Ch. 234; Vol. 10
Puck waved Bær to work from the porch, watching MO Highway Dept trucks parked on the street. A young African American man walked up to the pick-up, hoisted himself over the side to grab something out of the truck bed. I watched Puck’s face through the window…
“Cool…”
He jumped back off.
“Cool…”
Admiring these acrobats made me wonder if Puck would try the same when the pick-up was parked in the driveway again that night.
Puck just has to be a part of everything; it’s his job, really.
Whether it’s creating “celery men” at a formal-non-formal family dinner, or participating in his aunt’s girl talk…
“I can’t believe you think that guy is cute,” says Linnea.
“Agh! Everyone thinks he’s cute,” says Linnea’s friend.
[Snicketts girls have never followed status quo in this vital life department…]
“He has terrible hair.”
“Oh, I love his hair!”
“What if he was bald?” Puck suggests.
While I jogged to Gangnam Style at 10:51 that morning, Puck sorted his wealth. The scavenged bottle caps into a giant hard pretzel tub, the dimes, nickels, and pennies into a drunk lemon-flavored Mendota can, and the quarters into a pile to be used on fat Old Navy clunkers.
Puck exited his room during QH with his white t-shirt crumpled in one hand. Someone had been carried away with the strawberry jam at lunch. And scooped up the four silver Hershey’s foils sitting beside me on the couch.
Busted.
It’s his job.
Or making observations about his new cousin…
In the best sense…
We concluded an afternoon of studies with Puck mistaking pomegranates as the origin of garnets. A good note to step out in the oppressive humidity of a mostly gray afternoon for another stack of library books, bag of blue corn chips at Schnuck’s, and Old Navy. My first ever-purchased pair of flip-flops. And eight more rubber bouncy balls in many happy colors. Bright-eyed Puck guessing which one would roll down the chute next. The park: a friendly sweat bee chasing Puck’s ankles, trolling up grub. Oldies on the radio, an ad soliciting Missouri families to move to Texas… Who let that one in?
Puck had loosened another chomper tearing at a pillow again.
“I’M SPITTING OUT BLOOD!!”
“Clean it up, man.”
He really wasn’t that upset about it, especially because we had so many library books to read together, which always sparks insightful conversations…
“How did they attach that turtle shell to the harp?”
“Nails. Maybe.”
“They didn’t have nails back then.”
“Sure they did.”
“But they didn’t have curly nails.”
“Curly nails?”
“You know. The ones that screw in?”
