...Summer...  Continued

© 2000, 2001 Channel49

Freddy stayed in the bungalow above the garage with his grandparents. His parents came down for weekends and usually brought him all sorts of games and toys because they felt bad about not seeing him during the week. Freddy didn't seem to care, after all, his grandparents spoiled him all week long. And because they were renting the bungalow for the entire summer my grandmother never scolded him for making noise or getting wild. She only scolded me. Even my grandfather scolded me and he usually slept all day, having worked nights most of his life.

Freddy's grandmother loved to talk. I guess you would call it gossip and I suppose she was good at it, because my mother enjoyed listening to her. We all trekked down to the beach together, Freddy, me, the adults and Beth who also loved gossip even if she didn't know what it was about. --This much I knew, the good parts were all hushed up. Beach chairs and umbrellas along with rafts and almost everything else went into a battered old baby stroller my mom pushed.

When that old baby stroller wasn't holding beach chairs it could hold Freddy or I as a go-cart, jet fighter, tank or anything else you wanted to play at. We had survived some great crashes in that stroller hitting mailboxes and even flipping over once.

When the water was too rough, or stained with sludge, we played in the sand, building forts or game arcades that could be played with a ball. When the water was good we were commandoes or salvage divers.

After the beach it was showers and supper. And after supper it was back to play.

The adults would usually gab on the porch till they decided to watch TV, and then some of them would drift in and fill the chairs and couches before my grandmother's large television set. She had the TV under the mantle of the fireplace they never used, with glass and porcelain things lined up above.

We didn't see Doc around that night and supposed that our wiffle ball lessons would have to wait till the next morning. It was one of those long summer evenings that took forever to get dark. We used the cover of the rose trellises to sneak up on the bungalows two houses down that were owned by the 'Mean Mrs. Green.' There were many secret approaches to getting into her yard unseen. It involved climbing three sets of fences from behind our own garage-bungalow and using all the bushes for cover.

We didn't really do anything once we got there, but we were excited and whispered orders to one another. Freddy was on the edge of getting wild. I could tell because he no longer seemed to play at the same thing. He started peeking into the windows of Mrs. Green's second bungalow. Then he crawled across the rear end of her driveway to where I was hiding and burst into laughter as he told me he had seen somebody undressing and a fat-man rubbing Jell-O on his head.

I knew he had made it up but I laughed anyway. In two seconds Mrs. Green came storming out of her backdoor waving her arms and yelling. We never minded getting caught on the way out. My Grandmother didn't like Mrs. Green because of her habit of trying to steal away other renter's customers and Mrs. Green's complaints about us never resulted in any punishment. We usually waited till Mrs. Green was almost on us before jumping over the fence and making faces at her.

"I'll kill you rotten kids!" She shrieked at us.

We stopped laughing when we saw who was watching us from the yard we had just jumped into. It was the two girls. They had been playing some sort of game with a tennis ball. The four of us were frozen. Only Mrs. Green continued to make noise as she threatened to call the police and the fire department and have us locked up for the rest of our lives.

I couldn't look away from the one I knew was Nancy. She had a pink hair-band, and a white blouse with plaid shorts. I almost felt like surrendering to Mrs. Green and facing the death penalty.

Finally Freddy said something to Mrs. Green. "Go ahead, call the FBI. Tell them you found somebody laughing on your property."

Nancy was watching us. Janet or Janice leaned over to whisper something to her. I didn't like Janet. But Nancy pushed her back, gently and then she bounced the ball to her. Was that the game, bouncing a tennis ball to one another?

"Do you want to play?" Nancy asked us.

I couldn't believe it, but, Freddy was out of control. He said, "Sure, babes..." and ran from behind me to steal their ball right after the bounce and jumped the fence into our yard. It was the best catch he ever made. I didn't know what to do but look away and run after him.

Freddy ran two loops around my grandmother's house. He bounced the ball wildly on the sidewalk and sang a song I knew he hadn't made up. "A my name is Alice, and I'm full of Malice. M my name is Mandy and all I do is eat Candy..."

I laughed so hard I couldn't catch up to him. At last, he stopped running and played a weird game of stoop ball off of the cinderblock wall next to our driveway.

"We better give the ball back," I said.

"Why? Let's play like they were." And he bounced the ball hard off of the pavement and caught the bounce with his head. "OOO what a wonderful game for goofy girls..."

I tried to catch the rebound but he snatched it back and ran up the back porch into the house. I followed as he bounced the ball along the linoleum floor.

The adults turned from the TV set to quiet us down but it was too late, Freddy let go with a terrific bounce that sent the ball up to the ceiling. I reached for the ball only to knock it into the living room. The ball arched across the living room, hit the mantle above the fireplace knocking a porcelain bulldog down which hit Mr. Showbuck's shoes on the hassock and bounced into the television set exploding.

"YIPES! Do it again, Danny!" Freddy yelled.

The TV screen cracked, went dark and spit out a hiss of smoke. Adults were running for their lives.

"I gotta go," Freddy said and bolted out of the back door.

My grandmother began advancing at me. And who was marching up our front porch to ring the doorbell? Nancy with Janet one step behind her.

"I was just trying to get Freddy to stop bouncing the ball in the house, Grandma..."

The bell ding-donged. The adults who weren't killed by the sudden loss of TV began closing in on me. I turned and ran up the three flights of stairs to my tiny room. I turned the lights off and closed the windows waiting for the worst of what was to come.

The next five minutes took hours. Finally I heard footsteps coming slowly up in my direction. The steps were uncertain. It couldn't have been my grandmother who could not step as lightly as this footstep. The only one It could have been was Beth. Which meant my mother was back from the boardwalk already. I sat up and watched for Beth's head to appear at the top of the steps. Instead I saw a pink hairband. It was Nancy. Nancy with no Janet.

She stopped two steps from the landing. "Is this where you're staying?" She asked.

"Yeah. My grandmother owns the house. We get the attic for free."

She advanced an additional step. "Do you have my ball?"

"I think it was destroyed with the television set."

"Did you do that... downstairs?" She asked.

"Sort of. It was really..."

"The other boy. His name is Freddy, right?" She asked.

"Yeah."

"And your name is Danny. Your grandmother told me. My name is Nancy." She was on our landing. On the third floor. The floor where I slept. Practically in my room. She stepped closer to my open door. I couldn't move.

"Are you being punished?" She asked. She stepped into my doorway. Her face was hidden in the dark shadows.

"Not yet. But it's coming," I said.

She laughed. Not like Freddy does, like a sick hyena, but like...like I don't know.

"I know the feeling. You seem to be pretty calm about it."

Only because I was temporarily paralyzed. I shrugged. Finally I thought of something to say." What's going on down there? Have they called out the National Guard?"

She laughed again, and in spite of everything I thought I believed in, I thought I could listen to her laugh the rest of my life.

"I've got to get back..." She said.

I pushed myself off of the bed and reached into the bottom of my closet. Next to my baseball glove and bat, my cap pistol and water guns were a pile of soft balls. I pulled three of them out. One dropped and rolled under my bed. I offered her the other two. "Here, Nancy. Till I can find your tennis ball..."

She took one of the balls from my hand. "I'm only taking it for tonight, so Janet won't complain. You can have it back."

"It's okay, really," I said.

She nodded, pushed hair from the side of her face and left my room. She stopped by the stairs, though, and looked back. "I'll see you tomorrow, won't I?" She asked.

"Sure."

She slowly went down the steps from my room. I wanted to lean over the railing and watch her. To see if she would look to see if I was watching her, but I couldn't go that far. I slunk onto my bed again. The punishment that awaited no longer seemed as frightening. My head became sleepy with dreams of Nancy. But before I drifted off I fixed in mind the need to give Freddy a good beating for getting me into deep trouble and then deserting me.

The next morning I had to go downstairs. What I wanted to do was climb down a rope from the attic and run away. I had to pass everybody on the steps and in the kitchen. I was scowled at. Everybody was mad at me accept the TV repairman who was hauling the guts of the set onto a hand-truck to be carted away.

"Hiya Sonny," he said, "Are you the one who did this?"

I didn't say anything. He whistled happily as he moved the set onto the front porch.

My grandfather stopped me on the way up to bed for one of his naps. "You were a bad boy," he said.

"I didn't do anything, Grandpa!"

My mom and Beth we're already eating breakfast. I joined them. "I didn't do anything, Mom. Freddy snatched this girl's tennis ball and was throwing it. I ran after him..."

"Yes, we know. The little girl next door told your Grandmother that," My mother said.

It almost sounded like I was out of deep trouble.

"But you were still bad," Beth said above her spoon of soggy cereal.

"It will cost your grandmother a lot of money to fix the television." My mom said like it meant that my allowance would be gone for the next ten years.

"All I did was try to get the ball away from Freddy. You know how he gets..."

"Your grandmother swore that you will not be able to watch television for the rest of the summer," my mother said.

"Yeah. You we're really bad," Beth said again.

"What! Mom, that's completely unfair. Freddy gets to watch. They have their own television in the bungalow. And..."

"And Freddy's grandparents have rented the bungalow for the entire summer," Mom said.

"Well, put the TV on their bill!" I said.

"We can't do that. Freddy's grandparents have been coming here for years. We can't do that," Mom said.

"All summer?" I moaned.

"Relax. How much television do you watch during the summer anyway?" Mom asked.

"When it rains we watch...." I said.

My mother shrugged. "You have to take your medicine."

"And don't break the new television, either." Beth warned.

"Right." I got up to go into the backyard.

"Aren't you having any breakfast?" My mom asked.

"I'm not hungry now."

I went out the back porch. Doc was there reading his paper. The wiffle bat was next to him. "Good morning."

"Hi Doc," I said.

"Where's your friend?" Doc asked.

"I'm gonna get him right now." I marched upstairs to Freddy's place above the garage and rang the doorbell. His grandmother answered.

"Hello Danny."

"Hi. Is Freddy here?" I asked.

"Freddy isn't feeling very well, dear. Maybe come back later."

I was almost burning up. "Okay."

I ran down the stairs and behind the garage. I climbed the maple tree half way up till I could see into his room. He was sitting on his bed playing with a million games.

"Freddy!" I hissed.

"What?" He saw me in the maple tree.

"Come on downstairs, Freddy," I said.

"I uh... Uh...My Grandmother wants me to run some errands, later...I..."

"Downstairs," I said.

"No."

"You chicken!"

"You're just going to hit me," he said.

"No I'm not." I lied, thinking it wasn't really a lie because I wasn't going to just hit him. I was going to stomp him. "If you don't come downstairs now I won't play with you ever again, and when I do catch you I'm gonna cremate you."

He thought about it. "Alright..."

I waited out front for him to tell his Grandmother how fine he suddenly felt. I opened the garage door and thought I should push him in there before beating him up.

He came downstairs slowly holding a big chocolate chip cookie out. "Here Danny. This is for you..."

I took the cookie. "Freddy, if you ever get crazy in my Grandmother's house again, I'll murder you."

"Okay."

"It's gonna cost my Grandmother two hundred dollars to fix the TV. I can't ever watch it again. I'm banned from TV the rest of my life."

"You can watch it with me," He offered. "Whenever you like."

I bit into the cookie. It sure tasted good. "And you ran off and let me face everything by myself," I said.

"I'm sorry Danny."

I finished the cookie. I guess I wasn't going to beat him to an inch of his life after all.

Something soft sailed out and landed at our feet. It was the wiffle ball.

"You guys ready to play?" Doc called out, ready to bat another of the light, plastic balls.

"Sure," I said.

"Oh, by the way, there are two little girls here. Do you mind if they play too?" Doc asked.

"We don't want any goofy girls!" Freddy blurted out. Doc looked away for a moment, studying the clouds or watching some seagulls and I turned and punched Danny on the arm --hard.

"Sure," I shouted, "Anybody can play, accept babies."

Janet climbed the fence into our yard, but Nancy walked around to the front of the house and along the walk beside the rose trellises. She said 'hi' to me and I said 'hi' to her. Freddy and Janet already hated one another. Janet was not friendly toward me either.

Doc asked the two girls their names and told them who he was.

"Are you a Doctor?" Nancy asked.

