Sleeping in the hayloft - Part 2
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"My grandma and grandpa Butler have a beautiful farm. A big, beautiful farm. Back in Oklahoma."
A red rubber ball comes shooting through the air right past us like a comet. Trent and Troy, the red-haired, freckledy-faced brothers gallop by on its heels, shooting us big grins that we pointedly ignore.
"—in the Winding Staircase mountains," I add for effect. This is brand new material. I think last time I said in the Ozark Mountains, which really isn't even a place in Oklahoma I don't think. But it doesn't matter much because none of these girls are from around there anyway. We're all transplants because all of our folks work for the stinky old tire company or Marathon Oil. Sometimes we kids argue about which one is better. As if our lives depend on it.
"In the Winding Staircase Mountains!" that idiot Troy is making fun of me now, wrangling and rolling the words around on his tongue like the hick they say I am being from Oklahoma and all and having a Southern A-C-C-E-N-T. My mom wants me to tell them that I didn't exactly come to Findlay, O-H-I-O in a busted down truck with a chicken crate on the top. But I don't. I shut my mouth. She says when I am old enough to read some fellow named Steinbrenner I'll understand. It has something to do with grapes and people being real mad. She likes to tell me the story about when she was a young woman with no prospects in Maud, Oklahoma and had to ride all the way to California in a Chevy sedan with her parents and her younger brother Bud to pick apples and oranges and grapes on the farms. And her dad, my grandpa Butler, wouldn't stop for love nor money to let them go to the bathroom because he was in such a hurry. So I guess this isn't the first time she's been plunked down in a strange place like a tornado delivered her, just like me right here at Bigelow Elementary.
"There's this red barn with a gigantic hayloft." I spread my arms out wide like one of those fishermen. "It sits way up on a hill in the middle of the valley. And there's a trout pond in the front. Filled with all kinds of rainbow trout." I look at them smugly, and brag, "I caught one once."
We walk from first to second base in step, strung together like so many pearls, leaving a trail of green and muddy footprints behind us.
"And at the Thanksgiving supper my Grandma Butler hangs these kerosene lanterns, like the ones they had in the olden days—"
Roberta Parks nods her blonde head to let me know that she knows exactly what I am talking about here. Ready to explain to Missy and Bobbie in case they don't understand.
—from the rafters." I pause, turn my face up to the gray sky that is now spitting little drops of water at us, hoping the teacher doesn't make us go inside. " And the whole place is lit up in a golden light."
Missy Burton. "Do the horses mind?"
Do they I wonder? There are eight of them today with their shining beautiful heads thrust out of their stalls, looking at the Thanksgiving spread. My mind is rambling. I'm painting pictures with my words across cheap gray paper like they give us in art class whenever the art teacher comes. "What do you mean?" I press Missy for more information before I dig myself in too deep.
Missy Burton. "Well, with all the platters of food set up on the tables in the middle of the barn aisel and all the noise with people dancing and your grandpa playing his fiddle."
I got that part from the Little House on the Prairie books I found in the open-concept Library that you step right into from your classroom. When the teacher shows it to me and my mom on my first day of school, she seems real proud. Sometimes in my story my mom, my grandma, and my aunts wear calico dresses with skirts that sweep the ground. I don't think I've said anything yet about the maple sugaring. "Nah, they kind of enjoy it. And every now and then someone goes over and feeds the horses all an apple or a sugar cube."
The girls are nodding their heads. Not bad.
Bobbie Odessa. "But what I want to know is do they really let you sleep up there?—"
