Though he is only seven years old, Walt knows how to handle a sword. He parries to his right then ducks just in time to avoid the pirate’s dagger. With each swipe of his blade and every exhalation of his breath, the two boys walking with him get a strong whiff of bacon and maple syrup. A true hero never leaves home without eating a good breakfast. After a perfectly timed pirouette and a short shuffle backwards, he lunges forward, plunging his cutlass into the heart of his enemy. Once again, he had saved the day. 

     Jeffrey watches the entire dance in disbelief.  “What the heck is your brother doing Henry?”

     “He’s just excited about his first day of kindergarten.” 

     “Well, if he keeps jumping around like that, we’re going to be late.”

     A light breeze carries the sound of a clanging bell that lets the older students know it is time to enter the building. Walt hears the bell as a warning to get ready for the next attack. 

     “Come on Walt, we need to hurry!”

     Jeffrey looks back occasionally and snickers at the lanky youth with his blonde, army brat crewcut.  

     Henry slaps Jeffrey on the back of the head.

     “Knock it off. He’s just a kid.”

    “Yeah, just a kid dressed like some kind of weird, pink ballerina!” 

      Jeffrey is referring to the outfit Walt and his mother had picked out of the JCPenney catalog.  Swashbuckling and daring like his favorite pirate heroes. Walt wore a pink ruffled shirt with flowing sword fighter sleeves and a wide collar that opened a bit at the top to show his hairless, pale chest with just a hint of blue dyed long underwear beneath and the red cloth ties that held his cape to his neck. He matched all this with maroon pants and socks and soft red velvet shoes. 

     “Just leave him alone,” 

     Preparing to deal with the oncoming enemy ship, Walt overhears Jeffrey say, “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.”  He stops moving and looks down. It’s too late. His last thrust put his foot directly on top of a crack. He makes sure to jump over every crack the rest of the way right up to the school doors hoping to save his mother.  As he jumps, he holds his fist out in front of him with his Superman lunch box held tightly to his side.  Whispering to himself so no one can hear, “Faster than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” He feels the tightness of his red cape as it pulls beneath his shirt. 

     As they approach the school Walt looks up with wide eyes and a wider smile. He sees a castle before him, pretending to be a school. Three stories high made of small brown bricks with large windows surrounded by white wooden frames and battlements at each corner where he plans to position himself with a longbow and quiver of arrows. Walt had no idea that school was going to be so fun. 

     Henry waves goodbye to Jeffrey and walks Walt into the building as he promised his mother. Walt had never seen so many children in one place. Wall to wall children, walking, running, rushing about. An adult pleads with them to slow down.  Waves of voices and footsteps crashing, echoing through the gray, brightly lit halls. He runs a hand along the smooth, cool, shiny surface of the wall as he gets closer to his room.  There is an odor of lemon. The same lemon smell of his mother’s clean floors at home. He wishes he could be there now. 

     “Please stay with me.”

     “I can’t buddy. I have to go to my classroom too.”

     He could tell his brother was trying to be nice. He never called him buddy. Henry leans down and whispers, “You’re wearing the suit, right?

     “Yes,” Walt mumbles trying not to cry, as he struggles with the fear of being on his own in the world for the first time.

     “Then you will be fine. Remember what I said. There is nothing you can’t handle as long as you wear the suit. Just remember to wait for me after school.”

     Henry gently pushes him into the room then moves down the hall giving him one last smile as he disappears around the corner. Walt wraps his arms tightly around his lunch box as he enters the room. He sees a large group of children, all sitting at their desks. He is late.  He hears loud laughter. Children are pointing.  Others cover their mouths. Wide eyes and raised eyebrows. A girl snorts. He has no idea what they could be laughing about. He glances back. It is just the teacher closing the door. She does not laugh but smiles sympathetically. He realizes what it is as he feels the heat of his face turning a dark shade of red, matching his pink and velvet outfit perfectly. Walt notices a pretty girl with long blonde hair wearing a fluffy pink sweater smiling at him. Her blue eyes seem to say, “very nice, very cool.” Maybe things will be ok after all. 

