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Show Oh Say Can You See? 32 minutes ago on the tour. See the railroad tracks?" He held me with only one arm as he pointed. "Uncle Jack. Put me down, Uncle Jack. I don't like to look there." My head buried into his grey uniform but got stopped at the metal numbers on his badge. "Ah, come on honey. Uncle Jack wouldn't let anything happen to you." He s t i l l held me out over the edge. "Let me down. Let me down." "Gee, why are you so upset. I wouldn't..." I ran away from his words, away to the car that boiled the closest two feet of air around i t s metal surface. The door handle was untouchable, unopenable. I couldn't hide away to cry. I had to do i t in the air, on top of that dam, in front of people from Manila, Cheyenne and Pittsburgh. I used to wonder i f there had been devils in that redfire cloud. My mother always talked about devils liking f i re and red and gambling, even how the world would end by f i re because of them. I imagined horns balancing on top of their red caps that buttoned t i g h t , holding all that cunning close between their ears while they rolled and tumbled in the churning clouds, while the f i r e burned yellow and red at the center and in my eyes when I think about i t. One night after Uncle Jack held me out over the dam, he and my mother balanced a bed on the overhead cables, thousands of feet above concrete and water. "You have disobeyed again," Mama said. "Always running off." |