Page 15 - WTP Vol. XII #2

tankers and their cross-trees became triremes and ancient sails; the far shores filled with teepees and warriors dancing in the sun. All these he drew in his sketchbook and turned the afternoon into yesterday; no day; the never-ending march of imagined people all filled with the potency of his power.
Then inevitably he’s look back towards the city in the distance; past the boys harrowing the highway from the bridge; past the Puerto Rican girls dancing by the duck house; through the frenzied crowds of soccer players and eventually he came to the Duncan Garden Projects where he lived with his latest foster parents. The tops of the high-rise brick towers in the distance rose above the swaying rushes like a totem of his bad luck; the red buildings filled with the swirling thunderstruck welfare mothers, sons selling crack, fathers pushing guns and sisters walking in red dresses till dawn.
“Maybe next time he would get a good one,” he thought!
And then he would slowly lift from his perch; ride into the afternoon sky like a harrier hawk on the wind; rising, rising till the reclining willow dimin- ished with height; its sleeping tendrils swimming
in the river’s slow mouth; rinsing the land’s breath into the tides sweet sweat; the riffles of water rais- ing a shallow humming that only Peter could hear as he floated by like a leaf, wraith-like above the boys washing in the flood, pulling in their harvest of crabs; throwing stones upon the water; and he knew in
that awful knowledge that only the true warrior can know; that he was leaving never to return.
He willed himself lower and then lower again to hang upon the water’s surface like Christ upon the Cross with arms outstretched; the swift stream no more than a watery carpet rippling against his bare feet as he called to the boys on the shore who turned startled and looked at Peter suspended in the air and heard him cry, “Come on boys, fly with me and we’ll go to Never Never Land!”
Reprinted from Adelaide Literary Magazine.
Belton’s short stories have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Fterota Logia, Mystery Magazine, Mystery Tribune, and Constella- tions, among many other journals. He has been the recipient of sev- eral awards, including “Best Book in Science Writing for the General Public” by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, for his memoir, Protecting New Jersey’s Environment: From Cancer Alley to the New Garden State (Rutgers University Press); “Best Chapter” from Meet Me@ 19th Street; and the Writer’s Digest Writing Contest Popular Fiction Award for best Mystery/Crime.
“Kids didn’t frighten Peter-by-the-Bay!
But he was careful to avoid the adults when he saw them coming. He had a secret way out through the swamps where he’d walk his bike through ankle-deep mud or else, he’d just hide amongst the rushes until they left and he’d return to his magical aerie.”
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