I watched the small flames climb the post all the way to the top where it met the rafters. I looked at its progress around the room and realized I was the ghost in here, this was for Bobby.

He was amazingly industrious for a boy of six and on that last day he built a tower out of wooden Tinker Toys that was taller than he was. The tower stood in the corner of his small room by the window. Its skeleton was made of brightly painted thin wooden rods joined by round wooden wheels with drilled holes. It had taken him all day to build it. He returned to his room after supper to play with it and reorganize the sticks on the sides so all the colors matched. His mother Judith came in at eight o'clock to put him to bed against his protests. He wanted to stay up and build it even higher. He lay in bed looking over at it, wondering if he would have to move it outside to make it as tall as he wanted.

His tower stood silhouetted in front of the curtains. A street light beyond his bedroom window shined every night. He got up and walked over to the tower to re-inspect it in the dim light. There were two cords that opened and closed the curtains, but the one within his reach only closed them tighter. He could see there was work to be done, but he couldn't tell which rods were which color and construction couldn't continue unless it followed the same color code as the rest of the tower. Turning on the light never worked because somehow she always found out he wasn't in bed.

Bobby had seen his mother's new boyfriend William use matches as a light at night when they all traveled in the car to Atlanta. Bobby had taken a book of matches from the dashboard and kept them to use in case the street light ever went out. He went to the footlocker at the end of the bed and opened the lid exposing a myriad of toys inside. He slid his small hand down one side and into the corner of the trunk until he found the paper matchbook, then walked back over to the tower, took a single match and tried to strike it by imitating what Will had done. After seven attempts, one sparked and lit. The red tip flashed and was completely consumed in a second. He was too busy watching the process of the match burning to notice the light the flame gave off. He was fascinated by the flickering of the blue and orange flame and watched it change the blue, gray paper of the match into a black, shriveled and twisted cinder. When it burned down to his small thumb and forefinger, he dropped it and put his scorched fingers in his mouth. The match went out before it hit the green carpeted floor.