"Oh no. Just Doc."

He gave all of us a little practice hitting easy pitches with the wiffle ball and then made up a simple game with two bases and a few rules. Next, he put us on teams. Freddy and Janet naturally wanted to play the girls against the boys, but Doc put Nancy and I on the same team against Freddy and Janet.

At first our teams were real awkward with one another. I had trouble speaking to Nancy without getting tongue-tied and Freddy and Janet just glared at one another. They had first bat so they could only argue about which one would go first. Doc settled it with a flip of the coin.

"So, who's going to play infield and pitch, and whose going to play the outfield?" Doc asked Nancy and me.

We looked at each other. "Do you want to..." We both asked one another at the same time and then we both smiled.

"Nancy would you like to pitch?" Doc asked. She said yes and Doc said, "Who ever the next batter is can act as catcher. If a runner is on base then the batter will have to return the pitch. Okay everybody?"

Janet wanted Doc to go over the hitting rules again. "What's a home run?"

"Don't worry about it. You'll never get close." Fred said to his new team-mate.

"A direct hit onto the balcony above the garage is a home run. A line drive off of the garage wall is good for two bases. Anything to the sides of the garage-bungalow is foul," Doc told everyone again.

Then we began to play and got into the game so much we didn't even notice that Doc had left.

Freddy struck out his first time up, and felt real bad about it. Janet tried to give him some advice about hitting. "Watch the way I do it," she said.

She fouled the first pitch and whacked the second one. I ran for it but couldn't catch it. The wiffle ball smacked off the garage door for a two-baser. Then it was up to Freddy to hit her home.

"Come on hit the ball!" Janet pleaded from second base --which was where third base would be in regular baseball.

"I will, I will," Freddy said without seeming to believe it.

He swung and missed Nancy's first pitch.

"Hey Danny it's not fair. She's pitching harder to me than to her girlfriend," Freddy complained.

Nancy turned and looked at me to shake her head that it wasn't true. I knew it wasn't true. She was pitching easy to both of them. That's the way Doc had started us out.

"Just watch the ball and take your time," I told him, feeling confused about who I wanted to help.

He swung and missed a second time. "It's this light weight bat. I'm just not used to it," he complained again.

"Keep your eye on the ball!" Janet told him.

I could tell how miserable he was, and actually felt bad for him.

Finally he popped it up. It came right to me and I put my hands up and before I knew it I had caught it, but Janet tagged and ran for home. I threw the ball to Nancy and she raced toward home to tag Janet before she was safe.

Janet slid and knocked Nancy over. I couldn't believe it.

"You're out!" Freddy said.

"I'm out? Whose team are you on, bird-brain?" Janet yelled into his face.

"Shut up, fish-breath."

She grabbed Freddy and wrestled him down onto the grass just as Nancy was getting up. The two of them fought on the ground, though Janet managed to get on top of him. "I got you pinned!" she shouted.

"No you don't!" Freddy shouted.

Nancy and I lifted Janet off and the fighting stopped. They ignored the two of us as they continued arguing.

"Don't ever take the other team's side against me again, you hear! This way you get a sacrifice-run-batted-in instead of a dumb out. Understand?" Janet shouted at Freddy, then she turned to Nancy and I.

"Was I safe or out?"

We looked at one another. "I don't know," Nancy said.

"Okay they got one run. I'm sure we'll catch up," I said.

"Alright, I'm up now. If I get on base, hit me home, but try to keep it on the ground, that way I can run without tagging, okay?" Janet asked Freddy.

"Okay," he said.

The game went on for many innings. Eventually Nancy and I changed field position. At times we got confused, especially if one team got two members on base and the lead runner stayed so the second runner could bat again. Sometimes we forgot the force-play on the invisible runner from first. Janet and Freddy became a pretty good team, to the point that Freddy --after a hit, would root Janet on and actually taunt me from first base.

We got our hits too and the score was close at 7 - 6 with us trailing when Beth called me for lunch. I had forgotten how hungry I was, and yet wanted the game to go on. But Freddy's grandmother told him to come upstairs too.

"You want to play this on the beach?" Janet asked.

I hadn't seen them at the beach and guessed that they used a different street beach than we did.

"It's too hard to run in the sand," Nancy said.

"Allright, we'll finish this game after supper, okay?" Janet said.

"Okay." I picked up the wiffle bat.

Janet was already out of our yard. "C'mon, Nance," she called.

"Okay, coming... What beach do you go usually go to?" She asked me.

"Brinley and LaReine." I said, "And you?" I asked.

"Usually Fourth Avenue," she said.

"All the way down there? Why?" I asked.

"My mother thinks it's a better beach. It's more quiet."

"Uh huh. Maybe we'll take a walk down there," I said.

"Nance!" Janet called.

"Okay, coming," Nancy shouted back.

"She's tough," I said.

Nancy smiled. "See you later."

"You in love?" Freddy asked after Nancy left our yard.

"She's nice. Her girlfriend's something else," I said.

"She's okay," Freddy said, trying to juggle two of the extra wiffle balls. Which he must have lost because we never saw them again.

"Really?" I asked.

"Yeah. She's okay, for a girl, I mean," Freddy said.

"Fred, did I make your lunch to sit on the table all afternoon?" His Grandmother asked from the balcony.

"No Gra'm. I'm coming up." Freddy ran up the stairs.

"I see you have some nice new friends," his grandmother said to me.

"Yeah."

"It's so nice to see boys and girls playing nicely together."

"Yeah," I said smiling. She must have been watching television while Janet was rolling her grandson in the dirt.

Once on the beach we had to quick-step over the hot sand to get to the cooler area nearer the water. We set up all of the beach chairs and went for our first swim. We made it the shortest first swim ever. And then Freddy and I hiked to Fourth Avenue Beach.

The girls were waiting for us. Actually looking for us. Janet had written some new, additional rules for our wiffle ball game. They were set down with neat penmanship on small pieces of white paper decorated with hearts, flowers and blue ribbons.

I can't remember exactly what the four of us did that first afternoon on the beach together. We played in the water, searched for seashells. Looked under the boardwalk for lost change. Talked and threw pebbles against the jetties and watched fishermen reel in lines that were mostly snagged with seaweed.

It was a great afternoon. As the sun began to grow cooler in the sky we had to race back to our beach and help carry all our stuff up to the boardwalk and home again. Then take our turns in the shower and wait for dinner.

Afterwards we got together again to finish our game. By the time it was dark Nancy and I had won by 10 - 9. Doc was there to see the last play of our game --a force against an imaginary runner advaancing to second with a double play on Fred at first and three out so the last runner home, Janet, couldn't score.

"Very good," Doc said. "Amazing transformation."

We sat on the porch near his chair.

"What do you guys want to do now?" Freddy asked.

"We could go inside and watch television," Janet said.

I tried not to moan.

"Is it too late to go to the boardwalk?" Freddy asked.

"It's almost nine o'clock," Doc told us.

"Yeah, it's too late," I said.

"Let's tell ghost stories," Freddy suggested.

"Doc knows some stories. About giants and stuff," I said.

"Yeah, from an ancient people. You want to tell us some, Mr. Ludlow?" Fred asked.

"I don't know that you would like them," Doc said.

"Are they educational?" Janet asked.

"In a way," Doc said.

"Tell one of them to us," Nancy asked.

"Yeah, try one on us," I said.

The summer night darkened around us as we sat in a semi-circle before Doc Ludlow. He leaned forward in his chair, "Alright. I'll try one of them," he said.

"It's called," Doc began, " 'The Bull and the Lions' and before I begin let me set the stage for this story. In ancient times and some remote places even today you have herds of animals migrating --that means moving from one place to another. They might move from a summer grassland to an area of streams and lakes when the grasslands get too dry.

"In this story the Bull is the strongest leader of the wild buffalo. He's the brother, father, husband and cousin of almost all the other buffalo. And opposing the buffalo in the journey are?"

"The lions." I said.

"That's right. The lions, and other things. Hyenas, leopards, packs of wild dogs, drought, prairie fires, lakes full of crocodiles. It's not easy being a buffalo. But there are other animals moving in herds on these grasslands. There are giraffes, smaller animals like antelope, zebras..."

"Elephants?" Janet asked.

"Yes there are elephants but they are separate from the other animals. The way they eat and their needs for water keep them apart. Should I continue?" Doc asked.

"Oh yeah," We all said, imagining a grassland as big as all the outdoors with only these animals on them.

"For as long as the Bull could remember the buffalo had always moved along a familiar course from the high plains under the mountains to the summer grasslands and back. And all along the way animals had been hunted by predators such as the lions.

"A single lion would not attack a full grown bull. He was too big and strong. He weighed too much. Why, if the buffalo stepped on the lion he might kill it. In fact the largest lions, the big male lions didn't do very much hunting. The female lions, the mothers of the lion pride did the normal hunting for food."

Janet whispered something to Nancy.

"The female lions always coordinated their attacks. Some would chase the herd, others would pick out a likely target for supper. Then one made the kill to be assisted by two or three others.

"If they didn't attack the big bulls, who did they attack?" Doc asked us.

"The cows. The buffalo cows," Nancy said.

"Maybe... but mostly if the lions took interest in buffalo for supper it was the young calves. The babies. They were the most tender, and the best for eating. And they were the easiest to catch."

"OOOoo," The girls said.

"Didn't the mothers and fathers protect their babies?" Janet asked.

"The mother cows very definitely tried to protect their babies. But they didn't want to fall behind the herd, become surrounded and eaten themselves. And there are not many fathers in a herd. The Bull was the father. And he was trying to lead the herd and keep them together.

"Now if you read about something like this you will find that the attack on the weakest members of the herd keeps the herd fit."

"What's the difference between one baby calf who is unlucky and a lucky one?" Janet asked.

"Luck," Doc said. "Anyway, one spring as the herd rested under the nearby mountains, just after the cows had given birth, the Bull had a dream of a spirit coming down from the mountain and covering him with a new strength."

"What kind of spirit?" Freddy asked.

"What is a spirit?" Nancy asked.

"A spirit can be anything. It could be a strong dream, or maybe a breeze that not everybody feels.

"From this spirit-dream the Bull began to think like a person. It could see all the migrations in his life mapped out as if suddenly he understood life's purpose.

"Instead of just being a bull while he was strong and then being pushed aside when he grew older he could become a king. But he could only become a king if he found a way to make the herd a people. And to become a people the buffalo would have to defeat their enemies.

"It would mean changing a way of life that had existed for so many years. The annual trek across the plains where the lions waited could not continue. They could no longer allow the lions to take so many of their calves; to surround and destroy the older animals, to surprise the foolish who wandered too far tasting the sweet grass nearer the trees.

"They would have to defeat the lions. The bull was uncertain how to do this, so he sought out his own father at the edge of the herd.

" ' Father,' he said, 'I need to talk to you about something.'

"His father was amazed to be spoken to. 'Why do you speak to me? You have never spoken to me since the day you became the leader and pushed me aside.'

" 'It's different now,' the Bull said, 'We are going to become a people. We will do things differently.'

"The old buffalo chewed the grass, 'How can this happen? How can we change?'

" 'We must defeat the lions who wait for us in the grasslands to the south. I want your support. If we all work together there will be a day when we fear no enemy.'

"The old buffalo laughed quietly. 'This will never happen,' he told his son, the Bull.

" 'Then it will be the end of your time on the plains. Because you are too old to run all day. The lions will come after you. It's your choice. Would you rather live one more season under the sky. Eat the sweet grass, and when your time comes lay down and sleep. Or do you want to be chased and eaten by the lions this next month when we begin our march through the plains?'

"The old buffalo shook his head. Tears fell to the ground. 'None of us want to be eaten by the lions. But we always think it won't happen to us. What you have told me could be true. Maybe it will happen to me this time. I have nothing to lose if I listen to you.'

"Next, the Bull spoke to his older sons. They were wild and only wanted to fight and play. He had to force them into a circle to get them to stand still and listen. 'Hey, Pops what do you want from us?' Said one.

" 'Yeah man, be cool and let us do our thing.' Said another.

" 'Listen to me for a moment. Would you like to become a mighty people with no enemies, or simply play all day?' The Bull asked.

