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... and James Lewis banged his head real hard on the cement by the corner of the house... and he cried and and cried but nobody came... and James Lewis stopped crying and just stood there by the patio... and the day didn't seem to be moving along at all... and the weather stayed the same... and for a long time nobody came out of the house or went in the house and nobody walked by on the sidewalk where he lived even though he remembered Mr. Walters the retired man always walked by here in the afternoon... and James Lewis' brother Billy didn't come home from school... and a sneaky voice whispered something in his ear.. and James Lewis began to cry outloud again... he cried that he didn't wanna die... not until his Mom came out of the house... he didn't wanna die until his Daddy came home from work... and he didn't wanna die until he was in his bed at night because that's how you died when you laid there and your breath got all hairy and graspy like when Gramma died... and so James Lewis was going to stand there until something else happened... and for more than a hundred hours the sun didn't move... and nothing else happened in the day... and he wanted to move from that spot but he couldn't... and it was like his legs were sewn to the patio by the corner of the house... and James Lewis looked up and there was another boy about his age over on the sidewalk... and James Lewis waved and said his best "Howdee!"... and the other boy looked sad and his face was all puffy... and James Lewis tried to yell in a kinda happy way "So! What's wrong? Why don't you come over here?"... and the boy began to cry and yell that he didn't want to die there without his Mommy and he was going to wait there until she came back... and James Lewis told the boy, as soft as he could from that distance, that it was okay to die... and that it was just okay... and James Lewis felt himself free of the ground and he felt the earth zoom away like an elevator floor or like looking down at the ground from a rocket launch... and James Lewis felt free... and James Lewis' mother, 4 months after her child's death, felt something ease, felt something give inside her... and she laughed over something someone said that had nothing to do with her precious James Lewis...and she knew in her heart that there was nothing more she could have done for her sweet James Lewis.