‘It bit me!’
Liam’s parents exchanged a glance. ‘What bit you?’ His father eyed him with an interest he hadn’t shown since Mazeroski hit that famous walk-off homer.
‘The trunk!’ Liam cried. ‘Look.’ On the inside of his index finger, two tiny holes began to trickle red globules. ‘It hurts,’ he waved it in the air like a mad conductor aching to extract baroque themes from a Philip Glass work.
Doing her best mourning dove impression, Liam’s mother cooed at him as she gently grasped his forearm. ‘Trunks don’t bite,’ she chuckled airily.
After Liam’s mother had applied unguent and an aged bandaid to the wound, she brought him upstairs where his father sat on the offending piece of furniture. Dazed and pale, his father gave him a weak smile. ‘This trunk won’t be biting anyone else,’ he declared in mock triumph. ‘Come see.’
Liam vehemently shook my head.
His mother stepped from behind him and sat next to his father on the trunk. ‘See?’ she commented, ‘Perfectly safe.’
Liam inched toward them. ‘What did you do to it?’ he asked.
‘I fed it so it wouldn’t eat you,’ his father smirked.
Liam froze.
‘Jim, what are you doing?!’ my mother fumed. And then to her son, ‘He’s just kidding.’
But Liam had already fled to seek the safety of his room.
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