Molly was excited when she came over to get me. I was going with her and her mom and dad to the Dexter Cider Mill. It was a cold, cloudy, windy day, and I almost forgot to bring my jacket, but mom reminded me. Molly and I walked across the street together, looking both ways like our moms and dads had told us.

Molly’s mom and dad were coming out of their front door and Molly’s mom called out to her, “Molly, you and Coop can sit in the way back if you want!”

Their car was called a “station wagon”, because it had more seats than a regular car. A regular car had a front and a back seat. But a station wagon had another seat behind the back seat. Molly called it the “way back”, because her mom and dad had told her it was the seat “way in the back” of the car. Molly and I both liked the “way back” seat because it was far away from the grownups in the front seat. Also because it was different, when you sat in it you were looking out the back window of the car. You couldn’t see the grownups driving, so it was easier to pretend you were driving, even though the car was going behind you, not in front of you.

Molly ran toward her front door, leaving me standing by the car. “I got to get something”, she said, as she tried to slide between her mom and dad back into the house.

Her dad put a hand out and grabbed her waist, lifting her off the ground, her legs still moving, trying to run. “Where you going, young lady?” he asked.

“Just up to my room to get my steering wheel”, she said, a fierceness in her voice as she continued to move her body, though she didn’t look unhappy being captured by her dad.

“Okay”, he said, putting her down, “But hurry up!”

From near the car I could see Molly running up the stairs and disappearing out of sight around the corner.

Molly’s mom shook her head, saying, “You don’t need to encourage her Jack!”

Molly came running down the stairs and ran past the two of them, the steering wheel thing with the buttons and circles in her hand. This time her dad didn’t try to grab her. She ran out to where I was by the car.

“I got it!” she said, looking at me with fierce eyes. With her other hand she opened the back door of the car. She pulled open the back door and climbed onto the back seat, feet first, and then tumbled herself over the seat into the “way back”.

I thought about following her but instead stood just outside the open door and looked at her mom and dad as they came up to the car.

Her dad looked at me as he walked towards the back of the car, his hand reaching into his front pocket, making clinking noises. “Young man”, he said, “How about I let you in through the tailgate!”

He pulled a big ring of keys out of his pocket and with his fingers found one for the car, opening the back part so I could climb into the seat next to Molly.

“All aboard, Sky King!” he said to me laughing.

“Dad”, said Molly, sounding mad, “I’m Sky King!”

Her dad tilted his head down and looked at her over the top of his glasses. “Now you don’t expect Coop to be Penny, do you?”

“Jack!” Molly’s mom’s voice came from the front seat behind us, sounding like she was kind of mad, “Where are you going with this conversation?”

“Okay”, he said, laughing again, “You both can be Sky Kings!” He closed the back part in front of us. It felt like we were in some sort of airplane or a rocket ship, which made me think of Tom Swift.

I had told Molly about Tom Swift. We had opened that door on the dresser in my room and looked at all the pictures on the front parts and all through all six books. We had even played like her room was Tom’s flying laboratory and invented things.

Molly remembered. She looked at me in the seat just next to her. She put the tip of her thumb in her mouth and bit it with her teeth, then pulled it out to talk.

“I can be Sky King and you can be Tom Swift”, she said.

I nodded. That was okay with me, though I wish I had my space helmet.

But it was a lot of fun pretending even without the helmet. The leaves on some of the trees had turned brown or red or orange or yellow, and were even falling off the trees onto the ground. It made everything we drove by look different, like we were in some strange new place.

My mom knew a lot about plants. She said that every year in the “autumn”, the leaves fell off the trees, which was why they also called it the “fall”. The lilac bushes in the park looked strange because they had no leaves and you could see right through them. Other trees were still green because they were “evergreens”, like the two spruce trees in our backyard. Mom said the fall was also when the apples that had grown on the trees were ready to be picked and mushed up into cider. But the cherry tree in Kenny’s backyard was all done making cherries.

Molly and I were glad that it took a long time to go to the Cider Mill. She was flying the airplane through the leaves with her steering wheel and buttons while I was busy working on inventing a new button that would tell when bad guy airplanes were coming.

“Keep working on that new bad guy button”, Molly said, looking out the back window and turning the steering wheel when the car turned.

“Roger”, I said, “Almost done!”

“You inventing radar back there?” Molly’s dad asked from way behind us in the front part of the car.

We were surprised he was hearing our words and we both didn’t say anything.

Finally he said, “Well don’t let me stop you. Carry on!”

Molly whispered to me, “Keep working, Tom. The bad guys are coming and we need it!” She pushed the different buttons around her steering wheel and kept flying the plane.

I pretended I was done. “It’s ready Sky King”, I whispered back to Molly.

“Okay Tom, let’s turn it on!” She flipped the switch by her steering wheel and the red light started flashing. “Dammit Tom, there are bad guys all over the place”, she said quietly but fiercely.

“Molly”, her mom called out from the front seat, “Where did you learn to say that?”

“I don’t know”, said Molly, caught by surprise and being shy.

“Jack”, Molly’s mom said, “She must have heard you say that. You need to be more careful!

“Molly”, her dad said, “Girls don’t say things like that!”

“Or boys”, Molly’s mom added, “What’s good for the goose!”

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“I’ve heard Eric say his share of the D word and the H word”, Molly’s dad said.

“Jack”, the word burst out of Molly’s mom’s mouth, then talking softly but with a fierce voice, “I’m not comfortable with this whole discussion, can we drop it please!”

“Molly”, her mom said, “You should say ‘darn it’ when you want to sound angry, and people won’t think you are being rude or using bad words.”

“Darn it”, Molly said out loud like she was mad, then looked at me. She had a kind of smile like she had a secret that was funny. I wondered if she said it instead of “dammit”, or because she was mad that she couldn’t say “dammit”. Looking at her twinkling eyes I figured that was her funny secret.

Molly’s mom started laughing.

“What’s so funny, lady?” her dad asked.

“It’s nothing”, her mom said, waving her hands in front of her face. “Molly dear. Sometimes I wonder if you are three or thirteen!” Then turning to look back at the two of us, “Just wait until you two grow up and become parents!”

Wait for what, I wondered. Again grownups said strange things sometimes.

Molly flew us across the bridge over the river and then we turned to fly next to the river. Finally we landed at the Cider Mill. Molly jumped up on the seat and let her body fall and tumble into the back seat. I tried to do the same thing but ended up falling on top of her. She pushed me off her body and laughed. We both liked it when our bodies touched.

“Molly Wheeler”, her mom said, “My god! Cooper’s parents are never going to let us take him ANYWHERE again if he ends up coming home swearing and throwing his body around like a maniac.” But she didn’t really sound angry.

“G word”, her dad said laughing.

Molly’s mom looked at him, then slapped him on the shoulder. “Mister Wheeler”, she said smiling, “You just mind your own… gol darn business!”

He made a face like he was pretending it hurt him. Then he pointed his finger at her and moved it up and down. “I’ll deal with YOU later Mrs. Wheeler!” Then turning to Molly and me he said, “Ready for some fresh made donuts and cider?”

Molly bounced up and down on her toes as she nodded. I nodded too, but didn’t do any bouncing.

Molly, her mom and I sat at one of a bunch of picnic tables while her dad went and stood in line. Above us, the trees were whooshing in the wind and leaves kept falling down on the ground around us or right on our table. There were other grownups with kids sitting at the other tables. I liked looking at the older kids, seeing what they were doing and how they talked. They didn’t make me worried like grownups did.

Finally Molly’s dad came back to the table with two boxes, one on top of the other, and set them down in the middle of the table. The top box had cups full of the clear brown liquid, and he gave one to each of us. Then he opened the bottom box and it was full of the darker brown donuts that smelled really good. I knew all about donuts because dad loved to talk about them, get them, and eat them.

Molly, her dad and I all ate two donuts. Molly’s mom only ate one, and ate it slowly, saying “umm” with every bite and chewing for a long time. She told Molly that she was eating too fast, that she should “enjoy every bite”. But Molly’s dad and I ate our donuts as fast as Molly did but Molly’s mom didn’t tell US that. I wondered if that was because her dad and I weren’t girls.

The “cider” was cool and sweet but also a little bit something else, which made it taste even better. Molly’s mom said it tasted “crisp”. The donuts didn’t taste as sweet as the cider, but felt warm and good in my mouth as I bit into and chewed them. I thought of dad while I ate them.

Molly’s mom looked at the two of us and said, “You two can play down by the stream. Just stay where we can see you and try not to get wet. Okay?”

Molly nodded and then I nodded too. Molly ran down to the side of the stream and after a second, I ran after her. As I did I could hear Molly’s mom say, “That Molly!” and then heard her dad laughing. Molly’s mom was always telling Molly to be more “polite”, whatever that was, but I think I liked it better when she wasn’t “polite”, and just did what she wanted and told you what she was thinking.

The water in the stream was moving but was not very deep because you could see the bottom ground part under it. The water moved over round rocks of different gray colors, some covered by the water and others sticking out. There was a little middle part that the water went around on either side and there were some big rocks sticking out of the water between the side of the stream where we were and that tiny “island” in the middle. Different colored leaves with pointy edges floated by on either side of that middle part like little boats. The trees above the river blocked out the sky and made that same whooshing noise when the wind blew and made more leaves fall. It was a very different outside place than my backyard, Molly’s backyard or even the park. The wind made the skin on my face and hands feel cold, but I liked it.

