Archive for June, 2008
Saturday June 7th, 2008
I think it’s time I told you the truth about me. By that I don’t mean that I have plain brown hair and my eyes are the same. I don’t mean that I’m on the puny side for a twelve-year-old, or that my mama’s name is Katy and she’s out there somewhere in this big wide world. It’s about God. I don’t think He likes me much. Seems like every time I took the time to ask Him for something, what I’d end up getting was something else entirely.
My eyes, for instance. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that if he was going to give a girl plain old brown hair, that he’d at least make up for it with some fancy blue eyes. So one Sunday while the preacher was preaching ’bout how good God is at giving us gifts and how all we have to do is ask for something and we’ll get it, well I closed my eyes right then and there and bowed my head and asked the good Lord to give me blue eyes. I tell you it wasn’t five minutes later we were leaving the church and a honeybee flew right up and stung me right under my left eye. I spent the next three days with my eye swollen shut and Pilot looking at me funny every time I went outdoors. I decided right then that preacher must be studying the wrong book.
When Ben rushed inside this morning without first stomping the dust off his boots and asked me real calm-like if I wanted to learn to bottle-feed a goat, something stopped me from jumping out of my chair and racing him to the barn.
“Why won’t its mama feed it?” I asked him. That’s when he looked down and seemed to notice his dusty boots for the first time.
“Forgot to stomp my feet,” he mumbled and shuffled back outside.
Well it’s a sad thing when a baby comes into this world on the same day her mama is taken from it. I spent the better part of the morning trying to get that little she-goat to take the bottle and Aunt Kitty tried for most of the afternoon with no better luck. A goat’s cry isn’t so different from a human baby’s and I don’t mind telling you by the end of the day we were all frazzled, even Pilot, who took to howling like a hound dog and pacing outside the barn door.
This is the part where I get back to God. See, I decided to pray the most backwards prayer I could, thinking maybe I could trick Him. After thinking on it for a while, I finally prayed that God would bring back the goat’s daddy (who lives on some neighbor’s farm, I think), hoping God would instead bring back her mommy. I know that seems unlikely, but I think God could work a miracle sometimes just to spite me.
We none of us ate much of our dinner that night, what with the goat’s crying and Pilot’s howling. It was later, when Ben was out closing up the chicken coop for the night and I was trying to get past the first paragraph of Moby Dick, that I realized the only sound in the night was the “chink, chink” of Aunt Kitty washing dishes. I dropped my book and ran barefoot out to the barn. Ben was standing at the door and turned to hush me as I drew near. There was just enough moonlight pouring through the stall window that I could see them there on the straw, Pilot curled up around that baby goat, the both of them snoring in their sleep. What can you do when you’re looking at a tragedy and a miracle sittin’ side-by-side? Ben shook his head and grinned and I grinned back at him and together we went back to the house.
Aunt Kitty started calling the goat Wilbur before Ben told her it was a she-goat, not a buck, but we’re all pretty used to the name after spending the day saying again and again, “Hush, Wilbur. It’s going to be all right.” Turns out we weren’t lying after all.
Saturday June 14th, 2008
What is it about a boy that can make a girl do such silly things? Our little Wilbur sashays around the yard now, too good for the pasture and too curious for the barn. She never took to the bottle and we finally gave up. She prefers her vittles in a dog dish, and prefers to lap up her drink out of the trough beside Pilot. I’ve seen her trying her darndest to wag her little goat tail and yesterday I watched her turn no less than three times before she lay down in the straw. It’s not so much that she believes she is a dog; it’s more that she’s doing her best to impress one.
As for Pilot, near as I can tell he hardly knows he’s got a goat on his tail from sunup to sundown. He goes about his business like usual–waits at the door for breakfast in the morning, hunts up a little rodent snack around mid-day, and barks once or twice to let us know when he’s ready for dinner. Now you just go right on and tell me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that just how boys always are when girls are making themselves silly moonin’ over them?
That’s just why you’ll never catch me making a fool of myself over some boy. Just this morning, in fact, we were leaving church and Aaron McMillan bumped right into my backside.
