178th St.

He stood on the east side of the road across from the normal, average ranch home. It was the type that had the garage on the right, and the house on the left. Three faceless, blank windows stared out at him from the top of the short, but steep driveway. Steep driveways are great because you know what that means? Walk-out basement. The house is on a small, rolling hill that lines the road like a plump snake for about a hundred yards before it disappears into the woods, sloping down and sinking below road level so that in the heavy rains, there are swampy parts to traipse into with splashes that fly and slap the trunks of the trees.

Staring north, the woods on his right buzzed. He turns and walks into it through the fine, grassy trail that leads over the deep ditch. “There’s frogs in there. And pollywogs,” he’d say, matter-of-factly to his friend. She wasn’t there. Not now. He’s all by himself. His shiny, blonde hair, only 60 months old, bears a white sheen and caps his head like a fine, wave of grain in the august of harvest. The buzzing sound in the woods calls him closer. The trail weaves hard and fast straight ahead, with the option of taking a left through some taller, thicker grass, or a bit further up, a short, hard right through some pines. He travels straight ahead…

A small, concrete-laden bunker lay before him. Next to it stands a steel tower made of crisscross metal blades forming a diagonal ladder 100 feet into the endless, grey, Spring sky. A warm, lake breeze kisses his forehead and playfully tosses his hair with a “Good boy!” feel that encourages a squint as he looks up in glad tidings of the slow-moving clouds, moseying overhead like a grazing herd.