Summer Scars and Memories It was a scorching June day; 1967. The sky was heat-faded blue. We rode out for a swim at King's Bridge in a gentle bend of the Oconee River. I was sitting behind my big brother on the open back of his shiny BSA, wearing an old tee shirt over my suit. We rounded a corner in Nicholson and saw a crowd of school girls. Big brother did a show-off wheel stand on the hot cracked pavement. I was only fourteen that summer; I kept that scar on my butt forever. When we returned home in the evening, there was a letter in the box. Our lives were marked and sliced that hot afternoon in June. My brother was only eighteen when he left for Vietnam; he kept that scar on his soul forever. Shirley Alexander © 2007Return to Backward Glances
