My Brother
I remember a time when Albert and I were very young. I had read the story of Icarus and the waxwings and told my brother and friends the tale. Albert's eyes were wide with the possibility of flight. Never mind the moral of the story. It was the fantastical, the wonder of flight that captivated him. We were country boys full of dreams and possibilities, and Albert said, "Let's calculate," which was a word he had just learned, but it immediately set the plan in motion. We found a corrugated crate the railroad workers had tossed by the cotton gin. We measured and cut wings, glued chicken feathers, and attached rope and wire for hand and flight control. We christened the wings Icarus. We used an old outhouse as a launching station and surrounded it with mounds of loose dirt in case of an emergency landing, and we waited for a haboob, a dust storm prevalent in the Texas panhandle. Weeks later, awakened by the rattling of windows and the smell of dirt, exhilarated by what ...
