They're after us!

Now playing: cousins, cousins, and more cousins

This morning my father went to the grocery store and bought two big boxes of donuts--one with chocolate frosting, and one with glaze. I ate a chocolate donut, and half of Lillian's chocolate donut, which she didn't want. When I went out to check the cats, Mandy was particularly friendly and began to purr as soon as I picked her up: she hadn't been fed. She decided to lick my ears as bribery.

Brother2 had a basketball game this morning, to which my parents, Brother1, and Uncle Kirk went. The boy cousins were all too interested in playing computer games and blowing up robots upstairs. Aunt Lisa had just gone running, and so needed a shower. She agreed to stay home with the boys and Mary, while Daisy dragged me, Lillian, and Annalee over to San Born Lake. We made quite an expedition: Annalee with her coat hood dragged down over her curls; Daisy and Lillian with their snow hats pulled down to their eyebrows and the pompoms at the tops of the hats wagging ridiculously, and me striding rather grouchily (at first) at the train of the procession.

Daisy led us on a long rabbit trail, down a sandstone path between juniper trees, across a meadow, and through a thicket of mulberry trees, their trunks writhen and spotted with green lichen. We ploughed through a glade, scrambled through some trees, and came out on a gravel road leading toward the lake. I spotted a horseapple tree near the road. We trooped over to inspect it. Horseapples (also known as Osage oranges) were sprinkled in the ditch under the tree. The three girls picked them up, inspected them, sniffed them ("Ew! Smells gross!" exclaimed Daisy; "Smells like a grapefruit," said Lillian), and stuffed them into their pockets, handling them clumsily because of their oversized gloves. "It's squishy!" said Daisy. "Probably bad," I said, and picked one up. "Feels like a brain," I commented. "Ooooh," giggled all the girls. "Feels like a dog brain!" chortled Daisy. "Yep. Dog brain, dog brain," said Lillian cheerfully. "Maybe a bunch of dogs lost their brains here," said Daisy, "maybe that's why they're so dumb." Annalee laughed.

Having filled their pockets with horseapples, they continued on their way, with me following. We jumped a fence and walked across a closely-mown lawn. We poked our heads inside an old shack and found a little path running into the woods. Suddenly, just as we started onto the trail around the lake itself, Daisy realized that she'd lost the walkie-talkie that we'd brought along (one walkie-talkie with the expedition, one with Aunt Lisa at home). We hurried back, searching the ground carefully. I found it where we'd jumped the fence. Annalee insisted on calling Aunt Lisa. When I told Aunt Lisa that we were alright, she said, "That's appreciated," in her dry way.

As we returned to the path in the woods, I poked my head out of a thicket. "Look out," I said. "There's spies over there. We have to hide from them." The little girls hastened up beside me and peered over my shoulder. "What?" asked Lillian. "Spies. We have to hide. Let's wait until they're on the other side of that building," I replied, "and then we'll run for it." There were four or five unsuspecting adults strolling about near the lake, close to an old house that people rent and use for parties occasionally. They sauntered towards the house. As soon as they were out of sight, I took of running, with the three girls skeining out behind me. We sprinted down the path, over a little rise, and were soon buried in a maze of trails and walkways running through the woods. Dangling honeysuckle ropes brushed our shoulders as we crossed a creek. We poked around by a pond upstream from the lake, separated from it by a very tall dam.