" 'Definitely play.' Said one. 'What's in it for us?' asked the other.

" 'If we all make a kingdom, eventually one of you will rule it,' the Bull said.'

" 'Yeah, but who, me?' asked one. 'Not you, you're definitely too dumb,' said another.

" 'Who ever is the best would inherit the kingdom,' the Bull said.

"To decide who was best several of them began playing and fighting. Two of his many sons did not join the game. 'How do we become a kingdom?' One asked.

" 'By defeating our enemy the lions,' the Bull told them.

" 'The lions won't bother me.' The son said, 'I run too fast, and I'm already too strong for any one lion.'

" 'But think of the little ones and the grandmothers who go down every year from the lion's hunger,' the Bull said.

"They listened but said nothing. 'Think of the kingdom that one of you will inherit,' the Bull said. This made the two sons smile and look at one another. 'We are interested in this.' the two sons said, and will talk to our brothers about it when they get tired of playing.'

"Next the Bull called all of the cows and their calves together. He told them of his plan and they all applauded. They stamped their hooves on the ground and bellowed with approval. They truly liked the idea. But one cow who had many children and had lost more than a few to the lions told the Bull, 'You must show the way, because most of us with little ones are afraid of the lions.'

" 'I will show the way,' the Bull said, feeling confident at the time that the special spirit that came to him from the mountain would help show him the way.

"As the herd prepared to head for the summer grasslands a single lion was spotted walking in the distance. The youngster that spotted the lion was upset, 'I didn't think there were any lions this far north in the spring.'

The Bull ran to investigate this lion. Sure enough there was single, male lion walking slowly alongside the herd. He was some distance away and seemed to have no interest in the herd. The Bull had seen this before, an old lion moving through unknown territory, more afraid of other lions than chasing buffalo. The Bull called for the herd to move closer toward this lion and reluctantly they followed.

" 'Remember, you must show the way!' The cow reminded him as other buffalo searched nervously for additional lions.

"The lion saw the herd moving toward him slowly and he changed direction to avoid them. The Bull moved in front of the herd to study the lion more carefully. He could see that the lion was hungry, and panting from the heat. The lion seemed to limp slightly from a sore foot. This lion was not looking for buffalo, maybe for a lame antelope that hyena hadn't found, or even a lazy rabbit.

"The herd stopped behind him. The Bull closed his eyes and asked the spirit from the mountain what to do. Then he understood that he must show the way. The Bull had never done anything like this before and he was frightened also. But no one could see he was frightened. He ran slowly toward the lion, huffing breath out of his nostrils as if he were angry.

"The lion stopped and watched this huge, strong bull trotting toward him. The lion thought, this must be some mistake. Buffalos don't hunt lions. Lions hunt buffalo. So the lion continued on his way.

"The Bull became concerned when he saw that the lion was not frightened of him. The Bull looked back and saw the entire herd watching. He tossed his horns in the air and pawed the ground and then ran after the lion again.

"Finally the Bull was only twenty feet from the lion. The lion thought to himself, maybe this Bull thinks I want to hunt buffalo as lion sometimes do. But I'm an old lion on his own and I do not wish to hunt buffalo. So the lion changed direction, again, heading away from the herd.

"The Bull was getting annoyed by the lion's lack of interest in him. So the Bull ran around the lion to stand directly in the lion's path.

"Now, the lion was completely puzzled. Behind him was the herd and in front of him was this huge bull. Never before in his life had he ever heard or seen of such a thing.

" 'Go back to your herd, Bull. Enjoy life. Once I was the leader of a lion pride. Now I'm just passing through,' the lion said, revealing that many of his teeth were broken.

"The Bull felt sorry for the lion. He bellowed out in his loudest voice, 'This lion fears us!' But the herd could not hear him. The lion heard him, though, and shook from such a loud bellow.

"The lion paused and wondered, is this what happens to old lions on their own, they are attacked by their former prey? 'Please let me pass,' the lion pleaded. But the Bull stood his ground. He kicked dirt at the lion and moved very close.

"The lion sat down on the ground. He panted from the heat and waited for the Bull to charge. The Bull pawed the earth and bellowed his loudest, meanest threats. Then he charged the lion.

"The once mighty lion was like a piece of rag under the bull's hooves and horns. He lay on his side, his coat torn, he could barely move. 'Why do you attack lions?' he gasped.

" 'So lions will no longer hunt buffalo,' the Bull answered.

" 'What will lions eat?' The old lion asked.

" 'Let them eat grass,' the Bull said, and rolled a clump of dry grass and dirt over the lion's back. This made the herd howl with laughter. The Bull, even the lion heard the laughter.

" 'This is what becomes of old lions on their own. They are mocked by buffalo, soon rabbits and mice will come to pull my whiskers, the lion cried. The Bull took pity on the lion, 'Don't move till I have rejoined my herd and led them away from here,' he told the lion.

" 'Don't move? I think my leg is broken. How can I move?' the lion cried. The Bull turned his back on the lion and kicked heaps of dirt on him, making the herd laugh again. Then the Bull ran to rejoin the herd.

"Several of his strong sons wanted to run down and trample the lion. But the Bull told them, 'Save your strength for the lions on the plain. There will be plenty of them and we can all have our fill trampling them together.'

"The herd moved from the high plains down toward the summer prairies which were rich with thick grass. Soon they noticed they were in lion country. A frightened zebra which had been clawed by a young lion ran around a nearby zebra herd telling her story over and over to anyone who would listen.

"It was early the next day when a pride of hunting lions were spotted on the outskirts of a herd of antelope. 'Those lions won't bother us, now,' an old buffalo said. 'That's right,' said the Bull, 'because we will destroy them.'

"The old buffalo was uncertain. 'Won't they know how strong you are?' she asked the Bull.

" 'Tell her, Father,' the Bull asked his father.

" 'He's right. Eventually the lions will get to us after the other game is gone. It's the way it's always been.'

"So the bull organized the herd into two groups. The larger group would guard the calves, the smaller group made up of the strongest animals would form a fierce wedge with the Bull at its center and would hunt down and destroy the lion pride.

" 'And if the lions change direction and try to get behind us, as lions do, we will simply reverse direction and the two wings of this wedge will turn and follow me again attacking in the opposite way,' the Bull told his war party, 'Does everyone understand?' the Bull asked. All nodded. 'Remember, we are larger than they with bigger muscles. We could pull a ton if we had to. Our horns can smash a dozen lions and our mighty hooves can kick holes in them. And they are smaller, female lions than the one who trembled before me alone, and look how many more of us then there are of them!'

"They trotted toward the lions in the hunting pride getting their wedge perfectly in shape. The other animals got out of the way. Birds flew into the sky and made a great noise.

"The lions looked up from their hunting and were puzzled by the wedge of buffalo charging toward them. The buffalo had no young with them and lions had never seen anything like this.

"The sound of so many hooves echoed off of the nearby trees where the young, male lion of the pride waited in the shade. He too looked up and saw this puzzling thing.

"The Bull felt sure of his plan and began to add great speed to his charge. It would take little time, he thought, to finish off this pride of lions and soon they would destroy all the lions of the grassland. One day he would be king of a great herd of buffalo. A herd with no enemies, a herd that in fact would be a people. A people who would grow to the ends of the earth. A kingdom he would pass down to his most deserving son.

"The Bull wondered why the lions didn't turn to run. He decided they were not smart enough to understand what was happening, and this too was good, it would make their work easier.

"But then, the Bull noticed that all, but the one lion directly in his path, were smiling. Smiling with strong, yellow teeth. And the Bull only heard the pounding of his own footsteps. He glanced behind and saw the attack party of buffalo milling about some fifty yards away.

"His first thought was to turn and rejoin them in order to offer encouragement. Perhaps they had forgotten the plan. But his way was blocked by two lions of the hunting pride which had closed in behind him. The bull pawed the ground and tossed his mighty horns. He called upon the spirit of the mountain to show him the way. Then he realized that he could no longer see the mountain from the lowland prairies. And perhaps the spirit of the mountain was only near the mountain itself.

"The Bull was standing still in a slight hollow of ground with five hunting lions circling around him. He charged at one lion who got out of his way. The others moved closer to him. He tried to form a mighty bellow but only a shriek escaped his lungs. Behind him the young bulls fought among themselves for the new leadership of the herd. And behind them the rest of the herd spread out in the early sun in order to eat the best grass. Between the two groups the Bull saw his own father watching.

"He was big enough to fight. He might have even killed a lion or two, and perhaps he could have escaped them with some damage. But the Bull saw little reason to rejoin his herd even if he could. His dream was gone. His sons were strong, he saw no future for himself, so he simply stood there looking up as the lions attacked.

"He was a big Bull. And a really strong Bull and even though he would not struggle the lions had trouble bringing him down. At last they did, and the male lion watching from the shade roared in satisfaction. He had never seen anything quite like it, a huge bull offering himself up like that to spare members of his herd for a few days.

"The Bull's father also watched from the distance. 'In the end, he was good son to me, a better son than I was to my father,' but he knew, that which ever of his grandsons became the new Bull, he would taunt and make fun of the old buffalo. A tear ran down his muzzle. 'It's just not the way for buffaloes, to hunt lions, it's just not the way,' the old buffalo said to himself, as more tears ran down and fell to the earth."

Freddy laughed, "Pretty dumb bull."

"And did the lions eat the baby calves, and the Bull's father?" Nancy asked.

"The story ends there," Doc said. "But I guess, in the end the lions ate everybody, and people came and hunted the lions for trophies and so on."

"But, like, how many calves would get eaten? Say, there were fifty calves, would the lions eat twenty-five?" Janet asked.

Doc shrugged, "The story doesn't say."

"Did you like that story?" Doc asked. I could tell he really wanted an honest answer.

"No. I mean it was interesting, but I don't like how it ended," Nancy said.

"I liked it!" Freddy said. "I'd root for the lions, anyway," Freddy said.

"That's because you don't understand the story!" Janet told him. "I liked it, Mr. Ludlow, but I'd like to know more about it. How about you?" Janet asked me.

"I'm still thinking about it," I said. "I guess I like it, but it's different than most animal stories..."

"Accept the Gingerbread-Man. He gets eaten too," Janet said.

"But he was cookie, and not a real thing," Nancy said.

Doc was smiling. "Why do you suppose that story is different?" He asked us.

"The hero of the story is dumb," Freddy said.

"Because it's not just a story made up for kids, you know, to show how cute everything is. If you ever went to a zoo you would know that none of these animals are really cute. Maybe the babies are, but the big ones smell bad." Janet said, holding her nose.

"That's good," Doc said, "And I think that it's also a story about people as well as about creatures."

Freddy's grandmother called for him from the balcony on the bungalow.

"I guess it's getting close to bedtime, kids." Doc Ludlow said, studying his watch by the dim, porch light.

That night I dreamed of buffalo and lions and hunting them with Nancy and Freddy and Janet. Late in the dream I heard a lot of clattering and imagined a herd of buffalo charging at us. When I awoke it was raining. It was the kind of rain that could ruin the beach even if the sky would clear up. Sheets of rain fell on all the houses I could see from my third floor window.

Downstairs, people milled around nervously waiting for the TV repairman to bring back the fixed inside of the set. I ate breakfast with Beth and ended up borrowing some of her paper and crayons to draw.

I drew a picture of the Bull surrounded by the hungry lions, but I felt ashamed by it for some reason and crumpled it up for the trash. An hour later the rain tapered off and Freddy and his grandmother came over from the bungalow.

Doc Ludlow had gotten a morning paper and was reading on the back porch when Freddy and I went back there. Freddy had something to show Doc. It was a picture of the Bull and the old lion from the middle of the story. It was a crude picture. You could see the bull's body from the side and his face and horns from the front as if he were half-turned and smiling at the artist.

"Very good," Doc said, "You drew this just as the Keneem did. It's like you had copied the scene from one of their vases or something."

Freddy beamed. I had drawn a much better picture but said nothing.

The sky began to brighten and Freddy and I decided to play something. We kept our beach carriage in the old garage, which was fairly spooky. We were going to use the carriage as a lion-hunting tank. We took the beach chairs out of it and stacked them next to the old ladder my grandfather had built.

