Black Cloud: A Still Life

By Mark E. Anderson

This is the story of learning, relating, and coming of age as seen through the eyes of Erik, the son of an old atomic bomb builder turned rocket scientist. Based on a true story, the love in this nuclear family unravels into betrayal amidst forgotten boundaries. Erik shares the experiences of his growing years, among them, those of his mother, an accomplished artist and an IV morphine addict; poor Miss Freeman, who endured condoms for show and tell in 1957; the notorious Jerry Pirate held at bay by a pet crow that becomes a messiah; and a meeting with Edward Teller for a sandwich and an afternoon of hydrogen bomb wisdom in 1968. In the midst of it all, a bond between father and son eventually solidifies in the comfort of two old rocking chairs that squeak in front of their basement whiskey still. Through illicit sex, drugs, and family violence, Erik learns to survive in a world that demands a premium for the simplest lessons of love and the miracle of the human spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 29, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469752327

Mark E. Anderson

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1951, Mark now lives and works near Redmond, Washington. This book is the result of his attempt to make sense out of what he once assumed was a typical childhood. A friend suggested otherwise and persuaded him to record his memories. He currently maintains a private practice as a family dentist.

Book preview

Contents

Preexistence

Snoose

Morphine and the Sidewalk Ant Karma

Show and Tell

The Edsel Experiment

My Messianic Messenger

War Theatre

Water in the Free Fall State

The Novel Idea

Affair View of the World

Teller Over Moonshine

Grandfather’s Betrayal

The Red-Winged Blackbird Takes Flight

On the Beach

About the Author

Chapter 1

Preexistence

-Ageless-

Years before I was born my father helped build the atomic bomb, but from what I am told it wasn’t his idea. The story goes that he started out building a nuclear power plant. Then world war broke out. Soon after, federal government officials furtively intervened into the likes of my father’s nuclear curiosities. He was compelled to come up with a way to house the critical mass of deadly uranium. During that time my father was sworn to a lifetime of secrecy over everything critical he had ever learned about uranium. This was the secret I always thought my family struggled to keep buried.

In the summer of 1945 he saw all his hard work blown to smithereens. On that fateful August day, the atomic bomb left Hiroshima a myriad of radioactive bits. It was a black day for many, glorious for others. My father suffered regrets in the years that followed. The nuclear reactor he had originally intended to help birth in the early years of atomic energy at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, had grown up to be the plutonium producing monster of his worst nightmare. I’ve often pondered this simple twist of fate which shaped my father’s career. As a young scientist he never suspected his experimental discoveries could readily blow up in his face, albeit a face no one ever sees.

I didn’t actually see my father’s face that August day in ‘45. I was born in the dead of winter, six years later. But, although I was yet unborn, I’ve always attributed that dismal day in August for planting the perpetually glum look of dissonance on my father’s face. The dissonance, I believe, portrayed the struggle he harbored inside himself between his science and his humanity.

My father was never a religious man. But I wouldn’t say he was wholly agnostic either. He believed in the laws of physics. Religious tales of God, at best, to him represented apparitional expressions of yet undiscovered electro dynamic phenomena. He questioned how any God could allow the entire city of Hiroshima to be toasted and tossed into the realms of historical oblivion. He’d never actually read the Bible, so he wasn’t inclined to make ecclesiastical connections with the fact that God had allegedly wrought comparable disasters on cities of days long past; Sodom and Gomorrah was merely a mythological legend to him. Such tales held only rhetorical significance for him, equivalent to the illusive fables of Atlantis, the Land of Oz, or Jack and his silly beanstalk.

When one of his scientist friends made the famous statement science was now capable of knowing sin my father supposedly laughed wholeheartedly, proclaiming that at least the God who initiated this idea of sin didn’t leave a radioactive hodgepodge behind when He destroyed cities. My father contended it made more sense to say science was now capable of knowing some very bad dreams. The old bomb builder would have gladly dismissed the whole atomic misadventure as a bad dream, were it possible. But part of him remembered it all too well. Ghostly images of ruthless annihilation haunted him for decades.

He lived his own nightmare, however. It was a nightmare he never bargained for. In short order, following Hiroshima, he awoke to the actuality of human betrayal he helped perpetuate via atomic devastation. His was not the sort of nightmare he could have dreamt. Bits and pieces of the horror, the guilt, and his acquired distrust of the human race kept surfacing from irrefutable memories engraved in his heart. I could sense it as if I had radar. He was sworn to carry those memories to his grave, secrets he was obligated to safeguard via signed governmental documents.

