Sixty-Six

One Neil lived up the street from me, from the time we used to live in the old neighborhood--with row houses that went on for miles, to the end of the horizon--and then even after we moved to the new neighborhood, where there were three-story wood homes covered in shingle, and front lawns with hedges, and big trees that seemed to stretch on forever. My first awareness--my first memory of Neil--was somewhere around the age of three. I had cut the index finger on my left hand very badly, and it was taped up in an elaborate bandage. Neil had cut the index finger on his right hand, and it too was taped in a very large bandage. My cut was vertical and ran the length of my finger. His was horizontal and cut into the bone. We were lucky in one respect--I was right-handed and he was left-handed. So there we were, two three-year-olds who liked to duel, using our bandaged fingers as swords. On occasion, if I blocked Neil's finger thrusts too strenuously, I felt a little bit of a stinging sensation that ran down the whole length of my arm and straight up to my brain. We moved to suburbia when I was six. There, we lived almost parallel to one another, separated by one block. I would run out my front door, down the steps, across the front walkway, jump across the evergreen bush, across the street through the neighbor's front yard, zigzag around the back of their garage, watching out for the clothesline, through the alley, through the back of another house, around the front, across Main Avenue, up Neil's walk and then finally his brick steps. It was about a minute and thirty seconds, depending on ground conditions. Sometimes, if it rained, the little puddles that I had to sidestep slowed me down. Neil was six weeks older than me. Those weeks separated us the most in our early lives--he was able to start the first grade in February, and I had to wait until the following September. Because of that, we never attended the same class. He started junior high and high school before I did, and then, because of those six weeks, ultimately he was drafted for Vietnam and I was not. Six little weeks. Neil and I saw each other almost every day for at least sixteen years. Even when we were sick, we still found a way to play together. We both came down with the flu one time and played tic-tac-toe over the telephone. We each had a tic-tac-toe grid with numbered boxes--upper left was a 1, upper middle a 2, upper right a 3, middle left a 4, and so on. As soon as our mothers were out the door, we got on the phone and the games began. "O on 6." "X on 3." "O on 9." My mother had a fit when she came home later that day. She was trying to call the house and couldn't get through for four hours. "How could you tie up the line like that?" Logic was on my side. "It's free, Ma. They don't charge to call a block." "Someone could have been run over or something and I'd never have got through. Tic-tac-toe on the phone! How high is your fever?" "I don't know. I'm winning 138 games to 96." "Get the thermometer." Then there's a gap. I can't remember how long the flu lasted; I don't know whether we ever played tic-tac-toe on the phone again. I do remember that, in school, I always wanted to write "5/5/55" at the top of my paper. The entire spring, I looked forward to May 5, 1955, and writing "5/5/55." But I never did. I got sick and missed school that day. I actually tried to hide the fact that I was sick. I got dressed, thinking 5/5/55 the whole time. I came down to have breakfast, and knew I had a fever. I even started shaking at the table the way you do when your temperature gets high. I tried to make as if I was just cold, but my grandmother immediately knew something was wrong. I saw the hand reaching out to feel my forehead. I tried to block her,Levinson, Barry is the author of 'Sixty-Six', published 2003 under ISBN 9780767915335 and ISBN 076791533X.