Most days we played war. It’s the one world of fantasy in which a boy can get reliably lost. (Before the fever of sex sets in, anyway.) World War II was always popular. We were constantly battling Nazis, storming the beaches, launching grenades, taking and retaking Normandy. Every once in a while, it was Viet Nam but the stink of ambivalence — what the hell is a “police action” anyway? — muddied the mission objectives. Everything worked better when it was Good vs. Evil, black and white, or in today’s case, Blue vs. Gray. Today it was the Civil War. We Union soldiers elbow-crawled along the ground to the cover of a low mound. We wore the blue caps of the Northern infantry (left over from a recent adult neighborhood costume party). The Confederate troops emerged from the sunken road, covered in dust from head to foot, gray as ghosts. Brandishing revolvers and throwing dirt clods as they came, they yelled their crazy yells to wake the piled-up corpses. Suddenly, an explosion rocked us as a caisson blew. We threw dirt in the air and made our best practiced sound effects to dramatize the extent of the destruction. It was generally agreed that the driver’s body flew high in the air, and in our collective imagination, limbs and trunk and blood and guts and the shattered fragments of the wagon rained down upon us and covered the adjacent cornfield in wood and gore. Thankfully, no one was hit by shrapnel. It was a Gettysburg of a day alright and we were fully immersed in the occult power that battle holds over the souls of boys. It was a feeling that the first person shooter games and paintball (not to mention the reality check of time in the service) could never quite recapture.
And yeah, this was a while ago. It was a July day in the days back before the Warming and the air was clear and cool feeling. Cotton candy clouds puffed happily across the sky, borrowed from some old Renaissance painting. A world away from the stifling muggy humidity we’re used to now. Still, we were parched from the exertion. Captain Steve, a year older and our acknowledged leader, gave each of us in turn a welcome drink from his authentic army surplus canteen. We wiped our dirty faces like we’d seen soldiers do in movies and discussed the plan of attack. We knew the enemy, and anticipated their moves. Just like the real historical Civil War, this was neighbor vs. neighbor, brother vs. brother. Each of us imagined what it would be like to be honor-bound to kill one’s own brother. Not just pin him down, and drool loogies inches from his face, or hit him with dirt clods, but actually kill him. Holy Monitor and Merrimack, that was heavy.
But this was no time for introspection. The battle lines quickly reformed. Captain Steve lowered his spyglass and called out that he could see Nathan Bedford Forest astride a dapple gray stallion in the distance, and Stonewall Jackson and even yes indeed Robert E. Lee himself surveying the carnage with cool eyes. The bullets continued to rain and the casualties continued to mount and the parrot guns bellowed to deafen the devil. “It’s getting damn hot in here boys!” said Captain Steve. Following Steve’s hand signals we scrambled 20 feet to the left and flung ourselves down behind a shallow granite overhang. It was time to give those Rebs a taste of their own business. “Fix bayonets, men. On the double-quick!” As we moved out, all the pent up tension of the day was released. With a charge of dazzling bravery the boys of the Fighting 69th were able to retake Purgatory Ridge, in this, the 7nd Battle of Bull Run, in the American war that never ever really ended.
***
The troops gathered to refresh themselves and nurse their wounds over Cragmont root beer. Steve held court and we younger boys listened intently. He was only a year or two older, going into 7th grade, but he already had the signs of manhood — a definition to the bicep, a wisp of dark down on his upper lip, and a hint of tempered steel in his glance under a darkening brow. Steve wasn’t like the other older boys, that would push us around and make fun. He would never for instance tease us if we cried a little when we crashed our bikes, or make us eat dog biscuits and tell us they were good. This was our Captain Steve. And we all wanted to be just like Steve when we grew up to be 12.
One of the younger boys pointed at a passing hot rod, an immaculate ’68 Firebird. The boys that could whistle did so and we all expressed admiration in our own way, and then looked to Steve for confirmation. Steve looked into the distance with those inscrutable eyes and gave his verdict.
“We should go back to the days before cars.” When no one waded into the silence, Steve continued, “The world would be a better place without cars. We should just use horses. And ride bikes.”
