house with Rebel at my heels. The forest was green and glorious, a warm breeze
stirring through the foliage and trees and the bright sun slanting down. I
reached the forest trail and followed it deeper into the woods, and Rebel
veered off to chase a squirrel up a tree before he came on. It took me about
ten minutes to break through the forest and reach the wide green clearing that
stood on a rolling hillside with Zephyr stretched out below. My friends, who’d
come on their bikes, were already there with their dogs: Johnny Wilson with
his big red Chief, Ben Sears with Tumper, and Davy Ray Callan with his
brown-and-white-spotted Buddy.
The wind was stronger up here. It whirled around and around in the
clearing, a happy circle of summer air. “We made it!” Davy Ray shouted.
“School’s out!”
“School’s out!” Ben yelled, and jumped around like a pure idiot with
Tumper barking at his side.
Johnny just grinned, and he stood staring down at our hometown with the
sun hot on his face.
“You ready?” Ben asked me.
“Ready.” I told him, my heart starting to beat hard.
“Everybody ready?” Ben shouted.
We were.
“Let’s go, then! Summer’s started!” Ben began to run around the edges of
the clearing in a wide circle, with Tumper loping along behind. I followed
him, Rebel weaving in and out of my track. Johnny and Davy Ray started running
behind me, their dogs racing back and forth across the clearing and tusseling
with each other.
We ran faster and faster. The wind was first in our faces and then at our
backs. We ran around the clearing on our sturdy young legs, the wind speaking
through the pines and oaks that rimmed our playground. “Faster!” Johnny
shouted, limping just a little on his clubfoot. “Gotta go faster!”
We kept going, fighting the wind and then flying before it. The dogs ran
beside us, barking with the sheer happiness of movement. The sun sparkled on
the Tecumseh River, the sky was clear azure, and summer’s heat bloomed in our
lungs.
It was time. Everyone knew it was time.
“Ben’s goin’ up first!” I shouted. “He’s gettin’ ready! He’s gettin’—”
Ben gave a holler. Wings tore through the back of his shirt as they grew
from his shoulder blades.
“His wings are gettin’ bigger!” I said. “They’re the same color as his
hair, and they’re lazy from not bein’ used for so long, but now they’re
startin’ to beat! Look at ’em! Just look!”
Ben’s feet lifted off the earth, and his wings began to take him upward.
“Tumper’s goin’, too!” I said. “Wait for him, Ben!”
Tumper’s wings unfurled. Yapping nervously, the dog ascended beneath his
master’s heels. “Come on, Tumper!” Ben cried out. “Let’s go!”
“Davy Ray!” I said. “Do you feel it?”
He wanted to. He really did, but I could tell he wasn’t ready. “Johnny!”
I said. “You’re about to go!”
Johnny’s wings, when they exploded from his shoulder blades, were
shimmering black. He went up with big red Chief flapping at his side. I looked
up at Ben, who was already fifty feet above the earth and flying like a pudgy
eagle. “Ben’s leavin’ you, Davy Ray! Look up there at him! Hey, Ben! Call Davy
Ray!”
“Come on up, Davy Ray!” Ben shouted, and he turned a barrel roll. “The
air’s just fine!”
“I’m ready!” Davy Ray said, his teeth clenched. “I’m ready! Talk me up,
Cory!”
“You can feel your wings startin’ to grow, can’t you? Yeah, I see ’em!
They’re gettin’ ready to bust free! Here they come! They’re loose!”
“I feel ’em! I feel ’em!” Davy Ray grinned, sweat on his face. His sleek
auburn-colored wings began to flap, and he ascended with a swimming motion. I
knew that Davy Ray was not afraid of flying; he never had been in the summers
we’d been coming here. He was only afraid of that first leap of faith when you
left the ground. “Buddy’s comin’ after you!” I shouted as the dog’s
brown-and-white-spotted wings caught the air. Buddy dog-paddled upward.
My own wings suddenly burst from my shoulder blades, unfurling like brown
flags. They ripped through my shirt, hungry for wind. I felt the delirium of
freedom lighten my bones. As I began to rise, I had a few seconds of panic
akin to the summer’s first jump into the cold waters of the public pool. My
wings had been tight and dormant under my flesh since the end of August, and
though they might have twitched every once in a while around Halloween,
Thanksgiving, Christmas vacation, and Easter break, they had been asleep and
only dreaming of this day. They felt heavy and ungainly, and I wondered—as I
did every summer since our ritual had begun—how such things could read the air
almost of their own accord. And then my wings filled up with wind and I felt
their awesome muscular might. They gave a jerking motion, like the reaction
after a sneeze. The second flap was more controlled and powerful; the third
was as pretty as poetry. My wings began to beat in the current of air. “I’m
doin’ it!” I shouted as I rose after my friends and their dogs in the bright
sky.
