Flames whip at my feet, dogs feverishly licking their water bowl for a drink long overdue. Has pavement ever been this scorching? We stumble down the shoulder of the two-lane highway, feeling one with the haze of heat emanating from the cars that pass by. It has been the hottest day since my great-grandparents can remember, and while we walk amongst the cattails, I marvel at the fact that the world has not managed to burst into flame.
We could have turned around miles ago, given up on the mission at hand, but somehow that seemed more impossible than the heat. Our bodies, cowering from the speeding cars only inches away, trudge on. Morris, Sterling and I had been waiting for this day since the first days of summer, when Mr. Lewis’ hearse tires sank three inches into the malleable pavement outside his funeral home. Not even the dead could escape this heat.
Moving at a glacial speed, I check my watch, the one I pulled out of a ‘POPS’ cereal box during our last excursion to Sterling’s treehouse in the woods of the empty lot at the corner of Pollison Drive and Treeshade Avenue. The lot had been for sale since they found the shoe of a missing girl under a fallen tree. They never found her and no one ever comes by to scour the lot anymore. But Sterling found the macabre nature of the place a deterrent for his younger siblings and decided the build a modest treehouse. An oasis for the oldest of seven.
I think of how nice the shade of the treehouse would be as my Captain America wristwatch flickers the digits “1:46.”
“Hurry up guys! The shop opened sixteen minutes ago, it’s going to be so packed by the time we get there we won't even make it to the counter until five o’clock.”
“Shut up, will ya,” Morris breathes. “You are the one who wanted to go, you just tricked us into this trek from hell.” Sterling nods in thick approval, sweat dripping from his hair to his fingernails.
“Ay, that ain’t fair. You know this is tradition! It’s as serious as a crime to not go to O’Mara’s on the hottest day of the year.” Sterling sighs, salt water dripping as he spoke, “Yeah, the hottest day of the year, not the century!”
Too hot and woozy from the heat pounding down on us and rising beneath our summer shoes, we stop arguing. We trudge on.
My watch blinks “2:03” by the time we get to the drive leading to O’Mara’s. We stop in our tracks, physically shocked by the fact that we made it. Morris, a track star at our school of 132, is the fastest boy I know. Countless times we have taunted Mrs. Herman’s bull, George, climbing the fence in the early light of day at the back corner of her property. Most times on account of a dare. Gingerly stepping around each blade of grass for the length of a football field, creeping up behind the sleeping bull, no sooner do I slap the bull’s behind and turn around before Morris is already hopping the fence off in the distance.
Stopped at the end of O’Mara’s drive, Morris spits his coined phrase, one that has been passed down to him from his father, “enough of this horse shit.” He bolts, running around the bend and up the graveled slope. Without word, and by some hidden pool of unknown willpower, we run after him. Our appendages slippery with sweat, we run, breathing in flames and puttering out smoke. We approach the crest of the hill, O’Mara’s door in site. Sterling and I are on Morris’ heals, surprising I note, though I attribute this to Morris’ exhaustion.
We practically slide into the etched, glass door but manage to slow down, our feet heavy with quicksand. We pull the handle on the edge of euphoria, thinking of the cool breeze locked inside.
The door is locked. We look up. Below the etched “O’Mara’s Ice Cream Parlor” is a hanging sign reading “Closed.”
We melt where we stand.