Molly and I both looked at that middle part and the stones sticking out of the water and had the same idea at the same time. If we walked on the stones we could get to the “island” without getting our feet wet. I took a step onto the first rock just before Molly thought to do the same thing.

She pulled back and said, “You go first!”

With Molly watching me, I carefully stepped on each rock over the moving water with the leaves like boats going under me. I held my hands out like mom showed me to keep from falling. I jumped from the last rock to the tiny “island” part. I looked at Molly and felt good that I could show her how well I could walk on the rocks and not fall down into the water.

She looked back at me with her hands on her sides. She did the same thing with her face that her dad did when he was thinking hard. “Why did you hold your hands out?” she asked.

“It helps you not fall off”, I said, not telling her that mom had shown me how to do that, so Molly would think I figured it out all by myself.

She put her thumb between her teeth and I could see her thinking that she didn’t need to do that. She started to step from rock to rock over the water with her hands at her side and not out. She almost got to the island but then she started to fall. One of her shoes splashed into the water up to above her sock. The other one got to the island. She pulled her other foot out of the water, but the shoe and sock were all wet.

“Dammit”, she said, then looked up at her parents still sitting at the picnic table, wondering if they would get mad at her. They were talking but we couldn’t hear what they were saying. Her mom looked our way but Molly was already standing on the island like her foot had not gotten wet. Her mom waved at us and her dad turned and looked. Molly waved back then stopped looking at them and looked at me.

“This is OUR island”, she said, and she let her bottom fall down onto the small dry round rocks we were standing on, making a crunch sound. I did the same thing in front of her. There was just enough dry part to sit on so the water didn’t touch us. We watched the leaves go by on either side and float along the water and then disappear under the bridge that we went over in the car to get here. We heard the trees whooshing above us.

“We’re in charge of the leaf boats”, I said. “The red ones need to go on this side of the island and the yellow ones need to go the other side.”

“What about the brown ones?” she asked.

I was thinking and said nothing.

“We keep the brown ones”, she said, “Because those ones are fish and we need to eat them so we don’t starve!”

Then she looked out at the leaves that were coming down the stream.

“Uh oh, yellow boat on the wrong side!” she called out with a voice like she was pretending to be a grownup in charge of the river.

I reached out and grabbed the leaf starting to go by to my left.

“Good work”, she said, still with that grownup voice, “Now give it to me.” She looked at it. “Looks okay to me. Off you go!” And she
put it back in the water on the right side.

“Oh… Brown one coming!” she called out, pointing.

“I see it!” I said.

The leaf floated towards us and I wasn’t sure which side of the island it was going to go by. I saw how the bigger round rocks that the water flowed over made the leaves go faster, but where the water was deeper, the leaves moved more slowly. Finally it was close enough to grab.

“Got it!” I said as I stretched out to grab the stem part sticking up.

“Good job!” she said. “Hand it over!”

I felt her hand on my shoulder. It felt good. I lifted the leaf and held it over that same shoulder. She took it.

“Mmm”, she said, “This one will be for dinner tonight!” She put it between her folded legs.

We continued to play boats and fish for a long time. Sometimes the leaf floating toward us was orange, between red and yellow, and we had to figure out what side it should go on. Then Molly’s dad was down by the side of the stream. “Time to go, you two islanders!” he said.

I stood up and started walking over the rocks with my arms out so I didn’t fall. Molly’s dad stretched out to grab my hand after I’d taken a couple steps. Then Molly got up with a handful of leaves.

“We got lots of dinner tonight” she said.

“What?” her dad asked, “You eating leaves for dinner?”

“Fish!” Molly said. “Five of them.”

“Fish… got it”, he said. She started to step on each rock, holding her arms out this time like I did, the leaf fish in one hand. Her dad grabbed her other hand and swung her off the rock to the side of the stream.

When we got back up to the picnic table where Molly’s mom was sitting, she saw that Molly’s shoe and sock were all wet.

“Molly Wheeler, your foot is soaking wet!” Her mom said it like Molly didn’t already know that, but she already did.

Molly nodded and said, “It’s okay.”

“It’s NOT okay”, her mom said, “It’s a chilly day and you could get a chill and catch a cold or worse!” Then after thinking some more, “When we get home you’re going to take a hot bath!”

Molly wrinkled her nose, pushed her lips together, and made a funny face. She looked at me and I knew she was thinking that that was stupid. But she didn’t say anything. My mom would tell me sometimes that I needed to take a hot bath too, like when I started sneezing or I got a stuffy nose.

“Jack”, Molly’s mom said, “Is there a towel in the car somewhere? We need to get Molly’s foot dried off!”

Molly’s dad did that same thinking look that Molly did, though he didn’t put his thumb in his mouth. Then he said, “I don’t think so. There’s just an old rag in the glove compartment I use for checking the radiator and the oil.”

“Oh my god, Jack”, her mom said, “Not that filthy thing!” She looked mad for a second but then she started to laugh, like she was laughing at what she just said.

I wondered if Molly’s dad would tell Molly’s mom that she shouldn’t say the “G word”, but he didn’t.

Molly’s mom continued, “Maybe you can tell the cider mill people what happened to Molly and ask if they have a towel we can borrow, and bring back the next time we’re here.”

As she spoke I could see Molly’s dad’s face look more and more like he didn’t want to do that. Finally he said, “This is right up my alley actually, an engineering problem”, he said. “Let’s put Molly in the front seat and then take that wet shoe and sock off. Then I’ll turn up the heater and direct it down at her feet.”

It sounded to me like something Tom Swift might have figured out to do.

“I’m going to take my shoe off”, Molly said. “It feels all squishy when I walk!”

Molly’s mom looked like she couldn’t figure out what to do. Finally she looked at Molly’s dad and said, “Honey, would you mind carrying Molly to the car?”

“Don’t mind at all”, he replied laughing a little bit, “That’s what dads are for!” He looked at me and winked, like I knew his secret. But I didn’t, because he was a grownup.

Molly stood on the sitting part of the picnic bench. Her dad bent down and reached around her and she put her hands around his neck as he picked her up like she was a little kid. She laughed and I could tell that she liked it.

“Honey”, he said to Molly’s mom, “Can you bring the box of doughnuts?”

She nodded and picked up the box with both her hands. Then she looked at Molly’s shoe on the sitting part of the picnic table and frowned.

“Cooper dear”, she said to me, “Can you bring Molly’s shoe?”

I nodded and picked it up. It was cold and soaked with water, but it still felt like Molly’s shoe.

We all walked back to the car. Still holding Molly in one arm, her dad opened the front car door with the other, and let Molly slide down into the front seat where Molly’s mom had sat before. Her dad then opened the back door.

Molly’s mom put her hand on the top part of my back. “Get in sweetie”, she said, “You can keep me company in the back seat rather than sitting by yourself way back there.”

“Coob can sit next to me in the front”, Molly called out. “His feet might be cold too.”

I looked at Molly’s mom.

“It’s up to you dear”, she said smiling.

“Sit next to me”, Molly said again, patting the sitting part next to her like grownups did sometimes when they wanted you to sit next to them.

“Well”, Molly’s mom said laughing a little, “I don’t know that I can make you a better offer than that! Guess I’m all by myself in the back.”

Molly moved over to the middle of the front seat and I got in next to her. Molly’s mom closed the door by me and got in the back. Her dad got in the front by the steering wheel, closed his door and started driving the car.

“You going to turn on the heat honey?” her mom asked from behind us.

“It won’t be warm yet”, her dad replied. Then he glanced at Molly and me and pointed at a circle thing behind the steering wheel. “That’s the temperature gauge. When that little red pointer gets to the middle that means the engine is warm, so turning on the heat and the fan will give us warm air.”

Molly looked at the circle and all the other buttons and knobs in front of her, then looked up at her dad. “Can I turn on the radio?” she asked.

“You remember how?” he asked back.

She nodded. She had to wiggle herself forward in the seat to reach the knob and turn it.

The music was really loud everywhere.

“Whoah”, said Molly’s dad, reaching out to turn the same knob, which now made the music softer. A woman’s voice sang slowly…

I stop to see a weepin’ willow
Cryin’ on his pillow
Maybe he’s cryin’ for me

Molly’s mom leaned over the top of the back seat behind Molly. “You can change the station if you like”, she said.

Molly’s dad laughed. “Your mom’s not much for country music. She thinks it’s just for hillbillies.” The woman’s voice kept singing…

I go out walkin’ after midnight
Out in the moonlight
Just hopin’ you may be somewhere a-walkin’
After midnight, searchin’ for me

“Jack, that’s not fair!” her mom said. “I acknowledge it’s a legitimate type of folk music. It’s just not my cup of tea.”

“Well boys and girls”, he said, glancing at Molly and me, “That’s no hillbilly singing. That’s the queen of the Grand Ole Opry, Patsy Cline.”

“Good to know Jack”, her mom said, though it didn’t sound like she felt it was good to know. “The kids can make their minds up for themselves.”

I remembered mom and dad talking about hillbillies too, and making fun of them, they pretended THEY were hillbillies, saying words in a funny way. But the song on the radio sounded like something dad would like to sing.

I go out walkin’ after midnight
Out in the moonlight
Just hopin’ you may be somewhere a-walkin’
After midnight, searchin’ for me

Click here to read the next chapter

Dad read books and sang songs to me when it was bedtime. He told me it was the favorite part of his day, to sit in the wood rocking chair across from my bed and together get “lost in a good story”, and then “raise our voices in song”.

