Judith Skillman The Unicycle One wheel, it meant— as in, one horn, unicorn, a strange beast and therefore on the verge of extinction. We took the machine in our hands, and it was easy beneath the pines to learn how to balance near rumors of so and so's divorce, of the Co-op's demise, and Mrs. Schreiber's checkered background before she taught art. We rode through events too big for us. The Bay of Pigs, nuclear war, the cafeteria/bomb shelter where we were called by sirens, not knowing which day the earth would end. We knew the shock wave would spread its shadow over caterpillars so tame they walked from finger to palm, hand-fed squirrels, chipmunk chatter on a stump. The unicycle took us away from the earth. Some of us stayed upright for minutes, some fell down in seconds flat. No way to know who would be good. That's why we treasured its single wheel, the grease monkey hovering just out of range, ready to patch the hole in a tire or tighten an axle. That boy's talent for fixing things was too good for chance. He belonged in a cage, like us, his childhood snatched right out from under.

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