Thursday, December 20, 2012

12-21-12: The End of the World

 

“I wouldn’t wanna do that on a regular basis,” Greg said as he cleared the lock at Base 5.

 “It once took seven months Captain,” reported the AI gate attendant. “Welcome to your new home.”

“Yeah, new home. Old home may not…” he choked back emotion at the thought.

Walking felt good, reassuring, as his wobbly legs adjusted to the Martian gravity. He stretched and looked skyward at the expansive black dome over colony five. In a corner of the reception area stood the ancient Curiosity rover. He smiled atthe crude technology, and admired its durability. The probe became a village mascot early on, still responding to signals from Earth mostly intended to be humorous. The term “rover” suggested behaviors to the distant programmers. The vehicle would occasionally be found staring longingly with it’s camera eye at the barren red surface of the planet, like a dog waiting to be let outside, one leg lifted.

“Your team would like to meet with you before you get settled Captain,” prodded the attendant.

Greg shook himself to attention and nodded. A transport glided to a stop at his feet, waited for him to be seated, and then proceeded to the observatory.

The mood was grim in operations. New arrivals generally caused an excited stir among longtime residents, but the completion of Greg’s flight coincided with disastrous news from Earth. In fact, the fate of two inbound crews still in transit was in jeopardy. All eyes were on spectrographic imagery and a variety of monitors, all studying the sun.

“Hell of a day to arrive,” said an unfamiliar scientist who briefly glanced at Greg as he moved between stations.

“How bad?” asked Greg, keeping conversation to a minimum.

“For us…minimal” came the reply. “For them,” the voice trailed off, “The end. The end of the world.” The astronomer looked at Greg. There were tears in his eyes.

Greg was stunned. Scientists are data-driven, detached, unshakeable. He tried to make sense of the various displays. Magnetic imaging, a variety of spectral views of the sun’s photosphere. Colorful and agitated swirls of purple and orange. Each with a bulging arch that dwarfed a hundred Earths, malevolently hurtling a scimitar of radiation and heat toward the helpless planet.

Colonists were no longer the orphans and risk-takers of the early days. As the round trip shortened, crews became comprised of voyagers with families and a desire to eventually return home. But home was now in the direct path of an epic event that was about to cauterize the home world beyond recognition.
On Earth, a final sunrise displayed a fantastic assortment of reds and pinks. At about mid day in Europe, global communications were permanently disrupted. There was no news coverage of the event. No one needed to hear a play by play of his own extinction. As Earth rotated into the expanding coronal outburst, sunrise ignited the atmosphere and boiled ocean water within minutes, scouring the ground at 1000 miles per hour. The experience was mercifully short, but horrifyingly intense. Bunkers underground were permanently sealed shut by molten rock. Iron barrier doors liquefied and imploded into the furnace-like caverns where government officials attempted to escape.

The Lunar colonies, hidden behind Earth for almost twelve hours, were the last to communicate with the Martian bases. They were incinerated as Earth’s shadow exposed them from behind its protective eclipse.
Greg watched events unfold, fully aware that the magnified blue globe on screen was four minutes further into it’s demise than the delayed light speed signal they watched. The only sounds issued by a dying planet, so silent and tiny at this distance, were from the men and women around him, some collapsing in grief at the realization that everything, everyone they had ever known and loved was being systematically vaporized and removed from being, forever.

Welcome to your new home indeed, thought Greg with a shudder. December 21st, 2112. The Mayans were off by a hundred years.


Thursday, November 29, 2012

Gandydancer's Christmas

Charles began his railroad career as a navvy, serving on crews that laid and maintained tracks. He built a solid reputation over fifty years as a brakeman, conductor, fireman and finally engineer.

The job demanded much of his family, moving frequently to find jobs. As rails were gradually converted to trails it seemed as if he might outlive his usefulness, but Michigan proved to be a good place to prepare for retirement at a slower pace, on a scenic run.

His habit of inspecting the train he was assigned to drive was rooted in his earlier days. He reviewed track conditions, equipment history and weather reports before boarding each locomotive. Thus, he knew that trains on the trestle over the falls near Marquette were limited to 15 miles per hour.


