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Shedding Skin
I have my blue jeans rolled up to reveal the plaid underside and my Tom Corbett Space Cadet T-shirt clings tight to my stomach. Yes, and my white high-topped Keds surround my dancing feet, my red bandanna is tied around my neck, the point tickling my throat. Behind me, in the row house, Freda and Father sit beneath the Norman Rockwell kitchen calendar arguing about budgets. Ahead of me is Craig Avenue. That’s where the Hill is, where Baba Looie might be. It is where Gene Autry and Roy Rogers move inside our bodies, take over our speech, stop stuttering in Walter, make Kirk forget his scraped-up knees, turn Shirley Steinberg—who will later get gunned down for real in a tavern fight—into the traveling minstrel girl, charm a man out of his snake ring like it or not. Running down Craig Avenue, I’m no fat kid who will have trouble with braces acne marriage. I will not step on a crack. I am Lash LaRue; the bushes shrink from my touch. Me and my silver gun, my jewel-studded holster. Even though I cannot breathe with this scarf strangling my neck. I can still dodge Walter’s bullet.
“Gotcha!”
“Missed.”
“Didn’t. Can’t dodge two feet.”
“Can, Walter. Jump the exact moment you pull the trigger. Before the bullet comes out of the gun, I’m free.”
“Sure.”
A punch in the gut for Walt. See him lying on the chalked hopscotch, his head resting in sevensies. Kirk from the mulberry tree:
“Krehhh, krehhhh, you’re all dead.”
No chance to dodge. Call in the rulebook.
“Fix fix new man.”
“No new men. No new men. Awwww no.”
I may as well die, change the game to Best Death.
No one wants to play. It doesn’t matter. We go to the Hill. Dust all over Tom Corbett’s shirt. Standing on the Hill, should we go get the Seckel pears? No, Greenleaf will call the cops. What’s a penny made of? Dirty copper. So funny I forgot to laugh. Later we will say Funny as a fart in a space suit.
“Let’s dig.”
Run over to Walter’s for the shovel. Little Eddie, who has painted valentines on the backs of his box turtles, wants to dig. We push him out of the way. No one likes him because he has a cleft palate. Dig dig dig, working good here in the sunshine, dirt all over Kirk like moondust, digging further into that soft orange clay, stop, wipe off your head with the bandanna, go over to Eddie’s—yes, you can play, we love you, bring us the water bottle, bring us the ruler with the King Syrup picture on it; we’ve got a nice hole here now, three feet deep. Sweat all over us, as we sit in the hole, lob grenades at Japs, slitty-eyed midgets never stop Combat Kelly or the Blackhawks. Shoot marbles against the wall, get all the way down, we could store apples in here, Greenleaf comes looking, we spread a dark army blanket overtop and he breaks his leg. Dust all over everything, it’s four o’clock, time for Kate Smith, do you wanna go? No, nah, forget it, she’s a horse, never wears anything but long dresses because her calves are burned, nothing but scars. You wanna dig? Yeah yeah yeah. Let’s get this hole deeper, all the way to China. I wanna buy some chop suey, digging digging, our hands coated with the dust, our shovels cracking into rock, digging digging digging our hole….