Chapter Twenty-Seven
Click.
Our door opened at 6:05AM. Maybe a little early for a Sunday morning. But it didn’t matter. When a kid with a 1981 quarter pressed into his fat paw comes to cuddle with his dad for comfort, it’s never too early. Let’s say it didn’t take more than 30 seconds to appease the young chap from his nightmare, who wasn’t even hysterical in the first place. He was more interested in Crackers anyway, the feline who had sprawled herself headlong over the bulge of Puck and blanket before I went to bed last night. Like she had claimed her property. All she was missing was the Spanish flag, or something. In fact, Puck was so un-bothered, that after playing with Crackers under our covers for awhile, he tossed the comforter over his head and began scrounging around.
“Puck, go back to bed for a little while,” The Bear muttered.
“But, Dad, I want to play spook!”
The stick of butter squeaked over the frying pan for breakfast. Puck loved his eggs-in-a-nest.
“Oh I love to have a loose tooth, loose tooth…”
He was singing original tunes, wandering out of the kitchen.
“Puck, what are you doing? Come back and finish breakfast.”
“I am. I’m just getting a mirror.”
He returned with the large purple and green hand mirror he had picked out for me awhile back…
“I have a cavity, Mom.”
“You don’t, bud.”
“I do. See that little creak?”
He pointed to a crease in his gum-line, which I assured him was not a cavity. He still enjoyed watching the gap in his rosy mouth.
It was just a little icy. The freezing rain had done its damage. One of the guys from church did some kind of fancy dance on the black ice just outside the door as we approached ten minutes after eight.
“Wow! He almost could have died!” Puck shouted to me as we shuffled hand in hand to the front door.
Almost immediately, chunks of salt were being smashed onto the drive-up by several more gentleman. What can I say about church these days? You hit some darn brick walls, some darn stubborn brick walls sometimes. It’s not the lack of senior pastor, it’s not the lack of funds, it’s not the tapering attendance. Finally one of the moms just said it…
“Honesty.”
It wasn’t a new concept. Things got tense, of course, but sometimes tense is better.
Everyone was a little tense back at the house, too.
“Everyone out of the kitchen!” Carrie declared, as the chaos unfolded. “OUT! FRANCIS! Did you just eat a piece of that CHEESECAKE?!”
“What! Collette did, too!”
“Hey, I asked if it was up for grabs.”
“Snuggles already started eating it!”
Francis avoided permanent damage in time to enjoy the Tim Ferriss-style lamb with gravy. Only Carrie thought it wasn’t tender enough, of course. Homemade mashed potatoes…
“Let’s hold hands to pray,” Mom suggested.
There was sort of a sudden silence. And then laughter.
“Mom!”
“No way!”
“We’d just start having hand squeezing contests.”
“Eew.”
“Sweat!”
“Francis didn’t wash his hands!”
“Yuck.”
So… with that idea out the window, we talked about the circus instead. And Japanese cotton cheesecake. Francis was graciously allowed a piece before he and Linnea entered into a contest. Who could blow out the candles first on the table…
“Ag! Francis!”
“Ha ha ha!”
“You just blew spit in my face!”
And we adjourned to the living room to argue about where we were going for the afternoon.
“Um, Rose, could you move your head so I don’t sit on it?” Puck asked politely, snuggling next to Carrie on the couch.
When we finally got that figured out, the plan was for Mastadon State Park and the Blue Owl Cafe in Kimmswick for pie, we got out to the big old green thing and jockeyed for seats.
“Did you get the mail from yesterday, Dad?”
“No…”
Dad screeched up to the mailbox and distributed the packages, envelopes, and magazines through Mom…
“Oooh. My designer two-dollar silk pants.”
“I get a pound of chocolate from my boss this week,” Rose gave a wicked grin.
Dad started running the van’s tires on the road ridges on purpose. We got to 55, and Joe claimed car sickness, which never really went anywhere. Neither did the State Park in the cold gray wet of a day that never sunned up. Fortunately. No one seemed interested in checking out old bones. Well, “no one”. So we drove back across the highway to historic Kimmswick. Old cabins, 1840. A strange statue-memorial…
“Is that an idol?”
A thin pyramid-shaped building with a school bell attached to the top.
“Is that the outhouse?”
“I need more toilet paper! Clang-clang!”
A lot of shops and chocolate-like places. One sweet shop filled with empty chairs and empty tables, a gift shop, ice cream [including rainbow], and cases of chocolates. Mom handed a quarter to Puck for the jumbo gumball machine, which Joe helped him crank, revealing two gumballs. Joe got the one that had been split in half. We stocked up on a box of truffles: raspberry, mint, red velvet, bulls eye, etc. The kind lady behind the counter chatted with Mom and reminded us to take a pile of napkins. We munched them down on the ride out, Puck happy with the confetti-topped birthday cake version.
“This place is just asking for a tornado to take it out,” Carrie mumbled.
“It really is…”
[You just have to fully appreciate the “Night of the Twisters” childhood in which we were raised to understand that statement…] The lonely residential street skirted the building and wound around a wooded area with a green-stone shingled house on the hill.
“Well anyplace that has ‘wind’ in the title of its school…” Joe added as we passed the brick elementary.
“I haven’t seen any churches yet…” I noticed.
“That’s what the idol’s for,” Carrie’s eyebrows went up.
On the ride home the windows fogged up as usual and we talked about whose weddings would be the most fun to attend because they would be the most unconventional.
And, yes, when we got back, Dad and Joe got Dominos and a case of vanilla Coke, which I knew immediately was a Joe-idea. Also bottles of Coke Zero, including a discussion of the evils of diet sodas, and whether Pizza Hut or Dominos was better. The opinion seemed split. Linnea didn’t add to the conversation, though; she had the phone plastered to her ear catching up with Cherry on anything good and anything interesting. All good parties come to an intermission, though. So we drove home under dark clouds in the west skies over pale light. I mean, you just can’t ever call Sundays not fun around here.