To read the rest of this story and more than fifty others, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.



Saturday, November 24, 2012

Christmas Carol Revisited: - 1899

Peter Cratchit stood graveside on a bitter mid-December morning. To say that the sky was dreary or gray would be understating its dismal nature, in the way ashes from a burnt log could be more pleasantly described as fluffy flakes of oxidized wood. The sky was charred, and icy pellets stung the faces of mourners who struggled to shield themselves with cloaks and umbrellas from the sideward wind.

The timid patriarch of the Cratchit clan died at home surrounded by his large and loving family. It was true that Bob was adored throughout his life, an object of sympathy from all who witnessed his servile existence at the hands of that man. Ninety-two years, not a minute of which could be characterized as easy, was the reward in this world for a humble man who showed only love, the simplest of men who lived and died in Camden Town.


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Tuesday, November 20, 2012

50 Years Later

Dinner dishes were carried to the sink as night fell on the evening of October 20th 1962. My eighth birthday a month earlier was a distant memory. The coziness and warmth of our kitchen provided false security against the drama unfolding on the world stage. I played on red and white checkered linoleum with a toy truck while my parents sat transfixed by a radio address to the nation.
It was not unusual for my parents to linger in the kitchen for a while after dinner. They typically smoked cigarettes and shared stories of their day. There was frequently a cup of coffee or glass of wine to prolong the pleasant experience. Our togetherness was a comfortable blanket in an insular space. Television was not yet the irresistible force drawing us to another room that it is today. The 1960s had not yet erupted into the volatile mess we now remember. But that was about to change.
All networks carried President Kennedy’s address to the nation that evening. A crisis was brewing in Cuba. In his speech, the American people were told of a Soviet build-up of missiles ninety miles from our Florida shore. He commented that the "purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere."
The generation of parents raising children in the 60s had clear memories of World War II and the subsequent chill of a nuclear threat. Some of us practiced futile exercises in grade school, ducking and covering under desks and in hallways, as if a nuclear explosion would blow over like a thunderstorm. Others buried shelters in their back yards. The threat bonded us against a common enemy, but riddled our culture with an anxiety and feeling of helplessness that tarnished our otherwise good times.
The President continued, "Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift that any substantially increased possibility of their use, or any sudden change in their deployment, may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace."
"We will not...risk the course of worldwide nuclear war...but neither will we shrink from that risk.”
I looked up from floor-level at the frightened faces of my parents, who stared at the radio and hung on every word.
“Is there gonna be a war?” I asked.
“We don’t know honey. Let’s listen,” said my mother.
Kennedy then announced a naval blockade, a quarantine of all ships carrying offensive military equipment to Cuba. The United States increased close surveillance of the military build-up in Cuba with a promise of action by the Armed Forces should it continue.
“Any nuclear weapon launched from Cuba will be considered an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States requiring a full retaliatory response,” concluded the President.

Kennedy then phoned Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev to halt this "reckless threat to world peace." The Soviets called on the world to "prevent the United States ... from unleashing a thermonuclear war..."

After his speech, the President moved the military alert to DEFCON 3, and Cuba began to mobilize its troops. I played with my truck on the floor.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Iced

Marty headed out the back door with Hershey’s leash and collar.

“I’ll get your dog,” he shouted to Jess as the storm door screeched and slammed behind him in protest to the metal-warping cold. The temperature had dropped more than seventy degrees since a frontal passage the day before. Half a foot of rain flooded and then flash-froze the acreage behind the farmhouse. Hidden beneath a silent sheet of endless blue glass, fallow fields kicked up glare from the waning January sun.

“Just perfect,” Marty said in a disgusted burst of steamy breath. The river was over its banks, indistinguishable from the ice-covered land, but rushing beneath its solid surface was a torrent of muddy water, overflowing Wilke’s dam about a hundred yards upstream. Marty walked cautiously over the rapidly thickening new ice. Thunderous cracks echoed beneath his feet as the shifting surface settled and groaned. He glanced at the growing logjam building behind the dam. Broken branches from yesterday’s storm and mounting ice floes combined in a powerful trail mix of inertial mass.

“That won’t hold for long,” he muttered, nervously continuing his search for the dog.