Was he being for real? Or was he just messing with us, as he sometimes did, pulling rank, reminding us that he was among us, but not of us.
Peter, a short round-shouldered boy with a teeth-gritting, jaw-jutting hustle, whether the game was basketball, kick-the-can, or the war between the states, spoke up. ”But not all cars are bad. What about ambulances?”
We all nodded. It was a good point. But Steve held his ground.
“More people have been killed by cars than will ever be saved by cars,” said Steve, and spit into the summer dust, ending the discussion.
I knew that a car had hit Steve’s family dog the previous week. So I knew Steve had his reasons for hating cars, but maybe, who knows, looking back now, maybe he was right. At any rate our small company of boys pondered and finished our Cragmont sodas in silence. A world without cars.
***
In the early 90’s, the Japanese car makers started working on a secret initiative. They knew the Warming was coming, and they were worried that they would be held responsible. They didn’t want to be the cigarette companies of the 21st Century. After watching the debacle that was the electric car, and realizing the stranglehold that the “energy companies” had on the economy and therefore the policymakers in Washington, they decided to split the difference. They would create a “hybrid.” Honda was the first to come to market, with a sleek bucket of bolts called the Insight. One of the problems with the two-door, 70-mpg Insight was that it still looked like the Jetson’s-style nerdmobile of the future – aerodynamically covered back wheels and all. In ’93, Toyota introduced the first generation hybrid Prius, so unremarkable in its ugliness that it could also be called the world’s first invisible car. It disappeared into the backwaters of history without a splash.
It was with the second-generation Prius that things really took off. The part-gas, part-electric hybrid Prius was a compromise in every conceivable way. Indifferently drivable. Modestly ugly. Mildly techy. And, HUGELY popular. Given its milquetoast soul, the backlash was tragi-comic in its intensity, manifesting itself in throwback buffoonery such as: 70’s muscle car knockoffs, indecorous flying of the stars and stripes from every kind of conceivable recreation vehicle, as well as innovative novelties such as ‘truck nuts’ - scrotum replicas hung from the trailer hitches of V-8 pickup trucks. But dangling rubber testicles could not forestall the inevitable and within 15 years, hybrids had paved the way for the elecrtric. With the range afforded by Sodium-ion and solid state batteries, (as opposed to the old school Lithium-ion) everyone agreed, the electric cars were better, hands down. Faster, more fun to drive, easier to maintain. Soon the combustion engine was a nostalgic niche, a collector’s item. But the damage was done. Mother Earth was haggard, abused, chronically fatigued, bereft of beauty. Her weariness was contagious. Distracted, medicated and doused in CBD, her children reigned in their serotonin and dopamine levels while they ping-ponged from one screen to the next. Even language itself, became, like, I don’t know, sort of like, imprecise? Lacking in certainty? As if communication itself questioned its ability to communicate. Truth was just an opinion. All the good, positive words like hope, peace, charity, joy, love and optimism received the same tired eye roll – verbal artifacts, ruins of a bygone time when, just for instance, Miami wasn’t a type 7 malarial swamp.
***
As for what we now refer to as The Warming, it came on more slowly than the alarmists predicted but rapid enough to cause widespread destruction and societal upheaval. No one really anticipated the extent of the fires, and how they would compound the greenhouse effects. No one really understood the inter-relatedness of the jet stream and sea currents. The impact on weather and changing migratory patterns. The devastation caused by the bark beetle. Desertification. The water shortages. Temperate zones turning tropic and the north becoming the new temperate. The land and resource grab occasioned by the ice melt. The warming waters accelerating the melting of the ice caps exponentially.
The erosion and exhaustion of soil. The nitrogen blooms and rise of drug-resistance bacteria, microbes and contagions like Covid, malaria and TB. The mass deaths of arctic mammals and fish. Sea lions, harbor seals, salmon, cod. The beaches becoming stinking sulfuric boneyards; a medium circle of hell lacking only brimstone. The crows, pigeons, seagulls, ants, and cockroaches – and curiously, rabbits – didn’t seem to mind. Some days it seemed like those were the only species of creatures left.