"Do you love Nancy?" Freddy asked.

He might as well have punched me in the stomach. I didn't say anything.

"Well do ya?" He asked. "C'mon, I won't tell anyone," he said. Though, I didn't believe him.

"No. I just like her," I told him.

"Well I love her," Freddy told me.

"Who?" I asked.

"Nancy."

"I don't believe you," I said.

"It's true. I love her."

I sat down on the ladder and tried to think of something to say. "She's taller than you," I finally came up with.

He thought this over for a moment.

"You should like Janet," I told him.

He made a face, but not as weird a face as Freddy could make. "Janet?" He asked.

"Yeah. I think she likes you, sort-of." I told him.

"She's taller than me too," Freddy said.

"Not as much. And she likes to be a little taller. She's that way." I told him.

"Yeah?" He thought this over. "Okay," he announced, "I love Janet."

"Are you going to do something about it?" I asked.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. It's you who's blurting stuff out," I told him.

"Let's get them to play wiffle ball," Freddy said.

"The ground's too wet, with big puddles everywhere," I said.

"So what do we do? See them on the beach, tomorrow?" He asked.

I stood up. "Here, get in the carriage, I'll race you down to their house."

Freddy climbed in. "At least we can talk to them today."

"Right." I heaved forward with all my strength and built up a rush of speed to push Freddy down the driveway and onto the sidewalk. We both shouted and cheered probably trying to make as much noise as possible in order to attract attention.

I got quiet, though, when we rounded the corner bushes and saw the TV repairman's truck parked at the curb. I saw my grandmother talking to him on the porch. Even Freddy got quiet for a second. But then we passed the house and the second set of bushes and rose trellises, and made more noise.

Janet was standing on the far side of Mrs. Watchel's house. Mrs. Watchel owned the house and two bungalows between my grandmother and Mrs. Green. I was curious where Nancy and Janet were actually staying.

Janet waved for us to stop, which we were going to do anyway. Freddy, surprising all of us, announced to Janet, "I love you."

I looked at him. Janet looked at him. She kind of twisted her body around to put most of her weight on one foot. She blushed, then she looked at me and for some reason I blushed too. Only Freddy had no reaction. "I do." He insisted, making Janet believe that she was being kidded. She bit her lower lip and announced to me, without really looking at me, "Nancy's not here. And I'm going to the movies with my mother."

"Where's Nancy?" I asked.

"He loves Nancy," Freddy said.

I resisted the urge to punch him and instead changed the subject. "Are you guys staying here at Mrs. Watchels?"

"We are. We have the far bungalow. Though we might leave. Some lady moved into the other bungalow this morning with a dog that barks all the time. My mother hates barking dogs," Janet said.

"Is Nancy staying with you?" I asked.

"Uh uh. They only came down for a few days. They left this morning when they saw all the rain. They had a room upstairs," She said, pointing to Mrs. Watchel's second floor. "My mom and her mom are best friends. So are we."

I didn't feel very good at that moment. I hadn't thought to ask Nancy how long she was going to stay at the shore.

"I got a note for you from Nancy." Janet continued, "It's in my room. I'll give it to you later," she promised, "after the movie."

Freddy began laughing from his perch in the carriage.

"Are you supposed to be an overgrown baby or something?" Janet asked him.

"No, this is a cross country truck. We're hunting lions," Freddy said.

"Oh, I see. Well, if you can't find any lions you can shoot that noisy dog next to us. I gotta go. Bye." She waved mostly to me.

I nodded and wheeled Freddy around to race him around the block. I really gave him a good ride, trying to burn off a lot of stuff that was bothering me.

The super ride got Freddy started. Or maybe he would have gotten started anyway, having spent the morning cooped up drawing pictures. He started getting wild. It wasn't long before he was climbing trees in the overgrown yard next to where the two weird sisters lived.

The sister's house was directly behind the bungalow my grandmother had rented to Freddy's grandmother. Their house hadn't been painted since the Civil War though the yard was so overgrown you couldn't see the house from the street. They were both retired school teachers who saved newspapers in their living room. I think they saved everything in their living room.

There was a vacant yard, a small forest really, behind the church on the corner next to the weird sister's house. This was part of the jungle we explored on our adventures around and through Mrs. Green's yard. Mrs. Green had super hearing and could be alerted by stepping on an acorn. The two sisters were pretty deaf and you practically had to throw rocks against their wall to get them going.

We both knew that Mrs. Green had the nature of a murderer, but we were uncertain of the two sisters. New kids were ready to believe that they were witches and if you had the courage and chanced a peek into the front window you would be certain that was true.

Freddy was swinging from branches and making animal noises. He snorted like a bull and growled like a lion but was acting like a chimp. We could hear Mrs. Green moving through her back yard getting ready to catch us should we dare come through.

"Hey, Freddy! Mrs. Green's after us." I tried to say in a forced whisper, trying to get him to calm down.

"You bet I am!" Mrs. Green said from behind her bushes. "You try to cut through my yard again and I'll hold you till the police come."

"Oh no! I don't want to go to jail for a hundred years! What did I do? I got caught laughing..." Then Freddy went through his entire list of crazy laughs. Soon he had himself laughing.

"You bad boys should be punished!" Mrs. Green hissed at us through the bushes.

"Come get me underpants-face," Freddy taunted.

"You should have your mouth washed out with soap. Where are your mothers! Probably playing cards in the police station."

When you got Mrs. Green cooking she began to sound insane. I didn't want to hear any more of her. Nor did I want to hang around Freddy when he was about to go off his deep end.

"I gotta bring the carriage back, Fred."

"Why, you think some junk dealer's gonna steal it, maybe sell it to dummies for a quarter. Probably afraid the trashmen will take it."

"See ya." I wheeled the carriage the long way home avoiding the shorter end of the block where Mrs. Green was and Janet was staying. I felt foolish wheeling a beat-up, empty carriage by myself but knew that Freddy was looking for trouble.

He shouted things at me, as I left. Some were encouragements to stay, others threats designed to get me to chase him.

Doc Ludlow was standing near my grandfather's grape vine when I returned the carriage to the garage. I put the beach chairs back in and closed the garage door.

We could still hear Freddy and Mrs. Green saying crazy things to one another. Neither of us said anything. I went over to the fence to listen better when something started growling and barking. It was a little Scottish Terrier dog tied by a leash to a tree in Mrs. Watchel's yard. It must have been the dog Janet was talking about.

"Looks like you woke him up," Doc said.

The argument between Mrs. Green and Freddy stopped. Then Mrs. Green shouted a bloodcurdling, "Don't you step foot in my yard!"

We could hear Freddy crashing through the bushes near her, probably going through the two sister's jungle to the back of Mrs. Watchel's. He should have continued behind the bungalows and over the fence in the back, instead he ran across the center of the yard as we both had the other night and before we could say anything was frozen by the dog which made a direct attack at him only to be caught short by its leash.

The owner, a heavyset woman with short, red hair came to the porch of the bungalow next to Janet's.

"He won't bite, sonny. Calm down Poochie. Easy boy."

The dog calmed down and wagged its tail, though it still yelped at Freddy.

Freddy had been caught as he approached his wildest phase. He had more courage at that point than he normally does.

"Hiya poochie." Freddy said to the dog.

"He won't bite. You can even pet him, sonny. He likes children." The lady said, stepping off her porch nearer to both of them.

Freddy put his hand out slowly to the dog. The dog sniffed Freddy's hand. "Good poochie." The owner said.

Then poochie snapped and sunk his teeth into Freddy's hand.

What happened next was a blur. Freddy yelled and Doc jumped over the fence. The dog made a quick turn toward Doc who grabbed the dog's leash and yanked him into the air for a moment while he grabbed Freddy with the other arm and dropping the choking dog carried Freddy out of Mrs. Watchel's yard.

From the next yard Mrs. Green cackled with glee. She had been watching the entire thing through the bushes. "Serves him right, the rotten kid. I hope he gets a poison in his system and goes to the hospital."

If I had a stone in my hand I probably would have thrown it at her.

Poochie was being comforted in between hoarse yelps by his owner who cuddled and petted him, "There, there, good doggie, that mean-man hurt you, did he?"

I couldn't believe it.

"He shouldn't have teased the dog," The lady said to me.

"He didn't. He teased that old witch over there, but not the dog," I said.

"There, there, poochie..." The lady said over and over to her dog, scratching it's head and stroking its pointy ears.

Freddy's grandmother had been in the front house, on the porch, playing cards with my mother, my grandmother and Mrs. Showbuck. There was a crowd of adults trying to get a better look at Freddy's hand, which was bleeding. He was no longer being a show-off and was sobbing softly while sitting on Doc's knee.

Doc was able to get Freddy to open his hand but when everyone saw blood dripping they began to shriek and that made Freddy cry louder. I began to feel sick to my stomach and thought that the dog had eaten Freddy's hand.

Neighbors began to appear on the sidewalk. I was glad for Freddy's sake that Janet wasn't there.

Doc was able once again to pry Freddy's arm from his chest. He unwound all his fingers and found a few small punctures that were bleeding.

"We'd better get a clean handkerchief on this and take him to a doctor's office. Mrs. Major, do you think you could find out from the lady who owns the dog whether it's had all of it's shots?" Doc asked my grandmother.

Freddy's grandmother didn't know any child doctors in the area and they decided to call an ambulance. I went to the back window and watched my grandmother talk to the red-haired woman who owned the little dog.

"Excuse me, Misses, but could you tell me, maybe, that your little dog has had a shot for rabies?"

The woman became angry. She stood up and held the dog close to her. "My dog doesn't have rabies! You people are over-reacting. That boy was teasing Poochie and Poochie just snapped at him, it didn't even break the skin."

"The child is crying something awful and has bled all over his shirt. You don't have to tell me anything, you can tell the police. I'm calling them right now," My grandmother said, turning to come up the back porch.

The excitement was just beginning. First the ambulance came and took Doc, Freddy and his grandmother to the hospital. Then a police car pulled up and one of the officers talked to my grandmother. She even knew the officer's name. I walked up behind her to listen.

"--I don't know what happened, but the woman's little dog bit one of my tenants. They just took him to the emergency room," she told him.

"I know what happened, I was there," I announced, my heart beating fast.

"And what was that, sonny?" The officer asked.

"This is my grandson, Danny," My grandmother said.

"What happened, Danny?"

Suddenly, it was hard to talk. "Well... Freddy was in our neighbor's backyard playing. The dog was on a chain. But the lady said, 'don't be frightened, you can even pet him.' Freddy stood still, was going to pet him slowly, but the dog bit him."

The Officer nodded, "Is the bite serious?"

My grandmother shrugged, "Who knows. He's a child, with a little hand."

"Has the dog had rabies shots?" The Officer asked.

"She won't tell me. The lady is not very forthcoming."

"Where is she staying?" The Officer asked.

"Right here, I'll show you." Grandma said.

The Officer swung out of his patrol car and he must have been seven feet tall. He carried a club and a flashlight and a gun in a holster along with a ton of other stuff.

I watched from our side of the fence as the Police Officer knocked on the red-haired woman's bungalow.

The woman came to the door clutching the little pet which barked and jumped in her arms like a mad-dog. Even the Officer stepped back a little.

"Hi I'm Officer Kendal from the Borough Police. I have to see the dog's most recent shot tag."

"The people are over-reacting. The little boy teased the dog. You can't tease a dog, you know. Here see the tag?"

The dog growled meanly at the Police Officer. "Could you remove the tag, please, Ma'am, so I can read it."

"All this excitement has the dog upset." She went back inside and removed his collar and handed it out to the Policeman.

He read it carefully and returned the collar to the woman.

"So is that the end of it?" She asked.

"I don't know Ma'am. If the animal hadn't been inoculated we'd have to remove it for testing. What ever happens next would be a civil complaint."

"The boy was teasing Poochie with a stick. I think he even hit the dog." The woman said.

"That's not true!" I blurted out. "You told Freddy he could pet him."

The Officer smiled, put his hands up in the air. "Hey, I'm not the judge, and I wasn't here at the time of the incident."

