, “If I can call you Molly, you can call me Jane. Okay?”

Molly’s shoulders relaxed and she nodded, and I could tell that she was happy mom said that.

Still looking at Molly, mom said, “We won’t know whether it’s a boy or a girl until he or she is born, but I feel like it’s going to be another boy. We’ll see if I’m right again this time. Not that I wouldn’t be thrilled if it was a girl like you.”

Molly kind of squeezed her face thinking, and finally nodded.

“Well, okay”, mom said, clapping her hands together. “I’m going to sit in the backyard and try to get a little sun. You two are welcome to play in the basement or in the backyard.”

Molly’s eyes found mine. “Show me the island”, she said. I had told her the day before about what I had made with all the dirt.

“Okay”, I said and I started to run around the side of the house and Molly ran after me.

I stopped by the big tree and looked at the fort I had built under it. I had used pretty much all the dirt dad and I got. The green good guy soldiers were along the walls and in the towers of most of the fort, but the gray pirates had captured part of the fort and were in that part.

Molly came up next to me and looked at everything, thinking. She got down on her hands and knees and slowly crawled around looking at everything even closer. She pointed at the green soldier that had one hand pointing and the other holding a pistol.

“Is that the goodguy captain?” she asked.

“Yep”, I said.

She crawled over to the part of the fort where the gray soldiers were.

“These are the pirates?” she asked.

“Yep”, I said. I was happy she was getting it and that she was taking so much time to look at every part.

She pointed at the gray figure with his hands on either side of his waist and his elbows sticking out.

“Is that the pirate captain?”

I nodded.

“What about these guys?” She pointed at three green soldiers lying on their side in the dirt in the part of the fort where the gray soldiers were.

“They’re dead”, I said, as seriously as I could.

“And these guys?” She pointed at two more green soldiers surrounded by gray soldiers.

“Captured”, I said.

Mom walked by carrying a clear plastic bottle. She was wearing white shorts and a white shirt that covered her big stomach.

“Not to interrupt you”, she said, “But I was wondering if Molly wanted to see how the tomatoes and cucumbers are growing.”

Molly bounced up on her feet all excited, nodded, and ran across the grass towards the back of the yard. She let her body fall to her hands and knees in the grass right in front of the garden. I was mad that she seemed to want to see the plants rather than the dirt island, but I ran after her. Mom more slowly followed us.

So when mom got to the garden she got down on her knees and showed Molly the tomato and cucumber plants like she had shown me before. I got down on my hands and knees next to Molly, not so much because I wanted to look at those plants again, but because I didn’t want to be left out.

But Molly was done looking pretty quick at the green tomatoes turning red and the tiny hotdog shaped cucumbers with their little pointy things, which she ran her fingers over. She stood up again, her knees and elbows green from the grass. She looked up at the sky and made a funny face with her mouth.

Mom saw that and said, “Well okay, I just thought you’d like to see how they’re growing. Again, you two are welcome to play here out back or in the basement.”

Mom stood up groaning and slowly walked over to that “lawn” chair and carefully sat down on it, doing more groaning as she did. The sun was shining on her body, and she put a pair of glasses on that were dark in front of her eyes. She squeezed some clear liquid into her hand from the clear plastic bottle she was carrying and rubbed it up and down her other arm. It made her skin look all wet and shiny. She did the same thing in the other hand on the other arm. And then on each leg from inside her shorts down to and over her feet. Next was her ears and neck and down under the top part of her shirt. Finally she put some of the liquid stuff on parts of her face, sticking her lips out in a silly way as she did. When she was all done, her body was all wet looking and even more shiny in the sun. She put her head back and just sat there quietly. It all seemed like a strange thing to do. Just one of those strange things grownups did. When I looked at Molly, I could tell she was thinking that too.

Molly looked back at me. I could see the little blue circles in her eyes in the sun. She put her thumb in her mouth and bit on it. I could tell she was thinking things, lots of things, but I couldn’t tell what. When she was thinking just one thing, I could usually tell what it was. I always liked it when I was with her. I liked watching her think, and waiting for her thinking to turn into talking.

“Let’s hide!” she finally said.

Her idea surprised me. “Where?” I asked.

She looked at me and tilted her head. “I don’t know.” I could tell she thought I should know where because it was my backyard.

I tried hard to think of a place but couldn’t right away. She gave me a fierce look like she was waiting for me to come up with a good idea. I finally thought about that “spruce” tree.

I walked over to it and she followed me. I moved a big low branch with lots of needles, and then a second one, to where an open space was on the ground by the trunk between those two and other low branches. It was dark in there and the ground was covered with needles that had fallen off the tree and turned brown.

Molly nodded, like I was showing her a good hiding place. I held back the branches as she crawled in, the needles crunching softly under her knees and hands.

“Now close the branches and see if you can see me”, she said from inside.

I did, and walked away from the tree and turned to look at it.
“I can’t see you”, I said.

“I can see you”, I heard her voice from inside the tree. “Now you try it!” She crawled out, pushing her way between the branches. She held back the branches like I had and I crawled in. The needles pricked at my knees and hands and the smell went up in my nose and tickled inside it.

She was right. From inside the tree I could see her but she said she couldn’t see me. It was strange how that worked, but it was a perfect hiding place.

She was able to move the branches apart herself and crawl back in. The hiding place was small, and for the two of us to sit in it together we both had to squeeze right next to each other with our knees together and pulled up almost against the top part of our bodies. I felt her arm and leg press against mine. She felt warm. The smell of her body mixed with the smell of the tree. I was happy and not worrying at all. I could tell she was happy and not worrying either. Pressed against each other I felt we were two parts of the same thing.

“Coob”, she whispered my name but she didn’t need to, since it was only the two of us. I liked the easy way she said it. It would just pop out of her mouth, rather than the “Cloob” that mom and dad were calling me now, that was harder for your mouth to say. I knew my name was supposed to be Jonathan, but mom and dad only called me that when they were talking to other grownups. And I knew that it was not supposed to be “John” or “Johnny”, which was what other grownups tried to call me and made mom tell them not to.

“Mom told me a baby is going to come out of your mom’s stomach between her legs”, she said.

“Mom told me too”, I said, wanting Molly to know that I knew as much about it as she did. Though mom had not told me the between her legs part. How could that happen anyway?

“It could be a girl like me or a boy like you”, she said.

I heard her say that and I remembered that Molly was supposed to be different than I was, but I couldn’t figure out that she really was. The only thing was that her hair WAS longer than mine and I wondered why that made us different.

I tried to think really hard to figure it all out, but I couldn’t. I could tell she was figuring out what I was thinking about how boys and girls might be different.

“It doesn’t make any sense!” I said.

“I know”, she said, “Mom said that it will when we get older”.

She paused, thinking, then asked, “You think you and I will ever be a mom and dad and have a baby?”

I couldn’t imagine I would ever be like MY mom and dad or the other grownups. It made sense to me that I would get older and get taller, but they were completely different than us.

“I don’t think so!” I said, but now I wasn’t sure and it made me worry.

She patted my hand with hers. “Don’t worry about it Coob!”

We sat there quietly for a while. I figured she must be thinking a bunch of different things because I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. My mind was doing all kinds of thinking that I might be different than Molly, and that Molly and I might be grownups someday like mom and dad. It was a strange world outside of our hiding place.

“Cloob! Molly!” It was mom’s voice calling out, making my mind stop going places. She worked hard to get out of the chair and stand on her feet. We could see her looking around but we knew she couldn’t see us.

We looked at each other but didn’t say or do anything. We just watched. She called our names a couple more times then picked up the clear bottle of the stuff she had rubbed on her body. Then she slowly walked by us and into the side door of our house. I could hear her calling our names inside. Finally she came out the side door again looking worried and walked to the front yard and called out our names with her loudest voice. Then she came back into the backyard not far from the spruce where we were hidden and called our names once again.

“Oh dammit”, I could hear her voice almost crying. Molly and I still did nothing and said nothing. Mom went back out into the front yard.

“This is the best hiding place”, Molly whispered in my ear, “We can stay here forever if we want to”.

“Yeah”, I whispered back. All sorts of strange thoughts went around in my head. Things were changing too much out there. Something was going to come out of mom between her legs and change everything. Molly would get a big stomach too and she and I wouldn’t be the same anymore. The grownups were in charge of everything. It wasn’t fair.

A car drove up across the street and stopped. It was Molly’s mom. She got out of the car and ran across the street towards mom who was sobbing.

“Oh my god Joan, I can’t find them!” Mom’s voice sounded very scared. “They were in the backyard with me and I think I dozed off and now they’re gone!”

Molly’s mom said, “Take a deep breath Jane, they’ve got to be around somewhere! You stay here and I’ll go over and look in our house and backyard, and then look in the park and walk around the block!”

“Okay”, mom said, taking quick deep breaths now. She put her hand out against the side of the house and cried. Still next to Molly, hidden in the spruce, but less than ten feet from mom, part of me wanted to come out and tell her that we were here and everything was okay. But now I felt afraid that she would be mad at me for not doing anything when she had called for us. Molly was quiet next to me but I could feel her worried too.

Molly’s mom looked very serious. “I’ll be back in five minutes, ten tops! We’ll find them!” She ran across the street towards their house.

“Jonathan! Molly!” Mom yelled the words in her loudest voice. “Where the hell are you two? Oh my god… please no!” She was breathing fast, her eyes were red and wet, and her face was afraid.

Still Molly and I were quiet and did not move. It was like we weren’t really there anymore, even though we were.

After a while, our car pulled into the driveway. Dad got out and went over to mom.

“Eric dammit. I can’t find them! Where the hell did they go?” She sobbed some more and dad looked like he was thinking very hard.

Dad’s voice was quiet but like he was trying to be in charge, “Liz, don’t worry. We’ll find them”, like she was making it a big problem but it really wasn’t. “They can’t have gotten far! Did you look everywhere in the house?”

Mom made a very angry look at my dad. “What do you think I am Eric, an idiot? Of course I looked everywhere in the house, ten times!” She put her hand to her forehead and leaned against the house, still sobbing.

Dad looked hurt by her words. His mouth closed and his face got very stiff.

At that moment, Molly sneezed. Then she giggled. Both mom and dad turned their heads toward the spruce. Dad quickly came over to the tree and moved the branches enough to see us.

“Here they are Liz. They’ve been right here all the time!” His face relaxed to a smile.

Mom came over and looked in the space now between the branches to see the two of us. She looked fierce at me and said, “What the hell do you think you were doing? Why didn’t you say something when I was calling you? I thought something awful had happened to you two!” She put her hand on her forehead and closed her eyes. “Oh my god!”

I felt hurt and mad that mom had said those angry words to me, and my mind was blank, like I couldn’t think, or feel anything else. Everything was suddenly moving slowly and I felt very, very calm.

“Get out you two”, dad said like he was in charge and mad. Molly and I crawled out, crunching over the pine needles.

Mom’s eyes were still closed and her hand still on her forehead, now leaning against the side of the house. “I don’t feel well”, she said.

“Liz”, dad responded, “Are you going into labor?”

“Let me sit down for a minute and get my bearings”, she said.

Mom started to walk to the side door, but Molly’s mom appeared, running up the sidewalk towards our driveway where we were all now standing. “Oh thank god, you found them!”

Dad explained to her that the two of us had been hiding in the spruce the whole time.

As she listened to what he said, Molly’s mom rolled her eyes, shook her head, and let out a big breath. She kneeled down in front of Molly.

“Molly Wheeler”, her voice was quiet, not loud and angry like mom’s, “When Cloob’s… Jonathan’s mom called you two, you didn’t say anything?”

Molly’s eyes narrowed and she squeezed her lips together and shook her head.

“Did you know she was scared that something might have happened to the two of you?” her mom asked.

Lips still squeezed together, Molly said nothing. She looked at me and I could see in her eyes that she was trying to help me.

Molly’s mom stood up and looked at mom. “I am so sorry Jane!” then seeing how mom looked, “Jane? Are you all right? Are you having a contraction?”

Mom breathed hard and nodded. Finally she said, “I believe I’m having one right now!” She looked down at her wrist. “It’s two-fifteen”.

“Have you been having them today?” Molly’s mom sounded concerned, “You didn’t say anything when I left Molly here and went to the store!”

“I’ve been having them off and on but nothing strong or regular”, mom said, puffing air out of her mouth, “But this one feels much stronger”. More puffs. “When it finishes, let me lie down and pull myself together and see how long til the next one comes.”

Molly and I stood there not saying anything. The three grownups were talking about things that we couldn’t figure out, almost like they still couldn’t see us. I thought about Molly having to grow a baby in her stomach some day. I thought about mom’s angry words to me a moment ago and I still felt mad. Now there was silence all round as mom continued to puff out air.

Finally mom put her hand on Molly’s mom’s shoulder and took one long deep breath. “Okay, it’s done!”

Molly’s mom put her hand on mom’s, and patted it three times, “Okay… Jane… Eric… how can I help?”

Dad said, “Liz, should I take you to the hospital?”

Mom stretched her eyes open big after having them closed while she was puffing air. Her eyes quickly looked at dad, then at Molly’s mom, then Molly, and finally looked at me. I felt her looking deep into me. Her eyes weren’t angry anymore, but I felt like they were saying, “Well… here we go”, and for just a quick moment she didn’t seem like a grownup, but seemed more like a kid like me and Molly.

