There’s a little river what runs along our property line in the woods. It ain’t much and don’t hardly go higher than your knees, but it’s fine enough for splashing in when the weather gets hot and they’s all manner of interesting things to look at. One time I though I found gold on a rock, but when I showed it to Daddy, he says it's fools gold, name of iron pyrite, but I put it on my shelf anyway and to me it’s the real deal since I ain’t seen no difference.
Lately we’ve been cooped together in the house as we’re going through a rain spell what ain’t let up for a week. We is staring at the T.V. with Jacob’s latest choice of pictures on it and this time it’s from a national geographic. It’s an upside-down bat what has ears that look like a dog.
sometimes I like looking at it, but sometimes I get the creeps from it, especially when I see it move just a little bit when I stare too long. Sometimes it looks like its mouth opens and its teeth are razor sharp, Momma says for eating fruit, but everyone knows they’re really for sucking blood from people to turn them into bats too. I seen that on T.V. once. Daddy is pacing a lot these days from being cooped, and Momma is getting tired of him talking nonstop about the weather, and the rain, and the clouds, and the wetness, and they’s about tearing out their hair for it. Me and Jacob is bickering since we is cooped too and I ain’t like the way he looks at me. He is getting into my space on purpose because he’s bored and bugging me is as good as T.V. to him, only it's not good for me.
I get in his space and he ain’t like that either and we go back and forth while Momma and Daddy go back and forth too, and finally Daddy says he can’t take it no more. We all need to get out of here and to the town before the rains wipe out the road to like what he hears happens from the neighbors. Heard tell the last time it happened, no one could leave for three full months and it ain’t natural to be cooped for so long. Daddy is like a shark, always needing to be on the move otherwise he’s liable to take a bite out of something.
“That’s it!” Daddy says, “you and me, Momma. We is going to town early tomorrow and I can’t take this sitting around no more. I got about a thousand things need doing outside and everything is all wet out there and I ain’t doing them in the wet nohow. I hate the mud, and I hate slippery hands, and I hate wet leather gloves, and I also ain’t too happy about slipping on wet grass, and tell you the truth, it’s getting so I hate even drinking water. I hate it!”
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Momma agrees that the garden is all muddy too and she ain’t like us all dragging in the mud into the house anyway and it would be nice to feel some cement under foot. Even if it’s wet in town too, at least the cement won’t stick to you like the mud do. Jacob and Me want to know if we get to go along this time for we was tired of the wet and mud also and we hate each other in here and we is always in all of our spaces all the time. We can’t take it no more either.
Daddy says that it's just him and Momma what was going and we’ll just have to get used to it since we is grown men and shouldn’t be afraid of no rain or of being left alone. Jacob and I kick up a ruckus for we ain’t want to be left up here while Momma and Daddy have a good time in town while we stare at a broken T.V. with a terrible picture of a hanging bat on it. Jacob is squawking now because he says that’s his favorite picture, but I tell him that I hate it and bats is evil and they ain’t nothing but furry birds with sharp teeth and they hang upside down and that makes them like a piece of fruit, and the thought of reaching up to grab a piece of fruit from a tree and grabbing a flabby hot bat instead makes me want to puke.
Jacob says to take it back since bats is his favorite thing in the world, and I say I ain’t never taking it back and I rush over and rip that bat picture off the T.V. and tear it up and Jacob is coming at me with a murderous look in his eyes and Daddy and Momma is breaking us up and shouting. Me and Jacob start crying and Daddy is shaking his head and says, “We all need to get away from each other for a while. Momma and me is going to town tomorrow and that’s final. You all is going to do your chores, and stay in different rooms until we come back, and if I hear that you all have been fighting while we is gone, I’ll make one of you sleep in the outhouse for a week and you think this is close quarters? Wait until you have to fall asleep next to a hole that reaches to the center of the earth and is filled with turd towers.”
Me and Jacob both keep quiet even though Jacob sticks his tongue out at me and I shake my fist at him. Daddy goes on, “If you all behave yourselves while we is gone, you’ll both get a treat of your own choosing, provided it ain’t cost money. For we ain’t got none.”