Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [6]
The park also has a swimming pool. I just about go dead in the water watching Troo climb up those silvery high-dive steps and run to the end of the board screaming, “Geronimo,” which she will probably do even louder now after all the practice she got at camp.
The Jack Hoyt Woods are a big relief. When you can’t take the sun beating down on you for one more second, you can eat a peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwich in a leafy branch or get your ankles wet when you look for leeches under slimy rocks in the Honey Creek that runs through it.
There’s also a band shell, but it’s not much good until after it gets dark. That’s why it’s called Music Under the Stars. Once a week you can lie out on a blanket and hear an orchestra perform something like Rhapsody in Blue by Mr. George Gershwin (one of Mother and Dave’s favorites) and drink cup after cup of Graf’s Root Beer (Troo guzzles it) while you search for the Big and Little Dippers in the western sky (Daddy went nuts for them). When the show’s all over, everybody in the neighborhood gathers their stuff and walks back home, laughing and calling to each other, or sometimes there’s a scuffle because they mighta had too much Pabst Blue Ribbon Under the Stars.
And it’s not only during the months of June, July and August when this park is the star of the show. When it gets cold and snowy, you can take a leap onto your flying saucer on Statue Hill. Or bundle up and go skating. I feel much better being around the lagoon once it freezes over. I can’t do spins or jumps or anything else fancy like that, but I like the feel of the chilly air on my forehead and the blades cutting through the ice sound like I mean business.
But the absolute best part of the park, no matter what time of the year it is, has always been right where we are. The zoo. Sitting on the bench under our favorite climbing tree in front of Sampson the gorilla’s enclosure. Daddy and I used to sit at this exact same spot together. He’d point at Sampson and say, “Some people say the lion is the king of the jungle, but I’d have to disagree with them. Just look at him, Sal! He is magnificent!” I would nod my head, but what I was secretly thinking was No, Daddy, you are the king. Of the land and the sky. It’s you who is magnificent.
That was in the good old days. Before the night Bobby the counselor set me down on the grass near the lagoon. Before I heard Daddy’s voice call to me from on high—Now, Sal, now . . . fly like the wind—and I ripped down the zoo path and jumped over the black iron fence in front of Sampson’s enclosure. When Bobby caught up to me, he gave me the same winning smile I loved when we played chess together at the playground. Only that night he didn’t say, “Checkmate. Better luck next time.” He ran the tip of his tongue over his top lip so slowly and whispered, “Gotcha,” and I was sure that he did. But when he leaped over the fence, the air came off his body and his arms became wings. I waited until the timing was right and I ducked. Bobby flew over my head like Sky King’s Songbird and crashed down into Sampson’s pit. He died, so the only one he’s playing chess with now is Lucifer.
The reason we came here today is so I can say one last good-bye to Sampson. On one side of me on the zoo bench this morning is Mary Lane. (We have to call her by her first and last name like that because around here if you just shout out “Mary” you could get trampled to death since it is the most popular name there is due to the