No joke, today I read about a genetic breeding experiment where they’re trying to get the crows and rats to eat the cockroaches. That scientist will win the Nobel effing prize.
Dealing with the mounting global humanitarian crisis, the increasingly totalitarian governments of the G7 put up literal and figurative walls. The rich hid behind their encrypted bank accounts and password protected gates in AC cooled mansions and penthouses, systematically dismantling all checks, all balances, all unions and all rights to resist and organize. The organs of free speech became a obsessive ticker-driven loop of anxiety, fear and misinformation. The only news item you could rely on to be even remotely impartial and accurate was the weather.
“Today we have an E-Storm Watch in effect. Look out for flash flooding. Those nearest the high waterline keep your inflatables handy. The air quality is moderately unhealthful, so wear a mask if you plan any outdoor activity. Back to you, Brenda, for sports.”
***
Maybe the humidity got to everyone. No one had the will to fight anymore. The South rose again, and slowly, inevitably turned its back on the Union. When the vote for secession came up in the House it went through like a no contest divorce. There was a bit more discussion and posturing in the Senate, but it passed there, too — with some abstentions. It’s possible that everyone just figured that the president would veto it in the end, and so no one would have to take responsibility or lose face. But Madam President stubbornly called Texas’ bluff. The “Lone Star State” had threatened for years to make good on its slogan, and with the north drowning in tropical thunderstorms and the daily compounding of federal debt, she signed. What followed didn’t exactly mimic the pattern that preceded “The War Between The States,” but close. After Texas came South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and the north half of Florida, “Floribama.”* (*A name that started as a joke but gained momentum as a way to delineate a separate identity from the more multi-cultural southeast Florida coast.) It was as if the Southeast Athletic Conference had decided to create their own nation, and so subsist solely on sports licensing and gambling revenue. Tennessee was the lone holdout. And really, with the balkanization happening around the world, what made us think that we would be immune? The former Great Britain had become Scotland, Wales and England; Italy had shattered into a number of city states, as had Greece. Catalonia was its own nation, independent of Spain. The global economy was borderless, block chain and instantaneous but everyone wore their localized nationality like a badge, or more accurately, like their football club, on shirts made in Bangladesh. The South was emptied of nearly 15% of its population, as rising heat and a general unwelcome atmosphere forced self-identifying ‘progressives’ north of the Mason-Dixon. Camps were set up in Wyoming and Montana - far from the Tsunamis and now reasonably temperate.
On the eastern seaboard, people battled the sea, wind and elements with the same grim acceptance that they’d always fought the Long Island RR and the 7:30 commute. Lower Manhattan became an intricate system of dykes and canals, beautiful in its own way. I like to think that 600 years after being founded by the Dutch, it finally, truly became a New Amsterdam. My personal pet chimera was that Canal Street become an actual canal, but no such luck. No yet anyhow. Canal Street remains a hawker’s paradise, one booth after another offering novelties, vintage jerseys, rhinestone encrusted snap-back brims and knockoff jewelry.
And that brings us up to today, or to be more precise yesterday. I was leaving my spin class, the full VR experience, with the bikes that tilt and climb. I’d done 36 miles around Lake Wakatipu on the New Zealand’s South Island before walking back out into the Varick Street gloom. The City smelled of ammonia and the now-familiar swamp rot. Above, the low ceiling of clouds roiled and tussled like rabid cats in a dank wet bag. I walked over to the Starbucks and out front was a black lab waiting patiently for its owner. And that’s what set me off. In the 19th century, they would have diagnosed it as melancholia. I hadn’t thought about Steve, or playing war back in Lakewood, or any of that for awhile, not with any clarity, not for years. But this dog, it was exactly Bosco, Steve’s dog, reincarnated. He even had the white chest and paws. I patted his head, and looked into his eyes, and my mind broke its leash and took off running down memory lane, so to speak. It's not that I wanted to think about all this. I couldn’t stop.
