Tame a Tornado
Puck shuffled with a grin to unlock the front door for me, still enrobed in his spaceship footies. Minutes later he was cuddling bunnies with Linnea after a breakfast of fried eggs, moving onto a box of brightly colored wood shape blocks, railroad tracks, and Playmobil, shelling a large ziplock bag of ballpark peanuts from Francis.
The life of a young prince.
Carrie had mixed up her own eyeliner from burnt almonds and almond oil, given the sensitivity of her eyes. Linnea [who just found out she had become the setter on her team] grumpy-faced a lesson of algebra at the kitchen table where Mom replied to 50 emails. And I joined the chubster in crafting museum-houses of Colombian flag walls. Joe emerged at ten for coffee. He was hitting up Busch Stadium himself that night with a buddy some time after Francis had shipped out to work. It’s a humming hive most days around here.
As Mom hefted the Tunisian dates from the pantry, I joined Puck in another adventure through Candyland. My eyes were still burning from lack of sleep. But, as I say, duty calls. As does the ice cream scoop kremlin of King Kandy. I sent Puck to the corner twenty minutes later for socking Joe in the back; he emerged later to carry Linnea’s laundry hamper back to her room, docked down in Joe’s shoes, a pair on his feet and another on his hands. Carrie pointed at a fat scalloped wedge of painted drywall gouged in behind the loveseat. Apparently Francis and The Bear’s blitz fight-attack Sunday evening was a little more aggressive than we had thought.
Later Puck and I dug in the dirt until the mosquitoes chased down our veins, and Puck landed himself behind a pile of books about Harriet Tubman and learning manners, another of corn chips, and a Campbell’s mug of apple cider, announcing something or other to Joe about… “I’m going to marry Anneliese, you silly punk!”
“Are you worth it, Puck?” Carrie teased him. “Should we trade you in for another model?”
“Well, Sun,” he rocked back on the red-painted metal of the high counter stool, “That is called divorce.”
I set a plate of peanut butter sandwich on the coffee table and flipped on a “Johnny Quest” for his dinner.
“Drink all your water too, bud.”
“Ok!” he replies with zest. “It will give me more muscles to see better.”
The whole house was pumpkin-glowed, pumpkins, jack ‘o lanterns, and warm-golden lamps. Mom at her best.
The sun went down cool as Puck climbed the cracked dogwood with the tubular rung of an old utility ladder, spyglass Swiss Family Robinson style, waiting for The Bear to return. The evening sent in peepers in the thick trees of deep dark Hansel and Gretyl green and eggplant purple, heavy leash of climbing rose bush, rich gold sky in Sistine rose and fading blue. Puck and I walked to the end of the street, passing quiet stick fire where two deer approached for warmth. One tucked down into the grass for a seat near the woodsmoke. These are nights where things move out of the corner of your eye, but you’re never sure where. And the deep orange-gold of ending sun shut out by a dark celestial sea right as the rain of Maine comes. These are the nights we live for, between the city and the cusp of hill country.