left breast pocket. On the right breast it said MORTON FUEL OIL. “I’m impressed.”
“Thanks, Daddy-O.”
“Your silver tongue wins you the opportunity to help your mother clean up breakfast.”
“It’s Andy’s turn!”
“It was Andy’s turn,” Dad said, pouring syrup on the last pancake. “Grab a dishtowel, Silver Tongue. And try not to break anything.”
“You spoil him rotten,” Con said, but he grabbed a dishtowel.
Connie wasn’t entirely wrong about my concept of forever. Five days later, the Operation game Andy gave me was gathering dust bunnies under my bed (some of the body parts were missing, anyway; Andy got it at the Eureka Grange rummage sale for a quarter). So were the jigsaw puzzles Terry gave me. Con himself gave me a ViewMaster, and that lasted a little longer, but it eventually wound up in my closet, never to be seen again.
From Mom and Dad I got clothes, because my birthday falls near the end of August, and that year I was going into first grade. I found new pants and shirts about as exciting as a TV test pattern, but tried to say thanks with enthusiasm. I imagine they saw through that with no trouble; false enthusiasm does not come easily to six-year-olds . . . although, sad to say, it’s a skill most of us learn fairly rapidly. In any case, the clothes were washed in the hulk, hung on the clothesline in the side yard, and finally folded away in my bureau drawers. Where, it’s probably needless to add, they were out of sight and mind until September came and it was time to put them on. I remember there was a sweater that was actually pretty cool—it was brown with yellow stripes. When I wore it I pretended I was a superhero called the Human Wasp: evildoers, beware my sting!
• • •
But Con was wrong about the footlocker with the army inside. I played with those guys day in and day out, usually at the edge of the front yard, where there was a dirt strip between our lawn and Methodist Road, which was itself dirt in those days. With the exception of Route 9 and the two-lane leading to Goat Mountain, where there was a resort for rich people, all the roads in Harlow were dirt back then. I can remember my mother on several occasions weeping about all the dust that got into the house on dry summer days.
Billy Paquette and Al Knowles—my two best friends—played army with me on many afternoons, but on the day Charles Jacobs appeared in my life for the first time, I was on my own. I don’t remember why Billy and Al weren’t with me, but I do remember I was happy to be by myself for a change. For one thing, there was no need to split the army into three divisions. For another—this was more important—I didn’t have to argue with them about whose turn it was to win. In truth, it seemed unfair to me that I should ever have to lose, because they were my soldiers and it was my footlocker.
When I advanced this idea to my mother one hot late-summer day shortly after my birthday, she took me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes, a sure sign that I was about to receive another Lesson in Life. “That it’s-mine business is half the trouble with the world, Jamie. When you play with your friends, the soldiers belong to all of you.”
“Even if we play-fight different sides?”
“Even if. When Billy and Al go home for their dinner and you pack the soldiers back into the box—”
“It’s a footlocker!”
“Right, the footlocker. When you pack them away, they’re yours again. People have many ways to be lousy to one another, as you’ll find out when you’re older, but I think that all bad behavior stems from plain old selfishness. Promise me you’ll never be selfish, kiddo.”
I promised, but I still didn’t like it when Billy and Al won.
• • •
On that day in October of 1962, with the fate of the world dangling by a thread over a small tropical spit of land called Cuba, I was fighting both sides of the battle, which meant I was bound to come out on top. The town grader had been by earlier on Methodist Road (“Moving the rocks around,” my dad always grumbled), and there was plenty of loose dirt. I scraped enough together to make first a hill, then a big hill, and then a very big hill,