Orange Color The It was a hot summer day on Orange Street one of those days that seem ordinary until you look back on it Lawn sprinklers sparkled mourning doves cooed and the sky was an amazing blue as it always was in L A Even at eight A M the sun looked like a giant egg yolk In fact a few parents made a joke about the sidewalk being hot enough to fry an egg on by noontime noontime One grumpy kid wondered aloud why anyone would be dumb enough to do that
Everything seemed normal except you couldn’t help noticing the Day-Glo orange cone sitting at the curb in front of the empty lot The mysterious stranger didn’t arrive until later The empty lot belonged to the kids who lived on that particular block of Orange Street They didn’t have the papers to prove they were the owners of course but the lot had been theirs to play in ever since they could remember which even if you subtracted those baby years when nothing really sank in was more or less a decade The lot had no house on it but it wasn’t completely empty because of its orange tree Years ago the tree had shaded the backyard of a house that was later torn down and never rebuilt And oh what a tree it was with its juicy fruit and big huggable trunk and dark canopy of leaves It even had a little plastic swing hanging from a big branch The tree was the last living living member of the grove that had given the street its name long ago Everyone knew that the coolest spot on the street temperature-wise and otherwise was under the orange tree That’s where the Girls With Long Hair Club conducted its meetings Over the years hundreds of things had been buried
under the lot’s hard clay surface whether by accident or on purpose The mysterious stranger himself had come to dig up some small things as well as something something big Nasturtiums and sage and lavender grew all over the lot They looked so grateful to be planted in the sun you knew they would bloom forever A huge bushy bougainvillea vine climbed the lot’s chain-link fence Robert Green 302 Orange Street liked to conduct his important but lonely missions behind that vine He didn’t pay attention to the orange cone because orange orange cones showed up on streets in Los Angeles all the time and they usually meant street repair Bunny Perkins 308 Orange Street and a member of the GWLH Club noticed the orange cone when she let her dog Ruff out and went outdoors herself to count snails Summer always meant lots of fat snails some could be found in the garden others meandering meandering across the sidewalks leaving behind silvery wet trails Three snails on the front walk meant bad luck Luckily there were only two that day an important point to note especially on a morning when Bunny’s mother was preparing to go on a trip by plane Ruff ran to the lot next door and lifted his leg by the orange cone Bunny phoned Leandra Jackson 301 Orange
Street another GWLH Club member as soon as she could What do you think that cone means Bunny asked It’s not the cone said Leandra grumpily Lots of things made Leandra grumpy lately especially changes changes out of the blue Or in this case orange It’s the color color orange Orange You heard me In nature orange means good things like pumpkins and juice and autumn leaves and sunsets sunsets But when you paint something orange it usually means something not-so-good Except of course if it’s Halloween And even Halloween is scary sometimes sometimes It’s summer Exactly my point So we’re talking not-so-good Like danger Or condemned And of course keep out Keep out I can’t do that cried Bunny her heart pounding Bunny had lots of dependable ways to keep
