18 - Four of July




Dave comes over to roll the box with me only because I promise real fireworks later.
He doesn’t like my pretend games of space ship and submarine inside the large box that the outboard motors come in for my uncle’s boat store next door to my house, and neither doe my uncle, Harry, who is upstairs trying to sleep after his second shift job out at the airport.
I make Dave stay.
We both hear the scrap of wood as Harry yanks open the second floor window. I peer out the handhold in the box and see his head sticking out the window upstairs. He can’t see us – except maybe where Dave’s feet stick out one end of the box. But he knows we’re inside and yells for us to stop making such a racket.
I try to wait him out, the way I sometimes do, hoping he’ll get bored or tired and head back to bed. But he’s in a mood, refusing to leave the window until I show myself, so I do, easing out the wide mouth of the box, standing at the slate walk that runs around the house from the front porch along the side to the back porch and then into the boat yard next door, Harry’s head framed by one of the two windows of his bedroom on the boat store side of the house.
Harry looks and sounds old, his eyes wrapped in weariness churned up by annoyance, sweat glistening on his forehead exaggerating the hairline his baldness creates, the frown crinkling his face to make him look much older than he really is.
“How many times do I have to tell you to be quiet?” he asks.
“I’m sorry, Uncle Harry. “I didn’t think the box would make that much noise.”
“It’s not the box; it’s you. I can sleep a wink for you’re your giggling. Why aren’t you at school?”
“It’s Fourth of July,” I tell him.
I want to see it’s a holiday and if we weren’t out of school for the summer, we’d had the day off anyway.
“We’re just playing space ship,” I tell him.”
“Space ships don’t giggle,” Harry says. “Why don’t you place space ship in a park somewhere?”
“We’re gonna,” I say. “Later, Uncle Ed promised to take us to Garret Mountain to watch the fireworks.”
“Fireworks are all we need,” Harry mumbles. He always mumbles when he’s talking to himself. “Who do you have in that box with you?”
“It’s only Big Dave. You know the kid from down the street near the liquor store?”
“Tell him to get out of that damned box. If he gets hurt, I’ll have a hell of a lawsuit on my hands.”
I kick Dave’s big feet sticking out the end of the box. His feet jerk. He does not yet get out until I kick him again harder, then he moves, crawling out on his back, crab-like, so large he must be a lobster. He has to roll over to stand, and once standing, he looks smaller than he is, slumped shoulders, head down, looking the way I should look whenever my uncle scolds me; I never do.




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