Stood in the shade, yesterday

Stood in the shade, yesterday, sword-fighting Vaughn with foam swords, parrying, or trying to, her relentless, two-handed, overhead attacks. Stood in the shade behind my brother's new house in Wolcott, sidestepping Vaughn's slams and strikes, dancing-like to the pops and pings of her older cousins and their friends firing pellet guns at empty cups and cans. KC and Dash sitting on the grass in the shade, looking up and laughing with us as Vaughn persisted in her berserker-style attacks and I bobbed and weaved like, I imagined, Muhammad Ali. Sun glancing hot off the metal slide of the 70's-style swing set farther down the backyard, closer to the woods, not far into which runs the Mad River, though it's more like a brook in these parts—you couldn't even hear it fifty-feet away. Tired out and backed up near the lawn equipment under the deck, I gave up and let Vaughn slash and slap the bejesus out of me with her foam sword. Stood in the shade directly under the lonely bird feeder, laughing at the way she was killing me as I looked at the woods not thinking about it.