He'd get in trouble for going near the arrangements of concrete
foundation pillars and frames and sap redolent lumber where
carpenters hammered and made saws whine. And for playing in hot
streets and weedy lots haunted by snakes and wasps. The few
neighborhood boys liked to shoot down small game with BB guns
and improvised artillery, and they usually did it where he wasn't
supposed to go.

Tad's neighborhood intruded then as largely empty new streets
eastward into mesquite brush and abandoned farmland. On hot
afternoons he liked to walk or pedal the couple of dozen blocks to
where more houses were finished and a row of old businesses,
including an ancient country drugstore, faced the highway. He
would stand at the building's blue tile facade contemplating the vast
cottonfield that extended from the highway into shimmering
mirages and wishing he could be in the passing cars.

They go where everything's okay. A pebble clicked to the pavement
beside him. Tense, he looked up and down the littered sidewalk
without seeing anyone.

Because they're wrong and I don't act like them, that's how come
they won't play. Tad unwrapped one end of his candy bar and a
hail of pebbles bounced off his head and shoulders and clicked all
around him. He looked up at the face, haloed by backlit hair in hues
of reds and browns, that peered over the edge of the roof.

"Hey, big boy," she said. "You went to church where me and Mom
do."

"Yeah. I got sick every Sunday and now I don't have to."

"Uh-huh. They talk so much it's like they don't really want you to
know about Him. Can I have some candy?"

"Yeah." He looked about in case anyone saw him with a girl.

"Come around back and climb up the boxes."

Behind the drugstore was a shell paved alley edged by oleanders.
Along the building save in front of its metal door lay a
conglomeration of refuse that included the wooden crates which
with a gas meter enabled Tad to gain one of the two by fours
topping a wire screened trash enclosure. From there, ignoring
Abby's offered hand, he swung himself over the knee-high lip of a
flat roof covered with pebbles and sun softened tar.

"Let's go back down up front," she said, dropping to hands and
knees. Her skirt blew up to her shoulders in a movement like the
blossoming of a great pink flower, disclosing panties tight across
her clearly visible, clearly divided cheeks. Tingles shot through and
through Tad.

Abby squatted at the front wall to pick rocks from her knees before
sitting Indian style. She broke off a good half of his candy bar,
trailing honey translucence all down her chin and dress front as she
ate. She was an amazing spectacle as she licked her lips and chin,
then examined her hands and tongued sticky goo from each of their
long fingers before wadding them repeatedly in her skirt.

"See," she said, "way back there's the Island and the beach and the
Navy Base where Mom buys groceries and they got all kinds of
planes and boats, and way over there's where all the big ships come
in." Tad looked over shingles, metal lattices of antennas, past lines
that dipped away pole to pole and through foliage toward the
palmtrees he knew fringed the crescent bay. "Some day I'm gonna
go there an' get on one and then just sail away."

"They're all men on ships."

"Oh, I know, but they won't care." Abby tilted her head and smiled
and the wind teased curls all around her face. Her olive eyes
seemed to glow and her freckles showed dark against a blush and
her breath came slow and heavy. "Men always say I'm so cute they
want to take me home with them. You bet they'd like it if I went.

"I come up here just about every day 'cause there's hardly any
boys to play with an' it's like being way up on a big tall cloud
where they take care of the whole wide world," she chanted, making
a sweeping gesture. "Take care of the whole wide world. All the
boys and all the girls."

Abby paused. Suddenly she was afoot, dusting and straightening
her dress. "My Mom's calling me. Gotta go."

Before Tad even got up she was running, scattering gravel and
imprinting the tar, each thudding step reverberating throughout the
flimsy roof. He saw her skid, bump into, and step over the wall. He
reached the barrier in time to watch her clamber from the gas meter
to the boxes, which unpiled with a series of bumps, and plop herself
onto milkweeds, primroses, and oystershells.

"Gotta go now," she said, dusting off.

Abby lifted herself to the gas meter and stood holding a pipe while
she tested the crates she'd just avalanched. She looked up and
smiled.

She likes me. He waited on the two by four, sweaty, eager to reach
for her hand, expectantly watching her skirt riffle in the breeze.

"All right! Y'all get down from there and get outa here right now."
A bald man stood in the back door scowling up at Tad.

Tad almost lost his balance. Cautiously he began to make his way
down. Her glider went up there, yeah, that's it, and we were just
getting it down. Balsa plane from this store, they fly best. He bailed
out from the meter and landed beside the expressionless girl. I'll
take up for her this time.

"I've been waitin' to catch you for a long time, sonny boy. Now
git! And don't you come back, hear?"

When they reached the sidewalk, tad and Abby looked around at
the man who stood, hands on hips, glowering. Tad smelled the
disintegrating oleander blossoms and the metallic aroma of Abby's
sweat.

"Shut up, you old bald headed bastard!" she yelled.

"Sshh!" Tad exclaimed, grabbing her bicep. She twisted away,
giving him an angry and disappointed look.

"All right, sonny boy, that did it." The man strode menacingly
forward.

They ran.