Glen The Genius
...on Big Chief tablet paper. Not just memorized, but absorbed---like extra ribs in my chest. I was reminded of them whenever I saw others committing forbidden acts. I recalled friends who sneaked into the cloakroom at school to pop their bubble gum, and the filling station man who always told my Aunt Flossie she needed a quart of oil when she didn't. Flossie would just smile and say, "Thanks, I'm about to get it changed anyway." I figured her answer was sort of like turning the other cheek.
I think I did just fine with those Eternal Rules, honoring them to the fullest as the years went by. Yes, all was close to textbook until that one day at Caddo Lake.
I was eleven or maybe twelve. It was one of the summers I came back to East Texas---a short vacation from the harried pace of life overseas. Caddo Lake was my getaway. It was so different from the tropical forests of the Far East, and it restored me with its calmness. Caddo was like a secret elixir with its mossy cypress and caramel-colored waters. The glades were so open and inviting, like alleys into a happy realm I had long since lost. I bathed in the coolness of its brakes; I tasted its purity. It was the rekindling of my slumbering spirit.
This day, my uncle Archie drove me to the lake and left me with seventy-five cents to buy my lunch. I found my way down to the pier that led to the deck of the Caddo Queen. The Queen was a relic of a paddlewheel boat that rode tourists down the river from Big Pines Lodge into the lake. It was a hot and dusty August day, and my thoughts drifted back to the advent of another school year, less than a month away. I was reminded that summer was fleeting, like sleep being interrupted by shards of daylight through venetian blinds.
I sat there with my Big Pines hamburger, mesmerized by the things around me. The river swept by, curling itself around the cypress knees then dancing...
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