Officer Kendal returned to his patrol car. I wasn't far behind him. "I'm going to radio to our dispatcher to relay to the hospital that the dog probably isn't rabid," he told me.

Then he picked up the radio microphone, "I'll show you how we do it," he said to me.

Within a half an hour the excitement petered out. The sun was shining and the sidewalks were dry again. Mr. and Mrs. Showbuck turned on the television set to see if it was working. My Grandfather came downstairs from one of his naps.

"Works good as new, huh? But you shouldn't be watching it." He told me.

"Freddy got bit by a dog and went in the ambulance and the police were here," I told him.

"Oh?" He saw my grandmother standing on the porch and judging by her lack of alarm decided that nothing required his immediate attention.

"Did you hear what I said, Grandpa?"

"Yes I did. Maybe you should eat your lunch now."

My mom and Beth we're already eating in the dining room. They had their bathing suits on too.

"Beth and I are going to the boardwalk for awhile. We might even go down to the beach if the sand has dried out. How about you?" Mom asked.

"I really don't feel much like going," I said.

"Is Freddy gonna have to stay in the hospital for a week by himself?" Beth asked.

"No. He'll be home this afternoon." Mom said, fixing a sandwich for me.

"Did you want to wait for Freddy?" Mom asked me.

"Yeah."

"He might have a bandage on and won't be able to go to the beach for a few days."

Within an hour the house was deserted. The Showbucks went to the boardwalk shortly after my Mom and Beth. Freddy's grandfather worked part-time on Main Street and my grandfather went to talk to him. They would both end up talking to old cronies they knew at the bakery or in one of the stores.

The red-haired woman next door put Poochie back on his leash on her way to the beach. She wore and terry-cloth jacket over her bathing suit and had a lounge chair under her arm. "Now you be a good little doggie." She said, petting his head. She saw me watching from the window, "And you can bite those bad little boys who tease you."

That made me mad. After she left I went into our back yard and the little dog made such a fuss of barking and growling from the next yard that I couldn't take a step without him getting louder and louder. There didn't seem to be anybody left in the world accept me and the dog separated by a short fence. My grandmother must have gone visiting or been on the phone. Either way she would be missing for a while.

I decided to do something very mean. I got out the water hose and unreeled it slowly. Then I turned on the spigot all the way up and brought the nozzle to the fence near the yapping, snarling little dog.

He wanted to chew me up too. But I opened the nozzle to its fullest power and let him have it right in the muzzle. He stopped barking and tried to hide from the water spray behind the tree he was chained to. But I just moved to the other side of the tree from our yard and soaked his kisser from that angle.

The dog backed up as far as he could but the hose spray still hit him dead on. He tried laying down but I pounded him with the water till it made a puddle all around him.

"Is that what you want to do?" Doc asked.

I was startled by the voice, but I continued hosing the dog. "Yes."

"What if you hurt the dog?" he asked.

"Good. Is Freddy all right?"

"Yeah. I took a cab back. They have to wait for some x-rays."

The dog began to whine and sneeze.

"Maybe that's enough," Doc suggested.

"A little bit more." In a moment I turned down the nozzle. The dog stood up and barked at me so I turned the nozzle back on and gave him some more. "This is like your story, Doc," I said.

"How so?" He asked.

"The dog is just a little dog no matter what his master says. And he's got to pay the price of doing something bad to a person who wants to be friendly. It's just the way it is," I said.

This time when I turned the water off the dog only coughed. The entire area under the tree was soaked and the dog was muddy from the whiskers on his cheeks to the bottom of his short tail.

"The lady who owns him will be angry about this," Doc said.

"Too bad. She can tell it to the lions," I said.

"I hope watering him like that won't make him grow," Doc said.

I knew he was kidding. I put the hose away and sat on one of the steps to the back porch.

"Want to catch some flies?" Doc asked.

I made a face, "What kind of flies?"

"Fly-ball, flies," Doc said.

"Wiffle ball fly balls?" I asked.

"Baseball."

"Where?" I asked.

"There's a big vacant yard about two blocks from here. I could ask your grandmother; I'm sure she would say yes."

I knew the place he was talking about. "There's this gang of bigger kids near there that try to take your stuff and..."

"They won't bother you," Doc said.

I knew they wouldn't come after me if I was with an adult, but they might watch and laugh, I thought. I saw myself fumbling easy catches and looking clumsy. Still, maybe I could learn to get better at baseball.

"For most of us, the difference between playing okay or playing lousy is learning the fundamentals and practice," Doc said.

"Sure. Let me tell Gra'm and get my stuff."

I was hoping the bigger kids would be gone, maybe at the beach, but as we took our place on the field I could hear a few of them joking with one another from the shadows of a nearby porch. Doc must have noticed I wasn't comfortable.

"Don't worry about the grandstands. Even if you make it to the major leagues the game is always between you the player and this little white ball," Doc said holding my baseball up. Of course my baseball was no longer white, mostly from rolling along the ground.

"Judging the ball while it's in the air, or bouncing on the grass, is the key to everything you will do as a hitter or fielder. The other half of the game is throwing this ball correctly."

For the next hour Doc threw balls in the air or into the dirt and coached me. We started standing six feet apart and after an hour I was at one end of the field and he at the other. That's when he began using my bat to get the balls to me.

Finally, he smacked what looked like a home-run into the air and I went back for it, like he had taught, kept my eye on the ball's descent, covered the fall with my glove and was amazed when Doc's home-run landed right in the web for an out. "Look, I caught it!" I shouted.

"Hey, kid, the Yankees want you!" One of the smart guys shouted from his porch.

"You fellows want to play, get a game up?" Doc asked them.

There were a few catcalls and jeers but no takers. Which I was glad about.

On the way back home I asked Doc if he was serious about playing with those rough kids.

"If the game is played right you have a glove to protect you. Just don't stand in the baseline when they're running," Doc said.

"But in real baseball you have to protect the base, right?"

"Real baseball is for grown-up kids who are paid to get knocked down every now and then," Doc said.

Freddy wasn't back from the hospital yet, but I could see the red-haired lady walking back from the beach. I ran upstairs and put my bat, glove and ball away and then ran downstairs to watch from the window as she walked into our neighbor's backyard.

I ducked down to peer over the window sill. Poochie cried when he saw her.

"Poochie, what's the matter, hon?" she asked.

Then she put her hand down to pet him and made a face. "What's all this sand on you?" Then she noticed the wet spot under the tree. The rest of the yard was already dry from the morning rain.

"Who did this to you?" she asked the dog, and looked at our house.

I hid against the wall and held my mouth to stop from laughing.

The red haired lady stormed over to our front door and rang the bell. I peeked out at her from the kitchen. My grandmother had been looking through the newspaper. She usually read the obituary page to see if anybody she knew had died.

"Yes, Misses, what can I do for you?"

"Somebody poured water on my dog. Trying to drown him."

One of my grandmother's faults was her dislike of animals, which she considered to be makers of mess or noise. In this case it was a good fault.

"That's too bad." Grandma said, as if the lady had complained about stepping on an ant.

"I see, you don't really care," The woman complained, her voice rising in anger.

"No. Maybe you should ask how the little child is doing; in the hospital all this time. He comes to the seashore to go to the beach and now he's in the hospital and maybe he can't play for a week. Maybe more. No, I don't care about your little doggie, but I wouldn't throw water on him. Water's too good to waste, and I'm here all by myself this whole afternoon. Now, I've got to make supper because the Mister is coming home and you have to excuse me."

My grandmother left the woman standing on the porch as she went back to reading the obituary page.

"I'll call the Police." The woman threatened.

"I'll give you the name of the Police Chief and the Mayor, I know them very well. I know the mayor since he was a real estate man. He sold me this house many years ago," my Grandmother said, from the couch.

"You people are not very nice." The red-haired woman said and as she left the porch.

"Danny?" My grandmother called after the woman slowly left our porch.

"Yes Grandma?"

"Did you pour water on that dog?" she asked.

"Uh... What dog?" I didn't want to lie to my grandmother.

"Leave him alone from now on. Okay? I don't think this lady will be staying too long anyway. I'm going to speak to Mrs. Watchel. Let her move to Mrs. Green's bungalow. Then she'll be in good company."

"But Mrs. Green doesn't like dogs," I said.

"Mrs. Green doesn't like dogs, she doesn't like children, she doesn't like people. Mrs. Green doesn't like anybody, but if the rent is right Mrs. Green will take anyone."

"How will you do that?" I asked.

"People talk. Mrs. Watchel has other tenants who don't like the barking. I can suggest someone who is also looking for a bungalow. We'll see what can be done."

By the time supper was over the red-haired lady was moving her dog and suitcases to Mrs. Green. I tried watching from the window but my grandmother pulled the shade down in front of me.

"It's not nice to make faces like that."

"I wasn't making faces, Gra'm!"

"Smiling. And this lady could be nasty. No use antagonizing her," Grandma said.

"What does 'antagonize' mean?" I asked.

"To ask for trouble. So, wait till she's out of the yard and then go play."

Freddy had gotten back from the hospital but he was taking a nap. His grandmother was on the porch giving my mom and some of the other people the complete story of what went on in the emergency room. When the red-haired woman passed our porch on her way from Mrs. Watchel's there was a complete silence except for the yapping of the little dog.

I went out the back door and examined the next door yard. It was almost empty. But, Janet was there.

"I heard all about it," she said.

"About what?" I asked.

"How the dog bit Freddy and the Lady had to move. Was he crying?"

I shrugged. I climbed to the top of the fence and sat on it.

"He was, I'll bet," Janet said.

"You'd cry too if the dog had bitten you."

"I never cry. Never," she said, shaking her head. "Are you the one who poured water on the dog?"

"How would you know about that?" I asked.

"My mother got all the details from our landlady, Mrs. Watchel. Someone poured water all over that bratty dog. I'll bet it was you."

"It was," I admitted

"Then you're my hero," Janet said.

I looked down into her face, upturned and smiling, with quite a bit of tan making her eyes big and blue and her teeth white. She had two pink berets in her blond hair which looked very clean. I wanted to jump over to our side of the fence and think of something to do. I wished that someone had called my name and demanded I do something, anything.

"It was a dumb thing to do," I said, about watering the dog. "I just wanted to do something."

"It worked. It got rid of him. Mrs. Watchel said she would take no more pets. That she usually never takes pets, but made an exception this once because the dog was so small and the lady insisted that he was well-behaved like a child. But no more; that's what Mrs. Watchel said."

"Uh huh. Hey, didn't you say you had a letter from Nancy?" I asked.

"Oh. Yeah. We'll get it later," Janet said.

"Why later?"

"Because. My mom's in there right now. Let's wait till she goes to the boardwalk."

"I'd better go see how Freddy's doing," I said, thinking it was a good enough excuse."

"Come back in an hour, okay?" Janet asked. "Then the coast will be clear."

"Sure."

I went into the bungalow but didn't go upstairs. I watched from the downstairs window near the garage till Janet left her backyard. Then I sprinted across our yard and went into the house. Something was beginning to bother me, but I wasn't quite sure what it was.

It was a long hour to kill. Beth asked me to play cards with her, but she's not a very good player and neither am I. I went upstairs and turned the light on my room to read comic books. It was warm in my little room with no breeze coming through the window and a moth flew up the hallway to dodge at the light.

I tried to pretend that I was on a secret mission and put on my watch after matching the time exactly to the alarm clock's time. Then I went downstairs quickly and slid into the backyard. There, I remained hidden till my eyes adjusted to the light. I could see nothing moving in Mrs. Watchel's backyard. I tried to check my watch but there wasn't enough light by the side of the steps where I was waiting, so I leaned out into the dim glimmer of the back porch.

"You coming over, or what?"

"Huh?" I asked.

It was Janet sitting on her porch in the dark.

"Why are you hiding over there?" She asked.

"I'm not," I said, moving to the fence.

"You've been sitting there by the steps for five minutes. Why didn't you just come over?" she asked.

I climbed the short fence and walked to her porch. "I'm just checking to see if this watch still works. I got it last year but hardly use it. You said an hour, so..."

"Didn't you see me sitting here?" she asked.