     “Quiet class!” 

     The teacher asks his name and points to a desk in the middle of the room. There would be no escape. Everyone looks at him as he goes toward his desk and slinks sideways into his seat.  The words, “Ms. Grey,” are written on the blackboard.  Walt sees that she is in fact, gray. Her dress and shoes were all different shades of gray.  She wore a frilly white blouse.  He wonders if she had gotten it all from the same catalog.  He notices her large belly and realizes that she is going to have a baby, maybe more than one.  His friend Tommy’s dog had five babies over the summer. Ms. Grey has a much bigger belly and Walt is certain she will have at least eight babies, maybe more. 

     He is afraid to look around the room as he can feel everyone staring at him. His ears are still on fire. Ms. Grey claps her hands and asks for everyone’s attention. 

     “Did you all remember to bring your items for show and tell? I sent a letter to each of your parents asking them to send you with something to show that would help all of us get to know each other better.”

     She points to the front of the room and says she wants everyone to take a turn. Walt sits through a parade of baseball bats, pictures of dogs and cats and a jar filled with wood ticks.  One girl shows her grandmother’s black wig. Walt imagines a bald old woman running around her house trying to remember where she last put her hair. 

     Finally, it is his turn.  He walks to the front of the room with his lunch box under his arm as if it is a briefcase and he is a lawyer approaching the bench.  He sets the box on top of the teacher’s desk, opens it and reaches inside. Turning dramatically, like a magician with a never-before-seen reveal, he holds two cow’s eyes that have been in his lunch box since the night before and in his dresser at home for at least a week.  He lifts them over his head and then in front of his own eyes. The odor sets him back a bit.  “My grandfather came from Germany and is a butcher working at the grocery store in town.”  As he is talking, liquid from the eyes begins to drip from his tiny fingers onto the floor.  The smell is getting more intense.  Several children squirm in their seats.  He can tell that some find this very fascinating, though pink sweater girl seems uncertain with her head quizzically cocked to the side, her mouth slightly open and both eyes half closed, as if she can barely stand to see what is happening but cannot look away.  Ms. Grey moves towards him as she screams in a high pitched, desperate voice, “Please put those back into your lunch box.!” As she gets close to him, she slips on the fluid building up around him and gently drops to the floor.  She tries to get up but slips again.  Then the smell seems to hit her, and she begins to gag as she attempts to crawl to a drier spot. He watches her as one of the eyeballs slips from his fingers and rolls past her toward the children at their desks. More tortured screaming. The principal enters the room.  He seems puzzled. 

     “What’s all this about?” 

     He sees Walt with one cow eye held out in front of his face, a three eyed monster or Hindu deity.  The principal squints his eyes and puckers his lips as he appears to notice the rotting smell of nearly liquified cow eyes.  He helps Ms. Grey up and goes to open a window.  Walt retrieves the rogue eyeball and puts both back in his lunch box. He sees that his peanut butter and jelly sandwich is covered in smelly, sticky fluid but the plastic bag appears to be protecting it.   He goes back to his seat as the principal continues to talk to Ms. Grey. They agree the children should take a tour of the gym while the janitor cleans the room. 

     Ms. Grey asks the boys and girls to form a line next to each other. Walt is happy to see that the pink sweater girl is right next to him.  She appears to him as a golden-haired goddess. A true damsel he may have to save from pirates one day. Though a part of him thinks she might have to rescue him.  

