Sleeping in the hay loft - Part 1
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
It is the biggest lie I've ever told. And once it jumps out of my mouth like a slippery green toad, there is no turning back. The story is as undoable as what Pastor Rich says is the work of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior on the cross on Easter Sunday. I hold my breath. Gauge their response.
Roberta Parks. "Start again. Back at the part where there are wreaths of wild flowers hanging on the door of every horse's stall."
Stunned that she's got my story down nearly word for word, the relief whooshes right out of my mouth like the air out of a balloon at a birthday party, and boy howdy
I've got the joy, joy, joy joy, down in my heart.
Missy Burton. "Did you really get to sleep in the hay loft?"
Down in my heart.
Bobbie Odessa. "Oooooooh." The freckles on her nose all squish together. "That would have been itchy."
Down in my heart. To stay.
Roberta Parks. "I bet it sure smelled good." (We all breathe in the tinny morning air, trying it out, and get a good whiff of the Cooper Tire plant instead.) "Too bad you aren't going there this Thanksgiving."
All three girls' faces are filled with agreement as solemn as the lead-looking sky. They are absolutely right.
At this point, I figure I'm going straight to the pit of hellfire and damnation anyway. So I might as well make it good. My audience is eyeballing me expectantly. I survey the playground to buy myself a little time before the next installment of the grand tale. Lay heavy eyes on the tether ball poles, the jungle gymn, the merry-go-round, my mind racing. Set my sights far off into the distance beyond the postage-stamp yards. The slew of dead brown lawns. The crackerbox houses, as my mom likes to call them, newly risen out of the dirt like Lazarus himself. I'm pretty sure Missy and Bobby and Roberta all think I am doing some heavy remembering.
Missy Burton chews a piece of her mousy brown hair, twisting it around and around her finger until I'm feeling kind of winsome like and think about reaching for a strand of my own, but my mom has nearly broke me of that habit. Nasty, she calls it.
We lock arms and begin our recess-long stroll around the kickball field. The rain-glutted sod squishes beneath our tennis shoes. It doesn't hardly have any roots at all and once a boy got in some serious trouble for rolling a piece of it up like a carpet right after the nursery men put it down. And I start telling the bald-faced lie once again. Right from the beginning.
As I have every recess this week to any kid who'll listen.
To be continued. I'll finish both this story and A Hard Night Sky this week!