I heard a familiar barking, close behind. I looked back. Rebel’s white
wings had grown, and he was following me. I flapped upward, following the
others who followed Ben. “Not so fast, Ben!” I cautioned, but he was soaring
toward seventy feet. He deserved to fly, I thought, for what he had endured on
the ground. Tumper and Buddy swooped around and around in a long lazy circle
and Rebel barked to be allowed in the game. Chief, like his master, was more
of a loner. Then Rebel swooped over toward me again and licked my face, and I
put my arm around his neck and together we soared above the treetops.
Davy Ray had conquered his fears. He made a caw-caw-cawing sound and he
put his head straight down with his arms rigid at his sides and he dove at the
earth, laughing. His wings were smoothed back along his shoulders, his face
contorted by the rush of air. “Pull up, Davy Ray!” I shouted as he streaked
past me with Buddy in dogged pursuit. “Pull up!”
But Davy kept going down toward the green forest. When it seemed he was
doomed to crash like a meteor, his wings suddenly spread out like a beautiful
fan and he jackknifed his body upward. He could’ve chewed on pine needles if
he’d wanted. Davy flew across the treetops, yelling with delight, but Buddy
crashed through a few thin branches before he got himself straightened out
again. The dog came up from the trees spitting and growling, leaving
shell-shocked squirrels in his wake.
I kept rising toward Ben. Off by himself, Johnny was executing slow
figure-eights. Rebel and Tumper began playing chase sixty feet above the
ground. Ben grinned at me, his face and shirt damp with sweat, his shirttail
hanging out. “Cory!” he said. “Watch this!” Then he closed his arms over his
belly and pulled his knees up tightly and he whooped as he cannonballed down.
As Davy had done, Ben opened his wings large to catch the wind when he wanted
to slow his speed, but here something went wrong. One of his wings didn’t open
full. Ben yelped, knowing he was in trouble. He cartwheeled, his arms
flailing. “I’m goin’ dowwwnnnn!” Ben wailed on a wing and a prayer.
He slammed into the treetops, belly first.
“You okay?” Davy Ray asked him.
“You all right?” I asked.
Johnny stopped running, too, and Tumper ran over to his master and licked
Ben’s face. Ben sat up and showed us a skinned elbow. “Wow,” he said. “That
stung a little bit.” Blood was showing.
“Well, you shouldn’t have gone so fast!” Davy Ray told him. “Numb nuts!”
“I’m okay, really I am.” Ben stood up. “We’re not through flyin’ yet, are
we, Cory?”
He was ready to go again. I started running, my arms spread out at my
sides. The others sped around me in all directions, their arms out, too, and
the wind buffeting us. “Now Davy Ray’s up to seventy feet,” I said, “and
Buddy’s right there with him. Johnny’s doin’ a figure-eight at fifty feet.
Come on, Ben! Get out of those trees!”
He came up, pine needles in his hair, his mouth split by a grin.
The first day of summer was always a wonderful time.
“This way, fellas!” Davy Ray shouted as he began flying toward Zephyr. I
followed him. My wings knew the blue roads.
The sun was hot on our backs. The houses of Zephyr lay below us like toys
on gum-stick streets. The cars looked like little windups you might buy at the
five and dime. We flew on over the Tecumseh’s sparkling brown snake, over the
gargoyle bridge and the old railroad trestle. I could see some fishermen in a
rowboat down there. If Old Moses decided to grab their bait, they wouldn’t be
sitting so calmly waiting for a mudcat.
Our small shadows, and those of our dogs, moved across the earth like
secret writing. We flew over the dark brown, oblong stain of Saxon’s Lake. I
didn’t like it, even as I caught a warm current and zoomed up to seventy feet.
I didn’t like what was lying in it like a seed in a rotten apple. Davy dove
down and flew less than ten feet over the lake’s surface. I figured he’d
better be careful; if his wings got wet, he was through flying until they
dried out. Then he ascended again, and all of us flew over the forest and
farmland that lay beyond Saxon’s Lake like a patchwork quilt of wild green and
burnished brown.
