vantage point on Great Uncle's lap, I heard General Shafter address his troops and lead the attack. Uncle Steve followed him and left me alone in the lowlands, already cluttered with legs of understanding relatives and a green hassock, frayed but firm enough for a warrior's foothold. Grandmother took my hand and hurried out of the war zone, as Uncle Steve ranted on and rode off into combat somewhere near the front door shining with its double lock of inescapable security. There is no hi-hat, but he finds one in the air around his knees and keeps the offbeat while his supper tray jiggles on his lap, taking the beating he gives it with crossrods from two wooden hangers. They keep him downstairs so those wrapped in silence along the upper walls won't complain about paradiddles accompanied by the rudimentals of ma-ma-da-da and the barefooted thud tap thud, thud tap thud, of a man at work. A radio drifts in from the ward overhead, and wood takes on straw as clothesbrushes move across plastic, scratching a chee-chaa from the thirties. He watches his face in waves of glass and smiles through stubble; he sees his nursemaid swallow her laughter and tuck him back to bed to watch his life spin across the ceiling and down the wall, finding itself again in the cracked and shadowed mirror. Newton, Mass., April 20: Five women ranging in age from 80 to 96 drowned this afternoon when a driverless car rolled across a rest