Mark Knight's rewrite is copyright © 2001 by Mark Knight.

Return to every man a king.

July 19. Western Maine. Rain. A heat wave - the worst heat wave I ever knew, or anyone I ever knew knew. That's when you need rain I guess. But this rain was worse than the heat, spit-vicious, thunder-heavy.

Long lake got the first of the storms. There were so many I couldn't count them but this first one came beating at us out of the dark, still, night air. The flag lay dead-beat on the pole, stars and stripes pressed down by the heavy heat, sulking that they couldn't fly proud like Dad believed they should. We'd swum on the lake, three of us getting wet, but neither Steffy nor I could go deep because Billy is five and anyway swimming through the water was as bad as sitting in the heat.

By five thirty, with nothing better to do, we picked at warm ham sandwiches and warm potato salad, dully looking at the lake and its heat haze. There was Pepsi in a steel bucket of ice cubes. Everybody wanted that.

Mark Knight may be reached at office@MarkBKnight.com. His website at http://www.geocities.com/markbknight/ includes the complete filmscript for Mark's movie The Adventures of Sir Michael Skeaping, as well as a wide variety of poems, essays, and stories. It's worth visiting.

read next rewrite
go back to previous rewrite