Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

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What David always hated most about the Sumner family dinners was the way everyone talked about him as if he were not there.

“Has he been eating enough meat lately? He looks peaked.”

“You spoil him, Carrie. If he won’t eat his dinner, don’t let him go out and play. You were like that, you know.”

“When I was his age, I was husky enough to cut down a tree with a hatchet. He couldn’t cut his way out of a fog.”

David would imagine himself invisible, floating unseen over their heads as they discussed him. Someone would ask if he had a girl friend yet, and they would tsk-tsk whether the answer was yes or no. From his vantage point he would aim a ray gun at Uncle Clarence, whom he especially disliked, because he was fat, bald, and very rich. Uncle Clarence dipped his biscuits in his gravy, or in syrup, or more often in a mixture of sorghum and butter that he stirred together on his plate until it looked like baby shit.

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