“I’m going to lie down”, she said. And then she was like the good guy captain telling his soldiers what to do. “Eric… can you fix me some tomato juice on the rocks and then sit with me until the next contraction comes. Joan… can you take these two characters over to your place for now? I’ll have Eric call you when we decide what’s what.”

“Okay dear”, Molly’s mom said, “Call me as soon as you know!” Then looking at Molly and me, “Okay you two, move out!”

We followed her across the street to Molly’s house. I could feel things were going to change. At least Molly and I were okay, for now.

I woke up. Dad was wiggling my toe under the blanket on my bed.

“I’m going to drive the car to get fresh dirt for the backyard. You want to come along?”

I nodded. I was excited. This was what he called “an adventure”.

Mom was still sleeping. It was early morning. The light coming in through the windows in my room was different when it was early. It was fresher and softer. I took off my pajamas and put on my clothes. Dad made me a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast. We quickly ate and drank orange juice sitting at the kitchen table.

Outside the air was cool and quiet. The sun was a big orange ball just hanging there over the trees in the park. It was just hanging there over the trees and it was hard not to look at. Dad said not to look too long or it would hurt your eyes. That made the sun seem kind of scary. He put two empty trash cans in the trunk of our car but the top wouldn’t close so he tied it with a rope. He put the grownup shovel on the back seat. It looked kind of like my shovel but much bigger. I got to sit on the other part of the front seat of the car.

We drove down our street away from the park to the big street that dad called “Stadium”. Across the street was a giant “yard” with a really long building on the other side. He called it the “high school”, and he had taken Molly and me on our tricycles to explore it a couple times. After he looked both ways and no cars were coming, something he had taught me to do when I crossed a street, we turned right. I knew it was right because that way was the hand I didn’t throw a ball with. It was a wide street that had a curved part.

Dad stopped the car when we came up to one of those big metal poles with the hanging lights way above us, because the red light was turned on instead of the green one. He saw me looking up at it so he told me how it worked.

“So when you come up to the light in your car, you have to stop if the red light is on, but you can keep going if the green light is on.” So we had to wait, but not very long.

While we waited I was thinking so much about the lights and what you had to do that I asked a question. Dad was good at figuring out what I was thinking and answering my questions without me having to ask. But this time he didn’t, so asking was the only way he would tell me more that I really wanted to know.

“Why do we have to stop?” I asked.

He nodded. “Good question!”

I was glad it was a good question, though sometimes when grownups said that they did not have a good answer.

“It’s a rule we all agree to follow so our cars don’t crash into each other where big streets cross each other. Does that make sense.”

That sort of made sense. I had heard about those “rule” things before. And once we had gone by two cars that had crashed together and it had looked really bad. So I nodded.

When the red light turned off and the green light turned on, dad turned the car onto a different street he said was “Liberty”. This time we turned toward the hand I threw a ball with, so left. We drove under another road that was way up high with a bridge so we could get under it. Now there weren’t any houses, stores and sidewalks, but just trees, bushes and fields. It seemed very different. Dad said we were now “outside of town”. We turned left on another street and then left again onto a bumpy road that made a crunching noise and made dusty clouds around the car. There was a tall building ahead with no windows with a giant slide thing coming down from it.

It was so big and strange looking that I said, “What’s that?”, before even thinking about whether I was going to say that or not.

“That’s the elevator they use to take dirt or gravel way up there so they can dump it into dump trucks down there”, he said pointing at the different parts of the slide and the building. Then the next question was in my mind but he answered it without me asking. “The dump trucks take it to the people who need dirt or gravel for building or landscaping.” It all filled my mind up so much just looking at it that I stopped asking questions and just looked.

There was a man there in a blue shirt and blue pants that were the exact same color and a shiny yellow cap like he was playing baseball. Dad told him we just wanted a couple trash cans full of dirt. I kept staring at the giant building and the slide.

The man nodded and said, “Help yourself”, and pointed at a giant brown pile next to a giant gray pile of tiny rocks.

We got back to our car and dad drove it over to the edge of the giant brown pile. He untied the rope holding the top of the trunk and stood the two trash cans up in the bottom of the trunk so the open parts were on top. They had been shiny silver when we got them but now they were less shiny. Dad got the shovel out of the back seat. He stuck the shovel in the edge of the dirt pile so some dirt stayed on it so he could carry it over, lift it up, and dump it in the top of one of the trash cans. He did that a long time before both trash cans were full of dirt. By the time he was done there were drops of water all over his face, his white t-shirt had wet spots and his cheeks were a little pink. He wiped his face and head off with a white cloth from his pocket and grinned at me.

“Now we have to get it home”, he said, like that would be hard to do.

The top of the trunk could only close a little bit on top of the cans of dirt standing up in the trunk. But the rope was long enough to tie the top to the bottom part. He took a red cloth out of the trunk and tied it to the top part of the rope.

“That should be okay”, he said, ”The cans are so heavy with the dirt that it would take a really big bump to tip one over.” Then he looked at me and his eyes got fierce. “Here we go!”

He put the shovel in the back seat and we both got in the front. He drove the car very slowly by the dirt and stone piles and the crazy building with the slide, all the time there was the crunching noise under the car and dust everywhere. Back out at the regular road we didn’t go the way we came.

“In case you’re wondering Cloob”, he said, “We are going to take the long way home because there are less cars and we have to drive slowly to make sure the trash cans don’t tip over.”

I nodded, feeling worried. I didn’t like it when grownups were around and there was something that they were worried about but I felt there was nothing I could do to help.

We drove slowly down the road. We drove by lots of fields with bushes or trees by the road. It took a really long time, but there was only one other car that drove by. I sat on my knees on the seat so I could look at the trunk in the back part of the car and stuck my head out the window to see the edge of one of the trash cans in the trunk. I could feel the wind on the back of my head. It felt nice and the air smelled good.

When we did hit a bump the whole car bounced up and down.

“Cans still there?” he asked.

I could only see the edge of one, but I figured that if the other had fallen out I would see it behind us in the road. So I pulled my head in the window and nodded, then stuck it out again. I liked being the lookout.

“So we’re on Wagner Road headed south”, he said. “We are looking for Scio Church Road, where we’ll turn left back to Seventh.”

Pulling my head in the window I nodded and then stuck it out again to keep looking at the can.

Finally the car stopped. I turned my head and looked forward. There was another road crossing the one we were on. We turned left and moved slowly forward.

I knew what the dirt was for. Dad had gotten some before but I didn’t come with him. He would put it in a pile just behind the house under the big tree and right by the window that I could see into my room. Then I could play with it and make things like hills, roads and forts, whatever I wanted, and then set up my soldiers there.

I could tell dad was happy. And when he was happy and mom wasn’t around he liked to start singing, which he did now as he drove the car slowly down the road. It was a song he had sung many times, and when he sang it was fun for me to sing with him…

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above
Don’t fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
Don’t fence me in

By this time I had joined in though my head was sticking out of the car window looking back at the trash can…

Let me be by myself in the evening breeze
Listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please
Don’t fence me in

It was funny that we drove by a fence while we were singing about fences. It was silver and looked like the fence around the football stadium where dad would take Molly and me on our tricycles, only not as tall. I remember him saying that when you saw a fence you had to figure out whether it was for keeping you in or keeping you out.

Finally the car stopped again. Then we turned left again and soon came to a stop by a tall pole with lights hanging from it, the red one lit up.

“Almost home”, he said, stopping his singing.

I pulled my head in from the window and said, “Still there.”

“All right!” he said.

The green light came on above us and he crossed the big street. I remembered it was the one we had gone on earlier. Stadium. As I looked down the street we were crossing I could even see the stadium in the distance. A few right turns and we came up to our front yard. He drove the car slowly by our house then stopped. Then he made the car go backward and turn into our driveway all the way back to the corner of the house where my room was. The back of the car was right by where the dirt pile would go.

“Made it”, he said, turning the car off. “Thanks for coming along Cloob, it was quite the adventure!”

I said, “Yep!”, and nodded.

He untied the rope and pushed up the top part of the trunk. He used the shovel to dig some of the dirt out of the top of one of the cans. Then he just pulled on the can until it tipped over and the dirt spilled out. It was interesting how it dumped out like water but not the same, it didn’t go as far. But it did go mostly in the right place. He did the same thing with the other can, then used the shovel to put the dirt now on the ground in just the right places in the area with no grass under the tree.

Mom came out of the side door of the house while dad was shoveling. She still had her big stomach that she said had my brother or sister in it, but that made no sense to me. She walked different now like it was harder. She looked carefully at all the things dad was doing and the places he was putting the dirt.

“Fresh dirt”, she said, “Good work guys!”

I looked at the dirt carefully too, and saw hills with forts on them, guarded by soldiers but about to be attacked by pirates. All the area with bare ground where the dirt was could be an island. All the area around it with grass would be the sea where the pirates would come from. My mind was getting excited thinking up all the stories there could be.

“Well Cloob”, mom said, “It’s all yours! I’ve got to do the wash.”

Dad pushed his lips together and nodded. “And I’ve got to work on my thesis”, he said.

Mom and dad went inside the house and left me outside with the dirt. I wondered if the sun was still orange, and I walked around the house to where I had seen it before hanging above the trees over in the park. It was still there, but higher above the trees, and now more white than orange. When I stood where I could see it, my body felt warm. When I moved back to where I could not see it I did not feel the warmth anymore. This morning it had looked like a ball just hanging in the sky. Now it seemed like just a flat circle and so bright it made my eyes hurt. I remembered that dad had told me not to look at it too much. But how could you not look at it when it was the only thing in the sky. I could lie on my back and look at clouds in the sky for a long time. But today the only thing to look at in the sky was the sun, but you weren’t supposed to, so I went back to the backyard.

I liked our backyard. It had different parts that were interesting and fun in different ways. It started with a very big tree just behind the window to my bedroom that mom called a “maple”. She liked to tell me the names of all the plants and what they did that was different in the summer than the winter. It went up higher than the roof of our house and the dirt was piled underneath it just outside the window to my room. It had shiny green leaves now because it was summer. They had come out tiny before in the spring, but were much bigger now. She said they would turn orange, yellow and brown and fall off before the winter came. I couldn’t imagine that happening, but I did remember winter with the snow on the ground and this tree with no leaves and just dark branches reaching up towards the sky.

On the other side of the maple tree was grass going back to the back of the backyard. It was fun to run on and when you fell down on it it was soft and did not scrape your hands, elbows or knees much, just made them green. It smelled good too, especially when dad cut it with the mower. On either side of that grass there were two trees that looked very different than the big tree that mom called “spruces”. She said they had dark green “needles” instead of bright green leaves and were “evergreens”, because those needles did not all fall off in the winter. Though their middle part went straight up like the maple, they had a lot more branches, branches really close to the ground so I could hide inside all those branches like in the lilac bushes across the street in the park. All the branches of the maple tree were way up above my head, and when you looked up you could see parts of the sky between the leaves. On the other side of each of the spruces were the backyards of the people that lived next to us.

Farther back over the grass beyond the spruce trees was a garden that mom made with dirt and seeds. She was growing plants that grew up like tiny trees and were getting round green balls on the branches that mom said were “tomatoes”. She had shown me how they started out as tiny flowers. Then the flowers fell off and they turned into tiny little green balls that got bigger each day we looked at them. Now the balls were bigger and starting to turn red. She said once they got really red you could pick them and eat them. A different plant grew along the ground around the little tomato trees. It had tiny flowers too that turned into tiny little green hotdog shaped things with prickles on them that kept getting bigger. She said they were cucumbers and when they got big enough you could pick them and eat them too. I didn’t think so, but she seemed to be pretty sure.

I went inside the side door of our house and walked down the stairs into the basement. Dad was over in his office corner reading a book and writing things on white cards. I could tell he saw me but he didn’t say anything. I went over to my corner where my toys were on the shelf and found the box with all my soldiers in it, the green good guy American soldiers and the gray bad guy German ones. Looking at the gray soldiers, I started thinking that when making stories, sometimes the bad guys did more interesting things than the good guys. They caused trouble that made the story interesting. That’s what happened in Treasure Island.

I took the box of soldiers outside by the pile of new dirt. I took out all the green soldiers and put them in a long line with the captain in front. They were coming to the dirt island to build a fort before the bad guy pirates came. All the grass around the dirt island was the sea where the pirates were. I decided that instead of turning all the dirt into a fort and then putting the soldiers into it, I would have each group of soldiers go to one part of the dirt island and start working on it to turn it into part of the fort.

So the captain climbed to the top of the dirt island and started to tell his other soldiers where to go and what to build. Some had to make walls and others made towers. Still others had to build places where all the soldiers could sleep when it was nighttime. I piled and pressed the dirt into the different parts of the fort. For the sleeping places I first tried making big mounds of dirt that I would dig out the inside of like a cave. But as I tried to dig it out just a little more the top parts of those places kept falling down.

Having this happen several times, I started thinking really hard about some other way to make the top part so it didn’t fall down. I thought about the box my soldiers were in. When it had shoes in it it had a top part that was now on the bottom of the box instead. I didn’t keep it on top of the box, because then I couldn’t see what was in the box if the top was on. So I used it as the top part of my sleeping place for the soldiers, and it turned out that it was strong enough to let me make the sleeping place bigger so more soldiers could sleep there.

