It was vanilla week at the candy factory down the way, and without the help of Lake Michigan winds a saccharine blanket would smother the neighborhood, creep through the window and mess up your sleep. Puddles shimmered with an oily film, scattering sunlight into swirling rainbows. A gasp of vanilla-soaked air nudged the film, creating new iridescent eddies.
I stood on the curb wondering “What was here?” On this spot, back four centuries. If I could only go back, just for an hour, to see those bulging eyes carried on paired wings, the belching of methane from the waking bog, the shrill of frogs clambering up the banks of the Chee-Ka-Go, tumbling over each other, gurgling and cackling, coupled, free-falling through water the same temperature as their blood, down into the murk; then a duet of frog kicks back up for a sniff of air.
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“Dad, can we try ’em out?”
Across the Chicago a park spread out, giving us a glimpse of sunset over trees, here, deep in the city: a park flatter than the prairie but for eight pitching mounds and a kite and sledding hill that happy city managers built on top of a garbage dump.
Jamal eyed me without turning his head, doubting the wisdom of talking to these guys who never gave nothing but a hard time to anybody. And Nanny refused to break her trance, never budged.
“Well, I saw a raccoon one night,” I told her. “Its eyes glowed like blue reflectors. My wife said she saw a possum, or she hopes it was a possum, or else it was the fattest rat she ever saw.”
