Waiting for the Snow Cone Man

It was late afternoon, and the sun began to sneak a peek underneath the trees, chasing their shadows across the yard, up against the house. Terry sat his butt down on the back of his ankles--teetering forward a little on his toes, then back--his nickel still in his hand. He wondered about the snow cone man.

Masking tape held four good-sized magnolia leaves at their stems, a big floppy green X affixed neatly between his shoulder blades on the back of the purple tie-dyed t-shirt his mom dyed in a pot on the stove in the kitchen at home.

Two long dry strands of spaghetti still stuck up straight from the back of his head, held in place by string that was partly hidden underneath his hair and tied in a knot on his forehead. He was a bugged little bug beginning to wonder about his latest plan to make the snow cone man laugh.

That's the deal they had. If he made him laugh, Terry got to keep his nickel and have a snow cone on the house--or on the truck, the snow cone man would say, laughing--but in a flavor of the snow cone man's choosing. If the man didn't laugh, then a nickel seemed like a lot more than a nickel to the kid, even if he got exactly the flavor he wanted. He liked the free cones better because they took longer to make. And the longer they took the more fun the little bug had watching the man sort through his syrup, looking for just the right colors to mix together--like a mad scientist turned artist--to show what colors became other colors when drizzled all over each other.

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