Highlights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Bill Connolly

flat then scurried across the dirty linoleum to I don ’t know where. I whirled Zach onto the taped-up couch. It let out a slow hiss as he sank in it.

“You stretched out my shirt!” he said. The dog was still yipping.

“Yeah, hell, and I broke the door, too. Will!” I lifted the screen and got the wheels back in the groove. “Goddamn it. Brian! Get in here. ”

They come in slow.

Will raised a hand. “Hi, Zach. ” He plopped down on the couch, wiggled a sec, then pulled the black remote out from under him. He held it in his hands like he ’d never seen one before.

“No. Put it down, ” I told him.

“What?”

“Just put it down, ” I said.

“Y’ all get off my property, ” Zach told

us.

“You shut up a minute. Sit on the couch there, too, Brian. ”

Three blind monkeys they looked like. They needed a leader, but there wasn ’t any.

“Somebody better start saying something, ” I said. “Now. ”

Zach got nervous. Angela ’ s wouldn ’t look at him. “Stupid cow was eating my pop tart, ” he said.

Will’ s eyes lit up. “You were feeding it, Zach. Remember?”

“Remember, ” I said. “You better remember. ”

“Not all of it! I wasn ’t, ” Zach said. “I wasn ’ t. It just started“

“So we had to stop it, ” Brian explained.

“It wouldn ’t stop eating Zach’ s food, ” Will cried. He got to his feet, not even knowing he was doing it.

“Sit down. And stay sat down. ”

“You seen it, ” Zach said to the boys.

Brian was real calm. “That’ s the way it happened, Tim. ” He ’d get better at this as he got older.

I tried to imagine how they brought it down. Chasing after it. The whole thing. “Regular heroes. Stopped a cow from eating a pop tart. How ’d you think to start putting the sticks in it?”

They shrugged.

“Huh? You guys aren ’t even supposed to be inthat pasture, ” I said.

They tailed me like dogs to the metal shed on our lot. The backyard was damp, and the shed was situated in its lowest spot—it was always full of mosquitoes. I brushed a cobweb off my nose and grabbed the old shovel.

“Ho, mother, ” Brian smiled, rubbing his shoulder. “You gonna bury it, Tim?”

I tossed the thing to him. He spun it

Highlights

By Bill Connolly

Of all the indiscreet behaviors that colored my college years, my deep drags of yellow highlighter those zebra stripes I painted across textbook pages may be my most peculiar disgrace.

How hard it was to draw the line when drawing those lines. Once I had stretched that cautionary color like crime scene tape across chapters, inches led easily to yards until half of a story, most of an epic lay glistening from my indiscriminate, squeaky touch.

Professors derided aimless effort and preached diligence while, headphones on, I rode my own neon yellow Zamboni machine, painting long bands of importance in their sacred texts. Those books, still on my shelves, have one lesson left to teach: sharpen my daily search for the heart of what matters.

And so I will cap the marker of expedience and read my days deeply: I will notice that dot of yellow in the corner of my daughter ’ s eye when I’ ve spoken too harshly, the beautiful yellow parentheses framing my wife ’ s mouth when she says something funny, and the furrow in my young son ’ s brow, its yellow crevice telling me that this word he cannot pronounce yet is, in his opinion, important.

Bill Connolly is an administrator in the Woodstown-Pilesgrove Regional School District in Woodstown, NJ.

Main Street in Manayunk by Pauline Braun © 2008

in his hands.

“No, ” I said.

I let that sink in. We went back into the woods.

None of them was very good. Will, he was about useless. Zach was probably the best because he was the heaviest, but he wasn ’t into it. In little more than a half hour, they had this uneven ditch about four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet deep.

“Shovel sucks, ” Zach said.

Will showed me his palm. “I got a splinter. ”

A horsefly settled just below the calf’ s eye and sat there in the sun like it was waiting for a bus. “The hole ’ s not big enough yet, ” I told them. “Look at it. ”

Zach held his arms out to get the width of the calf, then he tried to hold his measure as he moved his hands over the hole. “It’ s goddamn close. ”

Brian snatched up the shovel. “Why we have to put it in the ground?” he asked. “Won ’t it just“

“Because y ’ all killed it. ” I looked around at them. “Aren ’t you even embarrassed? I’d be. Or maybe you ’d rather go over there, Brian, and tell the farmer y ’ all killed his calf. ”

“No. ”

“Huh? And for no reason, ” I added.

“It wasn ’t just me. ” Brian put the shovel on his shoulder and swung for the

fence.

“Get serious, ” I said.

“Tim, shouldn ’t we tell the farmer anyway?” Will asked.

The barn roof showed just over the hill.

Zach wiped his nose. “Don ’t forget it was eating my food. We said the reason. ”

I threw a stick at his head, but it missed.

“That’ s right, ” Will remembered. “It was eating his pop tart. ”

“So I heard. ”

The sun was getting low. Brian was quiet. He tapped the dead Hereford softly with the shovel. “Dig, ” I said. “Oh mother . . . ”

When we got back, Angela ’ s car was in the drive behind my truck. “Aw, hell, your mom ’ s home, ” I said. It was a joke they never got.

Zach walked home punching a cloud of gnats like he was hacking through some jungle, and the boys and I went inside.

