Lydia and Dana woke Jackson and Ralph up the following morning, pouncing on them and shaking them until they were sufficiently coherent to understand what was going on. The girls wanted their brothers to, instead of going out all day and come back muddy, play with them instead. The brothers agreed to the deal, if only the girls would get off them. The Dana squealed enthusiastically and ran out of the room.
"She's going to get her rollerblades right now, so you two better not be lying!" Lydia exclaimed.
"Yeah, yeah," Ralph mumbled, turning over. Jackson rolled to the edge of his bed and got up. Rummaging through the closet, he found his and Ralph's pairs of rollerblades and chucked Ralph's onto the top of the bunk.
Ralph grumbled loudly and then slid off the bunk. He denuded his body and Lydia huffed and left the room. The brothers changed clothes and Ralph put on his blades, while Jackson just carried his with him. They went outside and Dana was already raring to go, struggling to skate/walk on the gravel driveway. Ralph and Jackson struggled to open the garage door, eventually opening it enough for Jackson to wriggle in and use the mechanism to open it the rest of the way.
He wheeled Lydia's bicycle out of the garage and Dana latched quickly onto the banana seat bike, so he got on and started pedaling. They made it (somehow) down the driveway without mishap, reaching the paved road beyond. For the next several hours they rode and skated all over the neighborhood, doing ridiculous things (like wheelies, and one-foot skating, all while moving at top speed) and crashing quite a bit.
When everybody had at least one knee thoroughly skinned, they headed back to the house and put alcohol and peroxide on their wounds, and then ate the food their mother had prepared for the hungry munchkins. As they were eating, they began to hear rumbling file through the sky.
"Aww man! We had so much more time for rollerblading! No we have to go play in the mud!" Dana complained.
Ralph and Jackson looked at each other, grinning so wide it looked like it hurt. Lydia attempted to comfort Dana, explaining, "Rules are rules. When it rains, we all have to go outside."
Their mother confirmed this with a short nod, and smiled. "Remember, come in through the back door when the rain is done falling," she reminded them.
They chorused affirmation, took off as much clothes as they were allowed, and ran outside to play in the terrific thunderstorm.
For several hours, they dashed through puddles and climbed trees, threw branches at other branches in the hopes of knocking them down, and chased the dog around the yard. When they became bored with that, and the rain had abated somewhat, they began digging holes to fill with water, and making mudpies out of the results.
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Finally, covered in mud, bark, and leaf shreds, they bounced back into the house in the old laundry room at the back of the house, turned on the faucet in the massive sink (it was big enough to fit two small children), and cleaned themselves off.
By this time, their father had returned home, and he wanted to teach them all how to fish. 'Presumably it was 'the right time' or something,' Jackson thought.
He took them down to the dock by the 'lake', and they began digging for worms. After finding several dozen (and both Jackson and Ralph eating their fair share), he taught them individually how to thread the hooks through the whole body of the worm, how to slowly drag the pole back and forth, to get the fishes' attention, and how to sharply jerk the hook when the fish had taken the bait.
The children, being children, were not immediate successes, but learned quickly, and had nine fish in under two hours.
They brought the fish home in a bucket of water, but upon arriving, their father took the fish out back and buried them.
Rather surprised, Jackson asked, "Why aren't we going to eat the fish? Why would you catch fish and not eat them? Why did you bury them instead?"
His father hushed him, and responded, "All answers will come in their time. Which do you want first?"
Impatient, Jackson shrilly replied, "All of them!"
His father laughed, and said, "We aren't going to eat the fish because the water they breathe was contaminated. They are full of dirt, and mud, and possible remnants of drugs from when the house down the street exploded. They had been experimenting with chemical processes to make methamphetamines in a different way, and now their experimental drugs are at the bottom of the lake, if not the stomachs of the fishes. I buried the fish because the nutrients that make up a fish are a fantastic fertilizer, and I want to eventually start a garden in the backyard. Our yard used to be a gravel mine, but they sold the property to the man who owned this house before us, and he built the house and sold it to us. I'm telling you all of this to say one thing. The dirt in our yard is not good for growing things. The mine was stripped of its topsoil, first thing, and now the only good things that grow here in our yard are dandelions."
Jackson, having lost the train of thought, simply responded with a hesitant 'ok', and proceeded to forget about the entire conversation while washing his hands in preparation for dinner.
They prayed, ate dinner together, prayed again, read Proverbs 13, and went to sleep.