Episode in the Life of A Boy "Coming Out" by Cal Rollins

Summer

Spreading their web-like wings and flying up through the shafts of light, the dreams came and went. Summer day after summer day Howey had lain on the old cot musing through the dusty sunlight.

"So be it when I shall grow old, or let me die," he ended the almost-quotation in his mind. "Who did Augustus think of," he wondered. A chain of illustrious people passed through the sun rays.

"Yes," he thought. "I am the beginning of it all and we will tell my story. Caesar, come forth! Your story! And now Augustus. Your story!"

But such wastes of time. It seemed to him that he had spent most of his summers dreaming. On the back porch he would lie about with his legs crossed, one calf balanced on top of the other knee, his moccasin dangling at the end of the line. "Where to from here?" he questioned.

How many great men had lain like this and watched their shoes dangling from their feet? The cavaliers would have had to dangle them with a derrick. A giant came over the hill and David wound up his sling. Then Alexander Morton appeared with a catapult from the 16th Century, or somewhere in the vicinity. O! Everyone exclaimed. "I'll spell it that way when I write it," he thought. To give an archaic look, for good.

Goliath came over the mountain with a bear and Alexander Morton came with a boy. Tut-tut, not normal. But what a contraption! The soldiers shouted 'Hurray'. No, that's not what anyone in his right mind would shout. Maybe the Hebrews did. But they didn't have vowels and should have. 'Hurray for Howey, slewer of giants, king over David.' The Howey Dynasty. One h.d.

"Where would I be if Goliath had won," he pondered. Divine intervention. Taming of the shrew, turning of the screw.

The land of giants and screws became shadows and waves of gray fog. Shafts of orange and pink light streamed through the porch windows and Howey awoke.

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