After the good guy soldiers had worked for a long time mom came out and said it was time for lunch. She looked at everything that had been built in the dirt, now full of soldiers watching out for pirates while others were sleeping.

“Cloob, you really put in a lot of work on this!” she said. Her words made me feel shy. I didn’t like grownups saying things about what I was doing, even if they liked it. So I just nodded and said nothing, and tried to wipe the dirt off my hands.

“Please take your shoes off in the landing when you come inside”, she said, “And wash your hands before you eat!”

She had made “grilled” cheese sandwiches in the oven. The bread was brown, warm and crunchy and tasted like butter. The cheese was warm and soft, and it all felt good in my mouth as I chewed it.

Click to read the next chapter

When I woke up this morning I could see out my window that it was raining again. I liked it when it rained. It made the house feel more like a fort where you were safe and “cozy”. That was the word mom said. I liked being cozy inside when there was lots of weather outside. The bad part about when it rained was that I couldn’t ride my tricycle outside.

I did go for a walk with dad with our raincoats on. That was fun, but Molly couldn’t go because she wasn’t home. Everything was different outside when it rained. The weather was in charge instead of the people. It was washing everything off.

Dad would stick his tongue out to “taste the rain” and he got little drops of water on his glasses. I would taste it too. It was tastier and softer than the water that came out of the sink or the tub inside the house. The water made all the plants really green and shiny, and the grass too. Mom said that the grass was thousands of little plants all growing next to each other forming a “lawn” we could walk on. I had looked closely and seen this for myself. But when there was too much rain some grass got all squishy with mud. The flowers were all blooming because it was warm enough for them, like those special “bulbs” that mom had planted last fall. Not light bulbs but plant bulbs. They had all just grown up with very big red or yellow flowers. Also the lilac bushes across the street in the park had little purple flowers and smelled really sweet.

But now I was down in the basement playing. The rain still tapped on the small basement windows above me. Dad was over in his office working, but he was also listening to baseball on the radio. He said there was an “announcer” who was watching the game from a special “booth” and talking into a “microphone” that you could hear even far away with your radio. He said it was like when I talked to my grandparents on the telephone, they were far away too. He said today the announcer, his name was Van Patrick, was at the stadium of the New York team which was the Yankees. “Our” team, the “Tigers”, was playing against them and was ahead, “two to nothing”.

I knew what it meant to be “ahead”. Mom, who really liked numbers as much as dad liked words, had told me that “nothing” was another way of saying the number “zero”. “Zero” did not quite make sense to me because I used numbers for counting and I had never counted zero. She said that zero was how many of something you had if there was nothing to count. It seemed dumb to me, but she said in “mathematics”, the “study of numbers”, it was very important. Just as important as the word “nothing” was in “English”, the “study of words”.

Both mom and dad had explained to me that in sports, like baseball or football, you tried to score points. They called those points “runs” in baseball, because you had to run around all the “bases” to get one. I had seen kids and grownups play baseball in the park so I kind of knew how it all worked. The guy they called the “pitcher” was in the middle and he would throw the ball at the “batter” who would try to hit it with his bat. If he hit it in the right place then he would run around the bases, but sometimes he got “out” and had to go back to the “bench” and sit down and wait his turn to try again later.

You won a baseball game or a football game, she said, by having more points than the other team at the end of the game. That made sense. If you had two points and the other team had one at the end of the game, you won, because two was more than one. So the Tigers were ahead two runs to zero runs. They had more than the Yankees but the game was not over yet, so they were only ahead, but you still didn’t know if they would win, because the Yankees could still score more runs before the end of the game.

“Our team?” I asked just repeating dad’s words.

“Yeah Cloob”, he said with a serious face like this was important, “Our team is the Tigers, because they’re the Detroit team, and Detroit is the big city with a baseball team that’s closest to us”.

He could see I was not sure about that, I was “dubious” he would say.

He continued, “If we lived in New York, ‘our’ team might be the Yankees, because that would be the closest team to where we lived”.

He grabbed his cheeks with his hand and kind of rubbed them, which was something he did sometimes when he was thinking.

“Of course, I lived in New York but I hated the Yankees”, he said.

That got me really interested because he didn’t usually talk about things he liked or did not like, you just had to figure that out watching him if you could figure it out at all. Were the Yankees like the Germans during World War Two, or like the Soviet Union now? It didn’t seem like the same thing.

He could tell I was unsure. He was really good at figuring out what I was thinking because I hadn’t talked much before my third birthday.

“I always thought the Yankees were full of themselves”, he said, “Too big for their britches.” I could see in his eyes him thinking about what he had just said, then he started to chuckle. “I bet those two sentences make no sense to you at all!”

I shook my head. He laughed and his eyes sparkled. I always liked seeing that because that meant he was happy.

“The Yankees are bullies who always think they are the best”, he said.

As he said that I heard footsteps coming down the stairs slowly. It was mom. Her stomach was sticking way out because she was “pregnant”. She had told me about it a lot of times that I was going to have a brother or a sister soon, though it did not make a lot of sense to me. She slowly sat down on the bottom stairs.

“The Yankees ARE the best”, she said with a big smile on her face. “Your grandparents and I used to listen to the games on the radio when I was a kid. They are still MY team!”

Now this was all getting very interesting. Dad had lived in New York which was close to the Yankees but he didn’t like them, and now he liked the Tigers because he lived here in Michigan and now they were the closest team. Mom came here too from New York and she liked the Yankees. Now she lived here but she still liked the Yankees.

“What’s the score?”, she asked.

“Two nothing Detroit, top of the third”, dad said.

“Who’s pitching for the Yankees?” she asked.

“Whitey Ford”, he said

“He’s the Yankees best pitcher, right?”. She said that to dad but then glanced at me and raised her eyebrows like some signal that she and I had a secret that dad didn’t know.

Dad nodded.

“Eric… I’ll bet you a buck the Yankees win”. She smiled and then looked at me to explain. “I’m so sure that the Yankees are the best that I’ll bet even though they’re behind! That’s how good they are.”

Dad chuckled, looked at mom, and gave her a fierce kind of smile. “Liz, you’re on!”

The voice on the radio wasn’t talking about the game anymore, but about “buying” a new car at “Roy O’Brien’s at Nine Mile and Mack”, wherever that was. Dad went back to his work. He was reading these blue “booklets” with white paper inside them and using a red pencil to “grade” them. He had told me before that meant to give a student a “score”, but a letter like A, B or C, rather than a number, for how good their writing was. But then he would also write down what they could do to make their writing better next time.

Mom, still sitting on the bottom stairs, looked around like she wanted to do something.

“Hey Cloob”, she said. She was calling me that name that dad liked to call me rather than “Zuper” now. “Throw me a wiffle ball, one of the big ones.”

I went to the shelves where all my toys were and took a big white plastic ball with holes in it out of a wood box. I threw it to her and she caught it.

“Wow… good arm lefty!” she said.

She held the ball in front of her and waved it at me. “Try to catch it?”

Standing there on the basement floor, I nodded and put my hands in front of me. She threw the ball to me and I tried to grab it out of the air but it bounced off my hands.

“Nice try”, she said “You got your hands on it!”

I ran over to the ball and took it in my hand again. She held her hands up in front of her, fingers spread, and I knew she wanted me to throw it back to her, which I did. She caught it.

“Okay”, she said, holding the ball right down on the floor, “Ground ball this time”. She rolled the ball towards me. I bent over and grabbed it when it got close. That was easy. I threw it back to her.

“He’s out!” she said, making a fist with her thumb out and raising it in the air. I smiled.

“One hopper”, she said, and threw the ball and though I reached out it bounced in front of me, and as i pulled my hands back the ball hit my thumbs but bounced toward me. I pulled my hands back towards my body and managed to hold the ball between my arms and my chest.

“All right! Now throw him out at first”, she said, holding out her hands. I threw her back the ball and she caught it. “He’s out!” She did the fist and thumb again. I could see dad was smiling though he still was reading and writing in the blue books.

“Eric”, she said, “You remember the first time we met?”

Dad made a big smile and he looked up in the air thinking.

“I remember it was the semis of the IBM tournament in ‘43” he said, “I was covering your upset win over what’s her name.”

“Betty Wilson”, mom said.

“She didn’t know what hit her until you went up a break in the second set”, he said.

Mom could see that I was not understanding what they were talking about. She looked at me and I could see in her eyes she was remembering.

“Your dad worked for the newspaper and he wrote about the IBM tennis championship I was playing in”, she said

I wasn’t quite sure what that all meant. I knew what a newspaper was and what playing tennis was, and though not sure what a “championship” was, I had an idea that “champion” was something good. “IBM” was something mom talked about a lot when she talked about “New York”.

Dad turned from reading the blue book to look at me and then mom. “Your mom was quite the tennis player. She won several local tournaments.”

“Was!” mom said, looking deep into my eyes, and I could see some sadness in hers. “I don’t get to play much anymore.”

“Well, Liz”, dad said it like she was wrong, “We got out there and played until we found out you were pregnant.”

Mom squeezed her lips together like she did when she was mad. “It wasn’t the same Eric. I’m talking about real competitive tennis, not just a casual game.”

Dad seemed to maybe be mad now too, but you couldn’t hear it in his voice. “I gave you a run for your money sometimes!”

Mom puffed out her cheeks and then blew air out of her mostly closed lips. “It’s not the same Eric. You’re a man. You’re bigger and you can hit harder.”

Mom gave a fierce look in his direction, but then got quiet and thinking and her head turned to look at me.

“My point was that your father and I both love sports, and here we have you, our son, who seems to enjoy them as well, and we enjoy sharing all that with you.” Her eyes twinkled and she smiled at me. Grownups seemed more like me when they talked about their feelings. Mom did that much more than dad.

The voice on the radio got louder and more excited.

“Who hit a double for the Yankees?”, mom asked, she was excited too.

“Whitey Ford”, dad said, “But I think Kuenn misplayed it in center!”

“Hey, a double is a double”, she said, flashing more twinkly eyes at me, “How about that! Whitey Ford is a good pitcher and he can hit too! That’s unusual. Right Eric?”

Dad nodded and chuckled.

“Who’s up next?” she asked.

“Bauer”, he said, “The leadoff hitter”.

“All right”, she said, “Another base hit will drive in the run. Go Yankees!”

They both listened to the guy talking on the radio. I noticed the voice rising when he said “the pitch”, and then falling to say either “ball” or “strike” and then some other stuff. Then his voice rose for “the pitch” but then rose higher for “base hit to right”, followed by “Ford rounds third”.

“Yeah!” mom called out, making another kind of thing with her fist, different from the “he’s out” one she made with her thumb sticking up. Dad shook his head, but said nothing, still looking at an open blue booklet. She looked at me. “Those are my Yankees Cloob, they keep coming. They’ve got talent and they never give up. That’s what makes them the best!” She had a look on her face like it really was not so serious, but just fun. “At least in my opinion!”

She wagged her finger at dad. “Better have that dollar ready Eric!”

Dad chuckled. “Yeah I got it Liz, but we’ll see!”

Mom seemed to have even more energy now.

“How about you, lefty”, she said, groaning as she stood up, “You want to take a few swings?”

I looked at her and I wasn’t sure what to say. When one of them took me to the park it was always boys or men playing baseball, never girls or women. Dad had thrown the ball to me a few times so I could try to hit it. I always got nervous playing with grownups, but I really liked trying to hit the ball, so I would do it. But mom was a woman. Was she supposed to do stuff like this?

“You know”, she said, seeing that I was unsure and then looking at me more carefully, “Before I taught myself to play tennis I played baseball with the boys in the neighborhood. When they picked teams I was the only girl who wanted to play, but I was such a good player I always got picked first!” Her eyes lit up and her face was filled with a big smile.

Mom liked to say stuff like that, about how good she was. Dad never said anything like that. I had watched him play baseball and tennis, and he always tried really really hard to be good and win, but he never talked about it. I had never seen mom play baseball, and I could barely remember her playing tennis.

I looked at dad to see if he was okay with all this. Again, I felt strange playing with them. I had gotten used to playing in the basement when one of them was down here working at their own stuff while I played. This was different, they were both looking at me. But baseball was not something you could do by yourself. You did it with other people.

Dad looked in our direction and smiled. “Cloob’s got a nice swing. You’ll see!”

That changed things, I thought. Now it would be bad not to do it. I grabbed the plastic bat and stood like dad had shown me and like the guys did in the park. Not facing the person that was pitching but facing to the side, but turning my head to see them throw the ball towards me. I felt I had to do everything the right way because they were both watching. I was nervous.

My mind was still thinking about mom saying she was good at baseball, when she threw the ball towards me. Still thinking, I swung at it and missed. The ball bounced off the shelves behind me and rolled back towards her.

“Good swing”, she said, reaching down to grab the ball and groaning some more.

From his office chair across the basement dad said, “Keep your eye on the ball Cloob!”

She tossed it towards me again and I swung. This time I just barely hit the ball and it went up, and bounced off the top part of the basement and then back down and off my arm and rolled into the corner

“You okay?” she asked, though not looking too worried. It was just a wiffle ball, not a real baseball. Those real ones were really hard.

