Page 16 - Demo

%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK4 Jack Fritscherseemed only a bigger kid than me, always bullying and tattling and pointing his finger at me, saying, %u201cLickety-lickety.%u201d%u201cSonny boy, quit tangling those chains and get the hell out of our swing.%u201dI defied his thin line of moustache and twisted the swing around one more full circle.He shook his raised fist at me.%u201cLickety-lickety,%u201d I said.%u201cDon%u2019t you mock me,%u201d he said.%u201cLet him alone, Meredith. He%u2019s only a kid.%u201d%u201cAw, Bev,%u201d he said.%u201cAw, Bev,%u201d I mocked.%u201cRyan O%u2019Hara,%u201d she said to me, %u201cyou go upstairs, young man, right now.%u201d She turned to Meredith and hissed, %u201cI said, sit down. I mean it. You%u2019re making yourself nervous.%u201d Beverly was bigger than her husband. She told everyone Meredith had been sent home from the Army training camp, because he was %u201cnervous from the service.%u201d She measured out her words, sit down, like venom from an eyedropper. He sat down. His obedience shocked me. Sometimes they fought so loud we could hear it upstairs and my mom and dad shook their heads. We had lived in Peoria Miller%u2019s house a long time, from even before I could remember, when they moved in. I felt that gave me first dibs on the porch swing to do whatever I wanted which was anything he hated, especially winding the big swing up, twisting it around and around until the two chains tangled into one thick knot that lifted the double seat high above the floor. Then anyone could jump up into it and ride it down while it jerked and lurched faster and faster to the floor.Once when I banged the swing into the house wall, hard, Meredith came running out from their apartment. He had jumped up from the dinner table with one of Beverly%u2019s dish-towels tucked around his middle, screaming he%u2019d kick my fanny, lickety-lickety, over the rail into the bridal wreath bushes if I ever did that again because the sudden bang made the war sound like it had come to our corner of Ayres and Cooper streets.I did it again. After Beverly made peace between Meredith and my parents, and everyone agreed not to quarrel over the children, we sat long and late on the front porch. But this summer hadn%u2019t near the dash of the few summers before, the first I could remember, when the lights had to be turned off and the air-raid wardens patrolled the sidewalks. Across our river, the factory where my father worked had turned into a war plant and steamed day and night because even as far inland as the