     Walt comes to a decision.  He is going to kiss this girl, hopefully in a way that no one will notice, possibly not even her. His plan is to jump quickly and quietly like a ninja toward the girls’ line, hoping it all happens in super-fast motion, returning to his line before anyone sees a thing.  As he begins to jump, he realizes with shock and horror that it is all happening in extremely slow motion. He pushes out his thin little lips as his long, uncoordinated body floats through the air.  He feels himself slowly land next to her as his sweaty lips press into her soft cheek. The smell of lilacs enters his nose.  All eyes widen and slowly turn toward him, arms moving up with fingers pointing as the sound of laughter once again erupts. The heat reignites his ears and face as he watches the goddess falling to the ground and he begins his painfully slow descent back into his own line.  He will never forget the odd look on her face, as if she had taken a long drink of spoiled milk and desperately wanted to spit it out.  Ms. Grey calls them all to attention and the march to the gym begins. 

     After the tour, the children eat lunch. Blue and yellow mats are placed on the ground where the eyeball fluid used to be.  Following a short nap, Walt learns several new things about himself. Though he is right-handed he will begin to learn to use his left. According to Ms. Grey, left-handed people are rare and unique, which is exactly what Walt wants to be.  He also discovers that two layers of clothing on a hot, humid September day in Minnesota is a very bad idea. As the day progresses, he begins to feel uncomfortably warm and sweaty.  His pink sword fighter shirt is soaked through showing the faint outline of a giant, “S” on his chest. Lastly, he realizes that he has no idea how to get home.  Walt’s school day is done.  Henry has an hour or more left so will be of no help, though Walt has a vague memory of him giving instructions about this. 

     There is an eruption of kindergarteners as they pour out the doors of the school. Walt pushes his way through the crowd, never taking his eyes off a small group of students walking with Ms. Grey.  He has no idea which direction to go so he follows them hoping they will walk past his home. After walking for half a block one of the girls in the group notices him and pulls on Ms. Grey’s arm.

     “That smelly kissing boy is following us.” 

Ms. Grey turns and smiles at Walt then points in the opposite direction.  “I think you have to go that way to get home Walt.” As he turns to walk toward the east, he hears the muffled giggles of the children. “The adventure continues,” he says quietly to himself as he begins his long walk home. 

     He doesn’t care about them laughing anymore.  He is hot and tired and just wants to get moving.  He walks and walks and walks.  He passes the NorthStar gas station, staring longingly at the rusty red cooler outside filled with green frosted bottles of ice-cold Mountain Dew. The houses on each block gradually begin to thin out until he no longer sees any and pavement turns to dirt. He continues to walk, leaving the town behind him. Droplets of sweat drip down his forehead.  He opens his mouth wide to stretch his dry throat.

     Walt passes huge fields of tall, green corn stalks.  He stops outside the town cemetery.  The tombstones are surrounded by a white picket fence that is faded and broken. Tall trees near and within the fence begin to blow back and forth and around like living windmills as the breeze becomes a squall.  A tornado of leaves dancing and crackling around him.  The air moving through branches.  Sirens whisper to him.  Not luring toward the cemetery but away. A woman’s gentle voice pushes in and out of him like a breath, “Not too much farther little man.” Shaking the sweat and strange thoughts from his head he picks up the pace, pushing forward through the wind and heat and humidity trying to get as far away as possible. 

     Walt takes off his shirt and tries to force it into his lunchbox, but the drenched shirt slips to the ground unnoticed and dances with the wind on the road before slithering silently into the field. Cars pass. A semi-truck, a school bus, a mail carrier and others. One honks. All speed on without stopping. There will be conversations around dinner tables tonight about a boy walking along the side of the road wearing a blue shirt with a giant red “S” on the front and a long red cape flowing in the hot wind behind him. 

     The sky begins to darken though sunset is hours away. Walt is starting to realize that this may be more than he can handle, even with the suit that has gotten him through so many other adventures.  A mist releases from the sky that slowly turns into a drizzle. He can feel and smell the wetness in the air.  Walt sticks out his tongue trying to catch the moisture.

      A Godzilla-like screeching behind him wakes him from his walking dream. He jumps and runs toward the field.  An old tractor pulls up next to him. A man wearing a worn Twins baseball cap, mud covered t-shirt and faded jeans yells out to him, “are you lost little man?” Walt looks over at him trying not to cry and nods his head.

