Cleaning Out the Shed It was made of wood and held the coal that warmed the thick-walled brick building there beside it on those grounds, the one-room school eventually changed into an oil-heated house. We came when I was fifteen months, from Dayton out to the country, east of Xenia on Hoop Road. Moving as many were and would, away from advancing colored, a word most white polites used then. The shed was dark, housing for lawn mowers, tiller, tools and pools and cats and mice and sometimes rats when the felines were fewer and tamer and fed from a can. The shed was dark, even with the bulb above the bench turned on for seeing good enough in the shed. The shed was dark and usually not so you could play in there and not have it show on hands and pants. A good place to hide, make a haunted house, hear rain and put the balls and bats and my Flexible Flyer. And sometimes still certain beams of light, in certain places on certain days, bring me back to when we cleaned the shed. When my father...
Flying Island is the Online Literary Journal of the Indiana Writers Center, accepting submissions from Midwest residents and those with significant ties to the Midwest.