Read A Summer Life for Free Online

jelly-red sweetness from a footprint-sized Danish.
    While Grandfather played a game of solitaire, I fooled with the toothpicks in the wooden, pig-shaped holder, the only thing that resembled a toy in the house or yard. I swept the crumbs from the table and pinched the donut crumbs from grandfather's plate. Grandmother did the dishes, ever mindful of the sweep of the sunshine clock. “Viejo,” she said, “it's time.”
    I walked Grandfather to the front yard, where he stopped and said to me, “A pink house is worth lot of money, m'ijo.” We both stood admiring the house, trimmed with flowers and a wrought-iron gate, a plastic flamingo standing one-legged in front of a geranium. This was home, the color of his life. We started up the block, me taking two steps for every one of his, and he said no one's lawn was as green as his. When we looked back, when Grandfather said I should go because it was time to work, Grandmother was at the front window beating the dusty windowsills with a dish towel, waving goodbye until later.
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The Rhino
    I GOT UP QUICKLY on my knees in the back seat of our Chevy and stared at a charging rhino painted on the side of a tire company. His legs were pleated with lines, his horn broken, and his eyes yellow and furious. I stared at the rhino until my father's car pulled around the corner, its sluggish shadow following closely behind, and we flew onto the freeway.
    I looked at Father. His shirt was brilliant white in the late sun. He was working something from his teeth with a matchbook cover, and Mother was penciling words into a black book. I wanted to ask about the rhino but I knew that they would shush me.
    It scared me to think that tires were being made from rhinoceros hides. So many things were possible. We were eating cows, I knew, and drinking goats milk in cans. Pigs feet came stuffed into cloudy jars. Cheese came in blocks from an animal that ate something very orange or very yellow. The Molinas stirred bony pigeons in pots of boiling water, and a pig's happy grin showed up on the bacon wrapper. Hop-Along Cassidy was a face that appeared on milk cartons, his hand on his pistol, and what I noticed was that his horse didn't have any feet. I imagined that someone had cut off his hooves and the horse had to lay down for the rest of his life.
    I knew some of our clothes were cut from hides. Father's belt had an alligator look, his lathering brush was the whiskers of a docile pony, and his shoes, whose tips were mirror-bright, were cowhide. My own shoes were also leather and small as toy trucks. Mother's sweater was wool. Her pillow was a restrained cloud of chicken feathers. Her key chain was a rabbit's foot with a claw that drew blood when raked against skin.
    Our neighbor had a bear skin rug spread on his living room floor. Uncle Junior had a shrunken head that swayed from a car mirror. The mouth was stiched closed with black thread and the left eye was half-open. My aunt wore a fox fur with claws clipped together in friendship. The fox's eyes were smoke-brown marbles, but his teeth, jagged as my aunt's, were real. And my cousin Isaac, two years older with kindergarten already behind him, showed me a bloody finger in a gift box. He wiggled the finger and I jumped back, terrified.
    I sat back down. I watched mostly the sky, billboards, and telephone poles. A sonic boom scared Mother and had me back on my knees looking around. The sky was pink as a scar in the west where the sun struggled to go down. Birds huddled on a chain link fence, and because I could count to ten I used all my fingers to tell Mother there were eight. Mother looked up from her book, turned on her knees, and ran a comb through my hair.
    Father pulled off the freeway, and after two sharp turns, he pulled into my nina's yard, scattering chickens and a large black dog. The dog sniffed us as we got out, and I was so scared that he might bite, Father pulled me into his arms and put me on a low peach tree