Summer Satan Francis McDonald Harris Bartholomew, known to his friends as Chigger, tired of his tree-climbing peers and decided to spend his summer perfecting the subtle craft of sabotage. Waiting until the carrier disappeared around the corner, he stuffed the Millers’ mailbox with flyers from the Sunday paper and ducked behind the hedge to watch Mrs. Miller throw up her hands in disgust. He picked a hundred dandelions from a vacant lot and snuck out at midnight to blow their parachute seeds over every lawn on the block. He saw his neighbors, every weekend, on their knees, yanking and cursing. He snuck into the toolshed stash of Davey Chen, legendary firecracker dealer, and snipped a half inch from every fuse. He spent the Fourth of July watching his friends suck on their throbbing fingers, suppressing his laughter. He smuggled a pair of scissors into Ted’s Toys and snipped each spool of string at mid-point, then made regular circuits of Braly Park to watch the kites fall from the sky. In late August, he sat for hours at the Cambrian Shopping Plaza, charting the pedestrian flow patterns. Early the next morning, he took a jumbo pack of gum and placed freshly chewed wads at strategic locations. It was the best Saturday ever. At a meeting of the PTA, a week before school, the parents compared notes and discovered that they had all suffered summers of incessant, inexplicable irritation: a son with no feeling in his index finger, fierce invasions of weeds, kites dangling from telephone wires, gum on every other shoe. Unable to finger a culprit, they decided to set an example. Chigger’s primary concerns were the growing pressure in his bladder, the imminent arrival of his classmates, and the tricky matter of removing the duct tape that held his body to the top of the flagpole. Still, he had an excellent view of the neighborhood – the fields of his summer campaign – and all in all he would have to conclude that it was totally worth it.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 22:26:36 +0000
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