Despite all that, he wanted the ice-cold truth told to future generations—the insanity encompassing the conception and birth of the atomic bomb. A sizeable array of only partially briefed scientists like himself was progressively seduced into the project, never told at the time exactly what they were building. They knew it was the most powerful bomb imaginable; they didn’t have a clue it would annihilate a whole city. Many thought it might not even work, a cataclysmic dud. Brilliant young scientists were meticulously kept in the dark concerning their individual contributions. Meanwhile, the madmen in charge were building their killing machine in bits and pieces, cleverly utilizing various different sites throughout the country to maintain their murderous secret.

The plan worked. My father, like many others, remembered the era as a blur comprised of bits and disjointed pieces. Although, I suspect he preferred it that way because of the living nightmare he painfully locked in his heart. I believe that parts of him never recovered.

It was odd growing up in the image of this spindly-haired scientist. In the beginning, my mind overflowed with dreamlike figments. I knew nothing about physics. However, in time, menageries of the old wizard’s cosmic notions threaded themselves together into themes. He taught me ethereal nuances I never found in encyclopedias or textbooks. I learned the physics of spirituality from that spindly-haired old man, my father.

There was a parallel story occurring, nonetheless, the tale of a little boy and his troubled parents. The black cloud which hung over Hiroshima may have been an awakening for many. My own awakening had not yet begun.

Chapter 2

Snoose

-Earliest Memories-

In 1955 my father left Oak Ridge, moving to Seattle where he began work on what later became the Minuteman missile. I was four years old; Snoose was the family cat. No telling how she was named; maybe something to do with my grandfather, the betrayed seaman, or my great grandfather, the stately Norwegian sea captain. Both progenitors likely used the Norwegian sniffing tobacco known as snoose.

Snoose was the dearest of all living creatures in my earliest memories. She was as dear as the bedtime stories my father would conjure up for me between sips of sarsaparilla. When the bedtime story was over, the sarsaparilla glass empty and the light finally turned out; after the cowboys had long since ridden off into the sunset, Snoose, the cuddly feline, stayed behind half-tucked under the covers gently purring.

Dreams, memories, and bedtime stories. Growing up it was difficult to distinguish which was which during my earliest years. I eventually began to learn the truth surrounding my atomic bomb family; my father and mother, two older brothers, Rusty the family dog, and, of course Snoose. I was four when I learned the truth about death, about leaving flesh and bones behind, never to return. I saw the world quite differently from that day forward.

My memories of Snoose are the earliest I can recall. Snoose slept with me each night beginning when I was about three years old. I had a silky edged lining on my bedspread which I would hypnotically run my fingers over, tickling my forefinger until I slithered into the world of dreams and fell fast asleep. Without Snoose’s purring combined with my tickled fingertip I had trouble falling asleep at night. So my father, in preparation for another bedtime story, would track down the elusive cat before beginning each story, often including Snoose in the story similar to the way he included me. In the morning Snoose was gone, because sneaking out at night was a way of life for her. At night, I knew she hunted down and caught little nighttime creatures, using her special eyes my father told me were made for seeing in the dark.

All the same, Snoose and I grew closer and closer; we became intimate friends. Not so with Rusty, our senile little Lhasa apso whose habitual in-house defecations had permanently barred him from the sleeping area of the house. In the mornings when Snoose finally showed up again she brought birds or moles or mice or chipmunks, each little critter being lifeless, limping or otherwise injured. This was the game she played and I understood death as part of the nighttime game that only Snoose knew how to play. The creatures that died in the clutches of her furniture-sharpened claws didn’t really frighten me. I wasn’t close to the creatures which she rendered stiff and lifeless, anyway. Death was something that happened far away, out in the big woods.

When my best friend, Cary, and I played in the woods out back we usually played Tarzan bearing the wooden knives my father had carved for us, while telling us how he used to play Tarzan when he was a boy visiting his grandfather’s grapefruit orchard in the viney jungles of Florida. Cary and I were both four years old. And as four-year-old play typically goes, whenever Snoose showed up, we pretended she was Cheetah, Tarzan’s leopard-skinned personal protector, and trusted hunting companion.