“Oh, sorry Tevis,” he said, but I could tell by the blush rising up his neck that he wasn’t sorry at all. I’m sure Aunt Kitty was quite pleased with me though when I used my most mature voice and politest manners to say, “No problem at all, Mr. McMillan.” His mouth crooked up on one side then; I think he liked me calling him “Mr.” I just turned my head and strode with utmost grace across the lawn to Ben’s pickup truck. Aaron McMillan with his fair hair may be one of the finest looking boys of my acquaintance, but I see no need to make myself silly over him.
Now it’s unfortunate for my sense of maturity and gracefulness that Ben pulled onto our driveway just as that wicked neighbor boy was retrieving the newspaper from the box at the bottom corner of our property. (Of course he wasn’t at church, the heathen.)
Ben cranked down his window and called out, “Hello there, Ezekiel.”
That boy just nodded his head. Who did he think he was anyway? I swear he might’ve tipped his hat if he’d been wearing one. Thinking he’s some titled lord in regency England.
I stuck my head out the window and said, “You’re supposed to say ‘Hello, Mr. Ben.’”
For that I got an elbow in the ribs from Aunt Kitty and a whispered, “Hush, Tevis,” from Ben.
That boy–Ezekiel–he looked to his feet for just a moment and when he looked back up I saw that he’d been trying to contain a grin. He did not succeed. “Hello, Mr. Ben,” he said, but his eyes were on me all the while. Then he asked, “Been missing any chicken eggs lately?” and turned back up the road.
I fairly flew out of my seat, hollering at that boy. “Why you rotten, stinkin’, no good, snot-snivelin’, lily-livered–!” Aunt Kitty smashed her palm against my mouth at that point and I saw Ben shaking his head, muttering to himself, “Strange question to ask. Guess that boy is a mite disturbed. Best keep to ourselves, I wager.”
When we pulled up to the house Pilot and Wilbur were chasing a stray cat around the yard. The cat finally took refuge in a tree and Pilot sat back on his haunches to wait, tail wagging. Wilbur wobbled on her first try, but soon enough she was sitting on her haunches beside him and when she opened her mouth I swear the sound that came out was closer to a bark than a bleat. And who am I to judge that goat for acting like a dog? It’s all I can do to keep acting like a girl when I get around that boy.
Saturday June 21st, 2008
(aka the best Chocolate Fudge Cake ever)
FOR THE CAKE:
INGREDIENTS:
3 squares unsweetened chocolate
2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
2 1/4 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup dairy sour cream
1 cup boiling water
DIRECTIONS:
1. Melt chocolate in small bowl over hot water; cool.
2. Grease and flour two [...]
Monday June 23rd, 2008
I’m telling you straight off that everything that happened to me on my birthday is Ben’s fault. He came into my bedroom blowing on his harmonica, singing about me turning thirteen and all. Pilot set to howling and Wilbur, who lately has been invited indoors on account of all the whining she does if we leave her in the barn like she’s just a goat, tried to croak a howl out of her own little snout. What with all the ruckus and my eyes still half shut in sleep, I missed most of Ben’s song. Here’s the part that stuck with me, like tarweed on a horse leg:
“You’re a young lady now
no more little girl.
Thirteen years old,
takin’ on the world.”
Well it’s certainly not poetry, but here’s what that song set me to thinking ’bout: By the time she was thirteen, Pocahontas had already saved a man’s life. When Joan of Arc was thirteen, she was listening to the voices of God’s saints and angels. (Now I do hear voices talking to me on occasion, but they’re generally just in my head and it’s usually along the lines of “Aunt Kitty’s gonna know if you sneak another cookie off the tray” or “God heard that awful thing you were thinkin’ about that snooty Mary Coots in church today.”) Now you could say this here’s a reason to stop reading so many books, seeing as how reading about someone else’s life can make a girl so unhappy with her own.
