My Boy

He slammed the screen door, but the screen door demurred, bouncing against the door frame with a polite pat. He threw his backpack across the cracked-ice Formica tabletop, but the sweat-soaked canvas stopped it in its tracks. With two desires unmet, he couldn’t help but bellow: “I want ice cream!”

At this, his mother opened her eyes. Cat nap over, she kicked her outstretched legs off the chrome-framed chair. The thin fabric of her dress, no longer caught in the current of the box fan on the floor, deflated. “The fridge blew out. Everything’s melted.”

The boy fell to his knees in front of the box fan and screamed, his voice phasing against the spinning blades. “Ice cream!” He vocoded.

“Math homework!” His mother taunted.

“Waa!” He screamed into the fan, imagining himself a giant grasshopper who didn’t know the difference between a hot afternoon or a cozy oilination in a campfire skillet.

Then they heard the crooked melody as the ice cream truck rounded the corner at the end of the block. His mother grabbed her coin pursue and ran out the door, grinning over her shoulder at the ten-year-old boy hopping fast at her heels.