JULY

Evening frog concerts are underway, locusts screech refrains from high in the pines, and I’m beckoned back to memories of childhood summers. Without hesitation, my mind leaps to Stephen King’s wonderful novella The Body, [later retitled Stand By Me]. The story opens on a bright vacation day–lit by the innocence and delight of adolescent boys hiking the woods–before taking an unexpected horrific outcome. As Mr. King does so well, he peeks under the canopy of the everyday … to reveal the unimagined dark things loitering beneath. The boys go their separate ways after their experience, each struggling with unexpressed emotions, boyish eyes no longer wide with wonder, their casual jauntiness gone, a sad awareness in its place.

In that tradition, I wrote “Uncle Buddy’s Buick,” which found its way into the Summer section of my short story collection  For All the Right Seasons. Here’s an excerpt:

The ’53 baby blue Buick Roadmaster pulled into the crushed oyster shell driveway at Gramma and Grampa’s summer cottage, taking up most of its length. Uncle Buddy leaned on the horn, yelling, “Come see what I bought!"

Twelve of us kids tumbled out to the side yard, grownups trailing behind us. The car was all dazzling chrome: from its toothy grill to its jaunty portholes and on down the long arc of trim to the rear bumper.  Nothing said cool like whitewalls and a top-down convertible. The Buick had both. It was sleek, but big as a blimp…perfect for bouncing around inside. Every one of us would have given the contents of our piggybanks for one ride with Uncle Buddy and a minute of his attention. “Hey! Who wants a ride?”

“Uncle Buddy, me? Me?”

His glance passed over me, alighting on my youngest sister. Ellie was given the nod. He cavalierly took her hand and ushered her into the idling Roadmaster.

“She deserves it. She’s polite and quiet. She doesn’t scream like the rest of you hellions.”

©Copyright 2021 by Jayne M. Adams

As fickle as a summer day, life can turn from sunshine to thunderstorms in an instant. Have a great summer. Always keep your umbrella handy and your eye on the sky. Not all is what it seems. . . .

(Hmmmm. That’s two months with “rain” themes in this blog. What next?  Hurricanes?)