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Thursday, November 1, 2012

The Lincolnshire Journey



Twenty years ago we hoped for a convenient place to buy diapers for our children, but they were not carried at The Store Nextdoor near our home in Lincolnshire. My kids were not yet interested in cigarettes or beer.

It is said that the journey is the reward. So the other day we headed west from Oxford along the brick path on the south side of Half Day Road. Our goal was a restaurant in Lincolnshire’s local downtown. Forgetting that the walkway is not part of the ill-conceived network of Lincolnshire bike paths, we doubled back and crossed at the light by the tennis club. It was a delightful stroll over “big red,” the rusty, bouncy bridge, through the fearful forest, past the land of empty eateries to the corner of Milwaukee and Olde Half Day roads. In the distance lay an oasis now crammed full of tasty destinations. But first we had to cross an intersection where you had best not attempt a right-on-red or exceed the speed limits imposed by the Vernon Hills horsemen of the apocalypse.

One challenge remained. We just had to cross that old horse trail, Milwaukee Avenue…on foot. To the left is Walgreens. We drive there. Diagonally are the vestiges of another era, and behold, a new place to buy beer and cigarettes. Oh, how I miss the simple and somewhat disgusting, family-friendly Denny’s, Tacos del Rey and The Italian Connection. At least we still have a couple of favorite places where the sulfurous well-water is reminiscent of the beloved Half Day Inn.

We had a bite to eat at Tom and Eddies, where the plates are very large, and then began the journey home. Perhaps there was a better route.

Along the south side of Half Day Road, there is a path from Barclay Boulevard to the Des Plaines River Trail that ends across from the Village Hall, I guess because everybody walks to Village Hall from the west side of the village. The path then returns to the north side, east of the Village Hall after crossing the lightly traveled Route 22, and the absolutely rural Olde Half Day Road. The spelling of “Olde” makes it easier to cross, I think.

Remaining on the south side of the road would result in an interesting opportunity to collect golf balls, and the adventure of a river crossing, since there is no southern bridge to connect the east/west trails.

Should we be so inclined, paths on both sides of Route 22 extend from Oxford Drive to the east Village limits at the Tristate carriageway, where the path connects to the Village of Bannockburn's path system. Respirators and bright orange safety vests are recommended. Fortunately, we turn at Oxford.

The late Stephen Covey said, “Begin with the end in mind.” If that’s the case, is the desire to be upscale in Lincolnshire at odds with the need to be down to earth? Are we simply the longstanding victims of a sordid string of bankruptcies, bad timing and misplaced restaurants? What do we want to be, now that we’ve grown up? Quaint? Charming? Pastoral? Or did we miss that boat?

So, the journey continues, and we are super-excited to see bulldozers on the future site of an upscale grocery store at the much-improved corner of Milwaukee and Route 22 that features a winding rivulet and two giant cell towers. It remains to be seen what we can purchase there, but for now we can at least buy diapers at Walgreens. For our grandchildren.

Author's Note: the upscale grocery store failed. A Culver's was built nearby.


Saturday, October 27, 2012

Mirror in the Night


How I came to be in the favorite part of my boyhood home remains a mystery, but the basement looked exactly as I remember it.  A cavernous, liberating space with a ping-pong table and two steel support poles painted fire-engine red, speckled asbestos floor tiles and concrete walls painted a cheery yellow. Travel posters graced the walls at eight-foot intervals along the west side, glued in place with wallpaper paste by my father decades before. The posters depicted places my parents had never visited—Mexico, Spain, Paris, Rome. Cliché vistas of the Arc de Triomphe, a bullfight and the tower of Pisa. We had never traveled as a family beyond the Wisconsin Dells, so these windows to the world made me smile, but saddened me to think of all the unrealized adventures that had been dreamt in this playful subterranean space.


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Monday, October 22, 2012

The Pool

The balcony was solid and large, built to Hank’s specifications years earlier. He looked out over the backyard from his cantilevered vantage point, across the pressure-treated bench and safety railing. Memories sputtered for air as they raced to the bubbling surface of his new perspective. The swimming pool was gone.

