“Do you recognize this boy?” Mrs. Ford dropped a photo in front of the child sitting across the desk from her.
“Not really.” It looked like big Tim but it was hard to tell. The face that stared out from the white-bordered Polaroid was swollen; the orbital sockets drawn out like small black balloons.
“Well, the child in that photo is Timothy Wilcox. You know Timothy don’t you Joseph? We need to know what happened to him.”
The larvae of mosquitoes are air breathers. Like Japanese beta fish, they must continually float to the surface in order to exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. Baby mosquitoes don’t have mouths, they breathe through holes in their abdomen. They swim to the surface, poke their bellies into the air, and do a back float; what they suck up from the air is just what they get. To propel themselves through the water the larvae wiggle their entire body. The motion of the wiggling is very strange to see. Mosquito mothers still love their larvae even though they don’t look like mosquitoes and they make those herky-jerky movements.
At Goldsworthy Dickinson elementary they never played “ringer” for keepsies however, the faculty did encourage the children to play with marbles. There was only one rule known to the children, the only rule they ever needed, that every player would go home with the same marbles they brought to school that day.
Coach Malone always carried a few sticks of chalk with him during recess for playing hopscotch, drawing on the macadam, and shooting marbles. The first kid to get the chalk had the responsibility of drawing the ring. The number of marbles contested would decide the size of the circle drawn but for as long as anyone knew the circle never got much larger than a basketball.
All of the players, usually three or four kids, would pour their bags out in the center of the chalk ring and then reach in to take away their individual banger or taw from the mass of smaller marbles. Play moved clockwise from the child who had drawn the ring. The object was to flick the banger into the larger body of brightly colored marbles and scatter them to the greatest effect, retrieving anything that rolled beyond the confines of the circle.
When all the marbles had been collected from the ring each player counted what they had. After a winner was agreed upon the players returned the marbles to the ring to be played again or, after the last game, sorted them out and returned them to their original owners. The system was not perfect and on more than one occasion a child left the field of play a little lighter or a little heavier than they should have but no one seemed to notice.
The “No Keepsies” rule that governed all play was passed from child to child until there were no children left who had been present when the rule had been formally issued. On the last day of marbles there wasn’t a single shooter at Goldsworthy who could remember the rule’s native source.
“You like Timothy Wilcox, don’t you Joseph?”
“I suppose. He’s alright.”
“No he’s not alright Joseph. Timothy is in the hospital. He has to have surgery.”
“No, I know he’s not okay. I meant..like..he’s just okay, not like good or bad or anything… just alright.”
“I know what you meant Joseph. What happened to Timmy? Did you do this to him?” Joe wondered how adults came to big decisions so easily. For Joseph there were many things to be considered and yet Mrs. Ford was completely prepared to talk about what happened on the playground only a few hours ago.
The questions fired by Mrs. Ford took on the speed of a lecture, each one dovetailing to the next. The interrogation began making him feel nauseous, slowing time like thick rubber boots stuck in mud. He tried swallowing some spit but his mouth was dry and his tongue just clicked and sticked to the backs of his teeth. “No. If it’s anyone’s fault I suppose you could say it was Timmy’s fault. He’s the one who wanted to play for ‘keepsies’.”
Mosquito larvae turn into mosquitoes. Most adult mosquitoes only live for one week. The first three days they grow. The living days are very fast. The young mosquitoes spend little time registering what is happening around them. They make no effort to understand the things that happen to them. They just buzz and fly. No two mosquitoes spend their days the same way. Well that’s what they like to tell themselves. Flying different routes, kissing different mosquitoes, whispering things. The last two days of their lives they spend watching their baby larvae and dying.
Joseph had a taw. It was a fancy little shooter that he found underneath the steps of his grandparent’s old storage shed. He had been chasing after the grey tabby cat that they called “Cuddles”. Cuddles was a mean cat but he had been declawed. When he was chased into a corner he would hiss and frantically bat his paws. For some reason, over the summer, Joseph had started getting a thrill out of trying to pick the cat up. He didn’t want to hurt the cat but he did get a kick out of having his fingers clawed at. A strike from Cuddles always startled him and sent a jolt down his back. He always retrieved his hand to assess the damage despite knowing that a cat with no claws couldn’t hurt him.
One day Joseph cornered Cuddles under the shed steps and as he creeped his hand in to get his kitty-slap thrill he saw something roll out from the dark. It was the most beautiful example of a “Devil’s Eye” taw that he had ever seen. It was very big, nearly as big as his fist, and it had a honey-yellow eye that stared out from the center of the dark crimson marble. He quickly shoved the weighty shooter into his pants pocket and looked around to make sure that no one had seen him taking it. Joseph turned back to the cat that was still cowering in the corner and saw something in its eyes. Joseph knew that the cat had purposefully given him the taw; it must have been a truce. The cat knew how much Joseph loved playing with marbles and with this massive shooter Joseph was sure to be the best player at his school, maybe the best in the world. Still locked in a gaze with one another, Joseph and Cuddles talked for what seemed like a very long time. They talked about how cruel and stupid this chasing game had become. Joseph thanked Cuddles for his gift and vowed to never bother the cat again. Cuddles suggested that Joseph might go into the house and fetch a can of tuna fish, open it, and set it out on the back porch of his grandparent’s home. So he did it and then sat down on the steps to admire his new treasure in the rays of the sun. Cuddles had eaten all the tuna and was licking the empty can in circles across the porch when Joseph finally released himself from the reverie inspired by his special marble.