Cary and I were lost in the bliss of another make-believe jungle story the day Cary found Snoose sleeping under a Scotch broom bush.

Come here, I found something, Cary yelled back down the trail at me as I plodded along a distance behind him.

You wait. There’s army ants over here, I hollered back up the trail. Come here. Let’s kill the hill. I began to kick the mound of skimblescamble ants, stepping backward to avoid being swarmed.

No, Cary said. Hurry, it’s Snoose. She’s got bunches of bugs in her mouth.

I’m coming, I said, running to catch up.

Cary got back on the trail, meeting me halfway, I could tell in an instant by the look on his face that something was not right with the world.

Something’s wrong with her, Cary said. She’s sleeping and she’s got bunches and bunches of big bugs coming out of her mouth.

Why didn’t you wake her up? I said.

There’s bunches and bunches of bugs. Big bugs. I’m not touching her, he said. His face was full of fright.

No, you don’t know Snoose, I said. She sleeps in the woods in the daytime. She must be sleeping real hard.

Several crows were circling and several more were perched nearby on the head-high forest of Scotch broom limbs which marked the trail to where Snoose lay. As if waiting for church services to begin, the black-feathered beasts appeared patiently gathered for something. Or maybe this was their home, I thought.

Caw-caw, the largest of the crows bellowed while flapping his wings just enough to hop one branch closer to the place where Cary had seen Snoose. Something wasn’t right. Normally, Snoose would have been tiptoeing up to the most unawares of birds.

Rounding a corner of bursting yellow Scotch broom petals, I saw Snoose sleeping under the deep green shade of one of the shrub’s branches.

See, I said to Cary, moving in closer. She’s sleeping. See, her eyes are closed.

Cary came around from the other side of the bush and kneeled at Snoose’s motionless body, hand-sweeping off the flies that were landing and busily rubbing their tiny front appendages together as if preparing for a meal. Cary plugged his nose.

Look in her mouth, Cary said. She smells stinky bad.

My wooden Tarzan knife was sufficient to lift her head up, revealing her hardened tongue filled with tiny worm-like bugs in the center groove. Her whole tongue was frozen between her fangs with ants running in and out of the spaces between her teeth. I had never seen anything like this before. A whirlwind of new feelings engulfed me like a swirling vortex, plummeting from my head to my toes.

One of the crows perched atop the Scotch broom looked down in curious sympathy. It seemed as if he understood much more than I what this gathering was all about.

She’s dead, Cary cried.

I knew what dead meant; like the mice Snoose always left lying on the kitchen floor. That was dead. This, on the other hand, made no sense.

Maybe she’s just sick, I said.

No. She’s dead.

Snoose, I poked at her. Snoose, WAKE UP!

See, she’s dead, Cary said.

I could tell Snoose wasn’t in her body, I looked up at the priestly black crow, real hard, eyes fixed. He held still, staring back at me as if he knew where Snoose had gone.

I’m going to tell my mother, I took off running.

Running back down the trail then across the street and two houses down as fast as I could, I left Cary behind somewhere. I found my mother at a neighbor’s house drinking coffee and talking nonstop about another neighbor the two of them didn’t get along with. I waited politely for as long as I could, then tugged on my mother’s blouse sleeve.

It’s Snoose, hurry. Come see. It’s Snoose! There’s bugs coming out of her mouth and things.

Shush, my mother said. You’re interrupting an adult conversation. I’ll take a look when we get back to the house.

No, she’s dead, I blurted. I thought she was sleeping but she’s dead!

What Cary said about my cat’s condition had finally started to sink in, although I still didn’t know exactly what it meant in this case. I was sure as sure could be that Snoose had to be out there somewhere amongst the Scotch brooms, even if she wasn’t still inside her furry black coat.

Oh dear, she got hit by a car? my mother said.

No. Cary and me found her in the woods—with crows all over and big worms and bugs.

Oh dear, we’d better go see.

And she’s not just sick. She’s dead, I said.

My mother hurriedly folded up her things and gulped her coffee one last time before excusing herself from the conversation.

Just where did you see her? she said.

In the woods, I whimpered.

Stop pulling on me, she said. Do you mean out by the Scotch broom where you and Cary play?

Yes. And she’s dead.

I was too panic-stricken to out-and-out cry on the way back to the house.

