Winter Days can get you thinking...

BLUE CAR and SWEATY LEGS

The boy sat on the bench picking at the flaking green paint. It had been painted green many times but in different shades - a sort of grayish olive on the bottom directly on the wood followed by a grassy color then a few other layers until finally on top was a shiny but dark sea-foam. He knew these colors from the art lessons he had taken over the last couple of years. As he picked at the middle paint layers he tried to think of the names for each tiny shift in color - lighter, darker, more yellow, more blue. But it was difficult to concentrate on this as other thoughts kept intruding.

Is Mom going to be mad?, he wondered. How mad? Maybe there was a way to blame the bus driver. Maybe Mom will be distracted and not say anything at all. Not likely. This was the second time he had missed the bus in the last month. “What were you doing?”, she’d say. “What were you thinking?” “Are you doing this on purpose?”, she’d say. But this was not a question.

Just as this thought began to go somewhere a car approached from around the corner onto the small street that ran alongside the playground. It was really more of an alley. It was the blue Buick station wagon that belonged to Roger Dean. “I hope they stop...but only if Roger isn’t in the car” he thought. Roger’s mom is nice. She might take him home. If he got there before Mom did there would be no trouble as long as Mrs. Dean never mentioned it. But the long car rolled by without stopping.

Just as it passed, the boy could see a hand rising in the back window, middle finger extended. That’s Roger, he thought, and was glad to still be sitting on the bench.  “That car was skyblue” he told himself “which is different from cornflower, but just a little. Or turquoise”. He visualized the big box of crayons he’d just gotten from Gibson’s. Sixty-eight colors. Was turquoise in there? He thought of the one called “flesh”. He couldn’t think of anyone with skin that color except maybe a baby on a hot day, brownish pink with a little yellow in it.

It really was getting hot. Must be a hundred, he thought, and then got up feeling the slight slime slip his sweaty legs made against the bench as he stood.

- FREDDY / MoFo