Snippet

The weathered wooden screen door jumped out and slapped back into its frame. That sound, that spanking thwat, makes me feel summer more than any other noise. More than the crickets. More than the muffle that the humidity puts on the air. It resonates in my soul, like standing next to the bass drum in the marching band at the 4th of July parade.

I knew it was a hand that set the door banging. No breeze that stiff stirs in the farmhouse in the summer. And soon enough I heard Jerry's worn-out shoe footsteps slapping across our broad yellow hardwood. I was keeled back in that clever, tilting wheeled chair. It was wooden and someone had loved every slat with varnish and oil. It was so old the newspaper office was going to throw it away but we gave it a new home. I loved the giant threads on the great big screw underneath that let you twirl the chair until it was such a height. I felt like I was sitting on one those plates the Cat in the Hat was spinning on broomsticks. My feet were propped up on the family desk. The one gran'poppy made from the oak tree that used to stand in the backyard. Every member of our family for three generations had carved their names in that desk.

Cradled in that handsome chair back I felt like gravity didn't know me. I was leaned so far back I could dangle my head and the world looked upside down. So it took me a  minute to realize that Jerry's right hand was all filled up with the barrel of a shotgun.