She was such a beautiful cat, too, my mother said. I wonder what could have happened to her? You stay here, in the house, and I’ll go out back to see. She seemed to sense that I wanted to come along. It won’t do any good for you to look at her again and get even more upset. You stay right here. Get yourself a cookie off the plate on the kitchen table. I’ll be right back. As she headed out the back door I started crying. I’ll be right back, she snapped. It’ll be okay.

But things weren’t okay. I just knew it. Snoose had been gone for a week already, and I had been missing her more and more with each bedtime story. An empty, sinking feeling came over me. Snoose was never coming back. Minutes later, my mother returned to the house to tell me, You were right, Snoose is dead.

She said it plain and simple. Then she ruffled the hair on my head. I had already wiped my tears dry, it made her upset whenever I whimpered or cried.

She probably died of old age, my mother explained, going about her business, putting away the washed lunch dishes, dishtowel-drying the ones which had not completely dried. All cats die of old age sooner or later, she said matter-of-factly. It’ll be okay. We can always get another cat. Now don’t you go back out there to those woods. It’ll only give you more nightmares than you’ve already been having. Your father will take care of her body when he gets home. You hear me?

I nodded my head and stared out the back window toward the woods, struggling with the notion that Snoose was probably never coming back home. That was what dead really meant.

When my father got home he took care of the whole matter.

Did she still have bugs on her? I said.

No. We cleaned her up, he said.

Where is she now?

Oh, that’s a very good question. I’m guessing she’s way up there somewhere in kitty cat heaven.

Is her body there, too?

Sure. In fact they probably gave her a brand new one for being such a good kitty all the time.

Will bugs be able to get in her new body?

Of course not, my father assured me.

I still felt ill, an intense grip in the pit of my stomach.

She was a good kitty, alright, my father said. "Except maybe when she’d climb up on my pipe rack and knock the tobacco down onto the floor. She was the only cat I’ve ever seen that apparently liked to sniff

pipe tobacco. She’ll be missed."

Will she come back to us? I said.

Maybe so, he said. But it might not be in the way that you think. So be sure to look real deep into the eyes of the next cat you see. Look deep enough to see if she’s in there. In fact from now on, if you just keep looking very closely into the eyes of every kitty cat you see; I’ll bet you’ll see her again someday.

That gave me hope, but I still wondered about old age, accepting my mother’s explanation of how Snoose died. But it was weeks later, still bothered by not knowing what old age was, I asked my father. He laughed while the smoke puffed upward from his pipe.

You haven’t met my father or my mother, nor your mother’s parents, he said. But you will eventually—that’s ‘old age.’

Are they dead, too? I said.

Just your mother’s father, thank God. He was a hell-raiser. My mother and father, and your mother’s mother are all still alive, though.

The picture was becoming clearer to me. A person could have old age and not be dead from it. However, if a person had old age and was a hell-raiser at the same time, then he would be dead. Later, I asked my father what a hell-raiser was. He laughed some more and said I couldn’t understand it yet. He suggested that maybe we could talk about it ten years from now. Indeed, he promised me we’d talk about it then.

It was not easy falling asleep for many nights on end. But my father, the old physicist storyteller, made a point of including Snoose in nearly every nightly fable from then on.

Chapter 3

Morphine and the Sidewalk Ant Karma

-Age Five-

Trying to make sense out of things with my five-year-old understanding, I would always think about the fiendish Captain Hook whenever my mother went running for her morphine pills to cure her terrible headaches. The Peter Pan record on my phonograph player assured me there was no one more fiendish than Captain Hook; I just assumed my mother’s headaches felt like pirates plundering her skull.

It seemed only natural that my mother’s headaches were much more vicious than the fiendish Captain Hook, since they required little pills which were even morphined-ish than the powerful pirate himself for her to feel better.

The morphine I encountered at five years of age was kept on a shelf up high inside a shoebox in my mother’s closet. I was not able to reach it, although I desperately wanted to peek inside to satisfy my curiosity. My naiveté about the art of hypodermic syringing led me to assume that, aside from my mother’s morphine pills, the shoebox contained something akin to a snakebite kit. My older brothers had taught me about snakebites.

