"'If wishes were horses, then beggars'... You know, that one. "'Would ride.'" It’s Roe talking. He's my cousin. Older than me, but not by much.

  "Teddy Roosevelt," Uncle Ted answers. Uncle Ted's not Roe's father, he's his uncle, like he is mine. We both like Uncle Ted. One of the best things about Uncle Ted, outside of that he'll let you pull on his beer if nobody's looking, is that he has a good answer for any question you ask him. Ask him anything, and he answers like he knows. Very convincing. Who's the president of France? Without blinking or thinking he’ll say Pierre Trudeau. So even if you know that that guy was once the president of Canada, you start thinking maybe you're wrong because the way he says it is so convincing. He doesn't talk much, hardly ever starts up a conversation, but because his answers are so good, you ask him a lot of questions so you can hear him talk.  

Roe reminds everybody of Uncle Ted cause they look a lot alike. They're both kind of thick, and they both have eyes and hair exactly the same color. A sort of sandy brown color. If the two of them had hair like Cousin It from the Addams Family, combed over their faces, and you parted it, you still wouldn't see their eyes, they'd be camouflaged, same color. Not like me. I got baby blue beacons. That's what my mother used to say before I made her quit. “My baby boy with beacons of blue,” she’d say. Oh brother.  

"'I have a dream'?" Roe asks. Roe's already turned thirteen. We have most classes together at school, where I do okay and so does Roe because he copies from me all the time. Usually my English and science, and always my math. I doubt if Roe can reduce a simple equation or count in a higher base. But I don't care that he copies. Although I do believe that one of these days he'll realize he shouldn't have been doing that. I don’t say anything because it’s not up to me to tell anybody what to do or not do.

"Martin Luther King," Uncle Ted and I answer together. Roe could've gotten that one if he'd thought about it. Mrs. Powell was talking about that exact thing last week in our US government class. Uncle Ted's shining his shoes, for Uncle Forrest's funeral I guess, and drinking beer. Roe's doing some kind of quotation quiz thing in Saturday's Post, and as long as Uncle Ted's here, neither one of us is going too far. If you don't get greedy, you can wind up drinking a lot of beer. There're other people in the house, there always are. You can hear them moving around and talking, somebody's radio playing, or the water running. It's Gramma's house and it's old and noisy, but it's big. But right now just the three of us have got the dining room.  

The papers, yesterday's Post and Daily News, today's Times and Philadelphia Inquirer (Gramma came from Philly and says she’s loyal to it), are all stacked up at one end of the table, very neat and tidy. Gramma's been through all of them already, even today, two days after her oldest son died. She reads her newspapers like some people read the Bible. Then all day long she tells you the news. Like you come in for breakfast, she tells you about the household maintenance bills of Trump’s first wife. She doesn’t like Trump one bit, not anymore. Or you come home from school and she tells you the hours the South Side was out of electricity yesterday and the location of the transformer that blew. Big news, little news, any news. The rest of her's sort of shrunk away and she's got no hair left except on her wig, but her memory is fine, thanks to the news she says.  

The news around here, which isn't in the paper, is that Uncle Forrest has died. It was a big surprise. He was always healthy, never a sick day; they go around saying stuff like that now. Heart attack at fifty-eight. Guess it was his time, they say. You can't cheat nature, and then, if they notice I'm there, they get a little nervous. The reason is, is that, even though I'm twelve, I was supposed to have died already. Not past eleven, twelve at the most, they told my parents. But here I am. Thirteen in two weeks. They say that, with what I've got, you only get so many remissions, like chances on a quarter to get the basketball in the hoop at the carnival, and that's it. I guess I'm shooting on somebody else's quarter now. Anyway, I think I make people nervous, especially now with Uncle Forrest dying. Except for Uncle Ted and Roe, and Gramma.  