I’d loved Steve as only a boy can, with an uncomplicated alloy of trust, honor, and loyalty. Steve was my idol, my exemplar, the older brother I never had. And even now I appreciate his gift for creating worlds in which all us Lakewood kids could live, whole universes with their own internal logic and gravity, lasting the length of long summer days and into the twilight, a spell only broken by calls to dinner. There was true magic on the other side of “Let’s say …” The historical battles we refought. (“Cover me!”) The epic ballgames we replayed. (“Five, four, three, two, one … …”) And his family dog Bosco was 100% pure, unadulterated boy’s best friend, and could reliably guide us through any minefield.
So, yeah I was there when the car hit Steve’s dog. It was about a week before the “Civil War” day. We were playing catch with his dad’s football, regulation size, the kind that stings your hands and will sprain your fingers if you’re not careful and of course Steve threw hard. After awhile we decided to embark on a mission to the Hop-n-Shop for candy. The road to the store was a familiar street and we crossed it often to get to school or go to the store, but busy enough to have a yellow line down the middle. Bosco wasn’t supposed to come, not ever, and Steve tried a number of times to make him turn back. “Dumb dog,” Steve finally said with feigned irritation, and gave Bosco a pat on the head. We weren’t concerned. Bosco could take care of himself. Bosco paced alongside us, and then ran ahead to scout at intervals, curving back to the beat of his own doggie algorithm, looking up at us as if to say ‘Hey guys, where we going? All good so far?” On one of these curl routes Bosco drifted out into traffic, and before we could react a red Audi A4 hit Bosco in the hindquarter and spun him hard in a 360. I’ll never forget how Bosco’s eyes met ours, the dead flat shock of death mixed with puzzlement and betrayal. His crushed haunches collapsed under him as he attempted to drag himself to safety with his forelegs. We rushed over but all Steve could do was hold Bosco’s head in his lap while Bosco’s pained yelping grew quieter and quieter and then Bosco stopped twitching and shivered to stillness and we just sat there while the cars and the wars and the hunger and the hate and the greed and the making and the destruction and cycles of endless buying and selling, near and far, on our familiar streets of Lakewood and all the streets around the world just kept going on and on and without much purpose I’m sort of realizing now or even a destination.
Most days we played war. It’s the one world of fantasy in which a boy can get reliably lost. (Before the fever of sex sets in, anyway.) World War II was always popular. We were constantly battling Nazis, storming the beaches, launching grenades, taking and retaking Normandy. Every once in a while, it was Viet Nam but the stink of ambivalence — what the hell is a “police action” anyway? — muddied the mission objectives. Everything worked better when it was Good vs. Evil, black and white, or in today’s case, Blue vs. Gray. Today it was the Civil War. We Union soldiers elbow-crawled along the ground to the cover of a low mound. We wore the blue caps of the Northern infantry (left over from a recent adult neighborhood costume party). The Confederate troops emerged from the sunken road, covered in dust from head to foot, gray as ghosts. Brandishing revolvers and throwing dirt clods as they came, they yelled their crazy yells to wake the piled-up corpses. Suddenly, an explosion rocked us as a caisson blew. We threw dirt in the air and made our best practiced sound effects to dramatize the extent of the destruction. It was generally agreed that the driver’s body flew high in the air, and in our collective imagination, limbs and trunk and blood and guts and the shattered fragments of the wagon rained down upon us and covered the adjacent cornfield in wood and gore. Thankfully, no one was hit by shrapnel. It was a Gettysburg of a day alright and we were fully immersed in the occult power that battle holds over the souls of boys. It was a feeling that the first person shooter games and paintball (not to mention the reality check of time in the service) could never quite recapture.
And yeah, this was a while ago. It was a July day in the days back before the Warming and the air was clear and cool feeling. Cotton candy clouds puffed happily across the sky, borrowed from some old Renaissance painting. A world away from the stifling muggy humidity we’re used to now. Still, we were parched from the exertion. Captain Steve, a year older and our acknowledged leader, gave each of us in turn a welcome drink from his authentic army surplus canteen. We wiped our dirty faces like we’d seen soldiers do in movies and discussed the plan of attack. We knew the enemy, and anticipated their moves. Just like the real historical Civil War, this was neighbor vs. neighbor, brother vs. brother. Each of us imagined what it would be like to be honor-bound to kill one’s own brother. Not just pin him down, and drool loogies inches from his face, or hit him with dirt clods, but actually kill him. Holy Monitor and Merrimack, that was heavy.
