The box is empty, gritty powder and sawdust get under your nails when you feel along it, it’s empty, no there are still some little wooden fire engines on wheels. Really truly fire engines. “We must set these off Uncle Jeff. Oh these are the best of all Uncle Jeff.” They have squibs in them and go sizzling off fast over the smooth asphalt of the street, pushed by sparkling plumed fiery tails, leaving smoke behind some real fire engines.
Tucked into bed in a tall unfriendly room, with hot eyes and aching legs. “Growing pains darling,” muddy said when she tucked him in, leaning over him in a glimmering silk dress with drooping sleeves.
“Muddy what’s that little black patch on your face?”
“That,” she laughed and her necklace made a tiny tinkling, “is to make mother look prettier.”
He lay there hemmed by tall nudging wardrobes and dressers. From outside came the sound of wheels and shouting, and once in a while a band of music in the distance. His legs ached as if they’d fall off, and when he closed his eyes he was speeding through flaring blackness on a red fire engine that shot fire and sparks and colored balls out of its sizzling tail.
The July sun pricked out the holes in the worn shades on the office windows. Gus McNiel sat in the morrischair with his crutches between his knees. His face was white and puffy from months in hospital. Nellie in a straw hat with red poppies rocked herself to and fro in the swivel chair at the desk.
“Better come an set by me Nellie. That lawyer might not like it if he found yez at his desk.”
She wrinkled up her nose and got to her feet. “Gus I declare you’re scared to death.”
“You’d be scared too if you’d had what I’d had wid de railroad doctor pokin me and alookin at me loike I was a jailbird and the Jew doctor the lawyer got tellin me as I was totally in-cap-aciated. Gorry I’m all in. I think he was lyin though.”
“Gus you do as I tell ye. Keep yer mouth shut an let the other guys do the talkin’.”