Thousand: Sixty-Four

screamed or sizzled) harmlessly past. That is my problem. Emily, however, is yawning. She lowers the binoculars and rubs her eyes. It is not an apple tree, this tree she has climbed high into the skinny branches. It is not a fruit tree at all, unless you mean the bats. Nobody knows they are there. Being green they disappear among the leaves. When autumn comes around the bats fly south for the winter, except for one freak who lingers, having the chameleon-like (or, why not, octopus-like) ability to change its colors to whatever gaudy spangle of yellows and reds this