But this was no time for introspection. The battle lines quickly reformed. Captain Steve lowered his spyglass and called out that he could see Nathan Bedford Forest astride a dapple gray stallion in the distance, and Stonewall Jackson and even yes indeed Robert E. Lee himself surveying the carnage with cool eyes. The bullets continued to rain and the casualties continued to mount and the parrot guns bellowed to deafen the devil. “It’s getting damn hot in here boys!” said Captain Steve. Following Steve’s hand signals we scrambled 20 feet to the left and flung ourselves down behind a shallow granite overhang. It was time to give those Rebs a taste of their own business. “Fix bayonets, men. On the double-quick!” As we moved out, all the pent up tension of the day was released. With a charge of dazzling bravery the boys of the Fighting 69th were able to retake Purgatory Ridge, in this, the 7nd Battle of Bull Run, in the American war that never ever really ended.
***
The troops gathered to refresh themselves and nurse their wounds over Cragmont root beer. Steve held court and we younger boys listened intently. He was only a year or two older, going into 7th grade, but he already had the signs of manhood — a definition to the bicep, a wisp of dark down on his upper lip, and a hint of tempered steel in his glance under a darkening brow. Steve wasn’t like the other older boys, that would push us around and make fun. He would never for instance tease us if we cried a little when we crashed our bikes, or make us eat dog biscuits and tell us they were good. This was our Captain Steve. And we all wanted to be just like Steve when we grew up to be 12.
One of the younger boys pointed at a passing hot rod, an immaculate ’68 Firebird. The boys that could whistle did so and we all expressed admiration in our own way, and then looked to Steve for confirmation. Steve looked into the distance with those inscrutable eyes and gave his verdict.
“We should go back to the days before cars.” When no one waded into the silence, Steve continued, “The world would be a better place without cars. We should just use horses. And ride bikes.”
Was he being for real? Or was he just messing with us, as he sometimes did, pulling rank, reminding us that he was among us, but not of us.
Peter, a short round-shouldered boy with a teeth-gritting, jaw-jutting hustle, whether the game was basketball, kick-the-can, or the war between the states, spoke up. ”But not all cars are bad. What about ambulances?”
We all nodded. It was a good point. But Steve held his ground.
“More people have been killed by cars than will ever be saved by cars,” said Steve, and spit into the summer dust, ending the discussion.
I knew that a car had hit Steve’s family dog the previous week. So I knew Steve had his reasons for hating cars, but maybe, who knows, looking back now, maybe he was right. At any rate our small company of boys pondered and finished our Cragmont sodas in silence. A world without cars.
***
In the early 90’s, the Japanese car makers started working on a secret initiative. They knew the Warming was coming, and they were worried that they would be held responsible. They didn’t want to be the cigarette companies of the 21st Century. After watching the debacle that was the electric car, and realizing the stranglehold that the “energy companies” had on the economy and therefore the policymakers in Washington, they decided to split the difference. They would create a “hybrid.” Honda was the first to come to market, with a sleek bucket of bolts called the Insight. One of the problems with the two-door, 70-mpg Insight was that it still looked like the Jetson’s-style nerdmobile of the future – aerodynamically covered back wheels and all. In ’93, Toyota introduced the first generation hybrid Prius, so unremarkable in its ugliness that it could also be called the world’s first invisible car. It disappeared into the backwaters of history without a splash.