Gramma may be too busy to keep track of my countdown clock. Of her six sons, three of them, counting my dad, live here in her house. Plus Roe, my mother, and me. She says she's having to raise her family all over again, thanks to how things are going in this country. She voted for Trump and now says it was a big mistake to have put a reality star in the White House. Ask her, she'll tell you what she thinks.

I've been trying to think of things to do with this bonus time I've got now. I'd like to fly in an airplane, but that costs. I'd really like to feel up some girl, like Donna Castroni who, even though she's only twelve, has a gigantic chest. That'd probably cost too. Might try smoking. Or, I might not. Keep the record clean, just in case.  

"'Walk softly and carry'... "

"A big stick!" booms Uncle Ted. "Teddy Roosevelt again." He looks over at Roe, who's just staring at him. "Hey, they could put two in by the same person." He pauses, looking steadily at Roe the whole time. "A maneuver."

The word seems to sell Roe. He folds his bottom lip over his teeth the way he does, and writes it down. I see him do the same thing when he's copying answers from me. I doubt if these quizzes have maneuvers like that, but I stay quiet. We're just passing time anyway, until they bring Uncle Forrest. Gramma wants the viewing in the front room, so that's how it'll be. They'll put his casket over by the piano, open it up my mother says, and then everyone's going to come for a look, same way they would at a funeral home. They've been delivering flowers all day, and food. The neighbors come over with casserole dishes and cakes and breads. Roe and I think the food looks pretty good. He and I are trying to decide if we want to go in and look at Uncle Forrest when he gets here. My mother says it's strictly up to us, that we can look or not, as we want.  

The air's so sweet in here, it kind of makes me gag. Between the heat and the flowers, I think it could make any person sick. One good thing about being the dead person is you don't have to smell the flowers they send. I told Roe that and he cracked up. No way I'd say it to anyone else. We figure that, when they deliver Uncle Forrest, Gramma will have to turn down the heat. I mean, you can't keep the temperature at approximately 100 degrees the way she does with a dead person arranged in the parlor, can you? Poor ole Gramma. She wears a couple a sweaters, wool stockings, and sometimes a ski cap instead of her wig, and she still complains about it being cold in here. When actually it's boiling. I have to open a window about every fifteen minutes and breathe a little cold air, just to stay alive, like a dog going on a Sunday drive with his family, with his nose stuck to the crack in the window. My mother walks around with a Japanese fan, fanning herself like some blonde Asian lady. But it's Gramma's house, and we all just live here, so we don't say a thing.  

"'Never give a sucker and even break'?" Roe takes a pretty hefty pull on Uncle Ted's beer. We're drinking Mickey's Wide Mouths.

"Phillip Tappan Barnum," Uncle Ted says, holding his shoe up and out, inspecting his polishing work. He used to be a butcher over at Towne Market, but they went out of business last year and Uncle Ted couldn't find another job. Too old to hire, and there weren't any jobs anyway he said. That's when he moved here to Gramma's with the rest of us and when he did, Roe and I didn't mind a bit having to share a room together.  

"Barum," Roe's asking. "Who? Spell that!" Old Roe. His parents, Uncle Malcolm and Aunt Shirl, live in Florida, moved down there a couple of years ago. Roe didn't want to go in the first place, but he did, they made him. He kept running away, trying to get back up here. He likes Yonkers better, if you can believe it. So finally Gramma said to let the boy live here if he wanted to. And he did. Got the room next to mine, upstairs in the front, looking right down on the Saw Mill Parkway, cars going a million miles an hour into the City, even faster coming out. Lights and noise all day, all night long. We like it.  

"World's premier circus showman. P.T. Barnum." Uncle Ted finishes his beer, holds up the bottle towards me. "Get me a cold one, will you, Sam?"

I know my mother's in the kitchen, I heard her out there on the phone a minute ago. She's having a hard time. Not so much over Uncle Forrest, he wasn't one of her big favorites. But I know it's got her all tuned up about me. I can see it in her face, tight lines around her mouth and eyes. She’s all the time getting in extra touches and hugs. She's just holding on, I know that. I think she wants to talk but she doesn't know what to say. She's way past the crying all the time stage, but she still doesn't know what to say.  