He remembered assembling treads and risers on a hand cut wooden frame, lifting completed stairs into place with the help of friends. Anchored between the balcony and a lower deck, the stairway was firmly shoehorned between the other wooden structures. Each step he took toward ground level accompanied a change in elevation that renewed his perspective of the changed yard and the missing pool.


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Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Cold Fire on a Warm Disney Night

We head down a flight of stairs to our table in The Edison cocktail bar at Disney Springs, deep within the lower level recesses of a steampunk homage to a 1920s era electric plant. Disney considers it an “Industrial Gothic” representation of a time when imagination ruled the day and innovators released electricity like fireflies into the night sky. Thus, the name Edison, but I can’t help feeling that there is a spark of Tesla in the air. Sure enough, one area within the restaurant is named The Tesla Lounge honoring that other pioneer from a time when new technology sprang to the forefront of great minds, all working and competing to light up a dark and limited world.
 

It was a time when it seemed that Disney’s Imagineers were loose on Earth, changing it virtually overnight and filling us with wonder at every turn. As a native Chicagoan I am enthralled with the 1893 World’s Fair, the “White City” where for the first time incandescent lights in vast numbers seemed to turn the Earth on its axis, shifting the setting sun late into the night and extending Man’s reach beyond his daytime grasp. I imagine it to be a sensation much like the one I get when visiting the Magic Kingdom after dark.

I prepare to work my way through a menu of namesake options, slowly sipping my Edison cocktail, sharing an order of Electri-fries, bracing for an Edison burger and completing my repast by indulging in a Triple Chocolate Voltage Cake.

We proceed from dinner to the Magic Kingdom by way of an enjoyable series of Disney transportation connections, boat, bus and Monorail, through the flowering Mickey gateway under the rumbling overhead heritage railroad and onward down Main Street. At night this is a modern day White City, bustling with wide-eyed guests, balloons of all colors, tasty treats and delicious smells, irresistible merchandise and characters come to life and posing for pictures. During the Christmas season the scene is adorned with wreaths, red ribbons and garlands of colored lights. The street takes you back in time and further into the park along embedded trolley tracks to an open area where you must choose which way to go. But you’ll be excused if you linger just a while, stunned into silence by the spectacle that is the illuminated Cinderella castle.

We pause to take in the sights and sounds, admiring the courage of young parents with strollers who navigate the twisting pathways filled with upward looking travelers, wandering without purpose and lost in the wonder of it all. Something catches my eye to the right, a small tree thick with leaves and alive with luminescent green sparkles that dance like Tinkerbell throughout. This is part of the Disney magic. Lighting up this tree is an unnecessary little extra in the midst of big ticket displays, the kind of detail that Disney does so well. The tree appears to be alive with the dancing glow of a thousand fireflies. It is an artificial reminder of the sparkling windswept gold that illuminated the nights from mid June to early September in the Midwest of my youth.

And suddenly, I am a child again, mesmerized by the cold fire that blinked just out of reach and kept us running and leaping with old pickle jars, slapping metal lids onto glass containers as we collected and examined our captured treasure. Their glow faded long after we were called inside for the night, released by caring parents who were taught long ago by Jiminy Cricket to wish upon a star.

But never was there a more industrious young Edison than the summer I responded to a local newspaper ad. 

“Collect fireflies for science. Research study will pay one cent for each insect collected. Minimum of 500 needed. Will pick up.”

Further instructions were given via the phone number provided. The insects were to be kept frozen until the appointed pickup date. A scientist would retrieve the bugs and make payment. A scientist! I pictured Charles Darwin or Thomas Edison visiting my house.

I began with the traditional method in my back yard – hands and a glass jar. It was slow work. According to my calculations, I would spend seven summers achieving my goal. In need of a more plentiful hunting ground, I decided to head down the street to the nearby forest preserve with a butterfly net and a covered plastic bucket.

Among the most memorable things I’ve seen in my life, including the Northern Lights, shooting stars and an active volcano, the sight that greeted me when I parted a dense green curtain of leaves and entered the woods that night ranks very high. Several steps beyond the trees along a trail I knew by day, the numbers of fireflies exceeded anything I had imagined. They blinked with a rapidity and intensity lacking among the more sluggish backyard variety. The forest seemed to be decorated with glittering Italian lights for al fresco dining in every direction. I paused to enjoy and comprehend what I was witnessing and gasped, “I’m rich!”

