Karl Harshbarger The Fox King EveI)' day thac spring and summer when he and his friends weren't eating or sleeping or standing on the sidelines watching the older boys play pick-up softball on the vacant lot, Danny Morrison and his friends were at war, glorious war. Their battles ranged over the whole neighborhood, from the railroad trestle and the rock quarry on the far side of the orchard all the way co the Methodist Church and Masser's Grocery on the other side of Hancher Avenue, along hedges, across back yards, over fences, inside and outside of the construction of new houses, even between cars on the street. Back then their weapons weren't very technologically advancedjust single shot water pistols. To compensate, Danny and his friends carried six or seven pistols in bandoleers of one kind or another their mothers had sewn for them. (Danny's best friend, Bobby Grettelman, carried a bandoleer that held fifteen pistols.) So the boys had to be careful not to get carried away in the heat of battle and shoot too soon or too often because when the inevitable happened and one of them ran out of water, he would have to leave all his buddies up on the front line and high, tail it way back to one of the buckets to refill. As that summer progressed and Danny returned home in the late afternoon after running patrols, he found more and more cardboard boxes piled on top of each other in the living room and dining room and more and more empty spaces in the other rooms in the house. One morning, just as his parents had been telling him all summer it would happen, a huge yellow truck with ''Allied'' written across its side loomed up in front of their house, its air brakes hissing. Danny's moth~r stood in the middle of the front yard with a notepad while men in green overalls carried all those boxes from inside the house out into the truck. Danny's father came to the front porch where Danny and his little sister were watching and lifted Danny up and kissed him and then lifted his sister up and kissed her and explained again that he was taking the train on ahead to West Virginia to get things ready, but that he'd see them soon at their new home when they arrived with their mother in the car. "Danny, you'll be the man of the family for a few days. You take care of your mother and sister." "He's a real little man," said Danny's mother coming up onto the porch. "He's a big boy," said his father. 16
FUGUE #27