through the shade.
Outside, me and my brother take some side-gnawing bites out of a couple of the green apples until we catch the Murdock cat in a run underneath some cars. We clobber him a few times with some apples to his brains until he makes a flat-eared dive into the storm drain. We see him down between the grates pushing against a ledge to keep out of the water so we chew some apples until they are the right size to throw through the grate. The cat has to swim away with apple mess all in his hair.
We make a few checks in the storm drain grates down the street but they run dry so I figure the Murdock cat has hit a turn in the pipe. We set back home when the mail truck stops and waits by a box while the mailman reads somebody’s magazine. I line up for a shot like a bomb in a covered wagon but I’m off a little and the apple splits on the edge of the mailman’s mirror and the mailman gets a face full of mess.
I don’t do a Duke McQuaid. I run, pushing my little brother in front of me, pushing him so hard he starts to fall, then I grab him up before he does to push himahead some more. The mailman has dropped the magazine in the middle of the street to chase us. I try to run us towards home without really going there. I run us the direction of our house where I know whose fence is weak and where whose garage will lock. We turn the alley two people’s yards up from our chain-link gate and I figure: the dark of the magnolia next door! I throw my brother over the black-rotted whitewash and angle myself through a pushed-in plank and that is where we see them.
In that place, so always shady and the dirt is always damp, under where the magnolia has knotted limbs and leaves like plastic, the breakable-armed man is dragging a rake towards where the lady next door is bent over a basket. They both have stopped in mid what they’re doing to look at us, and I see that the man’s arm is white without his cast, his skin has been shaded by it from the sun. There is a tattoo of Jesus I would recognize anywhere on his white-shaded arm. The face of Jesus is blue ink and the beard is roughed with the real hair of the breakable-armed man. The tattoo looks somehow excellent, a wanted poster alive from the TV show I want to be.
Storm has come and taken our power off so we look into my brother’s eyes with a flashlight for any change. His eyes are still like when you are bored at home onrainy days and you start to draw but you don’t know what to draw so you just draw a dot and then you circle on and on the dot until it’s a big black hole in the middle of the paper.
All around my brother’s sick bed made up on the company sofa with a sheet and a pillow are stand-up Christian cut-outs of God and the Apostles. We have two of one, the one with the sheep up his sleeve. Our mom has made the green stuffed chair the place where she prays for my brother and waits in the dark with the flashlight.
Our dad is out in the car listening to the radio scores because the power is off to the TV. We know not to bother him. This afternoon Mr. Murdock came over and then my father grabbed me by my belt and collar like to clean a saloon bar with. I was lucky. When I hit by the TV I didn’t taste blood or anything and when he came over I knew to stay down and just study his shoes, to just watch for the toe parts to swell, to get ready for him to bend down and pick up my head.
For my brother it was a simple palm-push but my brother’s head was too close to the wall. I have told him a hundred million times to stay away from the walls even when the walls make corners. He was too close so when his head got pushed it sort of bounced off the wall and back to our dad’s palm like to kiss it, and then he fell out on the floor like a girl on the playground having a spell.
There is brought-over apple pie from next door smelling up the kitchen. Before the storm the breakable-armed man was in the neighborhood looking down into the storm drain grates. He
Outside, me and my brother take some side-gnawing bites out of a couple of the green apples until we catch the Murdock cat in a run underneath some cars. We clobber him a few times with some apples to his brains until he makes a flat-eared dive into the storm drain. We see him down between the grates pushing against a ledge to keep out of the water so we chew some apples until they are the right size to throw through the grate. The cat has to swim away with apple mess all in his hair.
We make a few checks in the storm drain grates down the street but they run dry so I figure the Murdock cat has hit a turn in the pipe. We set back home when the mail truck stops and waits by a box while the mailman reads somebody’s magazine. I line up for a shot like a bomb in a covered wagon but I’m off a little and the apple splits on the edge of the mailman’s mirror and the mailman gets a face full of mess.
I don’t do a Duke McQuaid. I run, pushing my little brother in front of me, pushing him so hard he starts to fall, then I grab him up before he does to push himahead some more. The mailman has dropped the magazine in the middle of the street to chase us. I try to run us towards home without really going there. I run us the direction of our house where I know whose fence is weak and where whose garage will lock. We turn the alley two people’s yards up from our chain-link gate and I figure: the dark of the magnolia next door! I throw my brother over the black-rotted whitewash and angle myself through a pushed-in plank and that is where we see them.
In that place, so always shady and the dirt is always damp, under where the magnolia has knotted limbs and leaves like plastic, the breakable-armed man is dragging a rake towards where the lady next door is bent over a basket. They both have stopped in mid what they’re doing to look at us, and I see that the man’s arm is white without his cast, his skin has been shaded by it from the sun. There is a tattoo of Jesus I would recognize anywhere on his white-shaded arm. The face of Jesus is blue ink and the beard is roughed with the real hair of the breakable-armed man. The tattoo looks somehow excellent, a wanted poster alive from the TV show I want to be.
Storm has come and taken our power off so we look into my brother’s eyes with a flashlight for any change. His eyes are still like when you are bored at home onrainy days and you start to draw but you don’t know what to draw so you just draw a dot and then you circle on and on the dot until it’s a big black hole in the middle of the paper.
All around my brother’s sick bed made up on the company sofa with a sheet and a pillow are stand-up Christian cut-outs of God and the Apostles. We have two of one, the one with the sheep up his sleeve. Our mom has made the green stuffed chair the place where she prays for my brother and waits in the dark with the flashlight.
Our dad is out in the car listening to the radio scores because the power is off to the TV. We know not to bother him. This afternoon Mr. Murdock came over and then my father grabbed me by my belt and collar like to clean a saloon bar with. I was lucky. When I hit by the TV I didn’t taste blood or anything and when he came over I knew to stay down and just study his shoes, to just watch for the toe parts to swell, to get ready for him to bend down and pick up my head.
For my brother it was a simple palm-push but my brother’s head was too close to the wall. I have told him a hundred million times to stay away from the walls even when the walls make corners. He was too close so when his head got pushed it sort of bounced off the wall and back to our dad’s palm like to kiss it, and then he fell out on the floor like a girl on the playground having a spell.
There is brought-over apple pie from next door smelling up the kitchen. Before the storm the breakable-armed man was in the neighborhood looking down into the storm drain grates. He
Similar Books
