Nothing came close to the day that Betty asked Jeremy to dance. She asked him, not the other way around. A daytime dance, held outside in the schoolyard taking advantage of the first warm days of May. Her canary yellow dress sat easily against her brown skin, a flower nestled in her black braids. She was beautiful. A public school Billy Holiday. Jeremy couldn’t remember the song; it didn’t matter. For this he’d have danced to the school band. They moved in a little circle, her arms straight out and glued to his shoulders, his feet floating above the asphalt.
Maker-of-Things was trying to present his latest creation to the elders of the tribe. “You say this stuff will protect,” said Thrower-of-Stones. “Will it protect us in battle against the Lowbrows from the Valley?”
Thog just doesn’t appreciate true art. I was spitting red ochre against my hands years before he was even a glint in the flint-napper’s eye, thought Krok, petulant as he searched for his charcoal sticks. His twenty-nine year old bones aching from advanced age and damp. Where were his tools? Thog preferred the new-fangled method of urine and pigment, so he was sure that up-start didn’t take them. Dusk had already brought darkness to the cave when he left for the stream, his ancient eyes missing the group of stealthy youths who quickly drew a willy on Krok’s noble hunter.
Thog’s mind wandered as Master Krok droned on about figurative representation. In the guttering light of a bear-oil lamp, the other students listened attentively; but as Krok turned to sketch a hunter on the cave wall with his charcoal stick, they made monkey faces behind his back. Krok’s hunter was nothing but a stickman, but one of the students asked an ingratiating question about perspective. Thog snorted and shifted impatiently. Old Krok was too beholden to the Establishment. He had no vision. Thog tuned out his answer, thinking about the vibrant, raging bison he would draw next to Krok’s stickman.
Lucinda and William dined off of hand-thrown pottery. In fact, their home was filled with the artisanal—weavings and ancient quarter-sawn oak, sculpture and paintings from friends. Treasures that took fifty years to amass. 
“Oh Mon Dieu Seigneur, le bon Dieu!” Lauretta screamed, her knuckles white and soldered to the polyester armrests. What was I thinking bringing her to the Mclaughlin Planetarium? She was petrified of a lot of things: Insects, heights, tornados, Satan, but especially Space. She’d never travelled beyond Michigan so the idea of living on a spinning planet surrounded by billions of other spinning things was just too terrifying. Gravitational pull really bothered her, given the chance that should Jupiter fly off into the ether she, like Dahl’s Enormous Crocodile, would barrel head-first into the sun and sizzle like a sausage.
At six I lived in a state of perpetual hope that I, like Ginger Grant, might find myself on an uncharted island, drinking from coconuts and wearing grass skirts. Walking barefoot through sugary sand would replace my daily Kodiak trudge from Webbwood Estates to St. Gregory’s. I wanted that combination of blue, white and green. And the shells. Nubby conches and smooth-speckled cowries—’way better than our pedestrian St. Clair Beach clams. And Elvis in his Blue Hawaii phase. Those Aloha shirts so cool I could see past his tiny ukulele. We’d make a go of it all right.
Again I get into it with the Grade Two Ursuline. Looking at the world map stuck to the blackboard I asked, “So what’s on the other side?” 