We finally finished reading the Tom Sawyer book. I was sad when it was done, because I liked hearing about all the things that Tom did. I did my best to keep pretending I was Tom sometimes down in the basement or out in the backyard. I knew that Tom was special because his life was an adventure that was in a book.

“So Coop”, dad asked as he sat in the rocking chair, “What should we read next?”

So much thinking was going on inside my head that I was shy to try to say any of it in words. I wanted something that I couldn’t say the words for, so I said nothing and did not even shake my head for yes or no. Dad looked at me and nodded like he knew what I was thinking and then he got a big smile and his eyes got bigger.

“I almost forgot about the books you got for your birthday”, he said, like that was something really special.

I remembered the books. They had the interesting pictures with all the colors on the front part.

Dad reached over to the dresser next to the rocking chair and opened the door to the top part where there were a bunch of books next to each other the same way the books on his shelves were in his office in the basement. He pulled books out with one hand and put each on top of the other on his other hand. He brought them over to my bed and laid them out on my blanket. Then he picked up the rocking chair and put it next to my bed. He sat back down on it so we could both look at the books at the same time.

I looked at all the books with their words and pictures on the front and counted six of them. The words all started with the “Tom” word, which I knew from the Tom Sawyer book. When mom used to read to me she would point out each word when she said it, so I knew some of the other small words, like “and”, “his”, “in” and “on”.

“Let’s see what you have”, Dad said, pointing at each book as he read the name. “Tom Swift and his Jetmarine.”

Dad pushed his lips together because he was thinking as he looked hard at the picture. It looked like two people inside some sort of tube thing, one of them holding a wheel like you hold to drive a car. They were looking out a window at something with a head and big eyes and a bunch of tails but no body.

“Looks like two guys in some sort of submarine being attacked by a giant octopus”, he said. I had heard those words, “submarine” and “octopus”, before but didn’t really know what they were. I figured the tube thing with the window and the people inside must be the “submarine” and that weird thing with the eyes and all the tails was the “octopus”.

He touched the next book. “Tom Swift and his giant robot”, he said.

I figured right away that the thing in the picture that looked kind of like a person but was gray and shiny with a can shaped head and buttons on its stomach must be the “robot”. The one person next to the robot was scared, but the other one, maybe that was Tom, was not. I remembered seeing older boys talking about “robots” and pretending that they were robots by walking and talking in a strange way.

“Looks like Tom is controlling the robot”, dad said, and he seemed happy about that.

He touched the next book and said, “Tom Swift and his rocket ship.”

I really liked the picture of the long tube with wings and a window with Tom and someone else inside looking out as they went up in the air through the clouds. I had just seen a rocket shooting up in the sky on the television, so I knew that the fire coming out the bottom of the tube was making it go up.

“That’s quite an impressive rocket ship”, dad said, and when I looked at him he looked more like a kid than a grownup, and I could tell in his eyes that he was pretending things.

His finger touched the next book. “Tom Swift and his diving Seacopter”, he said.

It was another different sort of round thing with windows with Tom and someone else inside, one holding a wheel for driving and the other holding some sort of poles. Outside it looked like there were strange fish so I guessed they were going under water. I guessed that the bubbles coming out of the top were making it go down in the water, like the fire coming out of the bottom of the rocket ship made it go up.

“Wow a sea copter”, dad said. “I wonder if it can go up in the air like a helicopter as well as underwater like a submarine.” I looked at him when he said that, and though he seemed to like it, he looked more like a grownup than a kid.

“Tom Swift on the phantom satellite”, he said, touching the next book.

The picture looked like people in silver boots and gloves and bubbles on their heads were running on some strange dark place with a big circle thing above them with lots of holes in it. I had heard some grownups talking about a “satellite” that the Soviet Union, the new bad guys instead of the Germans, had put way up in the sky going around the “Earth”, whatever that was. I wondered if that big circle thing was that satellite and they were scared. Suddenly I felt kind of scared. Dad didn’t say any more about that one and his finger moved to the last book on my blanket.

“Tom Swift and His Outpost in Space”, he said.

There were a bunch of what looked like rocket ships around a small thing that looked like a ball with maybe windows. There were maybe robots with bubbles on top and heads like people inside the bubbles. Some were standing on a rocket ship and others were flying above it. There was a big orange and yellow ball like thing in the back that looked like it was maybe on fire. I stared at the picture trying to make sense of it. Dad saw that I couldn’t figure it out.

“Looks like people in space in spacesuits”, he said, “Outside their spaceships by some sort of space station, orbiting another planet, maybe Mars.”

There was that “space” word that I kept hearing but I couldn’t figure out what it meant. There was space in the closet or the refrigerator, but also way up in the sky above the clouds. And like ships sailing in the sea, spaceships would sail in space and people would wear space “suits” instead of regular clothes. And now people were wearing spacesuits and this space “station” thing.

I had gotten a “space helmet” for my birthday, which I put on my head sometimes when I was playing and wanted to pretend I was somebody special. Even older boys in the park talked about “space” and they were pretending to be a “spaceman”. I knew the word “helmet” because dad said that soldiers wore them in the war to keep their heads from getting hurt. He had shown me pictures from his big red war books of soldiers with those round things on their heads. But they did not have the part in front that you looked through like the space helmet.

“Which one should we read first?” dad asked.

All the pictures on the front of the books were making me think about so many different things, some of them scary, so I felt shy and didn’t know what to say, so I shook my head. I wondered if we would also have to run away from the Soviet Union satellite, but I didn’t say anything because I thought dad might not like it if I said I was scared. He might tell me I had to be brave because he had been brave in the war.

“Okay”, dad said, nodding his head, “What about the rocket ship one?”

I nodded, my head moving up and down really quickly. The picture on the front looked more fun than the “phantom satellite” one.

Dad carefully put the other five books back in my dresser. He was always careful when he did things with books. He moved the rocking chair back across from my bed and sat down on it. I was hoping I would see that look like he was a kid again, but I didn’t see it.

He held the book in one hand and put the fingers of his other hand on the front part and slowly moved them down, finally grabbing the bottom of the front part with his thumb and opening it up. I knew he was looking at the picture of Tom just inside the front part, because I had looked at it before. I saw his eyes move back and forth to look at every different thing in the picture. I remembered that Tom was in a strange looking room looking out the window. There was a toy rocket and a toy boat. There were other toys in the room or maybe they were tools. And on the walls were circle things that looked like the ones in the car around the steering wheel.

“This must be Tom’s laboratory”, dad said, turning the book to show me the picture, “Where he does experiments and builds things.” I had heard those words “laboratory” and “experiment” before because Molly’s dad said them, but I didn’t know that was a place, and a place where you built things.

Dad turned the book back toward him and turned pages. He found the next picture, and his eyes moved again looking at it. I remembered that one too, and I remembered that I could not figure it out. Tom was wearing strange clothes and had one of those bubble things over his head. Maybe the bubble thing was a space helmet but it was different than mine. And Maybe Tom was wearing a spacesuit. He was standing on a circle thing with lots of smaller circles in it, or maybe it was a window.

“Tom’s hanging on”, dad said, “So he doesn’t fall into space.”

So that circle thing might be an opening that Tom could fall through into space. But what were those round things in space? There were so many things that I didn’t know yet!

Dad turned more pages and then stopped and looked at me for a moment and said, “Chapter one. A vanished pilot.” Then he looked back at the book and started reading it…

“Somebody’s flying into our restricted area!” Tom Swift cried as an alarm bell broke the midnight stillness of his rocket laboratory on Fearing island. The blond, eighteen-year-old scientist, tall and rangy, laid two wrenches beside the freshly machined, titanium metal column, the heart of the rocket, on which he had been working.”

There were words that I didn’t know but I wanted to. But I did understand that Tom had a place, a laboratory, a rocket laboratory on an island. I knew about islands from Tom Sawyer and Treasure Island. They were places with the sea all around them or a river all around them. I had drawn islands with chalk on the basement floor or made one out of dirt in the backyard.

So Tom was building a rocket. He was a “scientist”, a word that I had heard before but didn’t know what it was. I knew I was three years old and he was a different years old, and seeing him in the pictures, that was a lot older than I was. That was why he was able to know so much. I knew what “tall” was, mom and dad were tall and I was shorter but would be tall too when I grew up. “Blond” was the color of some people’s hair, Molly’s hair, but not mom’s, dad’s, David’s or mine.

Dad kept reading and I hoped I knew enough to follow the story, and was excited thinking where it might take me. If some parts didn’t make sense I was okay with that as long as there was enough so I could play Tom Swift down in the basement or out in the backyard.

I knew about airplanes from watching and playing Sky King with Molly. So some sort of airplane that was not supposed to was coming to the island where Tom’s laboratory was. So Tom and his friend Ben used their laboratory machines to capture it. But when it landed there was no one flying it. The pilot flying the plane had “bailed out”, whatever that meant, and might get to the island in the water. So “speed boats” from the laboratory went out in the water and “copters” went up in the sky looking for the pilot. Tom and some of his other helpers looked on the beach.

Tom was building a rocket ship to use in a race. Those two words together made sense because a regular ship had people on it and went on the water. A “rocket ship” had people on it but went up in the sky or maybe space. Airplanes went up in the sky too, but they looked different. They had big wings and went sideways instead of up.

