Shadows in the Garden

A BOY AND HIS DINOSAUR-1

A BOY AND HIS DINOSAUR

We’d been doing so well all day, Shad and I had even helped Grandma prepare Sunday dinner without bickering, when I mentioned that Brown Sugar Meatloaf had always been Mom’s favorite—and brought the whole thing crashing down again.

“You just had to do it—didn’t you?” said Shad, seething, as Grandma went into full Mr. Bill mode, her voice high and quavering as she began quoting Psalms and disappeared into the kitchen, slamming dishes, banging cupboards. “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the older order of things has passed away—Shad! Come get the salad.”

“Jerk,” said Shad, glaring at me over the candles.

He untucked his napkin and joined her in the kitchen, leaving me alone with the Boston Pops and the meat loaf.

“I didn’t mean to ...” I started to say, intending to add: ‘to upset anybody’—but quickly trailed off, mostly because it was a fat-headed lie; a lie as big and fat as Mrs. Carmichael’s—my history teacher’s—calves, which were big as hams. Then I got up and left the table—ducking out the little-used north entrance and double-timing it to the garage—where our poles stood sentinel near the fender of Grandma’s mint, black GTO like skinny green reeds.

There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain ...

I must have bit my lower lip as my fingers hovered near the poles—near mine which was battered and nicked and looked as though it had been used as a whip; near Shad’s which was as clean and straight as the day Dad had bought it (and not because he never used it). For the older order of things has passed away ... Then I gripped Shad’s rod—as well as his tackle box, a fish bonker, and a bucket—and was on my way. Past the kitchen window which I ducked beneath so as not to be seen—and into the California woods. Down to the Mohawk River, the waters of which, this time of year, were as cold and swift—and as unforgiving, Mom used to say, which was funny—as any ocean.

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