Boys Life

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.

IX – 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.
    “Hot day,” Mr. Dollar commented as he lifted up Dad’s hair with a comb and snipped the ends with scissors.
    “Sure is.”
    “Known it hotter, though. One hundred and three degrees this day in 1936.”
    “One hundred and four degrees this day in 1927!” said Mr. Owen Cathcoate, an aged specimen who was playing checkers with Mr. Gabriel “Jazzman” Jackson at the back of the barbershop, where the overhead fan kept the place the coolest. Mr. Cathcoate’s wrinkled face was dotted with liver spots, like a map of some strange and foreign country. He had narrow-slit eyes and long-fingered hands, and his scraggly yellowish-white hair hung down around his shoulders, which must have been torture for Mr. Dollar to have to look at. Mr. Jackson was a big-bellied black man with iron-gray hair and a small, neat mustache, and he shined and repaired shoes for people who brought them in, his workshop being at the rear of Mr. Dollar’s place. Mr. Jackson got his nickname because, as Dad told me, he could “blow butterflies and hornets out of that clarinet of his.” The clarinet, in a well-seasoned black case, was never far from Mr. Jackson’s side.
    “Be a whole lot hotter ’fore July gets here,” Mr. Jackson said as he pondered the pieces. He started to make a move and then thought better of it. “Owen, I do believe