So Bud flying in the copter saw the pilot who had been in the plane. Tom swam in the water and got the pilot who was wounded and had to go to the doctor. Then Tom called his dad to tell him what happened. Tom thought it was a “sabotage attempt”. I had heard that “sabotage” word on Sky King but did not really know what it meant. When dad read the word he stopped and looked at me.

“You know what ‘sabotage’ is?” dad asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s when you secretly try to wreck something your enemies are building.”

I nodded.

“Coop”, he said “You can always ask me when you don’t know a word. I’m happy to tell you!”

I nodded again, faster this time.

So Tom had “enemies”. I knew what those were. Like pirates, or Germans, or Soviet Unions. Bud said that Tom was too important to be “bumped off”. Dad didn’t stop to tell me what that meant and I didn’t ask.

Tom and Bud were driving in their jeep and saw another man who had sneaked on the island.

“That’s the end of the chapter”, dad said, looking at me. “Shall we read some more?”

I nodded again, almost without even thinking first.

The story continued. Tom and Bud finally figured out that the man who flew the plane to their island was a bad guy, an enemy. He was trying to steal Tom’s “invention”.

“Do you know what an invention is?” Dad asked.

I shook my head.

“It’s when you figure out how to make something no one has ever figured out how to make before.”

I liked that. I wanted to make an invention. I would tell Molly about it and we would make inventions together. And dad read that Tom had a giant airplane that was a “flying laboratory” that helped him make inventions. I would tell Molly about that too. We could pretend that her bedroom was a giant flying laboratory for making inventions.

Mom was at the door, peeking into my bedroom. “David finally fell asleep”, she said, looking at dad, “I’m exhausted and going to bed.”

Then she turned and looked at me and had a big smile. “You like the new Tom Swift book?”

I nodded, and before even thinking said, “Tom makes inventions”.

“He does, does he?” she said, “I bet you’ll be making inventions too someday”.

I nodded and smiled too.

She looked at me but was not smiling anymore. “You know Coop, if you ever have an idea for an invention, you tell me or your dad and we’ll write it down for you so you won’t forget your idea later.”

Dad laughed just a little bit. Mom turned her head to look at him. “Eric, I’m convinced that bright young children are born with great ideas in their heads that get mostly lost because no one takes them seriously.”

“Got it Liz”, dad said, though he didn’t look like he wanted to get it, like he thought she wasn’t right.

Mom looked at him harder. She could always tell what dad was really thinking, even when it was different than what he said he was thinking.

“So Eric”, she asked, “How does Tom Swift compare with Tom Sawyer, from a literature point of view?”

“Well”, his face got friendly again. He looked at the cover of the Tom Swift book in his lap. “Victor Appleton the second is certainly no Mark Twain, but the story is engaging enough, for pulp fiction.” Then he looked up at her, “But my buddy Walter says the science is pretty good”.

“Hunh”, mom said nodding, her lips pushed together. “You read a lot tonight. Will you be coming to bed soon? I have something I want to talk to you about.”

“Sure Liz. Let Coop and I sing a song first.”

She nodded. Then she looked at me and made a pretend angry face. “It’s not fair. I wish I could carry a tune like your dad, but I always go off key.”

Her hand reached down and found my big toe under the covers and she wiggled it like dad did. “Good night sweetie. I love you!” She left the room and dad watched her. I could see he was doing lots of thinking.

Then dad put his hands on the back of his head and looked up. “I don’t really know any songs about rocket ships.” He continued to look up, thinking. I could see the way he opened his eyes a little bigger that meant that he finally thought of a song.

“How about this one?” He sang…

Off we go into the wild blue yonder
Climbing high into the sun
Here they come zooming to meet our thunder
At’em boys, giv’er the gun
Down we dive spouting our flames from under
Off with one hell-uv-a roar
We live in fame or go down in flame
Nothing’ll stop the Army Air Corps

It sounded like an army song from the war, but it was about flying airplanes. It was like ships shooting cannons at enemy ships only it was airplanes instead way up in the sky. It was what boys pretended to do so they could be brave when they were grown up men and fight the enemy. He continued to sing…

Minds of men fashioned a crate of thunder
Sent it high into the blue
Hands of men blasted the world asunder
How they live God only knew
Souls of men dreaming of skies to conquer
Gave us wings ever to soar
With scouts before and bombers galore
Nothing can stop the Army Air Corps

Brave soldiers never stopped, I figured, until they “conquered” or were killed or at least wounded, though I really didn’t know what “conquered” meant.

Off we go into the wild sky yonder
Keep the wings level and true
If you live to be a gray haired wonder
Keep your nose out of the blue
Flying men guarding our nation’s borders
We’ll be there followed by more
In echelon we carry on
Nothing’ll stop the Army Air Corps

And then he sang in a different voice like he was singing through his nose…

Except the ack-ack

He laughed, looked down like he was remembering something, and shook his head. He looked at me.

“Ack-acks are anti-aircraft guns. They were big guns they used during the war to shoot down airplanes.”

I remembered the pictures in the big red war books of airplanes in the sky dropping bombs. I remembered him telling me that story about what he did in the war. Looking for German “eighty-eights” so his mortars could blow them up. The Germans used eighty-eights to blow up American tanks, but also to shoot down American airplanes. I wondered if the Soviet Unions had eighty-eights too, but I didn’t ask him.

When he finished the song, he wiggled my toe too. He said goodnight but instead of smiling he looked like he was thinking hard.

Now alone in my room, in my bed under the covers, I closed my eyes but I was thinking hard too. About Tom Swift the scientist with his laboratory where he built inventions no one had ever built before. About pretending I was Tom Swift with my space helmet. What I would tell Molly about Tom, and where she and I could pretend we had our own laboratory.

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Mom had shown me that you could “divide” things into four “quarters” by drawing an “imaginary” line across the middle and another one up and down the middle. Where those two lines crossed was the “center”. She said it worked for things that were square or round. She liked doing things like that, thinking with lines and numbers, and writing them on a piece of paper.

So it worked for square things like the basement. When you walked down the stairs to the bottom and turned left, that was my quarter. It was perfect for me because I was left handed and liked to go that way anyway. It had my toys and the shelves mom and dad made out of bricks and boards to put the toys in when I wasn’t playing with them. They never did anything in that part of the basement. I could always play there whenever I wanted to. They called it “Cloob’s area”, though now they were calling it “Coop’s area” because of my new nickname.

At the bottom of the stairs, if you turned right and walked around the big “furnace” thing, that quarter was called the “laundry room”. It had a big white washing machine and big gray sinks, plus a “clothesline” for hanging wet clothes that came out of the washing machine. I liked playing in that quarter of the basement too, because it had all these big metal things with knobs and buttons, though I knew I wasn’t supposed to press them. And the big metal things also had little blue flames hiding inside if you looked really close, and they would make different noises when they started working.

The washing machine made a lot of different noises if you waited long enough. After mom or dad turned the “dial”, it would make a whooshing water noise. Then it would stop and be quiet for a minute before you heard a clunk and then a noise like a car made when it was moving plus a water sloshing noise. Then if you waited longer, the noise would stop again for a minute, followed by another clunk. Then came the best part. It would go crazy with a louder car noise and even shake back and forth like it was going to explode, but it didn’t.

Now instead of turning left or right at the bottom of the stairs, if you kept walking straight past the center of the basement and THEN turned right, that was dad’s quarter. It had a rug on the floor and his desk, special wood chair and shelves like in my quarter. Except his shelves had books instead of toys. He said his books were like my toys. They were what he played with and learned from. His quarter also had a small bed and a “bamboo screen” that hung from the ceiling by the side of the bed to make it darker if he wanted to sleep down there in the daytime. They called his quarter “the office”.

I played there too sometimes when dad wasn’t home. I sat in his chair and made it spin around by pushing my foot against the desk. I counted how many circles I could go before I stopped spinning. I could do three sometimes but never four. I also liked going in the place under his desk because it was like a tiny secret cave that I was small enough to fit into. And I liked the bamboo screen, because it made dad’s quarter seem separate from the rest of the basement, like the furnace made the laundry room separate.

What was left was the fourth quarter, which wasn’t really anything special. It didn’t have anything that gave it a name to talk about it like the other three. It just had a big white wood table with black metal legs, that mom and dad did “projects” on sometimes. Sometimes I would play there too, when I needed more space for what I was doing. Sometimes I put a blanket over the table and turned it into a house or a cave that I could hide and play in. One time dad even turned it over so I could sit on it upside down and play Tom Sawyer on a raft on the river.

But today that fourth quarter of the basement got something new to make it special!

Dad came home from working and said he had a surprise in the trunk of the car. Mom and I came outside with him to see. She was carrying David who didn’t walk or go anywhere by himself. The sky was gray and the air was cool and windy for the first time I could remember for a long time. But it felt tingly and good after all the warm air that wrapped around you and made your skin wet. Mom and I stood on either side of dad as he opened the trunk, David in her arms turning his head to look too.

It was a television. I gasped. I knew it was a television because Molly’s house had one and some other houses we went to had one too.

“Oh my god Eric”, mom said, sounding mad, “We can’t afford a television! What are you thinking? We can’t even pay all my hospital bills from the delivery!”

Dad was quiet and looked up at the sky but his face didn’t look happy. “Liz, I know that!” he said, “The gal that manages the frat house I do work for said they were replacing this with a bigger model and I worked out a trade with her. I’m going to give her writing lessons. She’s a pretty good writer already but she wants to get better!”

