In July of 1955 I lived in Marion Ohio. I was five years old, to turn six in September that year. I was very young, but I remember several incidences during that summer. My Uncle Tom was fifteen to turn sixteen that year, and used to visit fairly regularly. I remember he had a firecracker cannon that you dropped a lit firecracker into, and if you stuffed paper quickly in afterwards, it would shoot out shreds of paper after it went off. He also had a little motor scooter that he took me for rides on occasionally. He was very fifties, very James Dean, and impressed me quite a bit as a little boy with all the dangerous things he did as a teen. At five going on six I was eager to impress any older boy with my daring do as well. I had a friend down the block named Paul, who was two years older than me, who took to me because of my knowledge of basball cards, interest in airplanes, and pirate sword fighting with wooden swords Uncle Tom made for us. Most of the neighborhood boys were impressed with Uncle Tom. I think he made my first rubber band gun as well.

 

As that summer went along, Paul and I got to be good friends. I defended myself, and my sister, a few times in boyish skirmishes, and rock throwing fights across the street; even taking a good wound to the nose once and surviving. The object was to stand there and not chicken out, a painful object I would discover, but well worth the gain in neighborhood status. I had a pretty good reputation as a scrapper by the end of that summer, highly enhanced by my Uncle Tom I'm sure, but a reputation none the less. One day Paul happened to see me flinch when a bee began to buzz about my head. He started to tease me about being afraid of bees, so of course when he suggested that we catch bees in glass jars, I had to prove that I wasn't afraid. We began to regularly catch bees and release them at other kids to scare them. We noticed immediately that the other kids were impressed not only that we caught bees, but that out mothers gave us permission to do it with glass jars as well. It was quite a power trip for a couple of silly boys.

 

One afternoon we were at the schoolyard with the big swings catching bees and chasing kids around. I remember it was after the fourth of July, but before my sister's birthday on the thirtieth. Paul got into an argument about Mickey Mantle with some other older boy and I drifted off toward the swings waiting to see what would come of it. I noticed an older dark-haired girl lazily swinging on the swing, in what looked like a Catholic School uniform. I thought she might be an older sister of one of the kids I was teasing, so I looked at her a bit warily. I'd gotten thumped enough by my Aunt Maryanna who was around thirteen, so I knew enough to respect an older girl's power. She looked up at me curiously and said, "What are you doing boy?" I thought it was odd at the time to address me as just plain boy, but I never knew the signifigance until later in life. I plunged ahead and replied, "Catching bees." She asked, "Why?" I decided not to answer that right away, and took the offensive brandishing my jar, "Want to see these two?" She replied, "Sure." I handed her the jar and she looked them over at different angles for a bit and then said, "You have to let them go you know. They'll die in the jar." I said, "They're just bees." She said, "Don't you know the flowers need bees?" I just said, "I never kill them. I always let them go." Aunt Maryanna had told me the same thing. Then the girl just unscrewed the jar lid and shook the bees free saying, "All right then."

 

I was impressed now. I asked, "Are you Catholic?" She ignored the question and began to swing slowly humming a song I didn't know. The she asked, "Is that your brother over there?" I said, "No, I only have a sister and she's at home with my Mom." And then I added, "But my Mom is having another baby soon." She stopped swinging and looked at me smiling and said, "That's your brother. Your Mom's new baby." I looked at her for a minute, and then for no reason just took her at her word. I think she sensed that I had done so and then said, "I think of being a Nun sometimes. They marry Jesus, and get a wedding ring and everything. You have to be very good though." Even I knew about Nuns so I just said, "They can't have babies though. They're married to God." She scolded me and said, "I'm not a dumb bunny you know." She giggled and started swinging and said, "Do you know this song?" And then she began to sing, "Let me tell you about the birds and the bees, and the flowers and the trees, and the moon up above, and a thing called love." I said, "No I never heard it before." She said, "You will." Then she looked at me peacefully and said, "I have to go home now boy. Tomorrow is my birthday." I said, "Happy Brithday then. Watch out for bees." She feigned a frown, and said again, "I'm not a dumb bunny you know." She ran up over the hill behind the swings, and I never saw her again in Ohio.

 

The day before my birthday, September 29, in the early evening I was playing outside in the backyard. I was imagining my swing set a great sailing ship under my command. There was a storm coming in, but I was determined to stay out there in the growing wind and play pirate. My Mom kept calling me to come in and I kept puting her off. She said, "Tommy you get in here if the lightening gets any closer." I said, "In a minute Mom. It's OK." Inevitably the storm began to grow, the sky darkening as the winds picked up. Suddenly there was a great clap of thunder, and a huge lightening bolt cut through the air. It startled me and I took off for the back door of the house. Halfway across the yard I stepped on a bee in my bare feet and got stung on the right foot. It started to rain. I hopped and jumped and managed to get to the backdoor, tears in my eyes, and reached out for the doorhandle and got stung again on the right hand by a yellowjacket perched on the door handle. The next day I had a sore swollen right hand and foot. I remembered the girl on the swing on my own birthday in 1955, and on the day my brother was born in October that year. 

 

I know now that somehow the girl was Zaz. I think she was trying to let me know she was coming into the world the day before she arrived. The last few years I have equated the bee stings with the unexpected death of my brother, and the tragic death of her Billy. The song she was singing turned out to be the Jewel Aiken hit song from 1965. The first time I heard the song on the radio I thought it was a silly old song from back in the fifties. I told my friends that liked it, that it was stupid to compare a song like that to Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone". I was so serious in the sixties. I think I was so precocious as a child, because I was so terrified of my Father. It was a defense mechanism to stay on my toes and be smart around him. That the girl, Zaz, was ten years old simply indicates how mature of a five year old I was at times. She knew I was smart, and she made sure to show me how smart she was, and not to get too big for my britches.