And there she is, standing at the sink washing vegetables. Her fan's on the counter where she can get it. It's really hot in the kitchen because the oven is on. She turns around when she hears me.  

"Getting a cold one for Uncle Ted," I say, though it's obvious what I'm doing.  

She nods. "How many's he... Never mind. It's his brother. He can do what he wants without any questions from me." She kind of smiles, but her face really is too tense for that. "Sam?" And from the way she says it, I know something's coming. "Sam, are you, well, are you doing okay?" My mother's sweating. There are dark circles under her arms, almost down to her waist.  

"Yes," I say. Because I am. Sure, I've had my hard times. Sure I have. And I still do sometimes when I think that I'll miss Islander games. God, I love the Islanders! And old Roe, I'll miss him. I worry that he's going to flunk school but, well, he'll have to figure something out. Sure, stuff is hard, but after all, I'm lucky and on a roll now. I'm okay.  

"Well, Sam," she begins and I think she's going to talk about looking at Uncle Forrest or death or something, and I wish she wouldn't right now. "Your English teacher called me." Now that's not what I expect to hear at all.

"Mrs. Grummer?"

"Yes. She told me that, um, that you've been turning in book reports on the same book. The last three." My mother reaches for her fan without drying her hands. She's dripping on the floor. "She says you basically just changed the titles and character names. Is that right?"

"Uh, yeah," I say. "Sorta."

And then when I don't have any idea what she'll say, her face cracks and she smiles. Her teeth are a little crooked, the two front ones overlap a little. But she's pretty when she laughs, and we both start laughing, and she looks pretty, all pink and glisteny. We try to stay quiet, keep it down, but it's hard. She's fanning and laughing, and I'm holding Uncle Ted's beer against my cheek, and laughing. 

"Sam!" Uncle Ted calls from the dining room.

"Sam," my mother says, "use your globe. At least change the locations."

"Right!" I say, backing out, bowing to her. What she doesn't know and Mrs. Loretta Grummer hasn't figured out is that I haven't done a book report on a real book all year. I make 'em up. The reports, the characters, the places, the books. In my case, I can't see that it makes much difference. 

"'To sleep perchance to dream'?" Roe's reading when I set down Uncle Ted's Mickey's.  

I think it's Shakespeare, but I wait for Uncle Ted to swallow. "Frederick Sealy." Roe and I both look at him. It's the middle of winter and the room couldn't be any hotter or smell any sweeter.

"Boys, boys, come on. Think of what you sleep on. Everybody in this house has a Posturpedic. Mine's an Extra Firm. Frederick Sealy's the foremost name in sleep." Uncle Ted's terrific. Sounds so sure, like he's the mattress and sleep authority himself and there couldn't anymore be a question of it than that it's a million degrees in this house.  

"How do you spell Sealy?" Roe asks, folding his lip.  

One thing Uncle Ted is right about and that's that everybody in this house does sleep on a Sealy Posturepedic. Gramma believes in them, has them on every bed, says they are such mattresses that they add years to your life. So we've all got them. Look at me, maybe she has a point.  

The doorbell rings and someone is right there to answer it. Gramma and my dad. It's the undertakers from Hasperns bringing Uncle Forrest. We hear them talking and can hear a lot of feet shuffling, some grunts and wheels over the floor. Obviously they're bringing in something big. Uncle Ted leaves his shoe on the table and goes out there. Roe and I look at each other. His eyes look kind of wild or afraid or something. His teeth are touching, but his bottom lip is folded over in between. I know he's waiting for me to decide whether we'll go in and look at dead Uncle Forrest. I'm thinking maybe I better and that means Roe'll have to too. I'll tell him we got to, to see if Gramma ordered a last Sealy for Uncle Forrestt. And later, I think, I'll re-do those book reports some so Roe won't get caught.