Visit with Grandma Combs

It was the end of another work week already. The evening before, while they ate their way through two bags of Reeses peanut butter cups, Joe sat google-eyed in front of the television, taking in the impacting documentary on tornadoes.
“Amazing!” he cried. “Can I just stop taking art and go to tornado school?”
“No,” said Rose, wrinkling her nose.
“You can come too, Rose. You would take your camera and walk right over and start talking to the tornado.”
“I would not.”
“You would, and then you’d come back and say, ‘He hollered at me, and I hollered at him. And then I threw mud on it. And then we hollered at each other.’”
Puck woke up Friday morning with the remnants of pen tattoos still on his hands. On one hand, Joe had doodled a happy sunshine with a sprig of hair, and on the other, a happy storm cloud.
On Puck’s feet, he had sketched bones.
“Bones,” he had told Puck, “Those are bones on your feet.”
Puck pointed curiously, “Bone-bones?”
After Collette, Carrie, and Puck had run errands around cinnamon pine cones and apple cider at the grocery store and Target, Grandma Combs came over, bringing with her several dozen donuts. She watched the Lawrence Olivier version of
Pride & Prejudice over a cup of tea while Puck napped and Collette schooled Francis through a mathematics version of Carrie’s latest favorite scholastics series from the 90’s: Standard Deviants.
Awhile later, Rose returned from work with a box of snackers and almond cheese dip, followed soon by Joe, also returning from his work shift.
The fields were still green, but the leaves were rich in autumn colors, and crunched underfoot.
Late that afternoon, as Collette and Puck drove home, the low blue clouds were cut through with a deep bed of pale light in the west. It slipped into a golden band as Collette walked the neighborhood that cold evening.
And OLeif studied for mid-terms.