opened and there stood Grandpa in his overalls—tall, sweating, holding his cowboy hat at his hip.
“Well . . . ,” he said, looking at me. Then he breathed out through his nose.
I wished I hadn’t slept so late.
“Well, looka who’s up,” he said.
“Me,” I said. I rubbed my eye. It itched.
“Up and about,” he said.
In the short time between breakfast and lunch—or dinner, as Grandma and Grandpa called it—I walked around the outside of the farmhouse. I investigated all three porches, each of which slanted or tilted in its own unique way. I knelt and looked under the side porch, and there, back in the darkness, I saw the curled, panting tongues of Ringo and Pal—the dogs. The front porch was loud because the air conditioner was set in the window blowing hot air onto the bushes. I walked out into the front yard and the sound of the air conditioner got quieter. There was one tree in the whole yard. I could see the garden across the driveway. Grandma was right: it was hot today. The grass was cut short, and it was largely dead, a casualty of the sun. There were two tractor-tire flower beds on the lawn, painted white. There was also the old swing set, which was smaller than I remembered. If you clutched one of its poles, it left white powder on your palm.
I sat on the back stoop, and Ringo and Pal emerged from their subporch den and lay in the strip of shade against the shed. They were filthy, and they looked at me not with Teddy’s what-are-we-going-to- do-now? look, but with a sort of what-are-you-going-to-do-now? look.
There, through the gate, was the barn. Leaning.
It was too hot.
I went inside and Grandma gave me a popsicle and I went back outside and ate it on the back steps. This was where we always ate her homemade popsicles, and today it went particularly well because the heat was melting the popsicle quickly, which was how I liked it. I liked the popsicle to get soft so I could suck the juices out of it. But when the popsicle was gone I realized that what I’d just eaten was simply frozen orange juice. Not that I hadn’t known it before, but today it sort of popped out at me. Frozen orange juice.
I went back inside. Grandma was making a cake. I stood near her.
“This is the first time I’ve visited you and Grandpa by myself, I think,” I said.
“I think that’s right,” she said.
She talked a little about Elizabeth’s birthday party on Friday—which was the occasion for the cake—then we started speculating how Susan and Elizabeth were enjoying their basketball camp in Warrensburg. She thought they were probably having a fine time of fellowship and sport. I added that Elizabeth would likely be the best player there.
When the cake went into the oven, Grandma asked me if maybe I wanted to paint and I said sure and she brought out the old box of watercolors that I remembered since forever and she put a margarine tub of water out for me and I wet the brush and then swirled it around on the orange lozenge of watercolor, raising a froth, and then Grandma reappeared with a brown paper bag and some scissors and I remembered that that’s what one painted on here: cut-up brown paper bags.
On a brown bag, orange watercolor looked brown. Red looked brown, blue looked brown, green looked brown, and yellow—yellow just disappeared.
At sunset, I went with Grandma to water the flowers in the front yard. She gave me my own watering can with a spout shaped like a flower. As we watered I observed that the flowers looked thirsty and she said she was sure of it. We returned the watering cans to the back porch and then went to look at the garden. After that we carried two lawn chairs to the front yard and sat and waited for the stars to come out. We were facing the eastern sky and there was a gauze of gray at the horizon, and above that ran a long belt of reddish orange. Grandma asked me what color I would call it and I said extra peach. Ringo and Pal came and sat behind us. The sky got darker but there still weren’t any stars and when a pickup passed we waved, and Ringo and Pal chased it. They trotted back toward us but didn’t quite make it. They flopped down on the lawn between us and the road.
I sat cross-legged.
Across the road, a cornfield mounted its way toward the horizon. That was the direction Dad used to walk to school. A bit to the right, in the distance, the radio tower blinked.
Whenever my family and Uncle Kent’s family were here in the summer, everyone would sit out on the front lawn of an evening and our cousin Brad would organize me and my sisters and his sister into a tumbling act. My best move was a somersault, but I could also leap variously. The girls could do cartwheels and Brad could do handstands, in addition to being the ringmaster. It had been a few summers—four?—since we had put on a good show out here.
We heard someone walking on the dry grass and we looked back and here came Grandpa carrying a lawn chair.
The stars did come. Grandma saw the first one.
The second day was hotter, and the third day the hottest yet. The thermometer on the side of the green shed said ninety-eight degrees when Grandma and I left for town. We cruised into Windsor. Sunlight reflected off cars. It sure was a flat town. We stopped at the drive-up window at the bank but I was too shy to ask for a sucker and Grandma didn’t ask and the teller didn’t give me one. Maybe she didn’t see that there was a kid in the car with Grandma.
We drove out the other side of town and I looked across the fields and the cattle were clustered under the few trees. I personally thought my suggestion that maybe my cousin-once-removed Craig might be lonely and might like to play with me this afternoon was a good idea. I had spent ample time with Grandma and Grandpa. Watching Grandma cook. Driving with Grandpa in the truck to buy feed. Stalking the cats. All of us going to the Wal-Mart and the Dairy Queen in Clinton. Supper in the church basement. I didn’t have my bike with me or any other entertainment, really, and after lunch Grandma and Grandpa always both fell asleep sitting straight up in the living room and I would simply have to wait for them to wake up. We had visited the bookmobile yesterday. It stopped not far away in a place that was called a town and had a sign so you knew it was a town but really there was nothing there but two houses. I had picked out two armfuls of books but Grandma had not been sure if that was an appropriate number of books and so she asked me to put some back. The consequence being I ran out of books the same day. In Jeff City, the librarians knew we took home a whole big box full of books.
“I think the cows are hot,” I said to Grandma. We were on a straight road.
“They can stand in a pond to cool off,” she said. “If they have a pond.”
“That’s true,” I answered. Our cows at home did that.
The car was slowing down, and Grandma made a turn onto another road. The car accelerated sluggishly.
“It seems flatter over here than at your and Grandpa’s farm,” I said.
“It’s flat as a flitter.”
“Is this the prairie?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t think people call it a prairie. That’s more like Kansas.”
I nodded.
“The farm I grew up on was just over there,” Grandma said, nodding west, “and my brother—your uncle Emmett—used to call it ‘Ruffin Valley’ because it was so flat. He’s a joker, just like you.”