I nodded. I got the ball and threw it back to her. Dad had gone back to his work. I got ready again to swing and looked at her. I could tell she could see that I was nervous and thinking too much.

“When I’m about to hit a tennis ball that’s coming towards me”, she said, “I look to try to see the seams on the ball.” She looked down at the wiffle ball in her hand. “If I were trying to hit a wiffle ball, I guess I’d look at the holes.”

That didn’t make sense to me, but when she threw the ball toward me I saw the holes spinning. I swung at it and there was a thud. The ball flew across the basement and hit the side of the furnace and made a loud clang before bouncing once on the floor and then off the wall on the other side of the basement. When he heard the noise dad looked up from his work and smiled.

“There we go”, mom said to me, then glancing at dad, “Base hit to right! The kid’s a natural, Eric.” Dad nodded and grinned. They both seemed happy.

I could see her start to get down on one knee, but she groaned a little and stopped, looked at me and said, “Do your ole mom a favor and get me the ball!”

I ran and got it and handed it to her.

“How are my Yankees doing?” she asked dad.

“They’re out of the third with just the one run. Two one Tigers.” Then with more feeling in his voice. “That dollar’s got a dozen donuts written all over it!” Dad loved donuts more than anything.

“Okay”, mom looked at me, waving the ball in front of her, “Cloob one’s on first, Cloob two’s up, another lefty folks.”

Mom continued to throw the ball to me, and a couple more swings and I hit it again, this time bouncing along the floor and onto the rug in dad’s corner of the basement.

“Cloob two gets a base hit to center”, she said, “Cloob one rounds second and”, she paused and winked at me, “he’s headed to third!”

Dad went and got the ball this time and tossed it to mom.

“First and third, no outs”, she called out, “Cloob three comes to the plate. Yet another lefty, ladies and gentlemen!” I could see dad chuckle as he continued to read a bluebook.

Liking mom’s pretending, dad turned round in his wood chair to face us. They were both now looking at me.

I swung at and missed three times in a row.

“Ooo”, she said, “Out swinging but he had his cuts ladies and gentlemen!” Then with the ball in her hand again, “But only one out folks!”

I swung and missed one more time before hitting one hard right at mom.
She stuck her hand out and caught it. She didn’t even use the other hand at all. Wow, I thought. She really COULD do this baseball stuff.

“That’s Jane Zale on the mound”, she said, “Snagging that sizzling linedrive from Cloob four.”

“Two outs”, she said, “It’s all up to Cloob five, yet another lefty, ladies and gentleman.” She threw the ball to me. I had to reach out with my bat but I hit the ball hard toward dad. Still sitting in his chair he reached out and caught it.

“Ohh”, mom said, making a pretend sad face, “Great catch by that center fielder for the Tigers, the kid from Pennsylvania.”

“Hey Liz”, dad said, “I’m just a fan sitting in the bleachers with a souvenir to give to my son. That’s a dinger!”

“A dinger?” mom asked.

“A home run”, he responded.

“The fans go wild!” mom called out, then in different voices, “Yay, wow, whoopee”. Then continuing, “Cloob five waves to the fans as he trots ‘round the bases”.

The Tigers ended up scoring eight more runs by the end of the game and the final score was ten to one. Mom had gone up to the kitchen to make lunch. When I ran upstairs and told her the score she said, “You win some and you lose some!”

Dad went out later in the day and came home with a dozen donuts from this place called “Quality Bakery”. He liked the plain ones, but he also bought some with chocolate “icing” on top for mom, and vanilla on top with sprinkles for me.

At bedtime, he came into my room as he always did and sat in the rocking chair. He carefully set the Tom Sawyer book on his lap like it was very special. The book was closed but a piece of paper stuck out from between the pages. He picked up the book with one hand and with two fingers of the other hand touched the top of the pages all pressed together between the closed covers. His two fingers touched the piece of paper coming out of the top of the book and he opened it.

“Okay Cloob”, he said, “Chapter 31. You ready?”

I didn’t say “yes”, just nodded without using any words. I had only really been talking since my birthday, so it still felt regular just to nod. I was more than ready. This is one of the things I liked best each day.

Tom and Becky were lost in the cave and lit candles, one at a time, to see in the dark. Becky got scared and started to cry. Tom tried to make her feel better. When I saw the story in my mind I was Tom and Becky was Molly. I remembered when Molly fell off the merry-go-round and cried, but not because she was hurt, but because she was scared. I didn’t try to make Molly feel better, but the grownups did. Grownups felt they had to make kids feel better, and make sure they were okay. But also grownup men felt that they had to keep grownup women safe and make them feel better too. Tom and Becky were pretending to be grownups I guess.

Then both Tom and Becky were scared by all the “bats” flying in the cave. Not “bats” like baseball bats, but flying animals that were pretty scary. Dad had shown me a bat in the sky the other day when it was starting to get dark. He had got a pinecone on the ground and thrown it up in the air at the bat. The bat then changed which way it was flying and followed the pinecone straight down almost to the ground. It was exciting and scary too. Dad said it was not a bird but more like a mouse, a mouse with wings. It felt like a thing that was “wild”, a thing of the dark, and not what we people were, we were people of the light. So one bat was scary enough, I figured what a hundred bats would be like. All that being wild.

Finally the last candle that Tom and Becky had was gone and it was all dark. I liked how Tom was smart to give Becky one end of the string and take the other end himself when he explored the cave, so he could use it to go back and find her in the dark. And then he saw a person with a candle and thought the grownups had found them but it was Injun Joe instead. Injun Joe was a grownup, but a lot of the other grownups thought he was a badguy. Like that pirate guy Long John Silver in Treasure Island, though Long John Silver was sometimes nice, at least to Jim, because Jim was a kid.

When he finished reading, dad said there were just a few more chapters to read and he seemed maybe a little sad, though he would never say so. I wondered if men pretended not to be sad so they could help women when they were sad.

When he stopped reading the story, it was time to sing. I loved it when dad sang because it was easier to tell how he was feeling. Now I was trying to sing with him because it made both of us feel better when I did. Along with singing some of the usual songs, he added a new one about baseball…

Take me out to the ball game
Take me out with the crowd
Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks
I don’t care if I never get back
Let me root, root, root for the home team
If they don’t win it’s a shame
For it’s one, two, three strikes you’re out
At the old ball game

That was the last song. Now it was time to say goodnight, and he always did the same thing. He got up from the chair, and came over to the foot of my bed. He felt around in my covers to find one of my big toes and wiggled it, saying, “Sweet dreams kiddo!” That was a different funny name he only called me at bedtime, I didn’t know why.

After he left I waited for mom to come in.

She looked at me with her big warm eyes and shook her head and frowned. “Cloob, you don’t know how much I wish I could carry a tune like your dad. Life is not fair!”

She did what she almost always did and kissed me on the cheek.

“Night night my sweet little slugger!”

“Night night mom.” I wondered if “slugger” was another one of those funny “nicknames” they kept coming up with for me.

Back from our tricycle adventure, Dad, Molly’s mom, Molly and I went in the front door of Molly’s house. I loved the inside of her house. It had lots of furniture unlike mine. But what I really liked the most was that it had many more different places to go than mine, and every room was up or down from the other rooms, with stairs everywhere. Where our house was simple, Molly’s was “complicated”, a word I heard mom and dad use. Her house was like the pirate ship in the Treasure Island book dad had read me. The book had pictures of the top part and inside the ship.

Just inside the front door of Molly’s house was the first choice. You had to decide whether to go straight and up the stairs, or go right into the living room. I could remember right from left because mom had told me to pretend I was throwing a ball, that was left, and the other side was right. Unlike our living room which was pretty empty, Molly’s had this big thing called a “couch”, which was like a giant chair for more than one person. It was soft and puffy, and great for climbing on, sitting on, and playing around on. There were also two big chairs across from it that were soft and puffy like the couch. Then there was a fence in the middle of the living room on the edge of this top part of the room that kept you from falling into the bottom part of the room. You had to walk down six stairs from the top part to get to that bottom part, which had a big shiny wood table and shiny wood chairs around it where you ate food and did other stuff. Or you could look down into it from the fence. It was like the back part of the ship in Treasure Island.

Then once you went down to the bottom part you could go through a doorway into the kitchen. Like in our house, from the kitchen you could go down a couple steps and go one way out the door into the backyard, or the other way down more steps into the basement. But it wasn’t like our basement, it had a rug all over the floor and shiny wood on the walls and another couch with that television thing across from it. There was another door in the basement to the room with the washing machine and other stuff for cleaning clothes.

Back at the front door, if you didn’t go into the living room, you could go up the stairs and around a corner to a hallway with a door to the left to Molly’s mom and dad’s bedroom. The door to that room was always closed and I had never been inside it. Farther down the hallway on the left was the bathroom. It had a tub like mine, but also a thing that sprayed water from way up above into the tub. Molly called it a “shower”. She said you took your clothes off and stood in the tub, and then the water fell down on you like rain.

At the end of the hallway, across from the bathroom were even more stairs that went up to a small door. It was the door to Molly’s room, which was in the top part of the house just under the roof. Molly said it was an “attic”, but it wasn’t like the attic in my house. You could walk on the floor and it wasn’t all dark.

I liked all the parts of Molly’s house, but her bedroom was the best part. I felt like I was in some secret fort above the rest of the world, or inside a pirate ship. The room was really long and had a top part that was slanted like a roof. There were three windows along one side looking down on Molly’s front yard, our street, and my house across it. The windows were strange because they were closer to the floor than the windows in our house, so you could sit on the floor and still look down from them. Across from the windows were shelves in the wall filled with books and toys. Molly’s bed, with wood posts sticking up, was at the end of the room away from the door. There were also two big soft puffy chairs like the couch and chairs in her living room. They were great for pretending, either fun to sit in, or fun to hide behind so we couldn’t see each other.

So the four of us went into the house and followed Molly’s mom into the living room. She told the rest of us to “make yourselves comfortable”, which seemed to me a strange thing to be told to make, but that was grownups for you. Molly took off her shoes and jumped on the couch, so I took mine off as well and did the same. She lay her head on one side part, like it was a pillow, and stretched out her body along the couch and wiggled her feet. Her eyes told me to do the same, so I did on the other side, my feet going towards her and past her feet in the middle. Dad grinned seeing the two of us and sat in one of the big chairs across from the couch. Molly’s mom called them “easy” chairs, I guess because of how soft they were.

Molly’s mom came up the stairs from down below in the kitchen with a flat thing with four big cups that had strange patterns on them and steam coming out the top. She set the thing on the tiny table between the couch and the two chairs, and said the cocoa was still very hot and we had to wait before it was cool enough to drink. She sat down in the other “easy” chair and looked at the two of us lying on either side of the couch.

“Look at these two Eric”, she said laughing a little, “They look like they own the place.”

“Well Joan”, dad replied, squeezing his face with his hand as he thought, “They certainly own the future. We just need to make sure there’s a future for them to own.”

“I agree with you there”, she said, “And I have hopes that Khrushchev will be very different than Stalin, and we can end this insane nuclear arms race.”

“I wouldn’t hold your breath.” I wondered what he meant. It didn’t make any sense to me why Molly’s mom would want to hold her breath.

But it looked like it made sense to Molly’s mom, who pressed her lips together and said nothing. She looked at Molly and me and her face was serious and I could tell she was thinking about us and what to say next. I knew dad did not like that “Khrushchev” guy, but mom and Molly’s mom both were hoping he would do something good.

Sadness flashed in her eyes, but then they looked at the tray of cocoa on the table between the four of us.

“I think the cocoa is good now”, she said. She took a cup off the tray and put it by the corner of the table closest to me, then one by Molly, one by dad, and finally took the fourth in her hands, smelling it carefully.

“Here’s to the future!” she said, holding her cup up, though she didn’t look or sound sure about what she was saying as she took a sip.

“To the future!” dad repeated, picking up his cup and holding it the same way in the air before taking a sip himself. He seemed more sure when he said it.

Molly slid her body off the couch and flopped onto the soft rug that covered the floor, folding her legs together under the little table which came up to her chest. I did the same. She sipped her cocoa and said “mmm”. I sipped mine quietly, uncomfortable with the energy between the two grownups across from us.

I could see Molly’s mom relax again as she drank her cocoa and even smiled and looked at dad.

“So Eric, when will you be able to start on your dissertation?” she asked.

All the other grownups that were dad’s friends were always asking him about his “dissertation”. It was something he had to write, or make on the typewriter. All the other grownups thought that things would be so much better once he did it.

Dad looked up in the air, thinking. He took a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and blew air out between his almost closed lips. I could tell he was thinking though he didn’t say anything yet.

“I hope to get started pretty soon”, he said, “But everything seems to take longer than I’d like.”

Molly’s mom nodded her head and put on a big smile. “Well, you got to keep at it, I guess.”

Dad nodded. He did not talk about how he felt about things.

“I’m jealous, Eric” she said, “I wish I could go for my PhD, but when is there time?”

Dad nodded again but didn’t answer her question. Usually dad liked to have answers to questions about how to do things, but not this time. I wondered why not.

Molly and I watched the two of them talk to each other about it while drinking our warm sweet cocoa. We both finished quickly, and I felt new energy in my body. I could tell that Molly did too because her knees were bouncing under the table.