Most days were painless when I was five, but the morphine out of my mother’s shoebox was not to credit for that. Mostly, it was the innocence of childhood games which made my life go from tolerable to downright fun. Cowboys and Indians, or chasing pirates on the high seas, were the games I played. Some of the games were deadly serious, in that, at such a tender young age, I had not yet learned to shoot from the hip. But, again, my mother’s morphine had nothing to do with that, either. I was small and vulnerable, trying to shoot a big, cast aluminum cap gun, fully loaded with red rolls of ammo tape lined with explosive black dots. The heavy gun and the startling cap explosions made shooting from the hip seem like a skill meant for grownups.

At this point in my life, autumn was well on its way to becoming the most depressing time of the year. That’s when my brothers would head off to school. That’s when I would be left all alone at home, except for my mother and the family dog. That’s when there would be no one to play with, such as there had been all summer long. That’s when Seattle turns cold and wet and I would get scolded for trampling mud in the house. My brothers would come home from school with strangers whom they referred to as their new friends; and that’s when I figured I wasn’t their friend anymore. That’s when my father would come home later and later each day, making up for summer vacation time he’d taken which was now just a distant memory. That’s when the milkman and the mailman would stop and talk to my mother for much longer than usual, making up for their lost time visiting with her during the summer when she was much too busy tending us boys. That’s when I would realize that the milkman was much more interested in my mother than he was in the gaming pranks of a bored five year old; I could see it in his eyes when he looked at my mother. That’s when Rusty would defecate in the playroom of our house because, I figured, even he would get depressed sometimes. That’s when I would have to clean up the putrid mess because my older brothers, who would have normally had to clean it up, had gotten to go to school instead. I was supposed to start learning household responsibilities, cleaning up Rusty’s messes apparently being the bottom of the ladder, best I could tell. Afterward, I would sometimes take naps on my mother and father’s gigantic Norwegian bed. That’s when the shoebox would come down from the closet shelf in my mother’s bedroom.

***

Once again, it was autumn, the time of year when my mother’s most aberrant and piquant behaviors would arise, sometimes several in a day. Today was a school day, the usual morning dullness. For breakfast we ate the predictable uncolored, unflavored oatmeal that my mother cooked. My father fled out the front door, I mindlessly eyeballed the empty bowl in front of me. I felt alone. My brothers had sped off to paste their blonde-haired flat tops with Butch Wax inside the bathroom with the blue tiles which perfectly matched their blue eyes.

Done with their primping, my brothers grabbed their lunches and left for school. Through the opened and then closed front door I could see the morning sun breaking through the clouds. I sat daydreaming about playing on the old dory skiff my father had filled with sand, converting it into a make-believe sailboat in our front yard.

I helped my mother clear the table, another responsibility I was to learn, not quite as important as cleaning up after Rusty because she would never get near as frantic about it. With the table cleared, my mother traipsed over to the house across the street where I played with my friend, Cary, and she yammered on and on for quite some time with Cary’s mother.

Then, abruptly, my mother arose from the living room sofa, stricken by her sudden awareness of the time.

Goodness, she said. I forgot to put the milk bottles out. She approached me. Put those toys down, we’d better hurry home.

I’m not going, I said.

You’re certainly not staying, she warned.

I’m not going.

Come along! she said, reaching out her hand.

Hoping she might leave me be, I ignored her; it only made her all the more mad, pulling me by the upper arm in the direction of home while she gave a false laugh of nervous embarrassment.

Apparently he’s got that dark cloud hanging over him again today, she said apologetically. That’s why we nicknamed him ‘Black Cloud.’ She turned to me, then back to Cary’s mother. His father gave him that name when he was two, said his temper makes him like a little Indian on the warpath. Her lips tensed as she forcibly repeated my Indian name, her deep blue eyes sternly landing the fullness of her anger. Cary’s mother looked anxiously about, quite uncomfortable with things.

Oh, how cute, she said, I’ve heard nicknames are supposed to strengthen the personality. I’ll bet he ends up with lots of character.

He already has lots of character, my mother said in exasperation.

Cary and I had gotten lost in the world of his erection set while the two talked—although a number of times my mother had interrupted our play, blithely letting us know it was an erector set, not an erection set. I was determined to stay; she yanked on my arm, insisting the milkman was due any minute.

I didn’t care for the milkman, since he would always give me a smug sort of dirty look, then turn inside out with gooey smiles when my mother greeted him and handed him the week’s milk and butter order which she had kept safe and warm inside the top of her blouse. Scarily unfamiliar, his youthful look wasn’t the look of a scientist, not in the slightest. Dressed in white with thick, white shoes and a bleached-white sea captain’s cap, his identity was confusing. As far as I could tell he was attempting to pass himself off as the Milk Angel. He went from house to house clanging old empty bottles like the ghost of some notorious sea captain hiding out amongst the living; cleverly disguising himself.

