I kissed ma softly on the cheek so as not to hurt her. Then I pounced on pa and hugged his neck, “When? When? When?” I asked excitedly.
“Soon as you go get washed up and get your best clothes on.” Pa said.
I was out of their room in the blink of an eye. Pa called after me, “Go fetch your other shoe first before Whiskey gets it and chews it all up!”
I was half way up the stairs already and had to spin around to go get my shoe. It was a good thing too ‘cause Whiskey was already over by it sniffin’ it.
“Oh no you don’t!” I shouted at Whiskey.
Boy I spooked her good! She hadn’t seen me comin’ out of the house so when I shouted at her she tucked her tail and ran into the barn. With shoe in hand I tore up the grass racin’ back to the house.
Two hours later I was sittin’ behind pa’s truck drivin’ us I back to the farm. Seein’ how I had been drivin’ the farm vehicles most of my life, Charlotte-Rose Blackwell, who had known me all my life and that worked at the Town-Hall where licenses are given and who I might add has the biggest hair I ever seen, didn’t make me take the drivin’ test part. She just looked at pa and asked, “Can he drive?”
Now, she knew perfectly well that I could drive and probably better then her and there is a good reason why. She is my ma’s second cousin and I might add that her and my pa absolutely love to hate each other. Putting them in the same room together is like stir’n gasoline with a hot poker. After her husband run off with her sister, Charlotte-Rose was beside herself. It just goes to show that no matter how much they hate each other, my pa was the first one to offer to help get their crops to market. For nearly two straight weeks I drove their tracker all over that little farm listening to the two of them grumbling at each other all the dang time. Since Charlotte-Rose didn’t have no kids to mind the farm, she sold that winter to Mr Griffith and moved into town where she got a job working in the Town Hall.
I suppose that things got to be done right when you are getting a license to I didn’t much mind her askin’ if I could drive. Pa answered her by simply sayin’, “I recon he could drive before he could walk!”
After that, she had me look into this weird contraption that flashed lil’ green lights all over and I had to say where they was’s flash’n at; then I had to read an eye chart that was hangin’ on the wall behind the counter. I did real good at that; she even said so.
I wasn’t sure what to do when she looked up at me and made a face like I smelled of poo. For half a second I thought maybe I had gone and made a mess in my diaper again but then she asked, “Don’t you want to comb your mop before I take your picture?”
Luckily pa came prepared; he pulled a comb out of his shirt pocket and combed my hair nice and neat for me. I didn’t even complain none when he spit on my head to get my hair to lie down.
Oh yeah, I also had to answer some silly questions like what does it mean when a light is yellow and Charlotte-Rose made me sign my name a bunch of times. The first time I started to sign my name I was so excited and nervous that I started writing Nevada but pa stopped me by thumpin’ me in the back of my head and saying, “Your real name!”
Pa straightened my tie for me and I stood on the spot where Charlotte-Rose told me to stand. Pa kept makin’ faces at me and Charlotte-Rose told him if he didn’t stop she was goin’ to make him wait outside until she was done. I don’t think she really would have done that but it would have been funny watchin’ her chase him out the door.
As we were leavin’ I think I wasn’t even touchin’ the ground as I walked and I think I would have floated right away had pa not had his hand on my shoulder. I was holdin’ my new farmer’s license and lookin’ at it as we walked toward pa’s truck. That’s when pa said, “Hey!” I looked up at him and he tossed me the keys to his truck. “Why don’t you drive us home?”
I clutched them keys so close to me that I think I left a key shape in my chest. When he pulled a stack of phone books out of the bed of the truck I realized that he had planned all along to let me drive home. We had to scoot the seat way up so that I could reach the pedals and that meant that pa had to sit with his knees nearly up to his chin. When I sat down on the phonebooks I felt that familiar squish and knew that I was hawlin’ a load and I don’t mean in the bed of the truck. I was so dang excited to have my own farm license and to be drivin’ pa’s truck that I even if I was wearin’ nothin’ but my diapers I wouldn’t have cared if someone seen.
I ain’t braggin’… well maybe I am just a little, but I drove pa’s truck all the way back to the farm without any trouble at all. A couple of times pa had to tell me to loose up on the steerin’ wheel or I would break it ‘cause I was squeezin’ it so tightly. I guess maybe I was a little nervous and super excited all at the same time.
When I pulled the truck up to the house I think pa and me seen at the same time that Christopher’s pickup truck was back and so was Doc Wilson’s car which was parked halfway into the yard.
When pa and me seen Christopher’s truck sittin’ there halfway between the house and the barn and the odd way that Doc Wilson’s car was parked we both thought the worst. But I learned a long time ago that sometimes the first things we see ain’t really right. Like lookin’ at a pie, you see the crust on top and you might think it is a nice yummy fruit pie but maybe under that crust there is meat or veggies! That’s just how it was for pa and me. We thought we were lookin’ at a nice fruit pie but we couldn’t have been more wrong.
The first thing that jumped into my head was that somethin’ was wrong with ma or the baby. As it turned out, while we were gone Christopher and his new bride, Meggin, had come home not long after pa and I had left for town. Their timin’ couldn’t have been better ‘cause Catherine had accidentally let the pigs loose and the pigs were runnin’ all over the place. Catherine, Kristen, Vincent-Lee, and Benjamin were runnin’ all over the place tryin’ to round up the pigs again and weren’t havin’ too much luck at it.
When Christopher and Meggin pulled up and seen what was happenin’ they joined the chase as though they hadn’t been gone at all. I expect that their home comin’ was nothin’ like they had been expecting; not that I know what they were expectin’ but I do know what I was expectin’ it to be like and it was nothin’ like that. Not long after Christopher and Meggin arrived Doc Wilson had stopped by to check on ma again but was blindsided by one of the pigs as he was gettin’ out of his car. He was knocked on his backside, bashed his head against his car and was knocked out cold. Everyone was so busy chasin’ the pigs that they didn’t even realize that Doc Wilson was hurt.