Every day Joseph carried that enchanted taw with him to school safely tucked away in the royal blue, cloth bag that contained the rest of his marbles. But Joe never brought it out and he couldn’t bring himself to use it during a game. Each day at recess he poured his marbles from the bag, put the magic taw back into the bag, and used his old shooter to play with.
Anne noticed his taw and commented on it every time it rolled out of Joe’s bag. Anne Davies had attended every game of ringer that Joe could remember. She had a spectacular eye for beautifully colored marbles. She never played in a game herself but was known for her ability to describe and quantify the value of a unique marble with such emotive language that it was impossible to disagree with her affinity for the subject.
Anne was present on the last day of marbles and when it came time for Joe to put his marbles up against Big Timmy she was sitting on the far side of the circle from Joe. As much as he had wished for her to sit close to him, to clearly hear her beautiful musings on the pieces, Joe was excited by the prospect of bombarding her senses with the marbles he was sure to strike out of the ring and into her direction. He would send wave after wave of neatly lined clambroth, yellow onionskins, and rainbow oilies.
The combatants poured out their marbles and then skimmed them into the center of the ring. Spectators buzzed about the players and the ring, contending with one another for a position to watch from. Anne was leaning against Tim, her hand on his shoulder, whispering into his ear. Joe wondered what that electricity might have felt like in his own ears, down his spine, shivering to a stop against his perineum, his thoughts wandering as he leaned in to take the first shot.
“Wait.” Tim slid a hand to hover over the ring. “Let’s play this one for ‘keepsies’.”
Joseph imagined his taw slamming through the mass in the center of the ring, one great collision that sent them all scattering across the playground. He wondered for a moment if he might be able to carry all of Tim’s marbles along with his own. He was sure that Anne would help him carry what he couldn’t fit into his bag.
“Okay. You’re on.”
Malaria is the mosquito disease. It is a blood-borne parasite that attaches to the red blood cells that carry oxygen throughout your body. It causes people to have a fever and get very sick. Some people die. Some people, people who grow up around it all their lives, are less affected by malaria. Those people are adapted to the malaria and it doesn’t bother them. Since you must be bitten by a mosquito to get malaria, and only female mosquitoes drink blood, you can only get malaria from a female mosquito’s bite.
“Keepsies’ is keepsies for all of them.” The thick brow on Tim’s face furrowed and drew closer over the ridge of his nose.
“That is all of them.” Joe saw Tim eyeing his marble bag and slowly tucked it behind his back.
“You have to play the one that’s in the bag too!” Tim stepped forward, his hand outstretched.
A tiny insect zapped out of nowhere. Landing on the bouncing lip of Mrs. Ford. Joseph stared as it clung tightly and Mrs. Ford continued talking about the abhorrent nature of juvenile violence. “…children need to feel safe…”
“He broke the taw! Timmy did it! Timmy broke the taw!”
Tim shoved Joe in the shoulder and turned him round. Joe dropped the bag and both children dove after it. Tim, being a much larger boy, shoved Joseph away and took the bag over to Anne.
As Joe got to his feet he saw Tim holding the magic shooter up in the sunlight. The hand that held it took on the same golden and crimson hues that danced across Joe’s hand the first time he examined it on his grandparent’s back porch. The sight made his insides burn like an iron furnace. Joe put his head down and charged at the couple.
“Okay…okay calm down Joseph. You see now we are getting somewhere. Did Timothy break something of yours?” The abdomen of the mosquito that hung from her lip was now the size of a red swollen pea. Excess sporadically dripped onto the Polaroid of Timmy.
“He stole it. He took it out of my bag and held it in the sun. I just wanted it back.” Joseph could see a few tiny flecks darting in through the window and fly in and around Mrs. Ford’s hair. They were too far away and too small to see but Joe knew exactly what they were.
Anne had anticipated the charge and backed away but Tim was fully absorbed with light from the crimson taw. Joseph’s shoulder made contact with Tim’s lower ribs with such force that two of the ribs were instantly broken, Tim’s arm jerked downward to protect his vital organs. In the motion of that life-preserving movement Tim lost grip of the taw and sent it smashing to the pavement. Both boys fell to the ground landing directly on top of the chalk ringer.
Joe, still dazed by the collision, pushed himself from the ground. His eyes found the spellbinding marble still wobbling on the blacktop. He reeled toward it and fell to his knees. Smiling, Joe reached to pick it up and found that the taw had neatly split right down the center or the amber eye. As Joseph peeled the halves of the taw apart hundreds of mosquitoes began escaping from the depths of the crack. They poured up his hands, feeding and leaving welts on his arms.
Joe took a section of the marble into each of his hands. The furnace reignited as an intensifying scream bellowed against the hot coals in his stomach. He stood and turned to locate the wheezing prostrate body of Big Timmy Wilcox.
--The End
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