As Tom didn’t get any reaction from his brother, he stopped picking berries and turned to him. Douglas, hunched over, was an ideal target. Tom jumped on him, yelling. They fell and rolled.
At first Douglas was afraid that the great Thing would be scared off, but no… it was all right! Their falling tumble had not scared off the tidal wave that crashed now, rolling them along the grass. Knuckles struck his mouth. He tasted warm blood, clutched Tom, held him tight, and so in silence they lay, breathing hard. Then, slowly, afraid he would find nothing, Douglas opened one eye.
And everything, absolutely everything, was there.
The world, like a gigantic eye, which has also just opened and stretched out to embrace everything, stared back at him.
And suddenly he understood what had jumped on him and it would not run away now.
I’m alive, he thought.
He let go of Tom and lay on his back holding his hand up and looking at his fingers through which the sun rays streamed making them look like a red flag.
The grass whispered under his body. The wind sighed over his ears. Ten thousand individual hairs grew a millionth of an inch on his head. He heard the twin hearts beating in each ear, the third heart beating in his throat, the two hearts pulsating in his wrists, the real heart throbbing in his chest. The million pores on his body opened.
I’m really alive! he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don’t remember!
He yelled it loudly but silently, a dozen times! Twelve years old and only now discovering this rare timepiece, this gold-bright clock and guaranteed to run three-score and ten, left under a tree and found while wrestling.
“Doug, you okay?” asked Tom.
Douglas yelled, grabbed Tom, and rolled.
They rolled downhill, laughing till they cried.
“Doug, you’re not mad?”
“No, no!”Douglas said excitedly and then asked quietly, “Tom… does everyone in the world… know he’s alive?”
“Sure. Heck, yes!”
“I hope they do,” whispered Douglas. “Oh, I sure hope they know.”
Douglas looked at his father, who was standing high above him there in the green-leaved sky, laughing. Their eyes met. Douglas understood. Dad knows, he thought. It was all planned. He brought us here on purpose, so this could happen to me! He knows it all. And now he knows that I know.
Dad helped him to his feet. He swayed a little, still puzzled and awed. Then he looked at Dad and Tom.
“I’ll carry all the buckets,” he said. “This once, let me haul everything.”
They handed over their buckets with quizzical smiles.
He stood swaying slightly under the heavy weight of the buckets full ofjuicy forest riches. I want to feel all there is to feel, he thought. Let me feel tired, now. I mustn’t forget, I’m alive, I know I’m alive, I mustn’t forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that.
The bees followed and the smell of fox grapes and yellow summer followed as he walked through the forest toward that incredible highway which would take them back to the town. His brother and his quiet father followed behind.
Later in the day there was another harvest.
Grandfather stood on the wide front porch questioning the wind and the high sky and the lawn on which stood Douglas and Tom to question only him.
“Grandpa, are they ready? Now?”
Grandfather pinched his chin. “Five hundred, a thousand, two thousand easily. Yes, yes, a good supply. Pick ’em easy, pick ’em all. A dime for every sack delivered to the press!”
The boys smiled and started to pick the golden flowers. The flowers that flooded the world, dripped off lawns onto brick streets, tapped softly at crystal cellar windows and agitated themselves so that on all sides lay the dazzle and glitter of molten sun.
“Every year,” said Grandfather. “They run amok; I let them. Pride of lions in the yard. A common flower, a weed that no one sees, yes. But for us, a noble thing, the dandelion.”
So, the dandelions in sacks were carried into the cellar, and its darkness glowed with their arrival. Grandfather operated the wine-press, and the golden tide, the essence of this fine fair month ranfrom the spout below. Then it was to be bottled in clean ketchup shakers and put in sparkling rows in cellar gloom.
Dandelion wine.
The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and sealed. Douglas was glad that now when he really knew he was alive, some of his new knowledge, some of this special vintage day would be sealed away and could be opened on a January day. The snow would be falling fast and there would be no sun for weeks, or months, and perhaps some of the miracle would be by then forgotten and in need of renewal. Since this was going to be a summer of unexpected wonders, he wanted it all saved and labeled so that any time he wished, he might go to the cellar, and there the rows of the dandelion wine would stand, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a light layer of dust on the bottles. Look through it at the wintryday – the snow melted to grass, the trees were in green leaf and blossoms again, and the sky turned from iron to blue.
Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in.
Even Grandma, one cold windy day in February, would vanish to the cellar.
Above, in the vast house, there would be coughings, sneezings, and groans, childish fevers, sore throats, red noses, the stealthy microbe everywhere.
Then, rising from the cellar like a June goddess, Grandma would come, something hidden but obvious under her shawl. This, carried to every miserable room, would be poured into neat glasses and swigged neatly. The medicines of another time, the balm of sun and idle August afternoons, the sounds of ice wagons passing on brick avenues, and of lawn mowers moving through ant countries, all these, all these in a glass.
Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine. Dandelion wine.
These fine and golden words would be repeated every winter for all the white winters in time. Saying them over and over on the lips, like a smile, like a sudden patch of sunlight in the dark.
The boys of summer were running. The grass sprang up again behind them. They passed like cloud shadows downhill.
Douglas, left behind, stopped at the edge of the ravine. This ravine divided the town in halves. Here civilization ceased. Here was only growing earth, and here were the paths, made or yet unmade, that told of the need of boys traveling, always traveling, to be men.
Douglas turned. This winding path led to the icehouse where winter lived on the yellow days. This path ran to the hot sands of the lake shore in July. This to trees where boys might grow like sour and still-green crab apples, hidden among leaves. This to peach orchard, grape arbor, watermelons lying like tortoise-shell cats sleeping in the sun. That path, now deserted, to school! This, straight as an arrow, to Saturday cowboy matinees. And this, by the creek waters, to wilderness beyond town…
Who could say where town or wilderness began? There was always and forever some indefinable place where the two struggled for possession of a certain avenue, a tree, a bush. Each night the wilderness, the meadows, the far country flowed down-creek through ravine and flowed up in town with a smell