“Do you have time to do that, with work on your dissertation and all your odd jobs?” mom asked.

“Sure”, he said, the word just came out of his mouth right after she asked the question without him thinking too much about it first.

Mom looked like she was thinking of more things to say, but then she looked at me and her eyes opened wide as if they were saying that maybe it was okay after all. I nodded.

“Where should we put it?” she asked, not looking or sounding angry anymore.

“Well”, dad did that thing where he pushed his lips together when he was thinking hard. “Maybe in the living room, or in the basement.”

“Not the living room”, she said with a quick laugh and blowing air out of her nose, “There’s no furniture in there to put it on, and I’m not having brick and board shelves in our living room. If we can’t afford any proper furniture I’d rather it stay empty!”

“The TV in Molly’s house is in the basement”, I said, trying to help now that I was feeling a little less shy to talk to grownups.

Mom and dad looked at me and then dad looked at her.

“Then the basement it is”, he said, “We can put it on the white table for now.”

“Just for right now!”, mom said, “I need every bit of that table top sometimes for my various projects, especially folding clothes.”

“I know that Liz, I use it too!” he said, “I’ll get boards and bricks at Fingerlee’s and we’ll put it back beyond Coop’s area against the west wall. You can watch while you’re ironing or doing other chores in the basement.”

“That sounds good”, she said, “There is an outlet back there on that west wall. I don’t want a cord anywhere that Coop could trip on or David might try to touch or chew on.”

He nodded. “I’ll put the bricks for the shelves right in front of the outlet so it won’t be an attractive nuisance for the kids.”

The two of them really liked working together on stuff like this, their “projects”.

Dad lifted the TV out of the trunk, and I followed him, with mom holding David behind me. He carried it down into the basement and set it on the floor. Then he grabbed either side of the white table and moved it over to the wall.

Mom called out, “Eric, let me help you with that!”

“No I’ve got it Liz”, he said, grunting as he moved it against the wall. Then he put the TV on it and took the end of the cord with two shiny little metal things coming out of it and showed it to me.

“This uses electricity”, he said, “It’s very dangerous. Never touch this plug or the outlet I’m going to plug it into. Get your mom or me to help you. Okay?”

I felt a little scared so I didn’t say anything, but I nodded up and down really fast so they knew that I got it.

The thing looked very small sitting there on the big table, much smaller than the TV in Molly’s basement, which was in a wood box with legs. I watched that airplane story, “Sky King”, down in their basement, that Molly really liked and watched with her dad too. We would sit on the shiny black “sofa” that squeaked when you sat on it. Her dad would push the buttons to make the pictures and sounds. She and I had also watched funny talking animals but her dad didn’t watch those with us. Her mom didn’t like the TV and said that Molly shouldn’t watch it too much. I liked it and Molly did too. It seemed very different than everything else and very interesting. I was so excited there was one in our basement now too.

Dad leaned over in front of it to look close at the buttons on the front part.

“Liz. Coop,” dad said, “This works like the radio. You turn it on with this small knob and adjust the volume to make it louder or softer. Then you tune it to the station you want to watch with this bigger knob. You may have to move these antennas on top around until you get a better picture.” He pulled out two shiny silver sticks on the top of the TV. “At the frat house we got four channels… two, four, seven and nine.”

I heard the click as he turned the small knob, and the thing made a crackly noise and started to hum like the radio did. A voice from inside the thing was singing about getting your money back if you bought a car. Then there was a small square of light in the middle of the glass part in the front which got bigger to fill the whole glass part with a fuzzy picture with wiggly lines waving through it. It looked like small pictures of pretend cars moving toward the center. Voices sang…

Roy O’Brien’s got them buying and buying
They come from many miles away
You’ll save yourself a lot of dollars, dollars
By driving out his way today

Dad moved the long silver sticks from side to side until the picture got less fuzzy and the wavy lines went away.

Now on the glass part, dad called it the “screen”, a woman and man inside a house were talking to each other. They both were angry and talking about someone else that the man liked. I thought her name was Mary because they kept saying that.

“This is channel two”, dad said, “Some sort of a soap opera I think.”

He turned the big knob and it clicked twice. There was a shiny gray car with a white stripe on the side and four people sitting at a long table behind it. Other people sitting behind them were yelling and cheering. The four people were each being asked to call out a number. Then one of them screamed and jumped up and down with her hands in the air and a man in dress up clothes and a tie came over and talked to her and walked her over to the car as she continued to scream.

“Game show on channel four”, dad said. “Looks like the lady won a car.” He turned the big knob three more clicks.

Some man with a white cowboy hat was shooting a gun at another man with a black cowboy hat, who was shooting at him too. I could see that dad liked watching this one more. The two men were moving around and trying to hide but still shooting at each other. Finally the man in the black hat stood up and the man in the white hat shot him. The man in the black hat put his hand over his chest, groaned, and fell over. His foot jerked and he stopped moving. The man in the white hat walked up to him and music started playing.

“Western on channel seven”, dad said.

“Eric”, mom said, sounding fierce, “Is this appropriate for Cooper to be watching?”

“I’m just changing the channels Liz to make sure it works”, he said.

“Well I’m not comfortable with Cooper or any kid watching shows like this!” she said.

“Well”, dad pushed his lips together thinking, “It is our history Liz, cowboys and the Wild West. Good versus evil!”

“This is people shooting people, and I don’t think it is appropriate for children. It encourages them to play with guns and I don’t think they should”, she said, “not even toy guns”. Then puffing her cheeks and blowing out air, “You know how I feel about this Eric!”

Dad pushed his lips together again while he was thinking. “Coop’s plastic soldiers have guns”, he said.

“Yes you’re right, and I’ve thought about that too”, she said, now looking at me, I could see in her eyes that she was thinking hard, “But I know Coop loves his soldiers, and they help him use his imagination, so I guess I compromise there. I’m just very uncomfortable having guns in the house, real or toy, or even TV programs about people shooting each other with guns.”

Dad was quiet and looked like he was thinking and did not look happy. “What about when the kids make guns out of their Tinker Toys? Are you going to not let them play with Tinker Toys?”

Mom had a fierce look in her eyes but she smiled. “I see that as different. That is their choice. I don’t like it, but it’s their choice. But a real gun, or a toy version of a real gun, is where I draw the line!”

He said nothing and looked away from her and back at the TV, turning the knob two more clicks.

The picture was more fuzzy, but there were three women lying on the floor next to each other moving their legs up and down at the same time while the woman in the middle told them what to do.

“Some sort of women’s exercise show on channel nine. This is the Canadian station from Windsor, across the river from Detroit.”

Mom nodded. “I’ll pick up a TV Guide at the A&P tomorrow”, she said. She looked at dad and smiled a happier smile this time. “You’ll go over to Fingerlee’s and buy the shelf stuff?”

He nodded with a happy smile as well. They were working together.

She looked down and her face got kind of sad and then she turned her eyes up to look at him. “Sweetheart… I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier when I thought you had bought this. I make myself crazy sometimes worrying about money. You did good here. Now some of my household chores might not be so mind-numbingly boring!”

He nodded while she talked but didn’t say anything. David started moving and making loud noises. She held him up and wrinkled her nose. “This one needs a fresh diaper”, she said, “Excuse me gentlemen, keep up the good work!” and she headed up the stairs.

Dad watched her go up the stairs so I did too. When she was gone he turned to the TV and turned the big knob so it clicked twice. The man with the white cowboy hat was riding a horse in the sand towards a mountain. Then there was more music and there were white words on the glass that moved upwards.

Dad stared at the glass pictures thinking. “I’m looking forward to being able to watch the World Series games on this thing”, he said “I also like the Westerns, but your mom doesn’t care for them.”

He seemed more like a kid. Staring at a new toy and thinking what he could do with it.

“The World Series”, I said nodding, though I did not know what that was, but I had heard grownups and older kids talk about it.

Still looking at the thing he said, “It’ll be your mom’s Yankees against probably the Milwaukee Braves.”

I got it. It was a baseball game. Dad knew a lot about baseball.

And those words “west” and “western”. I was thinking I got that too. It was some special place far away that you went to through the sky where there was sand instead of grass and men rode horses and shot guns at each other and there weren’t any fences. But some women, like mom, didn’t like it. They liked the “east”. Grownups were strange, talking about these far away places that were not here. Molly liked the “west” and I guess I liked it too.

Dad walked back over to his office and sat in his chair. The TV was still making sounds and pictures. A talking tiger was telling a woman with an apron in a kitchen to buy cereal. Then two kids were running across a kitchen floor and there were brown spots from their shoes but a woman cleaned it up and was happy. Then there were lots of shiny cars all in rows and one man stood in the middle and was talking to the sky. It all seemed so different and far away from what was outside our house or anywhere I’d ever been.

“Coop”, dad said from his chair at his desk. “You okay if we turn the TV off for now? I’ve got some papers to grade and it’s distracting!”

I nodded.

“You want to try turning it off yourself?”

I nodded again.

I walked up to the thing sitting there on top of the white table. Behind the voices and other sounds coming out of it I could hear a low hum somewhere behind those other sounds. Since dad said it “used electricity” and that was something to be careful of, I wasn’t sure what my fingers would feel when I touched the knob. But he said I could turn it off so I figured it would be okay, but still.

