Boyhood

Boyhood is an attempt at climbing as high as the stars. And once forgotten one is still climbing. I am looking out at the street from my window through glass that ripples and has bubbles but is always clean. I have many friends, but I am always up before them watching the street for the first to emerge. I never am out first. On most Saturday mornings the sun glints against the windows on the other side of the street blanking them out and sometimes hurting my eyes.

On some mornings when it's raining the Astoria, Queens summer streets are steamy and bathed in purple light while streams run along the gutters with bits of paper racing to the sewers. Behind me through the open window in the bathroom I hear the water running down the drains and splashing into the courtyard and as the drops get slower I know when the rain is over.

I sometimes have to wait a long time for Billy K. I can't say his last name but I like the name "Billy K" because it reminds me of the cowboy, Billy the Kid. Billy K still is missing two teeth in front. Mine came in real early before I was seven. Billy and I go to the library a lot. I never went to a library before Billy K. I didn't know there was such a place. The first time I was there I was scared.

"They're going to give me books for free, Billy?"

"That's what they're supposed to do."

The way Billy said it, I was expecting to be called stupid or silly. But he never said anything to make me feel bad. Billy K was a quiet boy and mostly we sat on his stoop and looked at books or played Go fish or talked about the war that had past us almost before we were born as if we were old men who lived through it all. Billy did most of the talking especially about his father who was in the war, but who I never saw.

Still I didn't always play with Billy K and one day when I walked past him to go down the block to where Larry and Dennis lived, he looked up at me with those missing teeth showing and said, "Want to go to the library today?"

"No. Not today Billy. Today I'm playing a different game."

"With who?"

"You know Larry and Dennis?"

"I don't like them. They always pick on me." He said.

"They don't pick on me. They like me. Dennis showed me his father's Japanese rifle that he got during the war. We always play war." Billy smiled up at me, a knowing smile, and then looked down at the ground between his legs and I walked by.

One morning on my way to school I walked past Billy K's stoop hoping to see him come bounding down arms flapping and book bag by the handles. There was a truck opposite his stoop and a ramp touched the street from a door in its side like a great tongue. Two men were struggling up the ramp with a green plastic covered couch. Billy K was standing next to the stoop watching not dressed for school.

"You're going to school today, Billy?" I asked.

"No. Today I'm moving."

"So you're going tomorrow?"

"I don’t know, probably."

"Where are you moving to?"

"I don't really know. . . I think the Bronx."

"Where's that, around the corner?"

"It's around lots of corners far away, maybe as far as

Japan."

"That far? I won't see you then tomorrow?" I asked.

"Can you go to the Bronx?" he asked.

"The Bronx? I don't know. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Can you come here?"

"I'll come if my mother lets me. I know this place pretty good." Billy said.

"Ok. Goodbye Billy, I have to go to school. I'll see you then. Maybe we can go to the library."

"Yeah, ok. Goodbye," he said. "I hope I see you some place."

I never saw Billy K again.