Camp Dogwood serves the kids ice cream for breakfast. Strawberry, Chocolate, or Vanilla. Your choice.      While they were supervising their kids, Scout (counselors are not allowed real names at camp to avoid there being 16 Sarahs) elbows Bucket (actually named Sarah) and points rather obviously at Salt (Jax) being escorted out of the office at […]

“All right Girl Scouts, lineup!” Robbie calls the patrols to attention. Here, he is The Law. He commands twenty boys, and they listen. Lineup he shouts, and they fall into three perfect lines. The all-powerful Senior Patrol Leader.      These aren’t Cub Scout meetings, where parents bring cookies and juice boxes for the kiddies. Parents who […]

My parents must be trying to kill me. The car windows are closed, and Dad is smoking a pipe, the tobacco is cherry scented, and Mom puffs away on her L&Ms. The smoke makes me sick and I want to throw up. They won’t crack the windows because they’re afraid dirt will get in the […]

Rain fell all morning but I decided on a walk anyway. I don’t recall precisely what time I left my flat, it may have been close to noon, but I donned my yellow mackintosh, my Wellingtons, and fetched my peacock from his gated pen. An iridescent blue and green beauty, his train blazed with gold-rimmed […]

Asters Ethan and Sharlene sat on the twin Adirondack chairs on the porch, his fingertips resting on her wrist as they gazed at the violent New England Asters and purple black-eyed Susans, which spread out like a cornfield all the way to MacArthur’s apple orchard. Above the flowers, the setting sun painted the clouds peach. […]

Owen stood in the boxing ring in the back of Bichelmayer’s Meat Market, using the edge of a turnbuckle to press the swollen flesh away from his eye. Breath came ragged through his teeth and exhalation whistled through a crack in his nose. His hearing, gone, blasted by the cacophony of the crowd. […]