A Month of Saturdays III

The boys of spring, like the boys of summer, have their uniform. They propel this particular Saturday through the William Mulholland Memorial park with a spit-and-polish precision from their shoes to their epaulets and shorn crowns. Lines of boys, clumps of boys, polite and respectful, still in their black wool blends, with only the occasional horsefly shudder to betray their silent sufferings. One cracks a smile, then a joke, mimes a punch, and boy-current jerks like a pulled thread through the throng; it is an act of God, perhaps, or the power of the maternal eye, that keeps them jacketed and still and dry and here. The girl in the white dress issues a command, and once again the boys, the girls, the fountain in Mulholland park glitter like a pair of patent leather shoes.