When I was six, my best friend Chaney and I walked to the end of the McKinley Road on Falmouth Foresides. Portland lay across the harbor.
The color of the water was a Maine blue.
Seagulls skated through the cloudless sky.
Chaney pulled out darts from his father’s den.
He gave me one.
I threw it and the dart hit a seagull in the neck.
Its wings quivered and the bird fluttered to the mud flat.
Blood spewed from the wound. Chaney and I watched the bird die.
A wave lapped over the gull and washed the corpse into the harbor.
Chaney put away the darts.
I hadn’t even aimed at the gull.
We walked back home.
Neither of us said anything to anyone.
Not even to Cathy Burns.
We both loved her.
Chaney drowned in Sebago Lake in 1960.
He was eight.
Always will be eight.
I will never forget him.