Summer was over. Only this Sunday stood between me and the cavernous abyss that is the eighth grade. Fellowship dinner had drawn to a close and everyone except the Boswells had gone home. Dr. Boswell, my father, Brandon and I sat on my back porch, weathered and worn to a splintered gray, in the cool September air, with four glasses of wine, in four groaning green lawn chairs that shot creaking reproaches every time we shifted our weight. Dr. Boswell was wearing a blue oxford shirt. His belly fell over his belt like a blue oxford wave over a khaki beach. My father’s tenor voice said something that I was too busy poking Brandon to hear, and the good doctors epicurean eyes lit up and he nodded in grateful assent. My father walked inside past the busted screen door leaning at ease against the house. He returned as Prometheus, a wooden box tucked under his arm. The box. The humidor. It was red like blood and smelled like heaven. He handed Dr. Boswell a thick robusto. But he was not done. He put his hand in the humidor again and pulled out two light thin cigars. Six inches long and three quarters of an inch in diameter. A fitting first. Its blond tan hue laughed at my red sun-kissed hands. Its wrapper was thick with veins and smooth as felt. It tasted like chocolate and leather and fire and earth and summer. It was six inches of summer: three months of summer tightly rolled and laid in my hand.