Ch. 256; Vol. 10

The Garbage Truck.

I don’t know what fascinates little boys about this vehicle so much, but everything else goes on pause when the dirty truck comes trolling up the street.

Puck and I weren’t having a red letter day.

He spent some time in his room that afternoon, grumpy, until of course he saw something interesting from his window…

“Tomorrow?” he called out. “I am going to go outside and get something from the back yard. It’s really white… If you’ll let me, please… Please?”

The later afternoon brought fairer weather.

Puck stashed himself up on the high bunk in his stinky boy’s room with his own imagination, fancying that “white thing” in the back yard was a crashed bird. He sort of had his heart set on it.

“Could I please go get that white thing, Mom?”

“No.”

“I want to see what it is.”

“Not now.”

“It might be an arrowhead!”

This sucker could butter.

“Seriously? That big white thing out there?”

“It could really be an arrowhead, you know. It is really pointy, you know.”

Still later, Puck adventured into the wilds of the backyard to the “big white thing”…

“Too bad. It was just a leaf. A silly old leaf. I hoped it was a bird thing…”

The dejected explorer returned to his room. I consoled him with several chapters of cardboard box adventures.

The evening had begun with a text from Joe, on his way to join Thunderbird, Annamaria, Jaya, and two more friends for an evening of doubtless goofiness: apparently he was playing drums in the local city orchestra after all. He at least admitted even scaring himself with the idea.

My brothers…