A Patient Boy, Page 1 of 8

(As it appeared in the Emerson College Literary Magazine Redivider, Volume 1, Issue 1, in March 2004)

It was a perfect place to build a fort, a natural hollow in the scrub willow, plenty roomy for two boys and their sleeping bags. Of course, they wanted to make it bigger. The only drawback was this one opening facing the road; but we found them Denny's old rocking horse blanket to tie up, and it was just like a door.

Maybe it was a little close to the road, but it had always been so quiet. We'd get five or six cars maybe, in a day. Maybe a few more when folks came home from work. That was about it. Hardly anybody went by at night.

I don't know what it is about kids and camping out. Gets into their heads every summer
like a bad song. Anyway, it had been really hot, and so we told them they could. "If you don't get scared," I said. I was giving Denny a hard time because the year before they hadn't made it much past 10:30. This old screech owl had started up, and ten minutes later we'd heard bare feet patting through the hall. Couldn't really blame them; screech owl makes an eerie damn sound. But we hadn't heard from it all summer, and being a year older, Denny figured he wouldn't be scared this time.

He got back to how the fort was really neat but it could be bigger and can they borrow the bucksaw.

I groaned inside, ‘cause a bucksaw's got some nasty teeth on it, but a boy's got a right to be a boy. "Don't you let Teddy use that thing," I said.

He laughed. "Don't have to tell me that one twice, Dad."

Little Ted could cut himself sitting on his hands in the middle of a pile of cotton. Alice would never let him near the kitchen. She despaired of what was going to happen when he went to kindergarten that fall.

"We'll probably have to rent space in the nurse's office," she'd say.
I thought it was those Big Bird Band -Aids myself. He loved the damn things. Used to put them everywhere, cut or no, till Alice figured out it was costing us $2.50 a week. Plus they always fell off, and we got sick of picking Band-Aids up.