A Day at the Pool The little boy sat where he had been put down, on a wooden bench in a crowded locker room. Three women gathered around him, toweling off after their showers, taken after a swim. Eyes wide, the little boy watched, enchanted by their hair, their graceful movements, the melody of three voices, intoning words of commonplace concerns. Behind them a sunbeam ... in a women's locker room? He loved all three of them, but most of all the woman at the center. Dust floated in and out of the light from the window set high above them. Oh the stories that sunbeams hold! His world was experienced, and understood, without words. Sounds, shapes, motion, the grammar of nature, the motion of marionettes. She held his hand as they walked in the center of three who held secrets. He hoped to learn. Each woman wore slim white or tan summer shorts. She wore a headkerchief and placed him in the back of an old beige station wagon. The click of a lighter, then he eyed the flame. The cigarette, now lit, intersected with music from the radio, the sound of crunching gravel as the car moved through the parking lot of the old YMCA. Smoke gathered between them. He watched the smoke and the back of her head, listened as she sang along with the song on the radio. It was a hit sung by Englebert Humperdink.