By the end of winter the saddler’s son had in fact made the soap factory girl fall in love with him. He abandoned the school playground at midday recess and occasionally skipped class to see her on her lunch break, or when she was working a split shift.
She started working at the soap factory when it opened in autumn. He walked her home through the butterscotch and peanut brittle leaves. He was the son of a saddler. It seemed right to Dale when he told her he would make her fall in love with him.
Duston and Russell grew frustrated and tired missing or letting lizards slip through their fingers. They deliberately flattened their hands and began indiscriminately smacking the walls. They squashed one accidentally and were satisfied. Then Duston pinned a straw lizard against a hot brick.
The plane soared upward like a ballistic Phoenix until it was a splinter in the sun and everyone squinted and turned away. They missed it curl around. Then it swooped down to a choir of hoops and screams that lifted and fell when it appeared gravity would smite its cavalier defiance.
Gonzalos swims in the light sleep of morning. He dances in his dreams to a bolero of unrequited love Rosita is humming. She had started singing boleros the day before, with her head drooped over the starboard aft, her gaze lost in the shimmering water like she was singing to the ocean itself.
Light swell slaps the wooden hull. Gonzalos, the Bolivian Vegetarian Mosquito stands shivering on the cleat at the pointed bow of the life boat. He has lost so much weight – the Vegetarian Mosquito is reduced to the sleek predatory design of his continental sisters and cousins.