But let me tell you something else I know, and this not from a book at all. It was the night of Aunt Kitty’s thirteenth birthday when she met her first husband, God Rest His Soul. (Just last year I figured out that last part wasn’t actually his name. Apparently it’s something you say when you talk about a dead person.) Now it’s true that Aunt Kitty says when she met him he was driving a cherry red ‘65 Mustang convertible and she didn’t really know what that boy looked like until their third date, but still. Things happen when you’re thirteen!
“Taking on the world,” Ben said, and it seemed like I ought to be doing more than chasing Pilot all over the hillside and tossing feed to a bunch of chickens. How does a girl wake up on an ordinary day and make it extraordinary? I spent the better part of that day waiting for Providence to step in and make something happen, but the chickens just kept pecking at the ground, Wilbur kept chasing her tail and Aunt Kitty kept telling me to pick up after myself. Well it shames me to tell you so, and for the life of me I can’t say what made this seem a good idea at the time, but I decided if Providence wasn’t going to take over then I would.
I ran on shaky legs all the way across the creekbed, up the hillside on down the gravel road leading to the neighbors’ house. Miss Julia was on her knees in the garden with a big brimmed hat covering her face.
“Where’s that boy?” I asked her, not announcing myself at all.
“Hmm?” she said, looking up at me.
“Where’s that boy?” I said again. She wrinkled up her eyebrows, like she was thinking hard. I curled my lip and said with utmost disgust. “Ezekiel.” Oh how I did hate to say that name.
“Oh,” she said, her brows relaxing and an easy smile spreading across her face. “Check the barn. I think he’s mucking stalls.”
Well I did hate to interrupt him, seeing as how he was right where he belonged, knee-deep in horse poop. But I was on a mission.
Fists tight, I marched up to the barn door and called him. “Hey, boy!”
He ducked out of a stall, shaking that black hair out of his face.
“Come here,” I said with some authority, but still I was a bit surprised when he set aside the pitch fork and walked right over to me.
He was taller than I expected, and maybe a little older too, but I steeled myself and glared up at him and said, “Today’s my thirteenth birthday and you need to kiss me so as I can say something happened other than chickens peckin’ at the ground and me picking up after myself.”
Now, soon as the last word was out of my mouth I started wishing I could swallow them all back up again, but I’m no coward and I stood my ground. I looked down for just a moment maybe, but that was for his sake, not mine. I thought he should have a minute to think about it without me staring him down.
I might’ve jumped just a little when he put his hand under my chin. His skin was rough and scratchy after all, and it probably had horse manure on it. But when he tugged my face up I looked and what do you think I saw? That stupid, crooked grin on his face. Oh, I could see right through him alright. It was all he could do to not laugh in my face right then and there. I slapped his hand away and ran all the way home.
We had chocolate cake that night, just Ben and Aunt Kitty and me. Ben gave me a tiny wooden jewelry box that he’d been whittling away at after dinner through most of last winter. Someday I’ll have something to put in it. Aunt Kitty gave me a pair of knitting needles and a big ball of fuzzy red yarn. We sat side by side in the kitchen and she guided my hands through the motions while she sang along:
“In through the front door,
around the back,
through the window
and out pops Jack!”
We were just getting started on the third row of stitches when there was a knock at the door.
“Who calls at this hour?” Ben said, and rose from his reading chair to open the door. He returned a moment later with a wrapped package. “No one there,” he said. “Just this.” He handed the box to me.
Here’s what the note on top said:
“Happy Birthday Tevis.
Keep this nice and warm and maybe you’ll get a baby hawk out of it.
Zeke”
I don’t have to tell you what was in there, do I? A chicken egg. A plain, old, stupid, white chicken egg. I really don’t like that boy.
Monday June 30th, 2008
It’s peach season at Frog Creek. Enjoy a taste of our corner of the world:
VANILLA BEAN PEACH SYRUP
INGREDIENTS:
1 vanilla bean
2 cups sugar
5 cups pureed peaches (peeled and pitted first)
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
DIRECTIONS:
Two days before you want to make the syrup, slice a vanilla bean or two in half lengthwise and place them in a [...]