She looked at me. “Coob, you want to come up to my room and play?”

I nodded, and Molly stood up.

Molly’s mom wrinkled her nose. “Molly, when we are with company we always ask to be excused!”

Molly, already standing up, said, “Excuse me!”

Molly’s mom chuckled then told her how she should say it. “Say, ‘May I be excused’.”

“May I be excused” Molly said. I could tell she was just saying the words because her mom told her to.

“Yes of course”, Molly’s mom said. She turned to dad. “Eric, you are welcome to stay for a while. I could use some adult company.”

Dad nodded and grinned.

Molly ran to the stairs by the front door and then ran up them, just like I liked to do. I followed her up. I could hear Molly’s mom behind me, laughing a little and quietly talking to dad.

“Molly is such a tomboy”, I heard her say, “I’m glad she has Jonathan as a friend. He appreciates her for who she is. He doesn’t expect her to behave like a regular girl.”

“Molly is SUCH a bright kid.” I could just hear dad say that to her as I followed Molly down the upstairs hallway to the last stairs up to her bedroom door. Mom and dad were always talking about kids who were “bright”.

I followed Molly up into her room and she closed the door. The room was full of soft light from the outside coming in the windows. Drops of rain tapped on the windows and I could hear the wind blowing outside. I liked being inside during a storm, and Molly’s room was the best inside place to be, because it was so high up.

I sat down on the floor by the first of the three windows and looked down at the street and my house getting wet on the other side. My house looked so different from up here. Small and lonely. Molly sat next to me and looked out too, pressing her nose against the glass. I had an idea on what to pretend.

“Let’s pretend we’re in a fort guarding the bay”, I said, “If a car comes we have to shoot at it before it shoots at us.”

“Okay”, she said.

I looked out at the streets I could see in the distance on the edges of the park. There were no cars.

“All clear”, I said. I had heard older boys say that in the park when they were playing that they were soldiers looking for badguys.

“All clear”, she repeated.

Finally a car did appear on the street on the edge of the park over by the trees where the swings were.

“Uh oh”, Molly said. Not excited, but steady like we were soldiers.

“I see it”, I said, “Aim the cannon and get ready to shoot.”

Her hands moved a pretend cannon to point at the car far off in the distance but headed towards us. The car did not turn onto the street that would have taken it along the edge of the park by our street, and instead disappeared behind houses.

“Whew, we’re safe”, I said, “Close call. But stay ready.”

“Staying ready.” Molly’s voice was as steady as she could make it.

We waited but we were still ready.

A car zoomed by on the street along the edge of the park.

“Oh my god”, she said, “We got to fire before it gets away!”

Molly made a cannon shooting noise with her mouth.

“You hit it!” I said, “Good shot!”

Molly nodded with her soldier face, not happy or mad or sad, just ready. The car didn’t turn on our street but continued out of sight.

“We can’t let any cars come down our street or they’ll get us!” I said.

She nodded, still with her soldier face.

Another car came down the street across the park.

“Ready to fire”, she said, her voice was cold and steady.

“Fire!” I said.

Molly made another cannon noise. “Got it!” she said.

This time the car did not disappear behind the houses, but turned on the street next to ours, still heading towards us.

“Oh no! Get ready to shoot again!” My voice was excited. My pretend captain wasn’t cold and steady like Molly’s cannon shooter.

“Getting ready”, she said, her hands moving fast. The car came up to our street.

“Fire! I said.

Molly made a third connon noise. The car turned on our street and drove between Molly’s house and mine.

“Oh no!” she said, “They’re firing!”

She made a big explosion noise and threw herself backward from where she was sitting to the floor behind her. I did the same.

“We’re wounded”, she said, “But we have to keep shooting!”

The pretend game continued with each car that we saw. With each wound we got we needed even more courage to keep shooting our cannon. We even tried to fix each other’s wounds, but it was never enough. Finally the end came.

“I can’t… do it anymore… sorry captain!” She closed her eyes and let her head fall to the side and she was dead.

“You tried your best!” I said, like I was so wounded I could barely talk anymore, and I closed my eyes and I was dead too, lying right next to her. Though I was dead I could still smell her hair, which smelled like plants. We lay there next to each other, dead. No one else knew what we had tried to do to stop the badguys, but we were still heroes.

Molly finally got up, and sat in one of the big puffy chairs.

“Let’s pretend we’re grownups!” she said. I got up and sat in the chair across from her.

“Okay”, I nodded. We hadn’t pretended that before, and she could tell in my eyes that I wasn’t sure how to do that, even though I had done a lot of watching and listening to mom and dad, her mom and dad, and other grownups.

She kind of held her shoulders stiff and pushed her lips together like she was sucking on a straw.

“I must tell you Coob”, she said, putting her chin on her open hand and looking into my eyes, “That was such a storm at the stadium! Don’t you think so?”

I just nodded, still trying to figure out what I could do to act like a grownup.

Molly looked at me like I wasn’t trying hard enough. I didn’t want her to think that about me.

“Oh my god, yes it was!” I said, rolling my head around, “All those lightnings!”

“Oh yes”, she said, nodding slowly more like a grownup would, and then in a different deeper voice like my dad or hers, “Scared crap out of me!”

Seeing the look in her eyes and remembering her scream, I got pulled into the pretend.

“Oh Molly!” I tried to put a lot of feelings in it, like I remembered mom saying to dad when he told her about something bad that had happened to him.

I could see Molly was also pulled into this part of the pretending. “Oh Coob! Oh Coob!” She said it a little different, like she wanted something that she couldn’t get.

“Oh Molly! Oh Molly!” I said it like I had heard mom and dad say it to each other in their bedroom one night when I couldn’t sleep. I looked at her eyes and she looked back at mine.

As I kept looking deeper into her eyes, I could see she was doing the same to me. As we kept our eyes that way for a long time, the room around her began to turn fuzzy and gray like it wasn’t really there anymore. There were only her eyes. I remembered being on the merry-go-round with her when something like this happened before. She put her thumb between her teeth and I could tell she had to say something.

“Did you see that too?” she asked, “The room went away.”

I nodded. “I didn’t see it anymore. Just your eyes.”

“I know”, she said, “Let’s do it again, even harder!”

I wasn’t sure how I could look at her harder, but I nodded and figured I would try to do whatever she was doing.

Her eyes met mine with a fierce look this time, like I had seen in some dogs’ eyes when they growled at me, or in a picture of a real tiger in one of dad’s books. She was so fierce it was almost scary, but I knew it was her behind the look, so I wasn’t really scared. My eyes still looking at hers, I tried to look back in a fierce way myself. I tried to pretend I was really angry. I could see her see my angry look and she tried to look angry back at me.

It looked like she was trying so hard to look angry, she really was looking more silly, and I couldn’t stop myself from starting to laugh a little. My laugh made her laugh, really hard, so much so that she let her body roll off the side of the chair onto the floor as she did. Falling off the chair made her laugh harder. I loved the way she liked to throw her body around, and the joy in her laugh as she lay there on the floor, arms and legs spread.

I tried to do something silly. I put my hands on either side of my face, looked up, and slowly shook my head back and forth, like I’d seen dad do when he was looking at the typewriter with a piece of paper in it but not knowing what to type. It worked. Molly laughed at my funny face and that made me feel good like a clown. I let my own body tumble off the side of my chair like she had done. Even when we both stopped laughing we continued to lay there on the floor. Neither of us said anything. There didn’t need to be anything that was next. It felt good just being there together, in Molly’s secret attic pirate fort, above the world of the grownups, where they usually looked down at us.

I woke up knowing today was my third birthday. My whole body shivered with excitement. I heard mom and dad in the kitchen talking about my birthday party. Rather than go into the kitchen so they knew I was listening, I stood in the back hallway by the door to the living room where they couldn’t see me and listened. It was always good to know what grownups were really doing, and they said more interesting stuff when they did not know I was listening.

“Liz”, dad’s voice was almost always soft, even when he got mad, “If it rains we can have the party in the living room. The kids can play down in the basement.”

“Eric”, Mom’s voice was louder than his with more feelings in it, “I’m not comfortable entertaining our friends in this house when we don’t have any furniture.”

“Oh it’ll be fine!” Dad was always saying that to mom, but she usually didn’t think so. “We’ve got the kitchen chairs, we can bring the lawn chairs in from the outside, plus the chairs from the basement and the rocking chair from Cloob’s room.”

“Where will people put their drinks and their plates?” I could tell mom was not happy.

“We can move the kitchen table into the living room. Open up the card table and even bring up the white table from the basement.” Dad always thought he had figured it out.

Mom sighed. “I know furniture is not a priority right now. But I’m having trouble asking people to come over and see that we have so little. I don’t want Jonathan to feel impoverished.”

I did not know what “impoverished” was but it didn’t sound good.

“I have another year of graduate school and hopefully just a year after that to complete my dissertation. Then I can get a real teaching job.” His voice was still smooth but it seemed more worried.

“I know. I know. God, I know!” Mom said, “But honestly Eric, I dread sitting down with the bills each month and figuring out which ones can wait til next month to be paid.”

I listened, but did not hear dad say anything back to her. I felt bad for him. I knew mom thought we needed more money, and dad was supposed to get it. But I was okay. They bought me toys to play with. I thought about that tricycle I had seen yesterday in the attic. After they started talking about different stuff, not about my birthday, I finally decided to go into the kitchen. When mom saw me she did a big smile and started singing the happy birthday song. Dad started singing too. It made me feel shy but I was still happy that it was my birthday.

“Are you excited about your party?” she asked, her eyes twinkling. Mom loved parties.

I did too, and it was my birthday. Feeling shy, I just nodded really hard.

Mom made me a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast, putting on extra sugar for my birthday. I told her when to stop adding the milk. After breakfast, she and dad stayed in the kitchen and worked on boiling potatoes in the big pot and then making potato salad. I watched them for a while. They seemed the most happy together when they had something to do together.

I didn’t want to watch anymore, so I went back into my room. I opened my closet door and looked up at the attic hatch in the ceiling. I thought about climbing up and looking again to see if that tricycle was still there. Then I remembered that I hadn’t closed the hatch the right way yesterday when I had heard my dad coming, but now it was back in place. Dad must have seen it and put it back the way it was supposed to be. He must know that I had looked up there. It made me worried thinking dad might know something I did by myself when no one was watching me. My “secret” stuff. I knew they did secret stuff too, that they didn’t tell me about because they were grownups. Molly said her mom and dad did too. But I did not want them to know that I did the same thing.

I played down in the basement all morning. Mom called down to me from the top of the stairs that we were ready to go over to the park for the party. I ran up the stairs like I always did.

“Well”, she said with a smile on her face, clapping her hands together, “Mother nature is giving you her birthday present of a partly cloudy afternoon with no rain in the forecast!” Dad looked happy too, like he was right that it would be okay.

We drove our car over to the park instead of walking. Mom said we didn’t walk because the picnic basket was really heavy with all the food. Even though the park was right there across the street, we had to drive on four different streets to get there. I counted them. They “parked” the car on the fourth street and we walked through the big trees, like that “maple” tree in our backyard only bigger, to where the picnic tables were. Dad carried the picnic basket and mom and I carried the other bags with stuff for the party. Under the trees there also were swings, monkeybars, a seesaw, a slide, and my favorite thing, the merry-go-round. Two girls were swinging on the swings, talking to each other and laughing. Two boys, older than me, were at the merry-go-round, working to try to spin it around really fast before jumping on.

As I watched the two boys keep trying to make the merry-go-round go even faster, mom and dad started getting ready for the party. While they did that stuff, I walked over to the merry-go-round. I stood just far enough away so I wouldn’t get in the two older boys’ way as they hung off either side of it until it finally slowed down. They looked at me with red cheeks and excited eyes.

“Can I get on?” I asked. I was still worried about talking to grownups, even mom and dad. But talking to other kids felt easier. Kids just said what they were really thinking and it didn’t make me worry.

They told me to sit in the center and hang on, which I did. They grabbed the metal pipes on each side of the outside circle part and started to run. Everything began to spin around me. I saw mom and dad by the picnic tables, then the lilac bushes far away and my house and our backyard even farther away, then the girls on the swing, then other houses across the street, then back to mom and dad, over and over again. It all didn’t seem real anymore, more like the things I would see sometimes when my eyes were closed, or when I was sleeping and then I woke up.

The only thing that felt real was when I closed my eyes and felt something pulling me away from the middle. If I went where it was pulling me it got stronger and stronger. The only place where it didn’t pull me was right in the middle. I couldn’t figure it out, but it kind of made sense somehow, and that was one of the things that made the merry-go-round so neat. Stay in the center of things and let everything else spin around you. As the thing slowed down the pulling went away and mom and dad, the girls on the swing, my house, and everything else, seemed real again, at least mostly so.

“Again?” one of the boys asked, looking at me with fierce but friendly eyes.

I nodded and off we went again. Back to the spinning pictures and then closing my eyes to feel the realness of that spinning center. Finally the boys didn’t want to do it anymore, looked at the girls still on the swings, and then walked over to the seesaw and got on. No longer going around, I still sat in the middle of the merry-go-round, and when I closed my eyes I felt like I was going around again, though when I opened my eyes I was not. I did it more times until I opened my eyes to see a face I knew looking at me wondering.

