The most beautiful boat

He is nine and I am ten. We are brothers. We share a room upstairs. Our beds are six feet apart. His bed is under the window because he likes to look at the shoulders and fingers of the burly maple trees outside.

He will go on to spend his life working with trees and wood. My bed is in the corner because I like to curl up and read the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift and Jack London. I will go on to spend my life with stories and books.

We spend a lot of time upstairs. Upstairs is for dreaming and downstairs is for everything else. Today upstairs is the Pacific Ocean and we are building a boat using the slats of our beds, which we are not supposed to take out from under the mattresses, but we take them out from under the mattresses carefully, noting how they were laid under the mattresses so we can return them properly and not get that look from dad. Our older brother says darkly that this look from dad can stop time and quell hurricanes and frighten warlords in faraway jungles, and this may be so.