They step out onto the platform and into the heat of the city.

Johnny finds it difficult to walk on ground that stays exactly where his foot left it, so used is he to the rolling and shaking of the train

Leave your sea legs behind, find your land legs! says his father. His father has never been to sea, never even seen the ocean,

but he did work on the mammoth freighters that ply the waters of the great lakes a few hundred miles of where they now stand.

Those lakes are so big, Johnny knows, that sometimes you can't see the far shore. He knows that they are deep and cold,

and that storms on those lakes can be as bad as anything on the ocean, with monstrous waves, and howling winds

He has heard his father tell stories about the many great ships that have been sunk by storms on the great lakes.

Our Johnny imagines struggling into a sou'wester, fighting against wind and massive waves crashing across the deck to reach the wheel.

He alone can guide the ship to safety; but the warmth & sweetness of the day are calling for his attention, & he runs off down the platform

Johnny scampers along beside the motionless train his arms out, making the sputtering zooming noises he thinks that fighter planes must make

The war was long over, his mother kept telling him, but it loomed large in his imagination,

fostered by the stories his many uncles tell him & the silence that falls when someone mentions that other, unmet uncle,

the uncle who never came home. Johnny thinks the war was exciting for the pilots, soaring high above the battlefields & into the clouds.

He imagines the clouds feel soft and cold on his face as he flies through them,

, his flying goggles covered with the tiniest of rain drops tasting of the air, tasting of heaven.

Our little boy knows that the war in the trenches had been bad, and very scary. He knows this because of the uncle that never came back

but also because of another uncle who fought in the trenches. He comes to stay with them sometimes, this other uncle.

Comes to visit and to be looked after for awhile by Johnny's mother, this uncle's oldest sister

If someone slams a door, or if something falls in the kitchen his uncle jumps, and sometimes drops to the floor to hide behind the furniture

He had trouble, this uncle, trouble breathing sometimes. And he never talked about the war at all. Never.