I touched the small knob with one finger. It just felt like other plastic things I played with. Then I touched it with two fingers and turned the knob and the voices got really loud, and it surprised me.

Dad laughed, “Wrong way. Turn it the other way to turn it off!”

I used my two fingers again and turned it the other way. There was a click and the voices and noises stopped, and then the hum stopped. The glass part went back to a small white square that got smaller and smaller until I couldn’t see it any more.

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I heard the doorbell ring in the living room. Mom was in my bedroom with me helping me button up the special shirt she had bought for me for dressing up. She said it was a “Campbell tartan” because “Campbell” was my “middle name”.

“Jonathan Campbell Zale”, she said. “That’s a name you can run for President with some day!” Her eyes twinkled when she said it. We were dressing in special clothes to go to a party across the street at Molly’s house. Mom was wearing a bright white shirt under a blue “dress”. That was one of those things that only women wore that was open at the bottom, instead of pants or shorts, which was what she wore the rest of the time. She had on the black shoes, “heels” she called them, that made her really tall, but also walk kind of funny. Her lips were very red and shiny.

“Margie’s here!” dad called from the living room.

“Great”, mom called back to him as she buttoned the sleeves of my shirt. It felt uncomfortable to have that tight feeling of shirt sleeves around my wrists. “Show her where we keep David’s bottles in the refrigerator and where his diapers are in the linen closet and how to work that damn diaper pail!” mom said.

“Liz, I got it!”, his voice sounded just a little bit angry, like she didn’t need to tell him that because he already knew.

Mom finished all my buttons and adjusted my “collar”. “You look very handsome”, she said.

She waved me to walk out of my room and walked behind me patting me on the shoulder, which I did not like. When I came into the living room Margie was at the door from the kitchen. She was not a grownup like mom and dad but also not a kid like me. She was wearing a dark blue sweatshirt with yellow letters that I knew said “Michigan” because I had one like it too.

“Hi Jonathan”, she said, “You’re all dressed up. You look very nice in that shirt!” She was about the only person who called me that name, because mom told her to and paid her money.

Mom patted me on the shoulder again. “Tell Margie what’s special about your shirt.”

I really didn’t like it when mom told me what to say.

“So what is the deal with your shirt little man?” Margie said, getting down on one knee in front of me.

“It’s a tartan”, I mumbled. I didn’t want to say it the way mom wanted me to say it.

“A what?”, Margie asked.

I heard mom blow out air and finally say, “It’s a CAMPBELL tartan, Jonathan’s middle name!”

“Okay”, said Margie, still on one knee, smiling and looking at me. “It’s your family colors!”

I felt embarrassed and mad that mom was talking for me.

Margie gave just the littlest nod like she knew how I was feeling. Then she said, “So tonight you’re all grown up going to the party with the folks while I babysit your baby brother!”

I nodded, not saying anything because I was still mad at mom.

Mom said to Margie, “Let me show you where the diapers are and how to work the pail.”

“Liz, I said I can do it”. I could hear the anger in dad’s voice. “You head over to the party with Cloob… Jonathan!”

“Eric”, mom replied, “I just want to show her the trick with the pail.”

“Liz”, he said, “I know the trick with the pail.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “Okay then.” She looked at me, “Jonathan, you can escort your mom to the party.”

I didn’t want her to take my hand, so I walked to the front door and opened it for her to walk out like I’d seen dad do.

“Such a gentleman”, Margie said as she followed dad into the hallway to find out about the diapers and the “damn” diaper pail.

“Thank you young man”, mom said to me, her bright red lips smiling and her eyes twinkling as she walked out the open door. I pulled it closed so it made a clicking noise.

Molly’s house was all lit up and you could hear voices inside talking and laughing. I looked up in the sky and the moon was a big round circle just over the tops of the trees. The street was full of cars all dark and still, and no people in them. But their outsides sparkled in the moon’s light. Though it was dark, the air was still warm and kind of wrapped around me like I was under a blanket. The door to Molly’s house was already open and a man standing by the screen door opened it for us to come inside.

“Jane Zale”, he said, his eyes moving from her face to look down her entire body to her feet, “You’re looking pretty damn good for a lady who’s just had a baby.” His words were coming out in a strange way like they were slowing down.

“Thanks Mort”, she said, putting her hand on my shoulder like she was protecting me, “How many drinks have you had?”

“A few”, he said, “Watch out for the punch, it’s wicked!”

Mom pressed her lips together and made them smile. “Thanks for the tip!”

“Who’s your date?” he said, looking serious and silly at the same time.

Mom breathed in and out. “Morton, meet my son Jonathan.”

He leaned over to look at me more closely and stuck out his right hand. I did not know what to do. He reached farther and grabbed my right hand and shook it.

His eyes were kind of wobbly as he looked at me and smiled. “Your dad says you’re quite the little ballplayer, a lefty like Johnny Podres. Johnny Zale… It has a nice ring to it. Like Tony Zale.” He looked up at mom.

She wasn’t smiling anymore. “His name is Jonathan, Mort. Not Johnny!” she said.

“C’mon Jane, a boy needs a nickname!” he said.

“That may be true Morton”, mom put her hand on his shoulder and looked at him, “But his is not Johnny.”

“Okay Jane”, he said chuckling, “I never pick a fight with a good looking woman!”

“Good thing for you in my case”, mom said, a big grin now on her face, her hand still on his shoulder and leaning towards him, “Because you’d lose that fight!”

He looked up at the ceiling and laughed. Mom gave him a final pat on the shoulder and then patted me on my shoulder with her other hand and we continued to walk into the house. It was full of grownups, men and women, most of them holding and drinking from funny looking glasses filled with what looked like water but was red.

Molly’s mom saw us and came over.

“Welcome you two”, she said, “Look at Cloob… er Jonathan all dressed up! But where’s your other guy?” She was saying her words kind of funny too. Maybe that was what grownups did at parties.

“He’ll be along in a minute”, mom said, “How’s it going?”

“It’s going gangbusters Jane”, she said, “We’ve raised nearly four hundred bucks for Phil’s campaign already!”

“Good for you Joan”, mom said, “I wrote you a check for twenty. Maybe that will put you over the four hundred mark!”

“Jane, you don’t have to do that”, Molly’s mom said, “I know how tight the budget is right now.”

“No Joan”, mom said, “This is probably the most important twenty bucks I’ll spend all year, to help put a man of Phil’s character in the U.S. Senate!” She pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and put it in a big pot on the table in the middle of the room with red, white and blue streamers all around it. Molly’s mom thanked her and gave her a little kiss on the cheek.

Mom reacted to the kiss by opening her eyes wide, saying, “And how many drinks have you had, young lady?”

Molly’s mom laughed, “Who’s counting! The more everyone drinks the bigger the numbers on the checks. And you know I can hold my liquor with the best of the boys!”

“I sure do”, mom said, and she looked at me and opened her eyes wide.

“Anyway”, Molly’s mom said to mom, “I’m dying to introduce you to Dick Sampson. He and I were grad students together in poly sci. He says he knows Eric and wanted to finally meet you. HE ended up getting his PhD and is now teaching.” She nodded slowly as she said it and looked up at the ceiling. “I ended up getting married and then Molly came along.”

She led mom and me over to two men talking very loud to each other in the corner of the living room.

One said to the other, “Look Dick, Kierkegaard said ‘existence precedes essence’, and Sartre and de Beauvoir are just starting with that axiom and taking it steps further.”

“I’m not buying it”, said the other, who winked at Molly’s mom as we approached them, “It’s not an axiom in my book, just an unproven theory! I’m not much for existentialism, I’m a Hegel dialectic man.”

“I don’t want to stop your tete a tete here”, Molly’s mom said, “But Dick, I wanted to introduce you to Eric’s wife, Jane Zale.”

He looked at Molly’s mom and then at mom and his eyes lit up.

“Jane Zale”, he said, “So you’re the girl that finally corralled Eric’s heart. We finally meet!”

Molly’s mom tapped mom on the shoulder and said she would go find Molly, and she headed toward the stairs up to Molly’s bedroom.

“We finally meet, Dick”, mom said, “So tell me how you know Eric.”

“I know him from Michigamua”, he said

“Michigamua?” mom asked.

“Yes. Well. It’s sort of a semi-secret university men’s club. A bunch of guys being guys”, he said. “Half naked. War paint. That sort of thing. The less said the better. Not really for mixed company.”

“Okay”, mom said nodding, “I get it.”

“So Jane” he said pointing at her, “Maybe you can help Lynn and I settle this argument once and for all. Have you read de Beauvoir?”

“I read The Second Sex for a soc class”, mom replied.

“Okay, perfect. I’ve been dying to pose this question to the female of the species”, he said, turning to look at mom, his eyes briefly glancing down from her face to her chest, “Don’t you agree with me that it’s nuts what de Beauvoir said, that ‘one is not born but becomes a woman’?”

Mom didn’t say anything for a minute thinking. Finally she said something.

“I think she’s being provocative Dick. Of course women are born female and men male. But honestly, I don’t think it’s any more natural for me to do dishes and change diapers than it would be for a man like you!”

He laughed. “You wouldn’t want me trying to change diapers Jane, I’d make a mess of it!”

Mom chuckled. “You underestimate yourself Dick. I could teach you in ten minutes. With a little practice you’d be as good as any woman!”

He made a funny snort like an animal. “I’ll pass!”