Then the mosquitoes found me, ferocious, aggressive and numerous. About ten of them for each firefly if I had to guess. In the spasm that ensued, I managed to hold onto my net and bucket, stumbling, choking and running out of the woods past the tree line toward home to find a bottle of insect repellent. They entered my mouth, buzzed in my ears and bounced off my eyeballs. My arms were coated with a brown and fur-like swarm of living pumps, nose down and drilling for blood.

It took me only a few nights to collect the requisite number of bugs. A swelling plastic lunch bag became the source of comments from my mother and sister. Bugs in the freezer near our frozen food! Disgusting! I eagerly awaited my visit from a scientist, and of course, five dollars, the next day.

            “But you’re a girl!” I blurted out when I answered the door.

The young lab technician laughed and said, “Girls can be scientists too,” as she handed me a five-dollar bill, examined the baggie of bugs and proceeded to explain that she was doing research on bioluminescence. She wasn’t allowed to comment on the eventual purpose of the experiments, but thanked me and told me to call again when I collected more. She held up the baggie and just said, “Hmm” as if perhaps mine was the first supply she had seen.

But that was the end of my bug-collecting job, with the exception of one instance when I tried to boost my back yard display with a seeding supply of captured living transplants. I realized the futility of my attempt and also decided that a penny each added up too slowly. It was time-consuming work. Time that could be better spent mowing lawns. And a nagging guilt affected my productivity with each bug I collected, murderous little maniac that I'd become. I loved those magical little creatures and wanted to keep them around.

I am shaken from my memory by an eager co-conspirator, tugging at my hand with a plea for a Mickey Ice Cream Bar. I admire the tree and the laser lights that have transported me. Unlike a neighbor’s lawn at Christmas with a crudely staked light projector that points roughly at the side of a house, I can’t tell where the Disney lights originate. They are as much a part of our evening as warm weather, ice cream and fireworks, and the park has filled me with a bliss that’s hard to explain, immersing me in sensory treats and summoning my inner child with transient wonders, like Tinkerbell soaring overhead from the top of a nearby castle.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

What Sandy Saw

Grass grew at a frantic pace during the early summer of 1963. My father struggled to cut parallel rows in the thick green carpet of our back yard. Grass clippings mounted quickly in the open catcher at the rear of his unpowered push mower.

A mountain of topsoil and clay from the house construction two doors down cast a shadow like the Rock of Gibraltar over the vacant lot next door. The lot served as my dad’s personal dump in the days before yard waste collection and composting. It was where he burned leaves in the fall and dumped buckets of waste water when he washed the car. It was where grass clippings formed a growing pile of delicious green sweetness as he stopped to empty the mower’s bag after each few rows.

We played on the grassy slope that led from our back yard to the slightly lower undeveloped property. It was an elevated seating area from which we watched activity on the dirt hill, in the sandbox and down in the holes being dug nearby. 

Danny and Johnny Mollinger played with plastic army soldiers in the large sandbox near the middle of the lot. Their brother Mark and his friend Timmy were knee deep with shovels in their latest group of foxholes. Doug Taylor labored over a tree stump near the rear of the property with the new hatchet he’d been given as part of his Boy Scout gear. I sprawled on the ground, lying on my back in a growing pile of moist blades, covering myself in the soft warm clippings.

Sandy Taylor spun the pedals of her inverted tricycle near the pile of grass. The spoked tire rotated counter-clockwise at a high rate of speed within the confines of the bike’s metal fender. She fed handfuls of fresh clippings into the space between the rubber tire and the fender and watched them spit out at the front end of the bike in a spray of green. She said she was making ice cream. The Good Humor man turned onto our street a few hours later, our appetites whetted by our imaginary dessert.

I had no concern for grass stains or bugs as I watched cottony clouds drift across an unpolluted blue sky. The grass felt wonderfully soft and warm, a bed of intensely fragrant springtime, opening my mental window to the approaching joys of summer and the delight of a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The thwacking blades of the manual mower grew louder as they came closer and then quieter as they retreated to the other side of the yard, reminding me that my dad was nearby and I was safe.