"No. Why didn't you say hello or something?" I asked her.

She shrugged, and I wondered if her mood had changed.

"Are you going to come over to our beach tomorrow?" she asked.

I hadn't thought about it. "I don't know. You could come over to ours which is closer to here," I said.

"Is that an invitation?" she asked.

"You don't need an invitation, do you, I mean..." I didn't know what I meant.

"You boys would ignore me anyway and just play your 'guy' things," she said.

"Freddy might not go to the beach, depending on his hand," I said, unsure of what effect that would have, but feeling uncomfortable having said it.

She brightened, "that's true. He might have his arm in a sling or something. Why don't you sit down?" She moved a chair next to her and I sat in it. The chair was lower that hers and felt foolish sitting in the dark trying to think of something to say.

"What subjects do you like best in school?" She asked.

"Lunch and three-o'clock," I answered.

She laughed, "I bet you're a good student!"

"I do alright."

"My final report card was all 'A's except for one B plus in math," she said.

"I don't get many 'A's."

"Do you like history?" she asked.

"Yeah, I suppose," I said.

"Are you in scouting?" she asked.

"No."

"How come, you don't like it?" she asked.

"I was a cub scout once. My mom works during the year and I couldn't get to all the meetings."

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" she asked me.

"I don't know. How about you?" I asked.

"I want to be a doctor. Come on, you must have an idea about something you'd like to do," she insisted.

"Maybe I'd like to work for the power company. Around those big generators," I said.

She laughed again, "Are you serious? Maybe you mean be an engineer."

"No. I think I'd like to fix those generators." And pilot rocket ships and submarines, but I didn't tell her that.

"Would you go to, like, a technical school?" she asked.

"I haven't thought about any of this. I really don't know what I want to do. Not really."

"Am I being a pain?" she asked, "Nancy says that I can be a real pain," she leaned around to see my expression.

"I just don't have answers to all your questions. Not yet."

She had a really big smile on her face.

"So Nancy and you are real good friends?" I asked.

She turned toward Mrs. Watchel's house so I couldn't see her face, "Uh huh. I know everything about her."

"What does she want to be when she grows up?" I asked.

Janet shrugged, "She has no idea. Somedays she says she wants to be a teacher, other days she'll say a movie star. She has no idea. I've always wanted to be a doctor."

There was a short silence which I broke a moment before she turned to speak again, "You said she wrote me a note?"

"Uh huh. Did you write her a note? I could pass it on," she said.

"I haven't yet. I could. I mean, once you give me her address I could send her a letter or something," I said.

"She has lots of boyfriends, you know," Janet said.

"Boyfriends?" I asked, my stomach forming a knot under my throat, "You mean she goes on dates?"

"No. There are just a lot of boys who like her," Janet said.

"Oh."

"I get better grades than Nancy," Janet said.

"I guess you'd have to; to be a doctor."

We sat through another short silence, "You might never see Nancy again. Or maybe she could come back to the shore. It's hard to tell," Janet said.

"How about you pass along that note. And give me her address," I said.

"You really like her, don't you. Like, even love her?" Janet asked, her voice growing small.

"I admit I like her. Let's not... Besides, Freddy said he loves you!" I said, throwing everything on Freddy's shoulders.

She waved her hand, "That doesn't mean a thing. Freddy's a goof." Then she looked at me and I could feel her getting ready to say something.

"I got to go." I announced suddenly, and stepped off of her porch.

"Wait! I haven't given you the letter yet," she said.

"Uh huh..." I stood in the yard several feet from her.

"Come on inside. I've got to find it," she said.

I followed her inside the bungalow. The lights made us squint. We went into her room which was a mess. There were clothes and books heaped everywhere. My room was never that bad, of course I don't have so many clothes and books.

She searched through several piles. I was beginning to suspect that there was no letter. Either that or Janet had no intention of giving it to me. She made a big show of searching all over and started to act very dramatic about not finding it.

"Oh, where is it!" She said.

By then I was smiling and then she began to smile.

"There is no letter, is there?" I asked.

"Yes there is!" But our eyes met and we both started laughing a little.

"You're too much, Janet," I said, grinning and shaking my head.

"Why?" she asked, "Maybe it's here," she said and began to furiously search some other pile. She was actually making fun of herself and in moments we were both laughing.

"Yeah, maybe it's in here," I said, pretending to be her, and flipped through a pile of clothes, as if people put letters between their shirts and jeans.

She laughed till tears formed in her eyes and then came over to grab the pile from my hands. "No, don't look in there!" she shouted between bursts of laughter.

"Why?"

Her underwear was at the bottom of the pile and she gasped, "That's why!"

I stepped away as if I had been contaminated and we both laughed again.

"Hey Danny, do you like me a little?" She asked.

"Sure."

At that moment Janet's mother entered the bungalow.

"Ma we're in here!" Janet shouted.

I stepped away from all the clothes piles and stood quietly in the middle of the room.

Her mother came into the bedroom.

"Ma, this is Danny. His grandparents own the house and bungalow next door."

"Hello Danny."

"Hi," I said.

"We're looking for a letter that Nancy gave me," Janet said.

"I talked to Nancy's mother by phone tonight, and maybe she'll be back soon," Janet's mom said.

Janet made a sickly smile, "Great."

"I got to get home," I announced.

Walking across the yard in the dark, I felt the best I had all day.

I finally got to see Freddy the next morning. He only had a piece of white gauze on the wound but held his hand like it was about to fall off.

"I can't play anything," he said, standing on the steps to the back porch. "If I go to the beach I have to wear a glove to keep sand out of it."

Doc was there, too, reading the morning paper. "No baseball?"

"No, I cant even close my hand, it hurts too much," he whined

"Gee, that's too bad," Doc said. "Yesterday I hit some balls to Danny. I thought that today we could do the same for you, and then give you guys turns at hitting. I pitch, cleanup man knocks them out, and super-glove swoops them up."

"Hardball?" Freddy asked.

"Uh huh, at the big vacant lot near Fifth Avenue," I said.

"There are big kids there..." Freddy said.

"Doc was doing the hitting. They wouldn't steal the bat from Doc, would they?"

Freddy's eyes brightened a bit, then he moved his fingers and recoiled in pain. "OOO, no I can't. I can't hit, I can't catch. I can't do nothing!" he moaned.

"Hi boys! You too Mr. Ludlow."

"Good morning, Janet," Doc said.

She climbed over the fence and shading her eyes against the early sun looked up at us. Freddy, at least had stopped moaning."

"How's the bite, Fred?" Janet asked.

"Okay, I guess," he said.

"Did they put stitches in it? They usually don't for animal bites," Doc said leaning forward. "Here, give a look."

"No, be careful," Freddy said, sounding like a baby, again.

"Relax." Doc peeked under the gauze bandage at the bite. "It'll probably take a few days to heal. But it doesn't look that bad."

"Can I see?" Janet demanded, coming up the steps.

"No." Freddy stepped away as if Janet was going to do some surgery on him.

"It's a few puncture wounds. He's got to keep them clean," Doc told us.

"And it's really sore," Freddy added.

The three of us kids milled around on the porch for a moment. Janet seemed to be moving closer to me all the time. She twisted around on her legs as if she were going in both directions, but had a huge grin on her face.

"I'll play ball with you." She said to me.

Freddy made a face that was full of sorrow, as if he was being asked to retire from the major leagues.

Doc rustled his newspaper and Freddy moaned once. I looked at Doc for a way out and Janet caught all of our expressions. Without missing a beat, she turned to Doc.

"Mr. Ludlow, do you have any more excellent stories for us?"

Then she sat down at his feet ready to listen. Even Doc had to smile. "I've got dozens of them."

"Well tell us one, please," Janet coaxed, in a sweet voice that would have melted the meanest teacher in any school. Now, I believed her about getting so many A's; she was not only smart but very clever too.

Doc already knew her style. He grinned and winked at me, "I'm willing," he said.

"Sure." Freddy said sitting down next to Janet. I sat across from him, on Janet's other side.

"What type of story would you like to hear?" Doc asked.

"A romantic story," Janet said.

"He only knows ancient stories!" Freddy insisted.

"Hey, what's wrong with romantic stories? You were saying romantic things to me yesterday," she told Freddy.

"I was just kidding," Freddy said.

"See!" Janet said to me about Freddy.

"The Keneem had stories about romance, about cunning, about war..." Doc began.

"Yeah, war!" Freddy said.

"...About how things are. They had all sorts of stories. Old people, like myself, would sing ballads around the night fires and tell them to youngsters, like yourself."

"You're not that old, Mr. Ludlow," Janet said.

"Thanks. Danny, what would you like to hear?" he asked me.

"About a kid trying to play baseball who gets into trouble," I said.

"Alright, then let's try the one about the boy who wouldn't lose his dreams," Doc said.

We all nodded and waited for the story to begin.

"The Keneem often had a hard life. It was a daily struggle to just stay alive. Even if sun and rain and good health existed one never knew how luck would turn out. And bad luck could turn up in the like of warlike tribes appearing from nowhere across the vast wilderness and doing bad things, stealing, killing and then disappearing again.

"When times were unkind, and the crops failed, the Keneem themselves would take to the wilderness chasing after water holes and appearing with weapons against towns and cities who denied them use of their wells and springs. It wasn't an age for a very long childhood. A boy of thirteen or fourteen was ready to become a warrior, even younger he was hard at work, herding animals, carrying wood, helping from dawn till dusk.

"The girls worked too, and at fifteen they would be married."

Janet made a face and then smiled.

Doc continued, "And marriage wasn't an escape from childhood it was marriage to constant work and responsibility. Children had to be ready to take their places in such a world with no fuss. If a girl refused to marry the man her father had agreed to, she could be sold into slavery with a foreign people."

Janet made an awful face. "Why couldn't girls become warriors?" She asked.

"Fair question. Let me explain things a little bit more. When they were under attack the women fought alongside the men, with whatever they had; knives, sticks, mallets, even a tent-pin. In fact, the Keneem had a woman leader once and a woman battle hero. But 'warrior' was a status reserved for the men. Think of it as an honorary part-time job, kind of like an official hobby. Let me add a few more details: When the Keneem were at their lowest point, before they almost disappeared from famine, the men who were warriors hired themselves out to nearby cities as security guards and fighters. In those days they had the reputation of murderers.

"Later, they developed skills as metal workers. And still later some of them became scribes and wizards.

"Of course, their best stories were based on their hardest times. And, because boys were expected to be warriors, as well as workers, they had to undergo an initiation rite..."

"Have scars carved into their arms and get tattoos, right?" Freddy asked.

"Maybe a little of that. But mostly they had to lose their dreams." He looked into our faces to see if we were following the story so far. We were.

"The final part of the initiation required the boy to learn all the histories and stories of the people, and then to journey into the wilderness, to climb a holy mountain and sit alone in a cave for an entire day and night. And then upon returning, to tell the elders what he had dreamt in the cave.

"If a boy told them he dreamt about adventure in a far-off land, or going to a great city and learning many wonderful things they had to go back to the mountain and undergo the ordeal all over again.

"If the boy came back and repeated the history and stories of his people and told the elders that he saw himself in these stories acting out the role of his people he was marked as a man and a warrior for his people.

"On the other hand, if after many attempts a boys still came back with greater and greater dreams, the elders made a harsh decision; they sent the boy away into the wilderness alone, for ever."

We gasped.

"The boy, Mal, approached the age of the test. He was a good boy, a tender of goats with the habits of a fine herdsman. He was the youngest of his family and well thought of by those in his town.

"He liked a girl of his own age who came from an even poorer family in this little village. The girl was called Yalenda. She worked hard all day curing hides, grinding flour and baking bread. But in the evenings she milked two of the nanny goats outside.

"Mal was always outside. From before first light to dark. And sometimes he would take turns with his brothers watching the flocks at night. --When wild animals prowled about. It could be a few hyena or even a lion. If there was trouble he was to blow the horn he had and summon the adults who would beat their spears on shields, or spoons on pots to drive the hunting beasts away from the flocks.

"In the evenings he would see Yalenda and call to her. And the two would talk till the milking was done.

