I’m across from him at the table. He’s 7 and I’m 8 so I’m bigger and I know what’s best even though we have the same rules. Our legs are too short and both of us swing them while our dads are outside at the grill. His dad’s my dad’s brother. Our moms are away with our sisters. We’re alone at the table but we’re still quiet, legs swinging so we don’t explode. When I see Moses’ eyes he looks excited and my hair itches where I start to sweat a little. I look at him more and he’s got dirt all over him, but the moms aren’t here so the clean rule doesn’t matter so much. That’s what I keep telling him, Moses, that some rules don’t matter some times. I’m nervous but I’m bigger so I act cool and try to get Moses to act cool. If we don’t then they’ll look in the shed and they’ll find everything and then all the rules will matter.
I know and Moses knows and we both know we both know, but the dads come in. For dinner we’re having the kind of corn you chew off the cob. There’s butter dripping down our chins and there’s burgers and cheese and hot dogs and we both forget about the shed and we forget about the plan because we’re starving. We spent all day in the sun working on our plan, trying to get into the Wycots’ garage, which we did, and trying to get everything into the wheelbarrow, and we did that too.
When it’s over, dinner, I know Moses is getting nervous again because his legs are back to swinging, but we still have more to do before the plan finished. I say Moses lets go catch frogs. He smiles and we run out even though we don’t ask to be excused, another rule for when there are moms, and Moses starts off towards the pond in the field. I follow him and when he’s quiet, listening for the ribbits, I say You did a good job not spilling and he says I know. I say we still need to finish the plan, and he stops smiling. I tell him that all we need to do is get the little plastic lighter in my dad’s pocket. I can tell that doesn’t work for him because of the rule we know against taking things that aren’t ours and I see that I’ll need to do this part by myself like James Bond.
Moses and I lay down then, in the field with the pond, and we watch the sky turn from light blue to purple to darker blue while the lightning bugs wake up. The air gets heavier and the crickets and cicadas chirp and scream and the grass makes our backs wet and scratchy. I can hear Moses’ breath slow down. The bugs and the frogs and I wait a little longer for Moses to fall asleep.
I get up slow and I tip-toe at first and then start running as fast as I can back towards the house. My dad is with Moses’ dad because they’re brothers and their faces are crackling red and orange with the fire that’s just a pile of garbage and the rusty springs of the mattress we burned a night ago back when Moses and I were just coming up with our plan.
I climb up on my dad’s lap and I’m too big so he grunts and says Jesus pal. I make myself the heaviest right on his bad knee that never got better from when he was younger and he says Oh bud off off off. In the fuss he doesn’t feel my fingers try to take the little plastic lighter from his butt pocket, the same lighter he taught me how to use last night. Since the moms are gone, no one could say Jim don’t teach him that. He looks at me now and says Where’s Moses, and I say He’s catching frogs, and he says Go help him. I run, same as before but faster, my hand in a tight fist because it’s got the last part of the plan.
Moses and I are running with the wheelbarrow now. It’s loud and creaky and we don’t care because we’re moving so fast. We’re moving everything from the shed where no one could see, into the field under the sky where everyone would. We’re running so fast because there are no more rules to break in our plan. It’s just us and the bugs and the dads and the rusty springs curling in the fire.
Moses asks Who’s gonna do it, and I say We both can, even though he doesn’t know how to do the lighter. When you’re bigger you have to share. We put everything from the wheelbarrow into rows like the instructions on the boxes show. We tie the strings one to another. I let Moses do it, but I watch him. It’s just getting to be real nighttime now and the light is almost gone while we take the last string and tie it to the pile and unspool as much as is left. We step backwards together as far as we can with it, through the lightning bugs and the crickets that don’t know our plan is finishing. Finally I stop and Moses stops and he looks at me. I can hear how fast he’s breathing and I am too. I can’t see his face but I know he’s smiling because I am too and we hold the lighter. I hold down one part and roll another part and it takes a few tries but the little string catches and our faces light up for a second in the dark and I can see every one of Moses’ teeth. Just as it catches we drop it and we turn and we start running towards the house.
I hear Moses laughing, running behind me, and he screams even though nothing has happened yet. We’re running towards the dads and the dads turn from their fire, in slow motion, towards Moses’ scream, and we can’t see their faces with the fire behind them. We’re halfway across the field to them and that’s when the last part of our plan happens in the sky and we don’t even see that first one, we just see our dads’ faces light up white and red a second before we hear the booms. We don’t stop running and Moses keeps looking forward to see if his dad’s face is happy or angry and I don’t care what my dad’s face is doing because our plan worked so I look back and up and into the sky. The next one is going off, even taller and brighter than the first. This one’s orange and yellow, and it doesn’t matter the rules we broke because the boom and crackles are so loud that they drown out the crickets and cicadas, chirping and screaming.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I couldn’t decide whether to make the possessive form of Moses “Moses’s” or “Moses’”. Some house guides say, regardless of the final consonant, add an apostrophe and an -s. A lot of guides also have specific exceptions though, and a popular one is to omit the final -s for Biblical or classical names like Moses and Jesus (“Jesus’ teachings”). Until recently, this carve-out was used by Chicago Manual of Style, for example.
When it comes to a proper noun ending in -s, the AP Style Book says to use only a single apostrophe, without the additional -s. The NYT style guide agrees but adds the -s when it follows a word that ends in a silent sibilant letter (like in Arkansas), rather than a pronounced sibilant (as in Kansas).
Speaking of Kansas, when the Supreme Court ruled on Kansas v. Marsh in 2006, Justice Clarence Thomas, in his opinion, wrote “Kansas’ statute”, while Justice Souter used “Kansas’s statute”. (Souter has since retired, succeeded by Justice Sotomayor, who has omitted the final -s as recently as 2023.)
A long time ago I was given a copy of The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. I checked with them and on the first page of their book, they include the classical-name exception to possessive pronouns ending in -s. I’m choosing to defer to them until convinced otherwise. ■