It was Molly. She lived across the street with her mom and dad. She looked strange because she was wearing one of those “dress” things like a grownup woman would wear. Not the regular clothes like mine that she usually wore. Her straight light colored hair came down over her ears, unlike my hair which was really short. Other than mom and dad, I had probably spent more time with her than anyone else. She was a kid like me, and we both tried to figure out these strange grownups.

“I saw you going around”, she said, “It looks fun.”

Like a kid, she said what she saw and how she felt about it. Unlike all the thinking I had to do before saying stuff to mom and dad, I felt like I could say everything I was thinking to her. Now that I was talking, I was going to have a lot to talk to her about.

“Two older boys spun me around really fast. It’s strange to see everything spinning around me, like it’s only pictures. I close my eyes and I feel it pulling me away from the middle.” It was the best I could tell her with the words I knew.

Molly looked at me, pushing up her nose and biting her thumb, which she did when she was trying to figure something out. She took it out of her mouth to talk.

“You’re talking”, she said. Her thumb was back between her teeth as I could tell she was thinking about that, but then out again to say more.

“I want to try spinning too!” she said. I figured she would want to try it.

“Okay. Sit in the middle and hold on”, I said. I climbed off the thing and pointed at the center. She climbed on the merry-go-round on her hands and knees, and by the time she got to the center the open part at the bottom of her dress was up around her waist and her underwear showed. Not worried about it, she sat in the center and looked at me.

“So spin it… really fast!” she said.

I tried to do what the older boys did, and pushed on the bars on the edge of the circle, but I was only strong enough to move it slowly.

The two older boys on the seesaw were watching us. They came back over to help.

“You want us to spin you two around?” one of them asked.

Molly and I nodded.

“Well get on in the center”, he said to me, “And hang on!”

I climbed on the bumpy metal surface of the thing and sat in the middle looking at Molly. I grabbed the bars on either side of us just below where she had grabbed those same bars.

“You ready for a wild ride?” the older boy said.

Molly and I looked at each other and were both excited. “Wild ride” I thought, that sounded really neat. We both nodded and looked at each other again. I could tell she was thinking the same thing I was. “What’s about to happen to us?”

The boys stood at opposite sides of the merry-go-round and started to push. When they were running really hard, they jumped on and the thing spun around with Molly and I sitting in the center looking at each other. Molly moved her hands to hold on better and I felt the bottom of her hands touch the top of mine. As we looked at each other again, heads just a couple feet apart, our hands touching made it feel even more like we were hooked together. As everything spun behind her, I watched her hold her body still and I saw her eyes looking behind me at all that same spinning stuff too. Then she closed her eyes.

“I feel it pulling me!” she said. I could see her letting her head and the top part of her body being pulled away from the middle, then the hard work as she pulled herself back.

It was like I stopped thinking and just watched as I saw my mom and dad and hers at the picnic tables, then our houses far away across the baseball fields, the girls on the swing now watching us. It all turned into just pictures, only Molly was real. It seemed like she and I were part of the same thing. I didn’t want it to end.

But it did. The merry-go-round slowed down. But then I was thinking that though something was ending, something new could be starting. As we still looked at each other, now just slowly turning, I could tell she had thought the same thing.

“That was fun!”, she said.

She said it, but it was the same thing I was thinking and about to say. It was the only thing you could say! And we both knew we had to do it more to figure out the different things we were seeing and feeling.

“Again?” one of the older boys asked.

Molly and I looked into each other’s eyes. I could tell she was excited like I was to have this adventure to see and feel new things.

“Again!” Molly yelled out, her eyes flaring with fierceness, “faster this time!”. I liked that she wanted it faster, and that she was looking at me when she said it.

“Okay then”, called out one of the boys. I could hear in his voice that this was just what he was hoping we would say, maybe even what the two of them knew we were going to say. They started pushing again, making lots of noises to tell us that they were trying to go super fast, smashing each foot into the ground, as they made it spin faster than the first time. Finally they let go this time, and watched us whirl around, both of them I could tell feeling really good they were helping us littler kids have this “wild” ride.

“Wow!” We actually both said it this time, and at the same time.

Still spinning fast but not as fast as it had been, I felt like I wanted to try to stand up, while still hanging on to the bars. Molly watched me and started doing the same thing. We looked at each other fiercely, like we could do anything. The thing slowed more and Molly let go of the bars, took a step toward the edge, but looked like she couldn’t figure out how to stand up straight and it was pulling her more than she thought it would and she went off the merry-go-round. She tried to stay on her feet, but when they hit the ground, she fell face first into the dirt.

The older boys grabbed the bars and stopped the thing spinning. I jumped off and felt like I couldn’t stand up straight either, like it looked like Molly had. But I was able to stay on my feet as I ran over to her. She sat up. There was dirt in her hair and both knees and one elbow were scraped pink, quickly changing to red. Her dress was covered in dirt.

She looked at me as her mom ran over yelling, “Molly, oh my god!”. You could hear the fear in her mom’s voice, like Molly had been hurt bad. As I saw the thinking in Molly’s eyes, I could tell that at first she thought she was okay, just surprised. But what her mom said made her scared, that maybe she was not okay, and only then started to cry. Now all the grownups came and stood around us, like they were in charge now. The two older boys stood back, next to each other, worried.

“We’re sorry”, one said, “We didn’t think she’d try to do that!”

Molly’s mom nodded at them and then just looked at Molly.

Mom was behind me and put a hand on my right shoulder, patting my left shoulder with the other one. I stood there and didn’t say anything, wanting to say something to make Molly feel better, but feeling scared to, with all the grownups watching. Molly’s mom and dad rubbed their hands on her dress to try to get the dirt off. Then they looked at her arms and legs to make sure they were okay, and looked closely at the scrapes on her knees and elbow. Molly looked at me with sad red eyes, sniffling, as the tears rolled down over her now pink cheeks.

I could see Molly’s mom worried about what the other grownups were thinking about Molly.

“Molly is such a tomboy!” she said.

I didn’t know what a “tomboy” was, but it didn’t sound good, and I felt sad for Molly and mad at Molly’s mom for saying that, and mad at the other grownups who I guess wanted her to say that.

Her mom took Molly’s hand, looked at dad then focused on mom.

“Jane”, she said, “Let me take her home, get her cleaned up, and we’ll be back.”

Mom’s hands still on my shoulders, I looked up and she nodded with lips pushed together and worried eyes.

“Joan”, mom said, “When I was a little girl I was just like Molly. I’d come home at least once a week with some sort of bruise or scrape!” Molly’s mom looked like she felt better that mom had said that. Mom was good at saying stuff that made other grownups feel better.

The other grownup women said things to Molly’s mom to try to make her feel better too. One said, “Molly is such a pretty girl!”

Molly’s mom said, “Thank you”, and rubbed Molly’s head. Molly stood there quietly looking down, as her mom tried to fix her messed up hair. I watched her mom start to walk her home across the baseball field.

Now other kids and grownups were at the party, the kids came over to me. Kenny lived across the street next to Molly, but I didn’t play with him as much. Danny, who was older than me, I played with when my mom took me with her when she would go to their house.

“So what happened to that girl?” Danny asked. He didn’t know Molly.

After seeing Molly’s mom worried about what the other grownups were thinking about Molly, I wasn’t sure what to say to him.

“She fell I guess”, Kenny said, though he wasn’t there at the merry-go-round.

“Yeah!” Danny said, “Girls!” He said it like he thought girls weren’t as good as boys.

“Girls!” said Kenny, thinking he wanted to think the same way as Danny who was older than we were.

I wanted to tell them that I didn’t feel boys were better, but I got worried when older boys talked about girls being different, so I didn’t say anything and just looked down at the ground.

Dad and Molly’s dad were making the corn and the hot dogs on that really hot “grill” thing. Mom was passing out plates and being in charge of things. The other grownups were sitting at one of the two other tables, including Kenny’s mom and Danny’s mom. The other two men were dad’s friends. Kenny, Danny and I were sitting at the other table, which had boxes on it, that I knew were presents for me, on the other end. Just looking at them made me feel excited, and I wondered what was in each. Mom called out to the three of us to come over and get some food.

“Jane!” Danny’s mom said, “You’ve got a bun in the oven. You should let me do that!”

“I’m just getting into my third trimester”, mom said to her, rubbing her big stomach with her hands, “I still have lots of energy.” Mom didn’t used to have a big stomach like that, but she said that was my “little brother” getting ready to come out, though I couldn’t figure out what she was really talking about.

“I wouldn’t disagree that you do, dear”, said Danny’s mom, “But please let me help!”

Mom nodded, and Danny’s mom and Kenny’s mom put the corn and hot dogs on our plates, which they brought over to the table where Kenny, Danny and I were sitting. The three of us ate our food and didn’t say anything. I thought about Molly and why she let go of the merry-go-round bars, and that she was okay really until her mom got scared. I figured I would ask her about it later, now that I was talking.

I could here the grownups talking about my name, though they didn’t think I was listening

“So what are you calling him?” dad’s friend asked, “Johnny?”

“Well…” said dad like he wasn’t sure what to say.

“His name is Jonathan”, mom said, her voice was loud and kind of fierce, “Not Johnny or John. My brother is named John. Our son is Jonathan!”

I didn’t really feel like my name was Jonathan, or John or Johnny. It was one of those nicknames, but it wasn’t “Zuper” either. Mom and dad mostly called me “Clubius” or “Cloob”. Molly called me “Coob”, I think I liked that one best. When grownups asked me my name and I wasn’t talking yet, mom or dad answered for me and said “Jonathan”, but they almost never called me that. Now that I was talking, I wondered what I would say my name was.

Molly and her mom finally came back. Molly was now wearing regular clothes like me, with a bandaid on her elbow. Her mom got her a plate of food and pointed at the table where Danny, Kenny and I were sitting. I could see that Molly didn’t want to sit with us, but her mom kept telling her to and she finally came over. I figured that it wasn’t because Molly did not want to sit with me or the other kids, but that she didn’t want to talk about falling down. She came over and sat next to me without saying anything.

But Danny did want to talk about it. “So what happened to you on the merry-go-round?” he asked.

Molly looked fierce, putting her thumb in her mouth and biting it. She moved her shoulders up and down and took her thumb out and said, “I fell.”

“Are you okay?” he asked. He didn’t ask it like a grownup would. Not like he was going to do something about it if she said no.

Molly nodded and stuck the end of her hotdog into her mouth, and seemed happy that that kept her from having to say anything else. All four of us ate and didn’t talk. I was happy to have her back and sitting next to me.

When we finished eating, Danny’s mom came over and took our plates. Then all the grownups sang happy birthday to me. Danny was singing too and really loud. Kenny sang to, I think because Danny was singing and he wanted to be like Danny. I looked at Molly and she smiled like they were singing the song to her too.

The song ended with mom carrying my birthday cake towards me so everyone could see it, with three candles that had fire on top. I remembered Molly’s birthday, when she was three. Her cake was different but it also had three candles. I remembered her blowing them out, so I figured I was supposed to blow them out since it was my party this time. Mom put the cake down in front of me. It was all white with blue words on it. I knew that first word “Happy”, since mom had shown it to me in some of the books she read to me where she pointed at the words when she read them. And I knew that the last word was my real name, “Jonathan”. The word in between starting with the “B” I figured had to be “Birthday”.

“Now make a wish before you blow out the candles!” Mom said to me, looking into my eyes with hers like she was trying to figure out what my wish would be. I didn’t remember this part from Molly’s birthday. I got worried that all the grownups were waiting for me to say what my wish was, and then what would I say now that I was talking. I thought about the tricycle, maybe that would be the wish. But then if I said that was my wish, would mom and dad figure out that I looked in the attic and saw it there. Would they think I was bad for doing that? I tried to think of a different wish to say.

I was so happy when mom said, “Now don’t tell anyone your wish or it may not come true!” Not worried anymore, I thought about the bicycle and blew out the candles with the biggest breath I could make. Danny and all the grownups cheered and clapped. Kenny and Molly did what the grownups were doing and clapped too.

Mom asked me if I wanted to open my presents. Even before I could say anything, Danny said, “He definitely wants to!” All the grownups laughed.

I was mad at Danny for saying that, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t like that he was thinking he knew how I felt and was talking for me, even though I did want to open my presents. When I wasn’t talking yet, I had to let other people, mostly mom and dad, say what they figured I was thinking or feeling, though sometimes I still didn’t like it.

But I stopped worrying about it when I got to open my presents. I loved holding each box in my hands, with that special paper stuff all around it so I couldn’t see what it was, feeling how heavy it was, and wondering what it might be before tearing the paper off. I didn’t care that others were watching me, even all the grownups.

The first present I opened was from Kenny and his mom. It was a box of Lincoln Logs, with a picture of a fort on it. Kenny’s mom said, “Kenny told us you already have Lincoln logs, but you can never have too many!” That was true, and I was excited and nodded really hard.

Mom said, “Thank you Kenny and Missus Novak.” Kenny’s mom nodded her head but just once.

The next present was from dad’s two friends, Frank and Walter. It was six books, all the same size and wrapped together.