     “Come on up,” 

Walt has never been on a tractor before.  After several failed attempts he scampers up and stands next to the man holding on to the back of the seat. The man turns toward him. “My names Jim.  What’s yours?” 

     “I’m Walt.”  He then tells him the story of his first day at school and not knowing how to get home.  He leaves out the part about the cow’s eyes and the disastrous kiss, two things he hopes his mother never finds out.  Walt and the man drive down the wet muddy road as the rain falls harder. Thunder can be heard far away. After a short time, they pull into a driveway that leads to a large red barn and a smaller white house. A barking German Shepard runs to the tractor to say hello, wagging his large tail and jumping toward the man.

     “Good boy Argos, good boy.” 

Then Walt sees the cows, lots of black and white cows.  They appear to be watching him too. He has never seen a cow in real life. He feels their intense stares and unconsciously hides his lunch box behind his back, trying not to look at them again. The man helps him down from the tractor and leads him toward the house where two children, a young girl, sitting on a large porch and a boy leaning in the shadows against the outer wall. 

     “Do you know this boy, Jimmy Jr.?”

     Jimmy Jr., who appears to be about Walt’s age, is barefoot, wearing a white t-shirt and white brief underwear. He stares at Walt and slowly shakes his head.  Walt had never seen him either. The man asks the girl to go get Walt a glass of lemonade and tells Jimmy Jr. to quit with the staring.  Walt enjoys the cold, sweet taste of real lemonade while Jimmy Jr. and his sister Jenny stand nearby staring and wrinkling their noses as they appear to notice the unusual scent of sweat and liquified cow eyes radiating from the boy and his lunchbox.  The man goes into the house to call the school while Walt sits on the porch step with Jenny, drinking his lemonade and watching the rain and occasional lightning. 

     Jenny is about a year younger than Walt. She has short brown hair and is wearing a white dress that goes down to her bare ankles and feet. 

   “I never met a superhero before.”  

     Walt takes another sip of his lemonade and grins. “Where’s your momma?”  As he asks this, he wonders what his own mother was doing at that moment. He hoped she wasn’t mad. 

     Jimmy Jr. finally has something to say. “She ain’t alive no more.”

Jenny points down the road from where he came. “She’s in the cemetery,”

The man returns in a rusty, red truck and looks at this son. “Get some pants on Jimmy Jr. We’re going to town.”

     Jenny gets in front with him and the boys crawl into the back. They sit with their backs to the cab and watch the road pass behind them. The rain has stopped. They see blue sky in the distance and a red setting sun. 

Walt has never driven in the back of a truck before.  A death-defying carnival ride, wide-open air with plenty of bumps along the way. Walt thinks it might be the most amazing thing he has ever done. Jimmy Jr. looks over at him, “I like your cape.”

     “Thanks. My momma made it.”

     They go down roads Walt does not recognize until they pass the NorthStar gas station and then the school.   Soon they are on Oak Street and things begin to look even more familiar.  He stands and turns to face forward, the red cape blowing behind him. He sees the familiar yellow two-story house and the yellow garage with the crooked, rusty horseshoe hanging precariously above the faded and peeling doors. His mother is sitting on the step at the front of the house with her head in her hands. His dog is wrestling with Henry on the grass.  As he begins to crawl out of the truck, Walt sees his mother running towards him and shouting his name.  He starts running towards her then stops and goes back.  He unties his cape and hands it to Jimmy Jr. 

     “I don’t need this anymore,”

     “Gosh, thanks Walt.”

     His mother comes around the truck and reaches out to him. He feels her arms wrap around him as she gives him a tight hug and does not let go. Walt feels her tears running down his face. After some time, she says, “What’s that smell?”  Walt pretends not to hear the question. 

     “Mom, I saw a cow!” 

The End

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