Johnny pushed an armored vehicle up a sand dune, making sloppy shooting and exploding noises with his mouth to counter Danny’s own barrage of pretend landmines and mortar rounds. Thrusting hands created divots and craters as incoming shells scarred the landscape. One of the blasts caused sand to fly into Johnny’s mouth. He sputtered and spat, but was otherwise unphased by the grit that lingered between his teeth. The noise snapped Doug out of the trance he’d been in most of the afternoon, chopping at the stump nearby. I nudged Sandy to get her attention as her brother slithered to the sandbox.

“Uh oh,” she said. No one knew better than the Taylor girls the range of possibilities represented by their brother Doug.

Danny Mollinger, two years older than Johnny, immediately took note of the approaching danger. He quietly left the sandbox and headed home, leaving Johnny alone on all fours, engrossed in his desert war.

Doug remained outside of the wooden boards that prevented most of the sand from spilling into the grass around the sandbox. He spotted a toy soldier, grabbed it and lay it down on the narrow wooden ledge of the simply constructed frame.

“Hey Mollinger,” he said to Johnny, whose back was turned.

Johnny emerged from his imaginary world like a man overboard, gasping and searching at the surface only to find his lifeboat missing. He turned to face Doug.

“Watch this,” continued Doug.

With a single, swift motion he raised his hatchet above his head, took aim and slashed downward to the vertical board, cleaving the toy soldier neatly in two. He chuckled at his handiwork as the small human figurine fell, half in the sandbox and half outside.

“That’s mine!” Johnny gasped in horror at the ruined toy.

Doug relished the effect his action had on the boy. He ran his finger carefully along the hatchet’s dusty blade, as if clearing it of blood and entrails. It glinted in the sun, scattering light across the sand.

“It’s really sharp,” he said for Johnny’s benefit, and then looked deep into Johnny’s eyes.

“You wanna see how good I am with this?” he asked Johnny.

Johnny nodded innocently. His face went blank, frightened. He did not smile or shake or cry. It was as if a light simply switched off in response to a suggestion that the day was too bright, or the sun too strong. The most vulnerable child on the block was alone with the neighborhood monster, a man-sized fourteen year old bully who could terrify children and some adults with equal facility.

“Come ‘ere!” demanded Doug.

“Mark!” I hissed, motioning to the drama unfolding at the sandbox. Taylor glanced briefly in my direction but re-focused on Johnny. Mark took notice and nodded at me, climbing out of the hole he was digging.

“Now!” Taylor shouted at Johnny.

Johnny stood and obediently walked the few steps to the side of the sandbox. His clothes dripped sand, much of which wound up in his pockets or pant cuffs. He held his army truck with one hand.

“Get down on your knees and put your hand here,” demanded Doug, motioning to the spot where the toy had been bisected. 

“Leave him alone Doug!” I yelled across the lot. Mark took advantage of the diversion to quietly slip around the back of the dirt hill. It shielded him from Doug's view and put him close to his house. He ran faster than I’d ever seen him run.

“You SHUT UP or you’re next!” Doug yelled at me, standing and half turning in my direction, the hatchet dangling at his side. He pointed at me with his free hand, then turned back to Johnny, who stood looking up, expressionless. “I MEAN it!” he said without turning, intoxicated by his own actions.

“Down. Now!” repeated Taylor.

Sandy watched as the scene played out, tears streaming down her face, but silent and motionless as if she had helplessly witnessed interactions like this many times before. Johnny kneeled at the side of the sandbox.

“Put your hand here,” motioned Doug at the spot where the soldier had been destroyed. Johnny’s slow response caused Doug to grab Johnny’s little arm and push it down.

Mark disappeared into the side door of his house at a distance that diminished the sound of a slamming metal screen door to an inaudible clank. Rather than confront the neighborhood bully he had wisely gone to retrieve his dad. 

His dad would surely help us. Dad. My dad! The mower had gone silent a few moments earlier. I turned to see where he had gone.

Doug had Johnny’s hand positioned on the top of the two by ten, his tiny fingers splayed open along the edge.

