Vestigial Structure

There was a boy who would simonize your car for a dollar. When he brought it back, the fenders shone like the Archimedes death ray. What kind of wax did he use? we wanted to know. He wouldn’t say a thing. He was a boy of seven or eight, yet he carried a cane. In the evenings, he was seen limping alone down a road that went nowhere. We called it Memory Lane because so many of us had broken our tailbones falling from his family’s tree. But he was going to the lighthouse to stand in for the beacon, who joined the Blue Angels after he fell for an afterburner. The town was shocked. Even the blind windows.