Burning the Days Read Online Free

there was still the promissory note, almost the exact size of a check, that Lignante had signed. It was like the bundles of rubles I once saw in the bedroom trunk of a schoolmate, Azamat Guirey, whose mother was a Georgian princess and whose parents had fled Russia after the revolution. Despite all one knows, something clings to paper that once had value.
    ——
    As a boy I knew none of this. In the summer we went to the beach, Atlantic City, and stayed with my maternal grandparents: my mother, cousins, aunts, and I. Across the bright flatlands and bridges, the earth of the roadside losing its color, we drove, children in a separate compartment, the rumble seat, in back, hair blowing, arms waving in happiness. There was sea smell in the air and sun in the bedroom windows. The rhythm of life was set by adults but the carefree joys were ours.
    We played all day in the sand, down where it was smoothest, the green sea hissing at our feet. Not far offshore was the black wreckage of a small coastal steamer. We were unable to go near it but it is stuck there in memory, the sea swelling over it and then pouring away, the water dropping in sheets from its sides. A few years later, but not when we were there, the Morro Castle, a cruise ship, burned on the horizon nearby with great loss of life.
    The taste of early things lives on. In my mouth I feel the freshness of farm tomatoes and salt, the scrambled eggs my grandmother made, the unexpected gulps of sea. In my heart thereremains childish love for those cousins, whom I saw only seldom and who later drifted away entirely.
    In the summers that followed I was sent to camp. Cordial men, the owners, brought a movie projector to the apartment during the winter to show baseball games, hilltop dining halls, and small boys diving from a six-meter board. With an unheard click of a switch the boys magically left the water, feet first, sailing up to stand on the board again. “We teach that, too.”
    The camps were always on a lake, a lake with leeches. The grass was worn and dry, the counselors not reluctant to fix character with praise or a fatal nickname. One night a week the flat wooden benches were arranged in a rectangle—the boxing ring—with spectators’ benches behind. You were chosen to fight once or twice during the summer. There in the opposite corner, skinny arms ending in oversized gloves, was the grim opponent. Sometimes the outcome was already revealed in his face, victory or certain defeat. Three rounds amid the yelling, the corner shouting instructions. The sting of the blows, especially in the face, brought shameful tears to the eyes.
    At High Lake, the first camp I went to, the most feared fighter was a husky boy with one arm. The right one was missing below the elbow. He would rush in and swing the rounded stump. I have forgotten his name, Miller, I think, but not the way the flesh was rolled tight at the empty end. It was like being hit with a club.
    At a second camp, in New Hampshire, where I went for three or four years, I was matched against my closest friend who had a temper, I knew. Royal Marcher was his name. He also had a glamorous red-haired mother and a younger sister whom we scorned but who made a surprising, sensual entrance into my dreams a few years after. Agile, assured, a few pounds lighter than I was, he sat in the other corner with a cold expression. When our eyes met it seemed he did not recognize me. The bell rang.
    We moved towards each other, large gloves raised, jabbinglightly, staring at each other from behind a right hand held close to the cheek. The jabs were from too great a range. They barely brushed the skin. Once in a while there was one more solid. I was watching for his possible anger as much as anything. I saw only a lean, inexpressive face.
    Between rounds, close to my ear, the counselor who was my second instructed, “Use your left hook. He’s carrying his guard low.” I nodded. It was the summer when the first soft pubic hair was