In front of the peach trees

In front of the peach trees in our front yard, Vaughn runs long looping "circles" around KC. It feels like a silent movie as I watch them from the living room, holding Dash up on the sofa so he can watch them, too. The late afternoon sun has softened, and the humidity, perhaps. Behind me the roar of a TV crowd: Tiger Woods has nailed a put for birdie, giving him a commanding five-stroke lead, well on his way to winning his thirteenth major. Hard to disagree with excellence in sports. The peach trees look heavy, almost tired of standing, longing, perhaps, for someone with proper pruning know-how. They're not there for the fruit, but for the shade and the privacy they're not really great at offering. Even on the downside of a lazy Sunday, the cars, SUVs mostly, buzz by at regular intervals. Tired of watching KC and Vaughn, Dash turns and reaches for me with his drool-webbed hands. Lets out one of his happy Hehs as I scoop him up. We wander into the dining room, where I look down at the table. Time is open to a picture of Mia Farrow; she has volunteered "to trade places with Darfur rebel Suleiman Jamous, who has been under virtual arrest at a U.N. hospital for more than 13 months. The Sudanese government has threatened to arrest Jamous if he leaves the building's confines." Dash gets bored as I stand there reading. He pushes a hand in my face. So I walk around the house. The world's sick and I'm part of the disease. My ill effects are in Iraq. Regular people's bodies blown apart every day. For a scam? Dash shoves his wet hand in my face again—Ok, ok, I'll put you down. He crawls over to the seed crate where the Duplo blocks are stored, starts taking them out, looks up at me. It's fine I say by walking to the sofa and slumping into the seat. Nearly 200,000 firearms gone missing in Iraq? And this after admitting 300,000 barrels of oil per day had done the same? And, as The Daily Show pointed out, after 380 tons of explosives and $12 billion of tax-payer money had also disappeared? Too much incompetence to be believed. The sham war's a scam, too. When will it end? A trick question. The war never ends: it turns into something else. "We are disease," an old friend once wrote, "communicable in all the wrong ways." Dash keeps taking out the Duplo blocks and tossing them every which way. Tiger Woods is down to a two-stroke lead, but he looks as in command as ever. CBS shows a clip of his wife in the clubhouse holding their two-month old daughter. Vaughn clomps up the porch stairs outside, soon she and her mom are coming into the house. Dash forgets the Duplo blocks and scrambles for KC's legs. Vaughn runs over to show me a leaf she found. "It's red," I say. "And yellow! and green! and brown! and pink!" she says, then rushes off into the kitchen to store it who knows where. Alone in the living room, I stare at the overhead view of the golf course on TV. Clashing shades of green. Can't prove a negative, yet here I am, blank lines where words should be. Tiger's back up to a three-stroke lead, about to win his thirteenth major. Only 31. Can't disagree with excellence in sports.