Walter said, “It’s the latest series of Tom Swift books. Frank and I know you’re probably not reading quite yet, but we made your dad promise to read them to you. And we have verified that your dad’s reading skills are sufficient for the task.” Frank, Molly’s dad, and dad all laughed.

The book on top had a picture on the cover of a rocket ship shooting up from the ground below with a big window in it with a boy in a gold suit looking out. Each of the others had something like that – jet plane, submarine, rocket ship – with the same boy either inside it or next to it. The pictures, and the stories each picture made me think about, were very exciting.

The next present was from Danny and his mom, Danny said he had picked it out himself. I ripped off the wrapping paper and the cover of the box had a picture of four smiling boys around a small board that looked like a football field with little figures of football players on it in two different colors. I figured it was a football field because mom and dad had taken me to a game at the Michigan stadium not far from our house. Danny said it was an “Electric Football set”. You turned it on and the players moved all by themselves. It interested me, but Danny said I should probably wait until I got home to open it up and try it, and ask my dad to help.

The last wrapped present was from Molly and her mom and dad. It was a space helmet with a front part that you could see through like a window, and that could be opened and closed. I took it out of the box and put it on my head, looking out through the clear front part at the people around me.

“Jonathan sure looks like he’s ready for what’s coming!” It was my dad’s friend Frank talking. “Just heard that Eisenhower wants us to set up a civilian space agency so we can outdo the Russians.”

I didn’t know who these “Russians” were, and if they were the same thing as the “Soviet Union”, but I figured this was not the right time for me to ask.

“I don’t know if you could pay me enough to sit on top of one of those big rockets”, said dad’s friend Walter, “I watched that Vanguard rocket explode last December at Cape Canaveral.”

Then dad said, “Once they work out the kinks, I’d do it! Poe, Verne, and others have been writing about taking a rocket to the moon since early in the 19th century. And I grew up reading all the pulp science fiction – John Carter and Buck Rogers.”

“Yeah, me too”, said Molly’s dad, “Though I never in a million years thought it could ever come true!”

The grownup women at the party had not been saying anything, but now mom did. When she talked, it sounded like she was in charge, and other people stopped talking and listened.

“I believe”, she said, “That anything we can imagine we can make come true!”

“Really Jane?” asked Walter, “Even time travel?” Like mom didn’t know what she was talking about.

But it didn’t change what mom was thinking, and she said, “Really Walter… even time travel!” She didn’t sound mad but her voice was kind of fierce. Walter sighed and shook his head.

“Honestly,” Danny’s mom said, putting her hand on mom’s shoulder, “I sometimes wonder if Jane hasn’t traveled back in time to our age to get us all off our rear ends!” All the grownups laughed, even Walter.

Mom nodded and grinned, her cheeks got a little red as everyone was looking at her. But I could tell she LIKED IT when everyone was looking at her.

“Lennice”, mom said, “I’ll never confess, but it’s been a heck of a ride!” More laughing from all the grownups. The four of us kids just looked at each other, not sure what they were talking about. Danny rolled his eyes. Strange grownups.

“But Liz”, dad’s voice was always quieter and less fierce than mom’s, always reminding her of something, “There’s one more present.”

“Right!” Mom looked at dad like there were lots of things she was thinking about. She turned and looked at me, still with my new space helmet on my head, her eyes sparkled. “This is for you from your dad and me”, she said.

Dad ran over to our car and opened the back part and took out that red tricycle with black wheels. He carried it over to the picnic tables where we were sitting and put it down in the middle of them. There it was in front of me, the one that I had seen in the attic yesterday, but wasn’t supposed to see until now. I stared at it, feeling everybody looking at me, so I didn’t know what to do next. Unlike my mom, I did not like talking when everyone was looking at me, especially when grownups were looking at me.

“Do you like it sweetie?” mom finally asked.

I nodded, but felt the grownups maybe were thinking I didn’t, thinking I should be more excited and say so. But I had already been thinking about that tricycle for a long time. I looked at mom and didn’t say anything, but nodded again really hard, and then at dad and did the same. I decided I should at least sit on it to show how much I liked it. It was all shiny and new. The seat felt cold and slippery under me. My hands circled around the black handle grips. Plastic had a special feeling to it when it was new. My feet rested on each of the black plastic pedals. I pushed the pedal with my left foot and then with my right and the big wheel in front started to turn and I was moving.

I headed toward the merry-go-round. Molly, Kenny and Danny got up from the table and walked around me. I was happy to just be with other kids and away from the grownups.

Click here to read the next chapter

I could hear that the rain was still outside, and it made me like the quiet cozy basement even more. It was a while before my dad came down the basement stairs to keep working at his desk. He was in the opposite quarter of the basement from where I sat on the hard gray floor looking at my box of plastic toy soldiers and a second box with trucks, cars and boats in it. I wanted to keep playing that story I was playing last night in the bathtub of the pirate ship in the hidden cove shooting at the goodguy ships out in the bay. The captains were trying to figure out what to do to stop the pirates from sinking their ships and killing their sailors.

I looked at the two boats in the box with the cars and trucks. They were ships that were big enough to put some soldiers on them. But only the two of them was not enough, I needed the boats that I had in the tub upstairs. I was thinking that if I went upstairs again dad might wonder what I was doing up there. This was where talking would help me.

“I’ll be right back!”, I said to him, something he and mom said to me and each other. He turned and looked at me and nodded, but I could tell he was mostly thinking about what he was working on. I ran up the stairs and through the house to the bathroom, grabbed the small plastic bin of boats and soldiers there, and ran back down into the basement. Now I had seven boats, that was better.

But now I was trying to figure out where or how to make the hidden pirate cove. Maybe if I could find something to build the land between the cove and the bay. I dumped all the soldiers out of their box and the cars and trucks out of theirs. I turned the wood boxes over and put them next to each other to try to make a mountain between the cove and the bay. I put the pirate ship in the cove part and the rest of the boats in the other and looked at how it was set up. I didn’t think it was very good. The mountain island between the pirates and the goodguys just wasn’t big enough in the big basement.

I thought of the laundry basket in the laundry room. If it was empty I could turn it upside down into more mountains hiding the cove. I walked around the furnace into that quarter of the basement. The basket was full of clothes, sitting on top of the washing machine. But as I stood in that area, with the furnace on my right and the washing machine and staircase in front of me, it made me think that the laundry room would be a great secret cove. The furnace and the stairway could be the mountains between that cove and my part of the basement, which would be the bay where the other ships could be. The sailors could try to climb up the staircase to get into the cove. I could even build a pirate fort guarding the hidden cove, and a goodguy fort guarding the bay on my side.

I was excited about pretending all this, and I got my ship that had been the pirate ship in the tub last night and put it in the middle of the floor in the laundry room. I looked at it there from different places, including looking down from the basement stairs. It looked good, but I couldn’t really stand the gray soldiers, my pirates in this story, on its deck. I would just have to pretend they were on the ship.

I brought my box of Lincoln Logs into the laundry room and used them to make the walls of the pirate fort plus a house for the pirate guy in charge in the middle. I put two of the smallest log pieces together, leaned them over and they looked like cannons, and put them along the wall of the fort pointed out into the beginning part of the cove, so they could shoot at any goodguy ships that tried to go in it. The gray German soldiers were the pirates and I put a couple of them around each cannon. The gray plastic guy in charge, with his hands on either hip and elbows out on either side, I put in the square house in the center of the fort so he could be in charge of all the cannon shooting pirates. His helper was next to him.

Back in my quarter of the basement, I made a second fort out of the rest of the Lincoln logs. I put it looking down on the bay up on the end of my lowest toy shelf so it could look out on the whole bay. The good guys’ ships could stop under it and they could climb up to the fort. I put different groups of the green American soldiers in and around the fort, each group with a special job. The watcher guys looked out down on the bay. Others worked the cannons. Others were ready to go out on the ships. The last group below the fort helped put things on and take things off the ships. The green commander, Captain Dale, his figure pointing a hand out in front of him, I put in the center of the fort with his main helpers next to him.

I took one of my bigger boats and put it in the middle of the bay. It was big enough to put five soldiers on it if I put them very carefully – one in the front, three in the middle, and the ship captain, Captain Drake, in the back. They kept falling down, but I finally got them all standing, and I laid on my side and put my cheek on the cold floor and looked at them on the ship, trying to pretend they were real. They looked neat standing on the ship. I looked at the captain in the back and imagined him being worried about his crew. I put the second bigger boat by the dock part of the fort, and then put the other smaller boats in different parts of the bay around the big one.

Once everything was set up just right for the story, I sat on the basement staircase for some time, where I could see both places, the bay and the hidden cove, and I thought about all the different things that could happen. For cannon balls I could use the small plastic wiffle balls I had. Yes, this was all good, very exciting.

I got all of my small plastic wiffle balls in the plastic bin where I kept my bathtub toys. I took it into the laundry room and sat on the floor between the pirate ship and the fort and I imagined the talking between the pirate ship captain, Captain Black, and the fort captain, Big John.

I sailed the pirate ship over to the fort and imagined Captain Black waving from the ship to Big John in the fort. Big John looked at the men and cannons around his fort and felt good. “The fort cannons are loaded and ready and the cannon shooters are ready for a fight if the good guys find the secret cove and try to come in!” he said.

Captain Black liked that. “Ha ha that’s good”, he said, “We’ll sail to the far side of the cove where we’ll have a better shot at ‘em and give ‘em hell!”

Big John laughed and said, “Yes give ‘em hell. They won’t know what hit ‘em!”

Captain Black said, “Ha ha you’re right matey!” Pirates talked that way.

The pirate ship sailed across the cove near the staircase mountains that were between it and the bay. Its cannons started to fire. I made the cannon noise and I threw each ball over the staircase and I could hear it hit the floor and bounce on the other side where I couldn’t see it. I moved to the other side of the basement and sat against the basement wall next to the goodguy fort on the end of my toy shelves and looked at what had happened. The fort and all the ships looked like they weren’t hit, but the captains, sailors, and fort soldiers were really worried. Dad was at his desk still working.

Captain Dale in the fort looked out over the bay and was very worried. “Oh my god… someone’s shooting at us. Pretty soon one of our ships or our fort will get hit!”

His helpers tried to make him feel better. “But Captain”, they said, “We built the strongest fort we could on the side of the cliff. The pirates can’t get it!”

Captain Drake aboard his ship was really worried too. “This is really bad!” he said, “Pretty soon one of our ships will get hit!”

His helper thought so too, and said, “You’re right, Captain!”

After looking at and thinking about the fort, bay and goodguy ships for a while, I got all the balls in the bin and went back into the laundry room.

Captain Black was excited. “Keep up the shooting lads! We have them right where we want them!”

Making more cannon and explosion noises, I fired more pirate cannonballs over the staircase mountains into the bay. On one of the shots I heard the crash of the ball hitting something.

Captain Black said, “Sounds like we hit something boys!”

His main helper said, “Yes, but how can we know for sure! We can’t see across the mountains.”

Captain Black thought about what to do, then said, “I think that’s a good job for you mate! Take some of the boys and climb the mountain so you can see what we hit!”

“Aye aye, Captain!” his main helper said.

I took several gray soldiers and began to have them climb up the steep side of the staircase, finally getting high enough on the washing machine where they could see out onto the bay.

I went back to the other side of the basement and sat by the goodguy fort to see what they were seeing. Three of the green soldiers that had been standing on the big ship in the middle of the bay had fallen on the floor around it, their ship had been hit.

The fort guys watching the bay yelled out, “Oh my god, they hit Drake’s ship!” Then to the Captain’s main helper, “Let Captain Dale know.”

“Will do”, he said, then to Captain Dale, “Captain… Drake’s ship’s been hit! There’ll be dead and wounded! What should we do?”

Captain Dale was quiet while he was thinking. Then he said, “Send out the rescue ship to get the dead and wounded and bring them back here. Tell the doctor to get the hospital set up.”

“Aye aye, sir!”

I had the fort captain’s main helper go down to the docks below the fort and talk to the captain of the rescue ship there.

“Captain Strong, time to go to work”, he said, “You need to rescue those sailors! Is your ship ready?”

Captain Strong said, “We’re ready! Sail boys! We must save our men if they can be saved!”

The rescue ship went out into the bay and had a hard time but got the dead and wounded sailors floating in the water and brought them back to the fort. Then the story was about the doctor, Doctor West I named him, who had to get the hospital ready. One area for the wounded and one for the dead. He looked at each rescued soldier and had to figure out which one could be helped and which one was dead. I imagined he was very worried and sad.

Finally, like in my bathtub story before, the good guys sent a team out to climb up the mountain staircase and see if they could figure out where the pirate ship was shooting from. Lieutenant Cord was in charge of that team, and they were taken by boat across the bay to the mountains. Before they could land, I went back into the laundry room and shot more wiffle cannonballs from the pirate ship’s cannons into the bay.

Returning from the laundry room I found that another ship had been hit, but not the one with Lieutenant Cord’s team, which finally reached the shore at the bottom of the mountains, ready to climb up the steps. But first the goodguys had to send the rescue boat out to get any dead and wounded from the latest pirate cannonball. Since the boat that was on its side had no soldiers actually on it, I decided there were two dead and two wounded. The rescue boat headed out and got the four of them. The two dead guys were floating in the bay by the ship and the two wounded were below deck in the front part of the ship hit by the pirate’s cannonball. Once the rescue boat returned to the fort the wounded and dead guys were brought to the hospital, and there was more worrying and being sad by Doctor West.