"Of course he liked her, and she liked him. As they got older --passing away from childhood, they became shy with each other. Sometimes he pretended not to see her. Sometimes, he seemed too busy to call out to. But always, even after avoiding each other this way for a night or two, they would meet, often by surprise, at the well, perhaps. Then they would smile and blush and sometimes laugh.

"The elders called Mal to their place by the gate of the city, which in this case was no more than a crumbling wall of stone. There, before the festival of the new moon they sang all the ballads, and told him all the stories he had heard from childhood. They added a detail or two, a thing that smaller children shouldn't hear.

"They taught him secret songs, and a ritual of bonding leather straps and amulets about him to prepare for the holy mountain.

"It was his father and elder brothers who brought him to the mountain the first time. With no jug for water and no satchel of bread they told him how to climb the mountain toward the cave.

"His father could no longer remember where the cave was. It had been so long since his only visit. His brothers remembered, though, and told him. He was instructed to take his sandals off before entering the cave, and to bow down in all four directions once inside. 'For in that place,' he was told, 'you are in the center of the world.'

"At first he was frightened to be there all alone. But no one could run away from such a place, not and become a man.

"The day past slowly. The light inside the cave changed also. Shadows deepened. He dozed off and was startled by a lion standing in the entrance of the cave. The lion bared its huge teeth and growled. He sat upright and the lion was gone. Maybe he had been dreaming.

" 'Is that what I tell the elders, that I saw a lion?' Somehow that didn't seem to be enough. He had trouble relaxing after that and wound the leather straps about him to ward off the bad and contain the good. He sang a ballad to himself from days of old.

"Outside, the sun went down. The howls of wild things echoed along the sides of the mountain and came into the cave, shaping the darkness with visions. Having had nothing to eat or drink these visions became things that stood out of the night and showed themselves for brief moments.

"Mal drifted into a sleep like no other of his life. The strangest dreams came to him.

"The next morning he left the cave. He put his sandals on and returned from the mountain. His mother fed him before he joined his father and brothers already at work.

"In the evening, before the festival, he went to the gate of the city. There the elders waited for his report. They sat quietly allowing him his chance to speak.

" 'First I saw a lion, looking into the cave,' he said. The elders chuckled. This was the first thing all the boys claimed to see.

" 'Go on, go on. The lion is a good sign,' one of the elders said.

" 'Later, I fell into a strange sleep. And it felt as if I awoke and climbed to the top of the mountain. There I saw a tower going up toward the stars. Strange lights went up and down the steps of this tower. A voice came from above said, 'Mal, don't be afraid. What do you want for your life?' the voice asked me.

"The elders murmured among themselves, and Mal continued, 'Just the simple life as one of my people. Perhaps I could take a wife when I'm older...'

"The elders interrupted Mal, 'This is the dream of a sorcerer, not of a young boy. This is not something that we told you...'

" 'Yalenda. The voice said Yalenda waits for me,' Mal said.

"The elder waved his hand. 'That's for her father to decide, not you.'

" 'But the dream, it was so real.' Mal said.

" 'Not a proper boy's dream. You should have seen this town being built from before your birth, or seen our heroes in battle, or seen our great elders as young men, as boys like yourself bringing good deeds upon our people,' counseled one elder.

"It was decided, that Mal should return to the cave upon the eve of the next festival of the new moon. He went and this time he wasn't so frightened, at least during daylight. He expected to see lions and was not disappointed. By late afternoon, he thought he saw four winged lions guarding the exit to the cave. And then came the dark of night and dreams brought on by hunger and thirst.

"He stayed in the cave most of the next day just to be sure he had gotten what was expected. There seemed to be no rule about staying longer. He returned to his village while the new moon festival was taking place. He found a great deal of playfulness among the townsfolk. It seemed Yalenda's father had announced her engagement to a man from a nearby village. A wealthy man who already had two wives.

"Yalenda was not happy about this at all. She sat in the kitchen of her house and wept. Mal went to her house and spoke to her through the window.

" 'If I refuse to marry him, I'll be sold into bondage, my life will be even worse. I just want to die. I wish I had never been born,' she cried.

"Mal tried to say comforting things to her. But nothing worked. His brothers saw him by Yalenda's house and took hold of him. 'She is engaged, you mustn't talk to her ever again!' They said, and they brought him to the elders who were gathered near the fields away from the gate.

"The elders were in good spirits and hoped to add to the happiness of the village by announcing that Mal's initiation to manhood had been completed. They waited for his most simple explanation of a suitable dream.

" 'What did you see this time boy? More lions?' an elder joked.

" 'Four winged lions,' Mal said.

" 'Four? Winged Lions? Good. That's a good sign,' another elder said.

" ' No towers going to the moon, I hope?' another asked lightly.

" 'I saw an eternal flame that burned more brightly than anything that burns at night. And the Voice said to me, 'If you do good and fight wrong, I will put strength in you.'

" 'This is not a boys' dream. This is the dream of a prophet. And not a prophet we know!' An elder said. He turned his cup of wine to spill it on the ground. 'What a sad day for our village; that instead of a warrior we have a little dreamer who hears things that even men of renown haven't heard before.

Mal's mother wept upon his neck, his father turned and cried, 'Please, give my son another chance. He's a good boy!'

" 'Yalenda's father will sell her to slavers! That's not right! She should be allowed to wait for me!' Mal said angrily.

" 'You shall have no wife. Not among our people!' an elder declared.

"And the elders had his own brothers force him from the village into the wilderness." Doc stopped and sat back.

"And then what happened!" Janet demanded.

"What would you like to happen?" Doc asked Janet.

"Hey, that's not fair," I said, "We want the real ending. We want to know what really happened."

"Well... I want a nice ending," Janet said.

Doc chuckled. "Mal was better able then most to survive in the wilderness. As the colors arch in the sky after a rain Mal made a bow for himself from a tree and became a skilled archer and hunter. Then, when the slavers came through with Yalenda he stopped them with his arrows. Then he had Yalenda, and all the gold and animals the slavers had owned.

"Soon, his reputation as a warrior against evil spread. He became a marshal with four hundred warriors pledging loyalty to him. One day he returned to his village as a king.

"Did he arrest the elders who had sent him away?" Freddy asked.

"By then, all those elders had died. He greeted his father and mother and forgave his brothers, who wept from shame and pride at what had happened.

"Was he a good king?" I asked.

"That's an interesting question," Doc said, and shrugged.

"You just made up the end of that story, just now," Janet said, smiling and waving her finger at Doc.

"I couldn't have," Doc said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"If the end of that story wasn't true, how would I know it?" Doc asked, and grinned broadly.

"So what does the story mean?" Janet asked.

"Why don't you figure it out," Doc said.

"I think I know what it means, I just want to be sure," Janet said.

"Yeah, right. Then tell us." Freddy demanded.

"Okay..." She smiled and held her head up as if she were in class and had been called upon, "It probably means..."

"Go on," Freddy urged.

"I will!" Janet said, "It probably means that if you have the right dreams and stick to them it could work out for you, right?" She asked Doc.

Doc nodded. "That's a good explanation of the story for today. Of course this is a real old story from a real old people. And they had beliefs about special luck that would win out against great odds."

"It's also about growing up, isn't it?" I asked.

Doc nodded. "Yes. The adult world is a challenge for every youngster. And adults do not know everything."

Janet's head slumped as if she had failed to get the whole question right.

"I would of rather heard more about shooting arrows at the slave traders. I liked the story about the bull and lions better," Freddy said.

"There are other Keneem stories about the great warrior Mal, about the victories of King Mal and then when he grew old about the battle of his sons over the kingdom and its division among them," Doc told us.

"Hey! That's sort of like the bull and lion's story!" Freddy said, pointing with his bandaged hand.

"Very good, Fred," Doc said.

Freddy beamed and Janet squirmed. "Mr. Ludlow, are you a teacher during the year?" She asked him.

"No," Doc answered.

"Then what are you?" she asked.

"None of your business," I said believing that Doc would rather not talk about himself.

"It's not an impolite question, if you ask it right," Janet said to me. It was probably something her mother had said.

Doc folded his hands together and thought the question over.

"A baseball coach?" Freddy asked.

"A world traveler?" Janet asked.

Doc cleared his throat, "I'm a retired fire captain."

"Wow!" Freddy said, his eyes wide open. I could tell he was no longer worrying about his hand.

"Retired early," Doc said.

"How come?" I asked before I could stop myself.

"I was injured. I went into a building after my men to help bring some youngsters out..."

"Was the building on fire?" Freddy asked, breathlessly.

"Unfortunately. And the steps went out beneath me."

"And you got hurt?" Janet asked.

"Broke my arm and right leg and my jaw... It took a while to heal. It was decided that I was no longer in top shape for fighting fires," Doc said.

"What did you do?" Janet asked.

"I spent a lot of time learning while I got better," Doc said.

"Traveling around the world?" Janet asked.

"Sort of, without even leaving my city," Doc said.

"How did you do that?" Freddy asked.

"At the public library. You would be surprised what you can find there if you look hard enough."

"Do you have any kids?" Janet asked, getting real nosey.

"Oh yes. They're quite big and on their own now. My wife was a nurse who passed away at a young age several years ago."

There was sadness in Doc's eyes and I felt sorry that Janet was asking so many questions.

"That's too bad Mr. Ludlow," she said with the sweet manner of a teacher's pet. Though maybe she meant it.

"That's life, kids. We all have our lions and our dreams," Doc said and smiled.

"Thanks for the story, Doc," I said, getting up. "C'mon guys lets play."

Freddy jumped up ready to make a bow and arrows out of something and start playing. Janet rose more slowly and followed behind us.

"Thanks for the story, Mr. Ludlow," she told Doc, sounding like an echo.

By the time we got off the porch Freddy had invented a game for us. "She can be Yalenda and we can be Mal and his brother who fight the slavers."

"His brothers didn't help him." Janet said.

"Maybe one did, besides, we can change the story to include a brother," Freddy said.

"But you can't be either with your injured paw. Maybe you can play one of the stupid slave traders," she said.

"Hey, we don't need any Yalenda either. It could be just Mal and his brother against the bad guys!" Freddy said.

"I got to go now," Janet said, "And I don't think I can come over to your beach today. I'm helping my mom with some embroidery."

"What's that, like spaghetti?" Freddy asked.

"Your brain is like spaghetti." Janet said as she left the yard. "Bye Dan," she waved to me.

"She likes you," Freddy said to me.

"Don't be so sure she doesn't like you," I told him.

"Why not?"

"Girls are that way," I said, thinking I might even be right.

Freddy's hand may not have healed, but his spirits had. When his grandmother told him he shouldn't go to the beach, he whined and stamped his feet, "Aw Gra'm..."

She gave in after he promised to wear a glove. He brought his batting glove and put it on over the bandage.

It didn't slow him down either. We played Mal and his brother against the slavers. Sometimes, Freddy was Mal, sometimes I was. But Freddy was mostly each one of the several hundred slavers we fought. If Fred had a good talent it was for dying after being shot. Especially water-dying.

We played in the surf for hours and Freddy was shot and plunked into the water so many different ways I was amazed. He even had different expressions for each slaver who took an arrow.

I'm not sure how the story's location had changed from the wilderness to the desert/seashore but it seemed to make sense. Dying looked like such good fun that I took my turn staggering and plopping into the water all the while describing the action that was going on.

Freddy, of course, began to get carried away. He found a piece of drift wood and pretended it was an arrow sticking out of him. Eventually he stuck it into his bathing trunks and jumped around as if one of the slavers had gotten shot in the backside. With all of his hooting and stamping and my laughing his grandmother came out of her lounge chair and over to the water.

She yanked the arrow out his trunks.

"Thanks Gra'm, you saved me!"

And then with the threatened back of her hand she chased him up the beach. "What-a-ya-mean, acting up that way in front of everybody!"

We came back from the beach on the early side and there was plenty of daylight remaining after supper was finished.

We saw Doc on the back porch and Freddy told his newer version of the story about how Mal and one of his brothers defeated an army of five hundred slave-traders.

"It still means the same thing, doesn't it?" Freddy asked.

"It doesn't have to," Doc said. "Let me see the hand."