“Where have you been?” she wanted to know. “No note. No nothing. ”

They escaped for their room.

“Where have you been?” I said. “We went out on a hike. Wash up!” I called to them. She faced me, waiting for something better. “I’ m sorry, ” I said. “I’ll tell you about it later. ”

I squirted Lemon Joy on my hands and knocked the faucet on. I wanted to say things.

She set two cans on the counter.

I shut the water off.

“You want green beans, ” she said, “ or

baked beans?”

I don ’t know, she and I had met in this strip mall bar I tried after work once because I was tired of the bullshit at the regular one. It was called Sidewinders. It was next to a Chinese take-out, and she was eating a rice thing with her cigarette going when I come in. Rum and ginger ale. I sat down next to her, and I asked the sleepy girl behind the counter for a Budweiser, which took her a whole five minutes to get it, open it, and set it on the little cardboard. The whole time I’ m waiting, Angela ’ s stopped eating and is just staring at the side of my face—smoking at me—because I practically sat on her lunch when there ’ s a hundred open seats in the place. That’ s my style.

“I bet they call you Apeneck, ” she said.

“Who does?”

“Somebody ought to. ”

I bought her a drink.

Snoozin Susan brown bagged us a six, and we took it out to my truck. We drove out to the lake, to that parking lot behind the parking lot that had a chain up for a while, but the chain was down and I just pulled back where the weeds grew through the gravel and stopped beside this tall brush pile somebody cleared. The lake glittered through the trees.

“You ’ re making me feel back in high school, ” she said.

“Sorry, ” I said, and I cracked another can for her. I opened the crammed glovebox to get a napkin to wrap around the can, la-dee-dah.

“Good lord, ” she said. “Half Burger King ’ s stuffed in there. ”

I kissed her.

“Apeneck, ” she laughed, pulling at my hairs. “A-a-ape-ne-e-eck. ”

I laughed, too. No one had ever called me that before.

She slid closer. “What did you do to your hands?” She kissed them. Ducks were quacking. “Nothing, ” I said.

“Some bullshit. ”

When I come downstairs morning after the cow thing, Will was crosslegged in front of the TV. The volume was turned low, and he was sucking on a tube of Gogurt.

“Morning, Mr. Will. How ’d you sleep?” I had a headache. “You ’ re up early, ” I tried again.

“Can we go to the grave?”

“The grave. No. I don ’t want you guys in the pasture at all for a while. Why would you want to go to thegrave?” I waggled my fingers at him.

“To put flowers on it. ”

“I see. And where would you get flowers, Willard?”

“At Walgreen ’ s they have some. Fake kind. ”

The nearest intersection was about a quarter mile down the highway, and there was a new little plaza there, built for neighborhoods creeping this way from town. So far, they had the gas station and a drugstore and a little pizza place, where I took them once, and a hair salon. Couple offices, maybe. One place had kung fu classes. Others had lease signs in the windows.

“And what are you going to buy flowers with?” I asked.

“Money. Duh. ”

I went into the kitchen and put the coffee on. Duh. A fresh trail of mouse droppings run along the counter ’ s splashguard. During the night, I had come down for a drink of juice and found a mouse scrambling in the empty sink. It couldn ’t get out. It reminded me of the kids with their boards at the skate park. I stood there half-awake, watching it scratch its way up the steel sides only to slide back down. Then I gripped the roll of paper towels and set to it with soft, quiet crushes. I barely slept at all.

Will sang along with a commercial for some sort of crap.

“Hey, ” I called.

He come to the doorway.

“C’ mere, buddy. ” I took Angela ’ s purse off the chair.

Zach’ s mom called and spilled the beans. Old Zach the Sack complained I made them dig—it give him blisters— and soon it all come out, and, presto, the bag calls Angela.

“Why didn ’t youtell me?

“Why did you bury it?

“Why wouldn ’t you tell me?”

She ’ s a strong arguer, Angela is. She gets energy from it, though I’ m not sure about her reasoning sometimes. She ’d gone on and on and ended her favorite way with, “End of story. ” She called Information.

The farmer was a Carlson or a Carlton, and as soon as she had the right number she called the old boy up. “I’ ve got to go to work, ” she told me. “You ’ re going to take care of this. ”

“Okay, ” I said. “I thought I’d taken care of it yesterday. ”

“I know you do. I know you do . . . Hello, ” she said. “Is this Mr. Carlson?”

His mailbox was a half mile down the road from ours, the opposite way from the plaza, but then I had to drive my truck another quarter mile down his old gravel lane, which went around the foot of the pasture, and then up to his house and barn on the far slope. I drove slow. A new Chevy sat in the dirt drive. I got out and shut my door. The house had a cool, settled look to it, and the whole place, even outside, smelled like a basement. It might have been the weather. He was waiting just inside the screendoor, and he let me into the enclosed porch and stepped aside as the door eased shut against my back.

In an instant, a dog was sniffing my boots. This happens regular to us who work the floor at the plant. I tried to shake it without overdoing it, but it growled and started sniffing and licking again. Carlson spoke to the dog then shut it in the kitchen.

The porch was concrete and covered with a big round rug, and a pair of stuffed chairs faced each other, and a shelf of magazines and newspapers. A