One Last Ride

On the kitchen floor, in the house on Stonington Street, my sister and I played cardboard box cars. She’d always take the box with the handles punched out of either side saying it looked more like dad’s car and mine looked like the milk truck that Mr. Hennessey drove. Hunchback Hennessey she called him. My imagination ran away to a bell tower where I’d be trapped with that old man and his evil monkeys. I’d crash into the refrigerator to snap myself out of it, a trick I learned to dislodge the disturbing. Ever optimistic, I figured once I got to school I’d learn a less detrimental approach. My sister learned to recite the Hail Mary in Latin. It didn’t help.

We drove so fast one day that the yellow and gold linoleum floor became a whirling blur of golden cake batter, my grandmother toppled over, our box cars confiscated. Later, in the cellar, under the bulkhead and cover of darkness, my sister found them loaded with old shoes and jackets. “Don’t” I said as she raised the car to her hips and dumped its contents. “One last ride!” she insisted fearlessly. The plastic of my feet pajamas cemented to the ground. “Chicken!” she hissed and ran off. “Don’t leave me!” I shouted, tossing the old shoes and jackets and chasing after her through the cobwebbed cellar with my milk truck. She waited at the bottom of the stairs ~ a spider luring a fly. “Quiet”, she insisted, covering my mouth with her hand for effect. Suddenly turning away, she climbed the steps like a cat. Stiff and silent I awaited her orders. Up I crept, dragging the boxcar behind me until I was at her back.

We opened the door into the kitchen darkness with relief. Everyone was upstairs seemingly asleep. We lit the pantry and made room for our ride. And what a ride! Belly laughs and cardboard blazing we rode that kitchen crazy til at last we rammed our dashboards into the fish tank topped table. A slippery blur of gold and silver waves crested, then crashed, and our cardboard boxcars were forever set out to rust.