Happy Trails
Puck continued to lecture his little brother as we backed out of the driveway Friday morning for school. “You can’t have everything you WANT! We discussed this LAST NIGHT! SHEESH!”
At breakfast, I had also tried to prep Yali for the day, a ward against screaming and protesting. “Yali, are you going to be good to Heidi today?”
Before he had a chance to reply either way, Puck provided him an ultimatum. “If you don’t, then you’re fired.”
Said the kid who I caught rubbing one of the couch pillows on his teeth this morning.
“Puck?… what are you doing?”
“Trying to get all the gunk off my teeth.”
Late in the morning at the Big House. Listening to the whole structure pop like Rice Krispies while the house was being leveled. The foreman kept walking back inside to test all the doors in the hallway and basement to be sure none of them were sticking anymore. Finally at the end of the afternoon, the project was deemed a success. The giant mole hills out front began to disappear as the moat-like trench around the castle was refilled.
Around six o’clock that evening, I found myself out in High Ridge, Missouri, through winding forested roads listening to a podcast tale of a 19th century serial killer. That was Oxbear’s idea. He was driving Rose and me to the big school cowboy-themed fundraiser just down the road from the old Boy Scout Camp Beaumont where Elmer and Jaya had their wedding reception two years ago.
There’s sort of a rag tag Appalachian wilderness to that part of the country. A few horses nosed around in the grass and mud as we walked up a gravely path to the barbecue where the fiddler in the band was somehow singing and playing at the same time.
So we ate up some grub with Hans and Julia, chocolate cake and apple pie for dessert, and listened to the live auction which included a first pitch at a Cardinals game, donated by the Benes family, and a trembling black and white puppy.
As the sun went down, rain clouds drifted on north. Someone lit a little campfire outside. After the live auction died down, an eerie coat of dark clouds passed over a full moon while I stood near the flames for warmth. That podcast about the grisly serial killer had a little more flavor in a setting like that.
About nine-thirty we blazed a trail back west for home.