“Well there you go”, she said with a big smile on her face and some fierceness in her eyes, then touching the side of his shoulder with her hand, “It’s really a choice on your part. Yet it’s supposed to be natural for women like me, though it’s really not. I think that’s what de Beauvoir is getting at.”

He frowned, but also liked mom touching his shoulder, so he smiled again and started nodding. “Okay. I’ll have to think about that one. If I hadn’t had so much punch I might have a good comeback.” Mom laughed.

He looked down at me and said, “This your little Johnny?”

Mom pushed her lips together and her head moved a little from side to side. “His name is Jonathan. My brother is named John. My son is Jonathan.”

I felt embarrassed, like there was something wrong with me that my mom had to try to fix with her words. I never liked it when grownups talked to each other about me when I was there with them.

“Okay Jonathan it is”, he said, looking at me again. But I could tell in his eyes he didn’t think so.

I felt uncomfortable, and when I felt that way I usually stopped talking. But I also didn’t like mom talking for me. So I told him.

“They call me Cloob”, I said.

“What?” He looked at me with wobbly eyes and a funny look on his face. Then he looked up at my mom with that same look.

“Well”, mom said, pushing her red lips together again, “That’s a nickname his dad made up, ‘Clubius’.”

“Clubius… Sounds kind of Roman”, he said, looking up at the ceiling and thinking, “Senator Maximus Clubius addresses the Forum.”

Mom nodded but didn’t say anything. I could see in her eyes she was doing a lot of thinking instead of talking.

Most of what they were talking about I couldn’t figure out. But that was what grownups did. I looked around the room for Molly. I saw Molly’s mom over by the front door talking to dad and pointing towards mom and me. She then went upstairs and dad came over to where we were.

“Eric”, Dick said, “I’ve known you for what, four years, and only tonight I finally meet your better half. She’s already wounded me in a philosophical argument.”

Dad tried to smile, nodded and chuckled. Finally he said, “Good to see you again, Dick. Congratulations on your doctorate!”

“Thanks Eric”, he said, “You started on that dissertation yet? Cardinal Newman?”

Dad shook his head, losing his smile, blowing air out between his lips. Mom shook her head too. There was that “dissertation” word again that they were always talking about.

Molly appeared from behind dad. She was wearing one of those dress things on the bottom part of her body but no socks or shoes.

“Coob”, she said, “Want to play in my room?”

“Now there’s the best offer I’ve heard all night!”, Dick said and laughed. Then looking at me, “You better say yes my man or I might instead!”

Molly’s mom appeared behind Molly and put her hands on Molly’s shoulders. “Dick you’re too much. I ought to cut you off from the punch.”

“Oh god Joan, anything but that!” Then looking around. “Where’s your hubby?”

“He’s around somewhere”, Molly’s mom said, “Maybe down in the basement showing some of his work buddies our new television.”

“Oh my”, he said, “So you’ve succumbed to the boob tube! You of all people Joan! It’s like a virus spreading! Commie plot to rot our brains!”

Molly looked at me and rolled her eyes. I knew she wanted me to go upstairs with her. I nodded and she ran towards the stairs and I followed.

“Like a moth to the flame”, I heard him say as I followed Molly up the stairs to her bedroom. Even from her room we could hear the talking and laughing below.

Molly said she wanted to play “Sky King”. I helped her move the two big puffy chairs so they were right next to each other, both facing one of the windows looking out across the street. She had a plastic toy thing with buttons on it and a steering wheel to fly the plane. She also had a black plastic box, with a button and a red light on top. Then she went over to the wall and turned off the lights. She sat in the one chair, the steering wheel thing in her lap. I sat next to her in the other chair, the black plastic box with the red light between us.

When the lights were on in the room it was hard to see out the window because you saw the inside of the room too, like a mirror. But when the room got dark that all changed. Our eyes were able to see what was outside the window. The shapes of houses, and cars in the street shining from the moon. Light from inside those houses coming out the windows, including our house across the street where David and Margie were.

“Okay. Ready to take off?” she asked.

“Okay”, I said. I would go anywhere with Molly and I knew she would go anywhere with me.

“Roger”, she said, and she pushed the button on the black box and the red light started to flash. She grabbed the steering wheel and pushed other buttons. “Taking off!” We saw the houses and the cars below us as we flew over them. We could still hear the voices and laughing of the grownups at the party below us, but now it seemed farther away. I turned my head to look at her and every time the red light flashed, it made her face look strange and scary. Like the light was showing the inside of her rather than the outside. Seeing her in a way that wasn’t the regular way. We were both quiet and continued to fly over everything together.

Far away I heard the door to Molly’s room open. I heard the voice of Molly’s mom saying, “What is going on in here?” I returned to the room and opened my eyes and saw three faces in the flashing red light, looking down at Molly and me. They were all smiling and their eyes happy, though their faces looked strange like Molly’s had.

“These two”, Molly’s mom said. She was talking slow and funny like the other people had down at the party. “Our little adventurers”, said dad. “So dear”, said mom. Mom and dad were talking that funny way too. Molly’s mom pushed the button to turn off the flashing light. Molly was still asleep.

“Joan, thanks again for hosting a great party”, mom said, “It’s been forever since Eric and I have been out together with adults.”

“It certainly has”, dad said. Then all three of them started to laugh.

“I may be jealous of Dick getting his PhD”, Molly’s mom said, “But I wouldn’t trade anything for getting to be Molly’s mom!” She stroked Molly’s hair and Molly opened her eyes, rubbed them, and stretched her arms.

“The feeling is mutual”, mom said.

Dad looked at me and his eyes were wobbly and he spoke very softly. “You want a ride home on my back, Cloob?”

“Eric dear”, mom said, “You’ve had a lot to drink, you better not.”

Somehow I knew to shake my head no.

“Okay. Okay. Okay”, dad said, nodding. He ran his hand through his hair and took a deep breath and blew it out.

“You two okay?” Molly’s mom asked them, “I think I’m going to tell Jack to put less vodka in the punch next time.”

“I think we’re okay Joan”, mom said, “We just need to get home and let the babysitter go and put this guy to bed. It’s pretty late. It was a wonderful party! Thank you so much for hosting it!”

As mom, dad and I walked out of her room Molly said, “Good night Coob.” I looked at her one last time and nodded. I didn’t want to say good night to her with all the adults watching and thinking that was so nice.

When we got out of Molly’s front door, mom put her arm around dad’s waist and pressed her body against him. “Mmm… you feel good”, she said in a slow calm happy voice.

Dad put his arm across her back and said, “You too Liz, it’s been a while!”

“It has”, mom said, “Hopefully David’s asleep and will stay so for at least a few hours.”

Their words and feelings seemed strange to me. They were not the way they usually talked to each other. Other grownups at the party had been talking that strange way. More like kids than grownups.

Mom looked up at the dark sky. “You know”, she said, now looking down at me with her big friendly eyes, her other arm grabbing my shoulder and pulling me against her. “You need a proper nickname until you’re old enough for people to call you Jonathan. “Clubius” is cute and we all love it, but it’s more of a baby name, and I think the kids in the neighborhood are going to tease you if you don’t have a more normal nickname.”

Her big blue eyes reflected the light from the moon. She looked both happy and sad at the same time. She didn’t seem so much like a grownup, which made me want to say something.

“I like the ‘Coob’ name that Molly says”, I said.

“Hmmm”, mom said, sounding more like a grownup now.

“Liz”, dad said, “There’s that sax player from Stan Kenton’s band, Bob Cooper, that they call ‘Coop’!”

“Coop! Cooper!” mom said, “What do you think, young man?” She squeezed my shoulder.

I still liked Molly’s name for me, but I nodded.

Click here to read the next chapter

This morning dad told me that mom was finally coming home from the hospital with my brother that had been inside her. He took me over to Molly’s and then he drove off in the car. I still did not know what was really going on, so it worried me. I had seen a baby before but it just cried a lot. Why did we need to have one of those at our house?

Molly and I had been playing up in her attic bedroom when dad and Molly’s mom came to tell Molly and me that the baby inside mom had come out and was now my brother. Dad had asked me if I wanted to go and see my new brother at the hospital, but I didn’t say yes or anything else, so I stayed at Molly’s house.

Earlier that day, Molly and I had hidden in the spruce tree and didn’t tell mom where we were. Mom got mad and said angry words to me. Then her body started hurting because the baby inside her was ready to come out, and dad took her to the hospital, and I went over to Molly’s.

Mom had told me a lot of times about having a baby inside her that would become “part of our family”. It might be a boy like me or a girl like Molly, but mom didn’t know which one until it came out. Where it would come out of her I did not even dare to ask. What she did know is that she would have to go to the hospital when it was ready to come out. The whole thing made no sense to me or to Molly. I already had Molly so why did we need anyone else.

After it got dark dad finally had come back to Molly’s house and taken me home, but mom wasn’t there. He said she had to stay at the hospital until she and my brother were ready to come home.

This morning he asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital with him. I still wasn’t sure what this all meant and how it might affect me, and I did not say anything. So he took me over to Molly’s again.

I was still thinking about all those things that had happened, when Molly saw from the window that our car pulled into the driveway of our house across the street. She and I looked out and watched as dad got out of the car and walked around to the other side to open the door for mom. She got out carrying something all wrapped up in a white bundle. I could tell that that thing was what this was all about.

Molly said, “Let’s go see it!”

I looked at her unsure and worried.