That taken care of, I went back to Lieutenant Cord’s team, getting ready to climb the dangerous mountain stairs. Seeing that other ships got hit out in the bay, they were all talking and worried and figured out that their mission was really really important. Lieutenant Cord talked to his team and told them they had to do it, even though they might get killed or wounded. They had to find where the pirate ship was or all would be lost. “It’s up to us boys”, he said, “Everyone else is counting on us!” I had heard grownups talk like that, at least in the stories dad read me.

Just then I realized that dad was standing behind me as I sat between him and the bottom step of the stairs. I was startled, and turned to look up at him. His eyes were dark and sad, though he had a smile on his face. He was strange that way.

“I want to get up the stairs”, he said, but he paused without taking a step up and said, “So what is this group of soldiers up to?”

I usually didn’t tell mom or dad the stories I was pretending. I was worried they might think they were bad, or silly, or even stupid. I really liked them, but I wasn’t sure they were going to like them. Or maybe they would think I should change the story and I wouldn’t want to and then I wouldn’t know what to do.

But he was asking me a question, and I felt that now that I was talking, that I should at least say something to answer his question, if I wanted them to answer mine. You had to be careful with grownups, even mom and dad, even though they gave me food, read and sang to me at night, bought me toys, and did other things for me.

So I told him, “Lieutenant Cord is leading his team to climb up the mountain to try to find the pirate ship.” That seemed like a good answer to his question.

His smile, there way above me, turned into a bigger grin. I could see he wanted to laugh but he tried hard not to and didn’t. But then his face got worried, and like he was thinking.

“You know”, he said, “I was a lieutenant in World War Two!”

I had heard him talk to his friends about the War, and that he had been a soldier in it, but this was the first time I could remember that he talked to me about it. I knew that real war was not something fun, or something you laughed about. It was what grownups said was “serious”. So I’d never asked him about it, only listened really hard when he did say something about it. And listened when other grownups talked about it too. But now I really wanted to know more so I nodded and looked at him like I was ready to hear his story.

“I was in charge of a platoon of motorized mortars”, he said.

“Mortars?” I decided to ask. What I asked was kind of quiet like I was asking whether it was okay to ask him at the same time I asked him. I wasn’t sure if he’d get mad or sad if I asked him about war stuff.

He pushed his lips together, closed his eyes and nodded, then opened his eyes again but looked over where my toys were and not at me. “They’re like cannons”, he said, “But they shoot way up high in the air”, his finger went up above his head and came back down, “Rather than cannons that shoot more straight.” He moved that same finger from one side of his body to the other without it going up very much.

Even though I had been worried, I could tell that he seemed happy to talk about it, maybe even wanted to talk with me about it. So I figured I could ask more questions.

“What did you shoot at?” I asked

He looked at me for just a second and pushed his lips together. It seemed like he was wondering whether it was okay to tell me this stuff.

“Mostly at German artillery pieces”, he said, “Eighty-eights. That’s what they call cannons nowadays, ‘artillery’.”

I knew eighty-eight was a number with two eights in it, but I didn’t know that it was a kind of cannon or “artillery”. Dad still seemed happy to talk about it so I asked another question to find out more.

“Eighty-eights?” I asked.

His smile turned into more of a frown, but he nodded his head like that was the next question.

“Big German field guns, field ‘artillery’, that shot big eighty-eight millimeter shells”, he said, holding up his thumb and finger, and moving them apart to show me how big. “That could take out one of our tanks with one shot.” He looked over at my toys, and I could see him remembering something.

“During the war”, he said, “When we crossed the border from France into Germany, the German soldiers were dug into their Siegfried Line. They set up their Eighty-eights in bunkers, which are like little forts, in groves of trees on hilltops guarding the road we were trying to advance on. My unit would be sent up to hide behind another hill near those German guns, in range but where they couldn’t see us to shoot at us. I would go up to the top of the hill, hide in the bushes, and try to spot the bunker with the Eighty-eights on the next hill and radio back to my unit how to aim our mortars to try to knock them out. Since mortars shot upward we could fire shells, they’re called shells because they aren’t shaped like balls anymore, over the hill and drop them down on the enemy guns from above. That is if I could spot their guns and give my gunners the correct direction and distance. Their Eighty-eights could only shoot at something they could see, like a cannon. Hopefully they did not see me!”

He finally stopped talking but was still looking off at my toy shelves. I kept thinking about what he had said to me. It was a lot of interesting new stuff to figure out and lots of new words, like “Siegfried Line”, “in range”, “spot” and “bunker”. He seemed to like answering my questions and wanting me to ask more. I wondered if he might even be sad about me if I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t stop thinking about that last thing he said, so I figured I’d keep asking.

“What if they saw you?” I asked.

He pushed his lips together, nodded, and his eyes got really big, as he still looked at my toys.

“Sometimes they’d see me”, he said, “And they’d start shooting at me, and I’d have to run for my life. If I was running at least they knew I couldn’t radio in their location.”

He looked at me, smiled, and said, “Let me show you a picture.”

He went over to his bookshelf and pulled out a big thick book with a dark red cover and sat down in his chair. He opened the book, then touched a couple fingers to the tip of his tongue and used those fingers to turn the pages, as he looked carefully at the pages in between. I went around behind him so I could see the book pages too. They were full of words but lots of pictures too. Not drawings like some of the books he and my mom read me, but pictures that I figured were from a camera because they were black, gray and white and looked like pictures I had seen in newspapers. There was a picture of three smiling soldiers in their helmets and uniforms standing around a large tube pointed up in the air.

“That’s a mortar”, he said, “But ours were set up on the back of halftracks.”

I nodded, but it didn’t look like any cannon I had ever seen in pictures.

He turned a bunch of pages with pictures of things I had seen before, tanks, airplanes, ships, soldiers marching, and people lying on the ground with their eyes closed. Finally there was a picture of a bunch of what looked like trucks but their back wheels looked like tank wheels. His big finger tapped on the picture.

“These are halftracks”, he said, “You drive them in front like a truck with wheels but instead of back wheels they have treads like a tank which help them go over rough ground where a truck would get stuck. They are also armored, like a tank but not as much, so the soldiers have some protection if the enemy shoots at you. The ones in this picture are set up to carry soldiers in the back. The ones in our platoon had mortars mounted on the back and carried the gun crew.”

I looked at the picture carefully and he waited for me to show that I was done. It all seemed interesting but made me worried too about all this “war” stuff, and if dad would tell me I would have to fight in a real war too. I finally nodded without saying anything and he closed the book with a clap noise and I watched him slide it back onto the shelf next to another book that was the same size and color. He looked at all the books on the shelf, smiled and nodded.

“You’re welcome to take any book off the shelf and look at it if you like”, he said “Just put it back when you’re done, okay?”

I nodded again. I would be sure to do that. Look at them and put them back.

“I have to get back to grading papers!” he said, pushing his chair with his feet so it rolled back to his desk. Then he reached behind him with a hand to grab the desk edge and spin him around to face it. I watched him sigh, fill his cheeks with air and blow it out. He took his red pencil in his right hand, and looked down at the papers on his desk.

I went back to the bottom of the stairs where Lieutenant Cord and his men, his “platoon”, slowly made the dangerous climb up the stairs. Finally they reached a stair step where they could see into the hidden cove where the pirate ship was.

Lieutenant Cord was excited. “Boys we’ve found it! There is the ship that is shooting at us. And look, they also have a fort guarding the cove too. Tell Captain Dale and Captain Drake!”

Captain Dale in the goodguy fort told Captain Drake to have all his ships with cannons fire into the cove. I got all the whiffle balls and started to throw them over the stairs into the laundry room. I could hear them bang against the floor, and that different sound when they hit the washing machine or the furnace. When I had finished shooting, I raced back up to Lieutenant Cord and his platoon up on the stairs looking at the cove. The pirate ship didn’t look like it got hit, so Captains Dale and Drake were told the bad news.

After a couple more times of firing cannons back and forth, hitting, and this time sinking one of the goodguy ships, Captain Drake, had a new plan. “We must sail to the secret entrance of the cove, sail in, and destroy the pirate ship”, he said.

“But the fort cannons sir,” Lieutenant Cord said, “They’ll tear our ships apart!”

It didn’t change what Captain Drake was thinking. “We have no choice!” he said.

On my hands and knees I moved the rest of the goodguy ships across the basement floor by the furnace to the “secret” entrance to the laundry room and the pirate cove.

Captain Drake was very brave. “Man your guns boys”, he said, “We’re going in. Give ‘em hell!”. I moved the four remaining good guy ships past the cove entrance and where the pirates in the fort with their cannons, could see them, and were ready for a fight. I made the sounds of lots of cannon shots and explosions, as the battle started. The goodguy ships were hit and got damaged, but the fort was hit too. Captain Black turned his pirate ship guns towards the goodguy ships and joined the fight. Lieutenant Cord and his men watched from up on the stairs.

His men were sad and mad. “What can we do?” they asked.

But he had an idea. “Did you bring the bag of bombs, Joe?” he asked.

“Aye, aye, Lieutenant!” Joe said.

“There is a path along the mountains there that leads to a spot right above the pirate fort” Lieutenant Cord said, “It’s dangerous, but we have to do it so we can drop those bombs on them.”

There was a narrow ledge between the bottom and the top half of the furnace, about three feet up from the floor. From the stairs they made the dangerous climb up to that path and continued from there. As the battle was going on below his platoon made their way to the far corner of the furnace above the pirate fort. Some pirates on the washing machine saw them and started shooting at them. One was hit and fell and was killed.

“Oh my god, we lost Sam!” said Lieutenant Cord.

“Keep going men”, he said, “We still have Joe and the bag of bombs!” He couldn’t worry about who was dead, they had to keep going. The rest of the platoon reached the place on the mountain path just above the pirate fort. I ran into my quarter of the basement and got all the whiffle balls into their box, and very excited, went back into the pirate cove. As the battle kept going below, Lieutenant Cord and his men dropped the bombs on the fort below. The first wiffle ball hit the fort wall. Two Lincoln Log cannons flew apart and most of the pirates shooting them were knocked over, dead or wounded.

The pirates in the fort were suddenly scared. Big John from his house in the middle of the fort yelled at his men to keep firing and not to get scared. But Lieutenant Cord and his men dropped their next two bombs right onto Big John’s house. Logs scattered, and the Big John figure was badly wounded and started to die. The pirate gun crews left their guns and ran to his side. I put all those gray soldiers in a circle around his fallen figure. Big John breathed his last breath and died. The rest of the pirates in the fort surrendered, not being able to figure out what to do about the bombs from above. The goodguy sailors got to the fort and pointed the fort’s guns that weren’t wrecked at Captain Black’s pirate ship out in the cove. He then also decided to surrender.

All the pirates that weren’t dead or wounded were marched onto the goodguy ships and brought back to the goodguy’s fort. One of the parts of the fort was turned into a jail for those pirates. Lieutenant Cord and his platoon were the last to return to the goodguy fort. They were now heroes.

That night at bedtime, dad read the next chapter of Tom Sawyer, Chapter 18. It was the morning after Tom surprised the grownups by coming to his own funeral. All the other kids at school thought he was a hero. Except for Becky, who was mad that he was ignoring her. After Tom left, she got another kid named Alfred to pour ink in Tom’s spelling book. She did that because she wanted Tom to get in trouble. The next day when the teacher found the mess, Tom would be “whipped”. Dad said being “whipped” was like being spanked, but they did it with a stick instead of their hand.

I liked that Tom always figured out what to do and then did it, no matter what. My Lieutenant Cord was like Tom, even though he wasn’t a kid. I also wondered about girls not liking to be “ignored”, which meant you weren’t talking to them when they thought you should be. I wondered if girls were different than boys that way. I thought about Molly. She didn’t seem different like that.

After we finished reading, dad added a new song to the end of his singing. I always liked hearing a new song, and this was a war song…

Over hill, over dale
As we hit the dusty trail
And those caissons go rolling along
In and out, hear them shout
Counter march and right about
And those caissons go rolling along

Then it’s hi! hi! hee!
In the field artillery
Shout out your numbers loud and strong – two, three
For where’er you go
You will always know
That those caissons go rolling along

Dad said that a “caisson” was a wagon that was carried behind a cannon that had the “ammunition” for that cannon, now shells but in the old days cannonballs. It was interesting, because he sang it like a happy song. I guess it sounded happy, because the guys singing it were brave soldiers, like Lieutenant Cord, ready to fight the badguys, even if they might get killed or wounded.

Mom came in after he had wiggled my big toe under the covers and left. She told me that tomorrow was my birthday party, which if it didn’t rain, would be across the street in the park. I remembered about that tricycle up in the attic but didn’t say anything.

“Night night birthday boy!” she said.

Now that I was talking, instead of just nodding I said, “Almost!”

She looked at me and grinned, nodding her head and said the same thing, “Almost!”

She kissed my forehead, looked at me and then left the room. I was still thinking really hard about at least two things. First my dad being a soldier in the war, and second that tricycle up above me in the attic. It was a long time before I finally fell asleep.

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