Let’s go, she said, fixing a death grip on my wrist and hauling me out of the house. We have to get back to the house, right now.

The Milk Angel was cruising down the street.

I heard the clanking of full milk bottles coming up the front steps shortly after we had gotten back inside our own house. My mother ran to her room where I heard perfume spraying just moments before the doorbell rang. As it rang, the bottles came to a clanking halt while she fussed and flicked her wavy, long blonde hair back from both sides of her face using the hallway mirror.

Go ahead and answer that, she told me, heading off toward the kitchen as though suddenly she was in no hurry to get to the front door.

I opened the door and there he stood, too young to be a bleached out ghost of a sea captain in my estimation. Gazing upward at his skyscraper height, I grew suspicious.

Howdy, little feller, he said, trying to see past me, Your mom home?

Tell him to come on in, my mother said from the kitchen.

I pointed my cowboy pistol at the Milk Angel as he walked past me. He gave me a snarly pirate’s look in return. Whenever I would point my six-shooter at my father, he would cock his thumb back and shoot me back with his finger. I followed the Milk Angel around the corner into the kitchen, aiming my gun at him all the while. As he rounded the corner his pirate eyes lit up, then softened into an intense scan that went up and down the length of my mother’s figure, sizing up the loot the way pirates always do. My mother’s thick blonde hair looked freshly pretty. Something about her seemed enchanting, and something else about her seemed full of playfulness. I could smell the trail of perfume she had left as she headed into the kitchen. It hung in the air like a sweet-smelling cloud.

Put that gun away, she said. It’s not polite to shoot people.

Her eyes returned the pirate’s gesture, scanning the intruding young man from head to toe; I decided at this point he was simply the Milk Pirate. I was ready to shoot him dead if I only had some real bullets.

Bam. You’re dead. Bam, bam, I said.

Well, now hold on there, little feller. He put his arms up.

Little feller, all the more reason to shoot this pirate dead.

That’s enough, Black Cloud, my mother said glaringly.

I knew she meant business. I put my six-shooter back in its holster and sat down at the kitchen table, ready to draw again if I had to.

Black Cloud? the Milk Pirate said. That’s an interesting name.

Oh, it’s just the way he is sometimes, my mother said, making girlish eye contact with him.

You know, nicknames are supposed to be good for a kid, he said. That’s what my aunt used to tell me. She was the sweetest woman ever. Used to call me her ‘dreamboat’ all the time. Said she was going to marry me just so she could hold me down and tickle me to death. I suppose I would’ve liked that. He leaned on the countertop after setting down the clanking milk bottles, chuckling to himself, seemingly lost inside a pleasant memory of his aunt.

"I’m sure you were her dreamboat," my mother said. She walked across the kitchen floor, more on her toes than usual, and stood within inches of him as she took the milk bottles one-by-one and placed them in the refrigerator. Each time she bent over, joggling things around in the refrigerator to find room for the next bottle, the Milk Pirate fondly eyed her from behind as if she were the loot he had been searching for. Her pedal-pusher pants stretched tightly across her rear end each time she bent over. Placing the bottles one at a time seemed to be her way of displaying her rear end to the Milk Pirate several times over.

The pirate was sly, though. He not only got her to bend over and display her pedal-pusher clad hind end, but also watched intently as she leaned over the countertop making out a check to him. As she did, I watched him peep through the top of her blouse.

Then, the Milk Pirate loaded up the empty milk bottles stockpiled on the floor of the pantry, clanging them into his carrying container. This time it was my mother’s turn, staring at him from behind; blindly gazing at his bent over rear end while he poked his fingers into the openings of several bottles at once and picked them up off the floor.

After the looking game between the two of them was done, the Milk Pirate slid his hands into his pockets and leaned against the cabinetry. My mother sat down at the kitchen table, running her eyes up and down the length of his white uniform as they began to talk about Mrs. So-and-so and other tidbits of neighborhood gossip.

Time to leave; I felt ignored. I slipped out of the kitchen, into the laundry room, and then out through the laundry room outer door, heading straight for the dory skiff to resume my play as the sailing ship’s captain.

Outside on the dory skiff, I hoisted the