She looked at me and figured out what I was thinking. “You can stay here if you want”, she said, “But I’m going to go see it!”

I said okay, but I didn’t want her to go. But when she headed out of the room I decided to follow her. I was having trouble thinking of anything except that I felt strange.

When we got down the stairs to the front door, Molly called out to her mom, “Coob’s mom is home and we want to go see it!”

“Oh my god”, Molly’s mom appeared from the kitchen, climbing up the stairs into the living room, “This is so exciting! Yes, let’s go see Cloob’s little brother!”

She opened the front door. Molly ran out down toward the street.

“Whoa there Molly Wheeler”, her mom yelled out, “Watch for cars before you cross the street!” I could see Molly jerk her body to a stop on the edge of our street, swing her head to either side, and then run across. Molly’s mom puffed her cheeks and pushed air out of her mouth and shook her head.

“C’mon Cloob”, she said, taking my hand, “Let’s see your brother!”

She and I walked across the street. Molly had already disappeared inside the front door of our house.

When Molly’s mom and I walked in the front door, mom and dad and Molly were standing around this basket thing with legs that had appeared a few days ago in the living room. All three of them looked at me and smiled, but I was worried.

Mom patted dad and Molly on their shoulders and came over to me and took my hand, looking down at me.

“Cloob”, she said, making her biggest smile but her eyes looked sad. “I really want to say I’m sorry for yelling at you yesterday. I just was so scared that something had happened to you and Molly when you didn’t say anything and you were right there hiding in the spruce tree. I need you to tell me you’re okay when I ask you!”

I nodded my head. The things she said always made sense like that. Her face got less worried.

“But now I want you to meet your brother David”, she said.

She took me over to the basket thing and there was a wrinkled little face with big blue eyes looking up at me. He was unwrapped from his little white blanket and was wearing tiny blue pajamas. His little pink fingers grasped at the air and his legs kicked. His eyes moved around like he was trying to see things and they finally saw me. He smiled at me and seemed happy to see me. I could tell in his eyes that he wanted me to like him, so I felt better. The grownups all seemed happy, and Molly too, so that made me feel better too. I wasn’t sure yet it would be okay, but it was okay so far.

Looking at me and then at Molly’s mom, dad said, “The doctor said it was an easy delivery, and Liz did well.”

“Jane’s a trooper”, Molly’s mom said. Then she looked down at the baby and she made a funny expression with her mouth. “He’s a beautiful boy!” Dad nodded. Molly looked at me like she didn’t know what they were talking about. I didn’t either.

Mom nodded too, “He is Joan. It still seems like such a miracle. Just like when Cloob was born. It changes your perspective on things.” She let go of my hand and rubbed my shoulder and neck.

“So Cloob sweetie, what do you think?” mom asked.

Since I started talking she liked to ask me what I was thinking. And if I said something, she liked hearing it. But I didn’t want to tell her I felt worried, but I felt I should say something because everyone else had said something, even Molly.

“He looked at me!” I said. That seemed okay to say.

“He did sweetie, he’s looking at all of us, trying to connect with us”, mom said looking down at him and touching his face.

David looked at me again and smiled. I smiled back.

“Can he talk?” I asked.

Mom laughed. “No not yet sweetie. Not for a while. He’ll cry and make other noises too. But he’ll be doing a lot of listening and watching, like right now.”

“He’s so precious!”, Molly’s mom said. Molly pushed her lips together and made a face.

We all continued to look at him and touch him and say things about him for a while and then mom said she had to feed him. It still all felt strange to me. The kid Kenny across the street, who lived in the house next to Molly’s, had a “little brother”, that Kenny didn’t talk about much, but when he did, seemed not to like. xxx

“Let me fix up his formula!” It was the first thing dad had said and he seemed glad to say it and do something other than look at the baby. He went into the kitchen.

Molly’s mom said she needed to go home to do things. She put her hand on mom’s shoulder and said, “He’s beautiful Jane. You have a beautiful family. Please let me know anything I can do to help. Any time. Anything you need, just call me, I’m right across the street.”

I thought it was funny that she said that last thing because we all already knew that they lived across the street. It was one of those things grownups did, say things you already knew. Anyway she said that Molly could stay and play with me and that made me happy. Molly’s mom said goodbye to dad and “congratulations on your growing family”, and told him too she would “Help out any way I can, if you or Jane need me”. Then she asked him if he would make sure Molly looked both ways before crossing the street to come home and then left.

Molly wanted to see how my mom fed the baby, so we went into the kitchen to watch dad make the “formula”. Dad figured out that was why we were there looking at him and started to tell us what he was doing. He was using a “measuring spoon” to take the “powdered formula” out of a box with letters and a picture of a baby on it. He mixed it with the big wooden spoon in a pot with water heated up on the stove, hot enough to “dissolve” the powder, but not too hot or it would burn the baby’s mouth. Molly and I peeked in the pot as he stirred it, and watched the powder disappear and make the water white and look like milk. He carefully dipped his little finger in the pot to “test” if it was hot enough, but not too hot. As soon as his fingertip dipped in the milky liquid we both looked at him.

“Litle bit more”, he said, continuing to stir the pot. “It’s like making cocoa, except the water turns white instead of brown.”

Grownups were good at using words to explain things, if they wanted to.

Finally the formula was warm enough and dad poured it from the pot into a clear glass “baby bottle”. I liked those baby bottles because they were thick clear glass with sides and edges. When you held one it was heavy and you could feel those sides and edges. If you looked through it, what you saw on the other side was kind of broken up by the edges. Then as you looked through and turned the bottle, different parts of what you saw shifted and were broken up.

Dad then put a “rubber nipple” on top of the bottle. He gave the bottle to Molly and asked her if she wanted to bring it to mom. Molly nodded, and when she took the bottle she slowly and carefully walked back into the living room, holding it in front of her with both hands. I thought it was funny because she usually ran everywhere. I followed her into the living room.

Mom was sitting in the rocking chair next to the basket thing with the baby in her arms. She took the bottle from Molly and said thank you. She showed us how she dripped some on her arm to test if it was the right “temperature”. Then she put the nipple part between the baby’s lips, and his lips closed on it and the baby started drinking. Mom looked at him while he drank, I could tell her mind was doing lots of thinking.

“So Eric”, she called out to my dad in the kitchen, “Did you talk to the Hutchinson’s about their crib?”

Dad appeared at the kitchen door. “Yes. They said we could have it. It looks like it is in okay shape, may need a little work. Could use a coat of paint too.”

Still feeding the baby she said, “Well we still have half a quart of that oil-based white that we used on this bassinet.”

Dad nodded and smiled. His eyes sparkled. He and mom liked working together on things like that.

Then he frowned, “It doesn’t have a pad or a mattress though.”

Mom frowned too. “Could you get a piece of foam, cut it to size, and cover it somehow?”

“Schlenkers has foam and will cut it to size”, he said, “Then we could cover it with one of the flat sheets. I think we have an extra one.”

The baby coughed. Mom pulled the bottle out of his mouth and a bunch of white stuff squirted out and down his cheek. Mom took the cloth from her shoulder and cleaned up his face. She lifted him and held him against her chest with his head over her shoulder and gently patted his back. She smiled at Molly and me.

“David needs to burp I think”, she said, “It’s been three years since you were born Cloob, and I’m still trying to remember all the tricks of the trade!”

I couldn’t remember ever being a baby like David and not being able to do much of anything except look at things and suck on a bottle. David made a noise. Guess that was a burp.

Mom looked away from us at dad. “We’re lucky David is a boy because we have that box of Cloob’s old baby clothes somewhere right?”

Dad frowned and looked up at the ceiling. “I think we gave those to the Drakes for Henry.” Then back at mom. “He’s over a year now, he may be done with them!”

“Yeah but…”, mom shook her head, “You can’t slap a coat of fresh paint on ratty old clothes. We’re not going to dress him in rags.”

Dad puffed out his cheeks and blew air out. “Well, I could do a couple evenings at the fraternity. Those frat boys’ rooms and laundry are not going to clean themselves! Otherwise I’m going to have to rob a bank Liz!”

She looked back at him very seriously. “Eric, how many different jobs do you have?”

He looked up at the ceiling again thinking. “Five… six actually if you count the proofreading.”

“You get paid for it right?” she asked, “That counts!”

“Well”, he scratched his chin, “They give me free books.”

“That counts!” She said, taking the baby off of her chest and back down in her lap. “But at some point it becomes penny wise and pound foolish. If it slows down you getting your dissertation done, it delays you finding a real job that pays and has benefits even.”

“Well”, he said nodding his head, “I told you I’m close to starting on my dissertation!”

They were always talking about his “dissertation”. He had tried to explain it to me that it was something he had to write to get his “PHD” thing so he could work as a “professor”, but it didn’t make much sense.

“Eric”, her voice was a little bit angry, “You didn’t tell me that! That’s a big milestone isn’t it? You need to talk to me about these things. It helps…”, she rolled her hand around in a circle in front of her, “Keep me going.”

“You’re right Liz… sorry!” he said.

Molly finally looked at me and I knew she wanted to do something different.

“Let’s play in the backyard”, I said.

“Let’s play Sky King”, she said.

“Let’s play pirates and Sky King”, I said.

“Okay”, she said, and she ran into the kitchen and out the side door. I got up and followed her. I could hear mom and dad and Molly’s mom chuckling at us as I left the room following Molly.