"The Mosquito Truck"

I'm going back to a Florida summer in the Sixties here. (Parts of it are unchanged even now as in this photo.) Enjoy.

The Mosquito Truck

Thick-headed fog roams street to street, engulfing us kids, white stuff fuming from the back of the big truck. Down First, over Sea Gull, up Second, around all the numbered streets and past our house on Albatross Drive. Mosquitoes are the foe, DDT spewing from the back of a truck our big science. We believe in big science. That’s how our daddies’ rockets are going to beat the Russians’.

The cloud billows and blooms dense and white. The boys on their bikes hoop and holler from inside the soft tunnel, following as the truck makes its rounds. The only thing visible is a wheel spoke here, a foot on a pedal there, a wild face squinting. Ghost boys appear and disappear in a noisy ghost machine, following the call.

We girls hang back a bit on our bikes where the fumes are thinner. We squeal. Our eyes burn. We’re repulsed by the stench. But we, too, love the mystery of the fog; we want the magic of invisibility, the coy visibility. We want to be lost in a way you can’t ever be lost under the blasting Florida sun.

The boys will eventually grow to soldiers and disappear into the fog of jungle, or slide away into narcotic mists, or stalk the miasma of manhood. We girls hang back a bit. We still want to believe in magic. We want to believe we will fall in love and turn into princesses.