Cheito Pagan rummaged through his father's tools and found the rusty army surplus entrenching tool. He grabbed it and the yellow construction helmet his dad had been given as a commemorative gift for some ceremonial ground breaking a few years back, ran out of his family's apartment, down five flights of stairs, across the grassy field behind the building, past the Australian pines that lined the beach, and met his friends on the sandy shore. The morning was cool and gray. The air was heavy with mist from the rolling breakers. His friends were already hard at work, digging into the moist sand of the beach. He went to work alongside them, shoveling sand on to the eastern side of the hole. Three feet down, the sand was mixed with water, so he stopped digging and started packing the sand along the sides of the trench. He lowered the protective goggles strapped on to the helmet over his eyes. All the boys had stopped digging and pulled the stones they had collected from their bulging pockets. Cheito peered over the berm along the edge of the hole. The sun had broken through the clouds and was starting to burn off the morning mist. A couple of dozen of yards away, he could see the built up side of the Park Place boys trench. Suddenly, a barrage of projectiles flew through the air and pelted them and the sand around them. The balloon had gone up.
Jose M. Caldas, April 14, 2014.
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