Further on, we came to a place where there was a stream. Beavers had dammed up the stream years ago, and though last summer the water finally cut a channel through the dam, there were still broad, muddy flats behind the dam where the water had once been. We found deer prints in the mud. We bounced on a fallen elm tree, its limbs creaking like arthritic joints, as though we were playing "horsie" with a grandfather. We followed the creek as it flowed through fairly open ground. At one point, under a clump of junipers, we found a good hideout. The floor was drifted, soft and deep, with silvery bermuda grass, like baby's hair. We curled up there and rested since Annalee's short legs were getting tired. After awhile, we continued on, hopping from sandstone rock to rock. The boulders shifted and slid, clinking like broken glass, under our feet. Annalee sat down on one of the red boulders to rest, watching Lillian and Daisy as they poked about in the mud by the creek. In one place there was a thin skim of ice on the brown water. Black fish, like slimy leaves, flickered in fear as I poked a hole through the ice and pushed it about on the tip of a long stick. Sluggish water sloshed to and fro as the ice rose and fell. We brushed through tall stands of ruddy grass, like Roman candles. Fluffy, cream-pale seed pods drifted down the breeze and caught on Lillian's teal snowhat. Baby's breath tinkled, like little bells, and last autumn's asters shattered like falling stars at the touch of a hand. Daisy held tangled skeins of wild rose bush aside for us as we crossed the creek and returned to the path.

Back on the path, Daisy and Lillian found a branch from a juniper tree that had been lopped off by some careless person. Annalee and I went in front, while they brought up the rear, dragging the branch to erase our footprints so that "they" couldn't follow us. As a helicopter buzzed in the distance, we hid in a thicket of juniper trees, crouching like hunted animals and whispering excitedly. A flock of sparrows, startled, leaped from the cattails by the creek. The roar of their wings made us jump. "You know," whispered Annalee, "they could've attached cameras to those birds." "You're right!" I said. "Let's hurry."

Geese paddled serenely on the lake, like brown lichen on a smooth, dark grey boulder. We hurried down a curving path and scrambled up a steep slope. Our feet slid on rocks that crumbled into red and yellow dust as we crushed them. Racing into a ravine, we climbed into a hollow and huddled near a dead cactus while the helicopter growled in the distance and a jet roared past overhead. Once the two noises had diminished, we raced across a broad meadow. Our feet pummeled the springy grass. Dead sunflowers rattled in a thin east wind. We debated for awhile about which way to go: south, over the dam and through the back properties of our neighborhood, or southeast, through the neighborhood itself. We finally decided (with the help of my conscience, which said that my mother wouldn't appreciate it if we took the back way) to go on the street and try to "blend in". Annalee was decidedly lagging behind by now.

To keep the spies from recognizing us, we pulled our hats and hoods low over our eyes and started off down the street. I balanced my long stick on my shoulder, shortening my steps to stroll beside Annalee, while Lillian and Daisy shuffled their feet through drifts of leaves. We cast suspicious glances at any car that passed, and when a door slammed shut behind us, Daisy jumped. To keep the spies from knowing where we lived, we walked up the easment and entered our yard through the back gate. We tracked leaves and clotted clay from our shoes onto the dining room floor as we trooped inside. Daisy immediately began to fix hot chocolate for anyone and everyone, while Lillian and Annalee prowled around, and Aunt Lisa finished off the hat she'd been knitting. Lillian proudly showed Aunt Lisa her horseapple, which made Aunt Lisa stare rather ruefully. Mary smiled her sunny, squinched-eyes smile at me as I flopped down on the sofa with a magazine. I chatted with Violin on the phone for a little bit. Her squirrely siblings were chattering in the background at her house, and my own squirrely relations were making the dining room quite a zoo on my end of the line.

When Brothers 1 and 2 returned with my parents and Uncle Kirk, my parents set to making lunch. When Uncle Kirk heard about the horseapples, he chuckled loudly, especially when Aunt Lisa told him that Lillian had told her, "They feel like brains!" "Is that any reason for bringing them home?" Aunt Lisa inquired.

I can smell burned cheesemelts from the dining room where my mother and Aunt Lisa are talking. Uncle Kirk stumps down the stairs. Mary babbles, "Jingle bells, jingle bells" in the living room, and the boys growl upstairs at their computer game. Andrew squeals--Ross probably just jumped on him. The little girls thump around in their room over my head, probably trying to rearrange the sleeping quarters. "Food!" shouts Aunt Lisa. It's lunchtime.