“Where are we now, Cory?” Davy Ray asked.
I said, “We’re almost to…”
Robbins Air Force Base, a huge flat clearing amid an ocean of woods. I
pointed out a silver jet fighter heading in for a landing. Beyond the base,
and off limits to everybody including boys with wings, was a testing ground
where the fighter pilots shot at dummy ground targets and bombers occasionally
dropped a real payload that rattled the windows of Zephyr. The airfield was
the boundary of our jaunt, and we turned around in the hot blue and began
flying back the way we’d come: over fields and forest, lake, river, and
rooftops.
With Rebel at my side, I circled above my house. The other guys were
swooping around their own houses, their dogs barking happily. I realized how
small my house was compared to the great world that stretched off in all
directions. From my height I could see roads going off to the horizon, and
cars and trucks on those roads heading to destinations unknown. Wanderlust is
part of summer, too; I was feeling it, and wondering if I would ever travel
those roads, and if I did where I would be going. I wondered, as well, what
might happen if Mom or Dad suddenly walked out of the house, saw my shadow and
Rebel’s on the yard, and looked up. I doubt if they ever knew their son could
fly.
I made a circle of the chimneytops and turrets of the Thaxter mansion, at
the top of Temple Street. Then I rejoined my friends, and we reached the
clearing on tired wings.
We made a few circles, descending one after the other like graceful
leaves. The ground was a jolt under my heels, and I kept running as my wings
and body adjusted again to earth’s grasp. Then we were all on the ground,
running around the clearing with our dogs, first pushing the wind and then
being pushed by it. Our wings folded up and returned to their hidden sheaths
in our hollow shoulder blades; the dogs’ wings slid down into the flesh and
sealed over with a rippling of hair—white, brown, red, brown and white
spotted. Our torn shirts mended themselves, and no mother would ever know what
had burst through them. We were drenched with sweat, our faces and arms
shining with it, and as we became earthbound again we ceased our running and
dropped exhausted to the grass.
The dogs were upon us at once, licking our faces. Our ritual flight had
ended for another summer.
We sat around for a while, talking once our hearts and minds had settled
down. We talked about all the things we were going to do this summer; there
were so many things, the days wouldn’t be long enough. But we all decided we
wanted to go camping, and that was for sure.
Then it was time to go home. “See you guys!” Ben said as he wheeled away
on his bike with Tumper in pursuit. “Catch ya later!” Davy Ray told us as he
departed on his bike and Buddy sprinted after a cottontail rabbit. “See you
later!” Johnny said as he pedaled away with faithful Chief loping at his side.
I waved. “Alligator!” I said.
I walked home, pausing to throw a few pine cones for Rebel to chase. He
barked furiously at a snake hole he’d discovered, but I pulled him away from
it before whatever was inside came sliding out. It was a mighty big snake
hole.
At home, Mom looked at me aghast when I strolled into the kitchen.
“You’re drippin’ wet!” she said. “What’ve you been doin’?”
I shrugged as I reached for the pitcher of cold lemonade.
“Nothin’ much,” I answered.
2
Barbershop Talk
“LITTLE BIT OFF THE TOP AND THIN THE SIDES OUT, TOM?”
“That’ll do me, I believe.”
“You got it, my friend.”
This was how Mr. Perry Dollar, the owner of Dollar’s Barbershop on
Merchants Street, began every haircut. It never mattered how a fellow
requested his hair cut; he always walked out with a little bit off the top and
the sides thinned out. Of course, we’re talking about a real haircut here,
none of that “hair-styling” stuff. For one dollar and fifty cents, you got the
treatment: wrapped to the neck under a crisp blue-striped barber towel,
scissors-trimmed and clippers-raked, hot lather applied to the back of your
neck and the fine hairs there scraped off with a freshly stropped straight
razor, followed by a liberal dousing from one of the mystery bottles of
Wildroot, Vitalis, or Brylcreem hair dressings. I say “mystery bottles”
because every time I got my hair cut at Mr. Dollar’s, those bottles, on a
shelf above the barber chair, were exactly half full and never seemed to go up
or down an inch. When the haircutting was done—“the scalping” was much the
better term for it—and Mr. Dollar unpinned the barber towel from around your
neck and swept the dead hairs out of your collar with a brush that felt like
whiskers from a boar’s snout, the adults got to reach into the peanut-brittle
jar and the kids got their choice of lime, lemon, grape, or cherry suckers.
