Boys Life

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,