It was with the second-generation Prius that things really took off. The part-gas, part-electric hybrid Prius was a compromise in every conceivable way. Indifferently drivable. Modestly ugly. Mildly techy. And, HUGELY popular. Given its milquetoast soul, the backlash was tragi-comic in its intensity, manifesting itself in throwback buffoonery such as: 70’s muscle car knockoffs, indecorous flying of the stars and stripes from every kind of conceivable recreation vehicle, as well as innovative novelties such as ‘truck nuts’ - scrotum replicas hung from the trailer hitches of V-8 pickup trucks. But dangling rubber testicles could not forestall the inevitable and within 15 years, hybrids had paved the way for the elecrtric. With the range afforded by Sodium-ion and solid state batteries, (as opposed to the old school Lithium-ion) everyone agreed, the electric cars were better, hands down. Faster, more fun to drive, easier to maintain. Soon the combustion engine was a nostalgic niche, a collector’s item. But the damage was done. Mother Earth was haggard, abused, chronically fatigued, bereft of beauty. Her weariness was contagious. Distracted, medicated and doused in CBD, her children reigned in their serotonin and dopamine levels while they ping-ponged from one screen to the next. Even language itself, became, like, I don’t know, sort of like, imprecise? Lacking in certainty? As if communication itself questioned its ability to communicate. Truth was just an opinion. All the good, positive words like hope, peace, charity, joy, love and optimism received the same tired eye roll – verbal artifacts, ruins of a bygone time when, just for instance, Miami wasn’t a type 7 malarial swamp.
***
As for what we now refer to as The Warming, it came on more slowly than the alarmists predicted but rapid enough to cause widespread destruction and societal upheaval. No one really anticipated the extent of the fires, and how they would compound the greenhouse effects. No one really understood the inter-relatedness of the jet stream and sea currents. The impact on weather and changing migratory patterns. The devastation caused by the bark beetle. Desertification. The water shortages. Temperate zones turning tropic and the north becoming the new temperate. The land and resource grab occasioned by the ice melt. The warming waters accelerating the melting of the ice caps exponentially.
The erosion and exhaustion of soil. The nitrogen blooms and rise of drug-resistance bacteria, microbes and contagions like Covid, malaria and TB. The mass deaths of arctic mammals and fish. Sea lions, harbor seals, salmon, cod. The beaches becoming stinking sulfuric boneyards; a medium circle of hell lacking only brimstone. The crows, pigeons, seagulls, ants, and cockroaches – and curiously, rabbits – didn’t seem to mind. Some days it seemed like those were the only species of creatures left.
No joke, today I read about a genetic breeding experiment where they’re trying to get the crows and rats to eat the cockroaches. That scientist will win the Nobel effing prize.
Dealing with the mounting global humanitarian crisis, the increasingly totalitarian governments of the G7 put up literal and figurative walls. The rich hid behind their encrypted bank accounts and password protected gates in AC cooled mansions and penthouses, systematically dismantling all checks, all balances, all unions and all rights to resist and organize. The organs of free speech became a obsessive ticker-driven loop of anxiety, fear and misinformation. The only news item you could rely on to be even remotely impartial and accurate was the weather.
“Today we have an E-Storm Watch in effect. Look out for flash flooding. Those nearest the high waterline keep your inflatables handy. The air quality is moderately unhealthful, so wear a mask if you plan any outdoor activity. Back to you, Brenda, for sports.”
***
Maybe the humidity got to everyone. No one had the will to fight anymore. The South rose again, and slowly, inevitably turned its back on the Union. When the vote for secession came up in the House it went through like a no contest divorce. There was a bit more discussion and posturing in the Senate, but it passed there, too — with some abstentions. It’s possible that everyone just figured that the president would veto it in the end, and so no one would have to take responsibility or lose face. But Madam President stubbornly called Texas’ bluff. The “Lone Star State” had threatened for years to make good on its slogan, and with the north drowning in tropical thunderstorms and the daily compounding of federal debt, she signed. What followed didn’t exactly mimic the pattern that preceded “The War Between The States,” but close. After Texas came South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and the north half of Florida, “Floribama.”* (*A name that started as a joke but gained momentum as a way to delineate a separate identity from the more multi-cultural southeast Florida coast.) It was as if the Southeast Athletic Conference had decided to create their own nation, and so subsist solely on sports licensing and gambling revenue. Tennessee was the lone holdout. And really, with the balkanization happening around the world, what made us think that we would be immune? The former Great Britain had become Scotland, Wales and England; Italy had shattered into a number of city states, as had Greece. Catalonia was its own nation, independent of Spain. The global economy was borderless, block chain and instantaneous but everyone wore their localized nationality like a badge, or more accurately, like their football club, on shirts made in Bangladesh. The South was emptied of nearly 15% of its population, as rising heat and a general unwelcome atmosphere forced self-identifying ‘progressives’ north of the Mason-Dixon. Camps were set up in Wyoming and Montana - far from the Tsunamis and now reasonably temperate.
