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Whistler sodded the roof instead, and the grass is long and green.
    The magazine is near the east wall. Between the thwap, thwap of the whip and Marshall’s screaming, I can hear the traffic going by on Spy Run.
    The street is on the other side of the wall. Cars honk at the sentry in the blockhouse from time to time as they go by.
    The real fort was on the other side of the river, near where the apartments are now, up on the high ground. That’s how they got the land to build this fort. It’s on the flood plain along with all the parks.
    There is a lot of flood plain when you have three rivers running through a town.
    One of the first jobs I did in the spring was sandbag the fort during the flood. We pumped the water out into Spy Run and back into the river. But the water really didn’t go anywhere. I was happy to work three days and nights without pay. It was a good way to get to know the people I was going to work with. And it was a big flood, a hundred-year flood, and I was in it with historians.
    That night the President’s helicopter was beating around overhead. Its spotlight was dancing all around and lighting up this little clearing. There we were, passing heavy wet bags. The water was rippling into waves from the rotors. Looking up I could see the rain pouring through the beam of light. Jim still worries about rot damage to the wood, termites and such, but everything is green and cool this summer, and it will probably stay this way until fall.
    The roof is nice with clover blooming.
    Most of the people in the crowd wear dark glasses. We can’t, of course. My face is tired at night from squinting. I have just started wearing contacts, so I can go without my glasses. Jim’s face is lined from the weather and from worry. We’re always trying to get the visitors to see how much quicker people aged then.
    This will be my only summer here, you know. George Washington Whistler has to be sixteen.
    Marshall’s been carried off to the hospital. Lieutenant Curtis has dismissed the men, and they are dispersing. My sisters have been dabbing the corners of their eyes with handkerchiefs. Their bonnets hide a part of their faces. My father is talking to a group of visitors, slapping his gloves, in his hand, on his flexed knee—talking about discipline and justice and a peacetime army, I imagine.
    “Who are you?” says a little boy, calling up to me on the magazine roof.
    He is wearing sunglasses with six-shooters in the upper corners of the lenses.
    I tell him who I am, and he asks if I know the soldier who was beaten.
    I tell him that I do know him and why he was punished.
    “Can I come up there?” the boy asks.
    “Nope,” I say.
    This isn’t the only thing I’ve been doing this summer. I still go out. I ride around town with some of the guys from school. We make the loop from the one Azar’s Big Boy out on the bypass to the other one by South Side High School. Everybody’s got their first jobs, running registers or dropping fries. They cut grass on Forest Park. It gives them money for the cars and enough left over to order food and hold down a booth without getting kicked out.
    Some of my friends are going to summer school, and that’s what my job seems like to the others, like summer school.
    We go by the Calvary Temple sign that flashes Calvary, Temple, Calvary, Temple .
    Clinton splits off into a one-way street. We go past the old power plant and the fenced substation with wires going out everywhere. On the ribs of the big transformers are these fans pointed at the fins on the side. They are on sometimes to cool down the transformers. But at night the blades are feathering, turning slowly in the breeze.
    Les always says how funny it is that they use some electricity to run the fans to cool the transformers to make the electricity. Over the St. Mary’s, by the armory, under the overpass, through downtown, under the overpass, and into the near south side of the city. Coming back, we go up Lafayette, which