Freddy pulled the gauze bandage back and showed Doc the wound.

Doc inspected it. "It has to be kept clean. Did you wash it good after the beach?"

"My grandmother did. I wore my batting glove to the beach," Freddy said.

"You did? You know, you might be able to catch pop ups, seeing how you would use your other hand for the actual catch. Would you like to go to the lot where Danny and I were yesterday?"

We both thought that it was a great idea and ran off to get permission.

Doc tossed a few easy balls to Freddy and coached him on making caches just as he had for me. Freddy tried hard but missed a lot of them.

"Take it easy. Try to time them as they fall. Here. This next throw I want you to watch. Just watch it. Don't even try to catch it, just watch it fall," Doc said.

Freddy put his glove up as if he wanted to make the catch anyway.

"No, Fred, just watch it. Watch it fall to earth and get a feel for the time and distance it travels," Doc told him.

On the next series of throws Doc told him to try and move close to where they might land without getting hit. The sight of Freddy wandering around after falling baseballs brought some laughter from the older kids at the nearby house.

"Maybe this isn't a good idea," Freddy complained, looking embarrassed.

"Stay with it. When you feel comfortable with a ball dropping down then try and catch it," Doc said.

The next one was a towering throw that grew small way up in the sky. Fred walked back, looking up at it and extended his glove. "I got it!" He shouted looking into his glove as if a miracle had put it there.

"Ready for the All-Star game, kid?" Somebody shouted at Fred from the porch of the nearby house.

"See, the fans are always fickle, Danny. Yesterday they were picking on you," Doc joked to me.

After getting Freddy warmed up in the outfield, Doc tried pitching to me over a torn pizza box that acted as home plate and coached my hitting. I did poorly and could hear the laughter from the older kids.

"Relax, Danny. A bunch of junior teenagers with nothing at all to do. Everything must be well-timed. The bat can not move too fast or too slow to meet the ball. You must concentrate on the ball. Only the ball. There is nothing else in the world but the ball coming toward you. Nothing else..." He threw one that looked like it would cross the pizza box at the level of my hip.

'Nothing but the ball...'

I swung the bat in what seemed like slow motion and felt a 'thunk' that went from my wrists down my arms. The ball sailed out over the field and Freddy scrambled to get under it.

"Nice wood on the ball!" Doc said.

Freddy could not move fast enough to get under it and the ball fell and rolled to the end of the lot.

It was the first time I ever hit a hard ball that good. I felt something in my hands that I had never felt before and felt sure I could do it again.

Freddy scooped the ball up and bounced it toward Doc on a long throw.

"Another one?" Doc asked as he prepared to pitch.

I nodded, but at the last moment tried to hit it too hard and missed.

"Don't try to kill it. Heroes need work more than luck. Just hit it. Hit it. Just like before." Doc said.

The pitch sailed in and I banged it out over the field. This time it came down into Fred's glove and he felt great too.

"WHOA!" the onlookers shouted and laughed.

I hit the next three pitches in a row. Freddy caught one of them.

"Getting tired out there, Fred? Would you like to pitch a few?" Doc asked.

Freddy shook his head and put his glove out to be ready for the next one.

I hit the next two pitches also and one of the onlookers yelled to Doc, "Hey, quit giving him easy stuff!"

Doc turned to the house where the calls were coming from. "They're just learning. Why don't you guys come out and show them what you know?"

Two of the older kids came down from the porch. One of them was real lanky and had a mean smile on his face. The other with blond hair combed straight back had no expression.

"Yeah, we'll play," the blond-haired one said.

"Nah, you're kidding! With these little punks?" the meaner one said to his friend.

"You have something against baseball?" Doc asked. There was something in his tone that was different from the way he talked to Freddy and I. Something that came from his having been a fire captain.

The meaner-looking kid ran his fingers through his hair. He had an unlit cigarette behind one ear. "Nah.... Hey, Johnny, see you later." He said to the blond and walked back to the porch.

"You're Johnny?" Doc asked.

Johnny nodded. He picked up my glove. "Okay?" He asked me and walked into the field.

I didn't concentrate on the next pitch and missed it. Then I went back to 'nothing-but-the approaching-ball... nothing...' And smacked a high one deep into the lot.

Johnny went back for it. He had the kind of grace seen on television. He made an almost impossible catch look easy. He tossed the ball back to Doc.

"You play some, huh?" Doc asked him.

"Some."

Johnny scooped up most of the balls I hit, though he let Freddy have a few and even gave him some advice.

Then Doc suggested that I take my turn with Fred in the field. He moved the mound back a little and allowed Johnny to hit.

And Johnny could hit. Fred and I stood at the left and right corners of the huge lot and Johnny took turns hitting to both of us. Doc had a big grin on his face every time Johnny connected with a pitch.

Each one whistled high and away and curved down to earth spinning with the shadows of clouds. With each hit we felt fear and excitement and hoped the ball would either come to us or not. Soon we caught enough of them to feel at ease and even giggled if we handled one badly.

Freddy's hand was still too sore for batting or even throwing hard and he would relay catches to me for the long throw to Doc, on the mound.

Time seemed to hang like the long ball taking its fleeting yet forever fall toward our scrambling mitts. We would sometimes loop through the center field between us and call each other off to make a play without knocking one another over. It was the first time in both of our lives that we didn't feel like kids.

We wanted it to last and last, but slowly the sun sank in the west and the pink bands on the horizon darkened with dusk. The balls became harder to see yet we were better at judging them.

Finally, Johnny dropped my bat on the ground and said, "Gotta go."

Doc said something to him that we couldn't hear as we ran in from the far reaches of our outfield to see this sports legend leave for the night.

"What did you say, Doc?" Freddy asked.

"I told him he had talent," Doc said.

"What he say?" I asked.

"Nothing. He knows he's good at the game. But sometimes that's not enough."

We walked back to my grandparent's house and all the adults were on the porch.

"Did they hit anything?" Mrs. Showbuck asked.

"They did very well," Doc said.

"Yeah, and they was this guy who plays like a major leaguer and he hit to us and you should have seen us making those catches, Gra'm," Freddy gushed to his grandmother.

She put two fingers into his collar to see how perspired he was. "I hope you didn't get dirt in that bite."

"Aw, Gra'm," Freddy squirmed away from her, feeling all of the triumph going out of him.

"How'd you do?" Beth asked me.

"Okay," I said, and left the porch and all the adults to put away my stuff.

Later, I lay across my bed with the lights out and looked across the skyline of houses to enjoy the memory of hitting and catching the little, white ball. I had a thought of playing in a big stadium and hitting a ball so far that the crowd hushed to see it fall. I closed my eyes to see where the ball was going, but all I could see was the faces of the people in the crowd. There in the middle of them was Nancy and my head flopped down on the pillow as my triumph leaked away just before I fell asleep.

I dreamt of her that night. Her and baseball and Mal and Yalenda and they all got mixed up together in a story that made sense in my dream. At one point in the dream I seemed to be lost and alone and I heard Doc's voice say, 'It's all right to be lost, Danny, it's hard growing up in the world, but hang onto your dreams hard and maybe the best will come out of them...' In the last scene Freddy and I rescued Nancy from the lanky kid with the mean smile and the cigarette behind his ear who was going to sell her into slavery, far away. Then I hit a baseball that exploded like fireworks, high up, above all of us.

It was Freddy who woke me up the next morning. He was already dressed for what he wanted to do. He had his Dodgers baseball hat on and his mitt under his arm. He also had colorful sweat-socks and a shirt with his name sewn on it.

"Danny, get up, c'mon let's go play ball."

I looked at the clock. It was only seven thirty.

"It's too early," I yawned. "Doc won't be ready yet," I said, knowing that Doc was an early riser but liked to walk along the boardwalk and get his newspaper before breakfast.

"We won't need Doc, Janet will pitch for us," Freddy said.

"Janet?"

"Yeah, I saw her already this morning. She'd like to play."

"This early?"

"Yeah!" he insisted.

"Alright. Give me a few minutes. I want to get something to eat, too," I said.

The three of us went over to the large vacant lot a few blocks away. It couldn't have been more than eight o'clock in the morning and the neighborhood was very quiet.

Janet was very excited about getting to pitch to us.

"This ball is real hard," she said.

"It's called hardball," Freddy said.

"I know that! In gym we use a ball that's a little lighter than this." She hefted the ball into the air and caught in with two hands.

"Hey, Danny, do you think I could bat, first?" Freddy asked, as he pulled the pizza-box home plate in front of him.

"Sure, if you think you can," I told him.

"It doesn't hurt as much, today, and I got the bandage and the batting glove. I think I can hit a little."

"Okay." I walked behind Janet between second base and shallow center field. I had a feeling that I wasn't going to see very much action.

Janet was eager to pitch and was pretty good at it except she threw underhand.

"Not that way!" Freddy insisted, letting a waist-high pitch go by.

"Freddy, just hit it!" she urged.

"Danny, tell her that in baseball, not like softball, you don't pitch underhand!" Freddy called out to me.

"What's the difference. She's getting them over the plate," I said.

"Thanks, Dan," Janet said, squealing happily when another pitch went right down the middle.

Freddy became frustrated going after the missed balls that rolled away behind him. He threw them back to her and she caught them using his mitt. "Can't you try overhand?"

"I'm afraid, I'll hit you," she said.

I rested my head on my glove. Finally, Freddy swung and missed and then yelled, "Owww!" and held his hand gingerly.

Janet turned to me, "I guess it's your turn to bat," she said.

"Do you want to bat?" I asked her.

"Can I?" She asked, with a bubbly smile.

"Fred, you want to pitch to her?" I asked.

"Naw... I'll field... If she hits anything..." Freddy said.

I wasn't sure I could pitch very good overhand either, not without putting some power on the ball, and I wasn't too sure of my control, so I waited till she got into position and tossed the ball softly, underhanded.

She smiled and tried hard to hit it but missed.

"I can do better!" She said, running after the ball

"Just take it easy. I'm throwing it easy, bat it easy," I told her.

"Okay." Her lower lip curled up as she concentrated on hitting.

I tossed another one and she smacked a blooper over my head.

"Nice!" I said.

Freddy tried to run it down, but it was too far from where he was standing and it plopped into the dirt.

He threw it back to me and I tossed her another one which she smacked back at us as an infield grounder.

"One more, okay?" She pleaded.

"Sure." I tossed another one but she missed again and had to put the bat down and throw it back to me.

"One more, please?" Janet asked.

I threw another one and she popped it up between us. It was an easy catch.

"Okay, You hit now," Janet said.

We changed places and I got ready.

Her pitches were pretty good. Better than mine had been to her, anyway. I got some good hits off of them. 'POP' another ball sailed out toward Freddy.

"Wow! You can really hit." Janet said as we waited for Freddy to run it down.

Just then we heard a lot of noise from the house behind us. I turned around with the bat resting on my shoulder and saw a mob of big kids running toward us from the backyard of the nearest house.

It happened so fast, I didn't know what to do. I glanced over to Janet and Freddy and they were dumbfounded also. Janet's expression changed. Her eyes grew wide and she stood stiffly.

I couldn't see Freddy's expression that clearly, but he moved closer toward the sidewalk as if he were ready to walk home.

The bigger guys spread all over the field with great motion and much noise. I only recognized two of them, the mean-faced lanky one and Johnny. Most of them had baseball gloves.

"Look at these squirts, here!"

"MOVE IT!"

"We're playin' here, now, so beat it!"

I was ready to leave, but one of them lifted the bat off of my shoulder. I tried holding onto it but he twisted it away.

"Let me see it."

He was much taller than me and looked like he had to shave. He took my bat, looked it over and started swinging it.

"Hey this is a nice one. Alright, I got my bat. I want first ups," he said to the others, paying no more attention to me.

It was the same across the field. The mean looking one waved at Janet, "Beat it, rat, unless you want to go for beers with us later."

Several of the others laughed. Janet backed off the pitcher's mound. Another guy took my glove from her.

"Hey, look at this dufus out here in on the right-field foul line. He's got his little name sewn on his shirt. 'Duh, I guess your name is Freddy; is 'dat right, little man