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“The boys will be home from school any minute,” Da
“May I see your son’s room?” the officer asked.
A curious request, Da
“Joe doesn’t ride his bike downtown-only in this neighborhood-and he always walks his bike across the street,” Da
“Here they are,” the cook said; he’d been watching the back alley for Joe and Max to appear on their bicycles.
The eight-year-olds seemed surprised to see Officer Colby in the kitchen; like the third graders they were, and almost as if they were passing a secret message in class, they looked quickly at each other and then stared at the kitchen floor.
“The beer-truck boys,” Colby said. “Maybe you boys should keep in mind that the blue Mustang has been seen all over town.” The officer turned his attention to Da
Joe couldn’t look at his dad or grandfather. “The beer-truck boys,” the cook repeated.
“I gotta go home,” Max said; he was that quickly gone.
“When I see these boys in City Park,” Colby went on, “I tell them I hope they’re not riding their bikes on Dubuque Street. It’s safer to take the footbridge behind the student union, and ride their bikes along the Hancher side of the river. But I suppose it takes you longer to get to the park or the zoo that way-doesn’t it?” Officer Colby asked Joe. The boy just nodded his head; he knew he’d been busted.
Very early the next morning, when Youn was sound asleep and Yi-Yiing hadn’t yet come home from her night shift at Mercy Hospital, Da
“It’s too early for school, isn’t it?” Joe asked.
“Maybe you’ll miss school this morning,” his father said. “We’ll just tell the school you’re sick.”
“But I feel fine,” the boy said.
“Get up and get dressed, Joe-you’re not fine,” his dad told him. “You’re dead-you’ve already died.”
They left the house without having any breakfast, walking down to Muscatine Avenue. In the early morning, there was always traffic on Muscatine, which turned into Iowa Avenue, a divided highway with a grassy median strip separating the driving lanes of the two-way street.
When Joe had been a baby and a toddler, and Da
“Where we lived with Mom, you mean-yes, it is,” Da
“The gray one?” Joe asked, because his dad had stopped walking on the sidewalk in front of the house, which was on the downtown-heading-traffic side of the street. The cars veering off Muscatine onto Iowa Avenue were more numerous now.
“Yes, the gray one,” Da
“Grandpa said you didn’t like Iowa Avenue -that you wouldn’t even drive on the street,” Joe said to his dad.
“That’s right, Joe,” Da
“What’s wrong? Am I grounded?” the boy asked his dad.
“No, you’re not grounded-you’re already dead,” his father told him. Da
“Was I hit by a car?” Joe asked his dad.
“You should have been,” his father answered. “But if you’d really been hit by a car, I would have died, too.”
There was one driver in the outbound lane who would see them standing on the other side of Iowa Avenue -Yi-Yiing, on her way back to Court Street from Mercy Hospital. In the incoming lane, one of Da
Perhaps Da
IN AVELLINO, LORETTA BROUGHT the writer his surprise first course. In the something-from-Asia category, the cook had prepared Ah Gou’s beef satay with peanut sauce for his son; the beef was grilled on wooden skewers. There was assorted tempura, too-shrimp, haricots verts, and asparagus. Loretta also brought Da
“Sure, I use them,” he told her.
Loretta still held on to the chopsticks. “You know what? You’re alone too much,” she told him.
“I am alone too much,” Da
Whenever Da
“What are you writing?” Loretta asked him; as long as she held the chopsticks, he would keep looking at her, she thought.
“Just some dialogue,” Da
“Like we’re having?” she asked.
“No, it’s… different,” he said. Loretta could tell when she’d lost his attention; she gave him the chopsticks. The way the notebook was open on the table, Loretta could have read the dialogue Da