“Now you’ll see how close I can get without hitting your fingers,” Doug claimed confidently.

Doug Taylor felt a rush that made him light-headed. He shook off images of his uncle that raced through his mind. He thirsted for Johnny’s fear. The control he had over the trembling toddler filled him with a sense of power that grew as he grew, and intensified with each subsequent encounter like this one.

My dad emerged quietly from our garage, walking purposefully and silently across the yard. He carried a baseball bat.

Time slowed. My dad motioned to me with a finger over his lips. Be quiet.

Taylor moved his own hand further up Johnny’s arm, holding his target clear and firm.

Mr. Mollinger burst from his back door, running in our direction. He would not make it in time to protect his youngest son.

Doug raised his hatchet high overhead and slowly brought it down in a practiced arc, then raised it again. He repeated the slow swing twice more, either relishing a surge of adrenaline, or convincing himself to carry out his savage experiment. He was unable to consider the consequences, nor did he care.

In a final swift ascent, the glimmering hatchet scattered reflected light beneath the hand that held it sunward. Doug’s eyes rolled back in his head like those of an attacking great white shark. His chest swelled with excitement. His scalp tingled.

My dad. My quiet father, broke into a run and screamed Doug’s name as he tried to cover the last few steps between him and the crazed neighbor man-child. He raised the bat with his right arm when it became clear that he could not reach Taylor’s hatchet-wielding arm in time.

The shadow from the dirt hill reached the edge of the sandbox as the sun crept slowly across the vacant lot. Metal and wood and bone became players in an unscheduled summer production in a theater that lacked script and staging and sound. Mr. Mollinger collapsed in the sand.


Doug’s momentary silence rippled across the sandbox and into adjacent yards. Motionless observers heard a metallic clang as the hatchet’s blade tumbled across the weed-infested ground, coming to a rest at the base of the hill sixty feet away. The nerves in Doug’s hand and forearm vibrated in a jolting cascade from the blow that loosened his grip on the broken tool, now lying at his feet. 

“That was my Uncle’s!” he shouted. “My father’s gonna KILL you!” 

He grasped his throbbing wrist and rubbed it to dampen the fire in his arm. 

The force he exerted to swing the bat turned my father half around. He regained his balance and let the wooden club fall to the ground at his side. He leaned on it for support but allowed his hand to regain a firm grip on the slender handle. 

Doug was red-faced and looked about to shed a tumbler of tears in an emotional cocktail of embarrassment, anger and pain. The man-child turned to face the man in a display that caused us to wonder if another line was about to be crossed. 

Dad took control. 

“You go GET your father. And your Goddam UNCLE too for all I care” my dad yelled back, tapping into boy-thoughts at the forefront of Doug’s man-sized but broken self-esteem. 

“If you EVER try a stunt like that again, so help me TAYLOR, I’ll use this bat on your HEAD, I swear to God!” 

To punctuate his threat, Dad lifted the bat and dropped it a couple of times emphatically into the open palm of his other hand. 

“You go home!” he finished. 

Doug looked around the vacant lot, compiling a menacing inventory of witnesses, then spat on the ground at my father’s feet and walked away. 

Mr. Mollinger cradled Johnny in his arms and rocked him on the sand. “You son of a bitch!” he muttered as Taylor sauntered past. 

Taylor turned and glared. Johnny said “Hey Daddy,” and drove his army truck up his father’s leg. 

Mark had returned on his father’s heels. He slowly approached the sandbox as most others quietly headed home. Sandy continued to mindlessly turn the wheel of her inverted tricycle while Dad headed into the garage and returned the baseball bat to a bucket of random sports gear. I soon saw the glowing orange tip of a cigarette moving up and down beyond the darkened window next to the garage door as he tried to compose himself. He hadn’t smoked in years, but kept a pack of Kools and a book of matches on a high shelf. 

I took Sandy’s hand and led her away from the vacant lot to the safety of our house. Her tears dried as the indifferent shadow from the dirt hill signaled the approaching end of another eventful summer day. The tricycle’s wheel slowed to a stop with a squeak, and a handful of fresh grass settled to the bottom of the inverted fender.