Free Boys and Girls Together by William Saroyan

piece of string and tied some of the rubber together. He undid the neck from the stick to which it was attached and blew into it and the little girl saw the balloon again, but different, tied, lopsided, the colour different, ends hanging loose, but she laughed and liked it. The man tied the neck, and the girl waited to have her balloon again. When she had it she squeezed it and let it fall and bounce, but the boy just sat and watched the fire.
    â€˜What is fire?’ he said.
    â€˜What we see there.’
    â€˜But what is it?’
    â€˜What it
really
is I don’t know,’ the man said. ‘But I know that the sun in the sky is fire.’
    â€˜It’s my balloon,’ the girl said. ‘Johnny can’t have it.’
    â€˜I got this,’ the boy said. He lifted the square pasteboard box containing the gyroscope. ‘Whatever it is.’
    â€˜It’s a gyroscope.’
    â€˜What does it do?’
    â€˜It turns.’
    â€˜What’s it
for
?’
    â€˜To look at when it turns. It’s beautiful then.’
    The boy lifted the top off the square paste-board box and turned the box over so that the gyroscope would come out into his hand. He held it up and looked at it.
    The girl squeezed the lopsided balloon, rubbed it against her face, tossed it up, watched it fall. The boy looked at the gyroscope and then let it rest on the floor and looked back at the fire. He had been sitting on the floor. Now he stretched out full length on his belly, rested his chin in his right hand. The man poked the fire and put more wood on it, squares and angles of house lumber, all kinds of shapes piled together.
    â€˜It looks like a church burning,’ the boy said.
    The man looked to see if this was so, and it was, it
did
look like a church burning.
    â€˜But nobody’s in it,’ the boy said. ‘They never burn churches with people in them. They always get the people out and then burn them, so the people can see the fires. Do they ring the bells when they burn churches?’
    â€˜I don’t believe they do,’ the man said. ‘But when the bells fall they make quite a lot of noise.’
    â€˜Did you
see
a church burn?’
    â€˜Yes, I did. I was a little older than you are at the time. It was at night and everybody ran. You couldn’tgo close because it was too hot, but you could see everything because the fire made so much light. You could hear the fire cracking the wood, and things falling inside the church, and then at last the bells fell and rang. We went home then, and the next day it was all black there, like the ashes after a fire burns in a fireplace.’
    â€˜I don’t like it when it’s black in the fireplace,’ the boy said.
    They sat and talked quietly for an hour, and then he heard the taxi out front and after a moment the woman let herself in. The taxi-driver carried half a dozen packages. The little girl ran and the woman hugged her and kissed her and talked to her, and then she told the taxi-driver where to put the packages, on her bed. She handed him some currency, and the man tipped his hat and thanked her and went out. The woman closed the door and stood hushed with excitement and happiness.
    â€˜Wait till you see the things I’ve bought.’
    She picked up the boy and danced around with him and then put him down again.
    â€˜Do you like my hair?’
    She removed a scarf wrapped over her hair and the red fell down, new and bright.
    â€˜It’s beautiful, Mama,’ the boy said.
    â€˜Oh, Johnny. Wait till you see Mama’s new dress. Shall I put it on now?’
    â€˜Yes, Mama.’
    â€˜Shall I?’ the woman said to the man.
    â€˜Sure. Let’s have a look at it.’
    The woman hugged the man, ran off to the bedroom, and closed the door, but the little girl opened the door and went in, and then the boy went in, too, and the man heard them talking in there. The woman came out, and she looked