Whole Blood - V. Wheel of Fortune (chapter 5) by Alika Yarnell

Everything is heightened at twilight. This island, this bench. As she approaches, a wavy blur in the distance, a boy from the Ogon Fairgrounds drifts near me, his face smeared with pink and blue cotton candy threads. My mind’s eye zooms in to the sugary fibers and closer, still, to the molecular structure of sucrose, and I think for a moment about the geometry of nature. I try to remember anything natural with hard lines and square angles but all I can see are spheres and the oblong, amoeba shapes that exist in all things organic. The only perfect cubes and triangles and six-pointed shards I can find in nature are those within the mineral level: sugar, salt, crystals. Sure, there must be others. Mankind can’t be the only party obsessed with boxes. But while my eyes remain blurred on the blue and pink sugar trail, I wonder why it is that these grains are so small. While mankind builds skyscrapers and big screens, nature keeps her hard lines confined to tiny cubes or shards of minerals hidden in caves and mountains. I zoom out and my eyes re-focus to see the boy licking his sweetened lips.

He spins a wheel in his small hands, concentrating on the sparks. It’s an old toy, metal and slightly bent. It reminds me of one I had around his age and I wonder where he got it. I didn’t know they still made metal toys. Now it’s all plastic and foam and plush fake-furred stuff. Back then it was tin and aluminum with wind-up backs and hand-cranked keys and handles. There were mostly cars and trains and robots but this one was none of these things. It wasn’t attempting to imitate its larger counterparts, but rather to serve as a complete, whole device strictly for the amusement of the child.

The boy holds the stick between his awkward middle and forefingers and pumps the lever with his thumb making the wheel spin fast, then slow, then fast again. The wheel serves two purposes: to look pretty and to protect him from the underlying sparks. It is aluminum with windows of red and blue cellophane. Tiny sparks burst behind the spinning wheel, making red and blue fire. It isn’t enough to cause any damage, but the potential is always there. What would happen if a finger was thrust behind the protective walls of the wheel? There is something magical about this dangerous firecracker light.

I, too, am mesmerized by the toy and yank it from him, from this boy, this child. I pump the wheel fast and my eyes glaze in a meditative trance. He looks at me as if to cry, then runs away. She is here, ready to spill.