What Will Rose Eat?

Monday, October 8, 2007

Monday morning, back on the ranch, Puck was busy bouncing it his bouncy with a celery stick. He took his job of celery gnawing, very seriously. After twenty minutes or so of this pastime, he became tired of his celery and dropped it into Collette’s water cup, twice. This was during math class.

Linnea was in the kitchen pouring a glass of milk from the fridge while Frances sat at the counter in front of his textbook.

“Hurry up, Frances,” said Linnea. “I’ll be done before you. I have easy problems today.”

“Easy problems for Linnea are chaos,” Frances said.

“I’ll be done before you. I bet you a dollar.”

“Your mom bets me a dollar.”

Predictable.

The world was a little apocalyptic that afternoon. Sheaths of gray clouds under hidden sun and thunderheads in the east and west.

Meanwhile, Rose was talking about anticipated college life in the realm of edibles:

“When I go to Mizzou I’m going to eat all good stuff.”

“Tell me, Rose, what will your pantry look like?” Collette asked.

“Well, I’ll have tortilla chips and milk, cheese, cereal… Captain Crunch of course, but not too much because it scrapes the skin on the roof of my mouth. Microwave pizza… no, oven-able pizza. Well, you know what I mean. Soda of course. Macaroni and cheese. Steak, canned sausages, Ruffles potato chips and French onion dip, hamburgers from Mannino’s. You guys can bring me some when you come to visit and I’ll make them for you. Canned peaches. Oranges…”

“But you never eat them. You only suck out the juice.”

“Oh well. And apples… for decoration.”

Carrie rolled her eyes:

“What about being healthy?”

Rose didn’t seem very interested in that.

Outside, Frances and Linnea continued their dig under the old rope swing tree. Linnea hammered rocks in the dirt and Frances pounded screws and plastic mesh squares into the dirt by the travel trailer with a hammer.

Earlier, Carrie had been passing out Ron Paul campaign papers to the family. Later, she and Rose took a bike ride in the afternoon wind. Inside, while they waited for rain, Mom and Linnea built a diorama for Linnea’s American Heritage Girls of a flood which included Playmobile figures, synthetic grass, bits of wood, miniature silk yellow leaves, and crinkled blue tissue paper in a shoe box.

Collette and Puck had their walk outside that evening as the storms tumbled overhead.