On the eastern seaboard, people battled the sea, wind and elements with the same grim acceptance that they’d always fought the Long Island RR and the 7:30 commute. Lower Manhattan became an intricate system of dykes and canals, beautiful in its own way. I like to think that 600 years after being founded by the Dutch, it finally, truly became a New Amsterdam. My personal pet chimera was that Canal Street become an actual canal, but no such luck. No yet anyhow. Canal Street remains a hawker’s paradise, one booth after another offering novelties, vintage jerseys, rhinestone encrusted snap-back brims and knockoff jewelry.
And that brings us up to today, or to be more precise yesterday. I was leaving my spin class, the full VR experience, with the bikes that tilt and climb. I’d done 36 miles around Lake Wakatipu on the New Zealand’s South Island before walking back out into the Varick Street gloom. The City smelled of ammonia and the now-familiar swamp rot. Above, the low ceiling of clouds roiled and tussled like rabid cats in a dank wet bag. I walked over to the Starbucks and out front was a black lab waiting patiently for its owner. And that’s what set me off. In the 19th century, they would have diagnosed it as melancholia. I hadn’t thought about Steve, or playing war back in Lakewood, or any of that for awhile, not with any clarity, not for years. But this dog, it was exactly Bosco, Steve’s dog, reincarnated. He even had the white chest and paws. I patted his head, and looked into his eyes, and my mind broke its leash and took off running down memory lane, so to speak. It's not that I wanted to think about all this. I couldn’t stop.
I’d loved Steve as only a boy can, with an uncomplicated alloy of trust, honor, and loyalty. Steve was my idol, my exemplar, the older brother I never had. And even now I appreciate his gift for creating worlds in which all us Lakewood kids could live, whole universes with their own internal logic and gravity, lasting the length of long summer days and into the twilight, a spell only broken by calls to dinner. There was true magic on the other side of “Let’s say …” The historical battles we refought. (“Cover me!”) The epic ballgames we replayed. (“Five, four, three, two, one … …”) And his family dog Bosco was 100% pure, unadulterated boy’s best friend, and could reliably guide us through any minefield.
So, yeah I was there when the car hit Steve’s dog. It was about a week before the “Civil War” day. We were playing catch with his dad’s football, regulation size, the kind that stings your hands and will sprain your fingers if you’re not careful and of course Steve threw hard. After awhile we decided to embark on a mission to the Hop-n-Shop for candy. The road to the store was a familiar street and we crossed it often to get to school or go to the store, but busy enough to have a yellow line down the middle. Bosco wasn’t supposed to come, not ever, and Steve tried a number of times to make him turn back. “Dumb dog,” Steve finally said with feigned irritation, and gave Bosco a pat on the head. We weren’t concerned. Bosco could take care of himself. Bosco paced alongside us, and then ran ahead to scout at intervals, curving back to the beat of his own doggie algorithm, looking up at us as if to say ‘Hey guys, where we going? All good so far?” On one of these curl routes Bosco drifted out into traffic, and before we could react a red Audi A4 hit Bosco in the hindquarter and spun him hard in a 360. I’ll never forget how Bosco’s eyes met ours, the dead flat shock of death mixed with puzzlement and betrayal. His crushed haunches collapsed under him as he attempted to drag himself to safety with his forelegs. We rushed over but all Steve could do was hold Bosco’s head in his lap while Bosco’s pained yelping grew quieter and quieter and then Bosco stopped twitching and shivered to stillness and we just sat there while the cars and the wars and the hunger and the hate and the greed and the making and the destruction and cycles of endless buying and selling, near and far, on our familiar streets of Lakewood and all the streets around the world just kept going on and on and without much purpose I’m sort of realizing now or even a destination.