Down the Side Street
By Susan Henderson
On Saturdays we shopped at the Commissary with
Dad. My brother sat in front and liked to roll the window all
the way down to mess up my hair. Then he'd turn around and laugh
at me, and show that big silver cap over his front tooth from
when he crashed into a parked car with his sled.
Dad marched through the base in his civilian clothes, but soldiers
still saluted, and he returned them with such a fast and hard
jerk, it looked like his wrist would snap just from the whipping
motion.
I trotted behind my father, eyes on the hand that remained at
his side.
"Keep up, Lucy," he'd shout now and then. "You've
got to hustle."
My brother never bothered to hustle. He liked to scrape his
feet along without picking them off the ground. He'd go even
slower if Dad called him "Poke."
Down the side street, the brass band practiced for the weekend
parade. I wanted to be the girl with the pom poms tied to her
shoes.
I danced along behind my father, danced to the womp-womping
of the tuba, the wild drumming. The man playing the snare drum
waved to me with his sticks as I trotted with fancy steps, eyes
on my father's hand. If I could only catch up, I knew he'd take
hold.
....
Susan Henderson is Associate Editor of the Massachusetts-based
print magazine, Night Train. Her work has appeared in Oakland
Review's 25th Anniversary Anthology, Zoetrope: All-Story Extra
(December 2000 and September 2001), Today's Parent, The Pittsburgh
Quarterly, Eyeshot, Alsop Review, Happy, Opium (January 2003
and October 2003), Carve Magazine, Monkeybicycle, Hobart, The
MacGuffin, Zacatecas: A Review of Contemporary Word, Word Riot,
Pig Iron Malt, Mid-South Review, Eleven Bulls, Insolent Rudder,
Ink Pot, Moondance, North Dakota Quarterly, as well as in a
number of pamphlets and training manuals used at Pittsburgh
Action Against Rape. She
is a recipient of an Academy of American Poets award and won
an Honorable Mention in the Green Hills Literary Lantern 2003
Fiction Contest as judged by DeWitt Henry.
