“Oh, all right,” agreed Abigail. Everyone sat down at the table, and Abigail recited her poem.
A Card Game in the Dark
My family Sits around a barrel Cut in half Upside down Cards thrown all over My brother makes me pick up two With a silly grin on his face My four-year-old brother Beats us again! Nobody else Ever wins.
Night closes in around us The porch light Is burning out The dog whining In the background My brother In a T-shirt and underwear Oh my gosh! He’s won again!
“The poem is a true story,” said Ernest. “About me.”
“I might have guessed that,” said Aline. “I like it. It has a real feeling.”
“Thanks. I have others,” said Abigail.
“So do I,” said Aline.
And so the children sat at the table through the afternoon, exchanging poems and talking. Aline brought out some soda crackers and butter and sugar and the children made themselves a snack. The afternoon passed quickly, though at one point Ernest imagined himself riding with real cowboys, herding cattle instead of sitting at a kitchen table. This adventure confused him: he liked it well enough, but it wasn’t what he really wanted. He wanted motion and excitement.
All of a sudden, a voice came from outside the house. “Sister, you got two boys out here hungry as jackrabbits. We’ll get the horses fed and watered and be in for supper.”
“Oh, no!” cried Aline, “I haven’t done anything.”
“We should go,” said Abigail, who suddenly remembered her parents back in Toronto.
“Won’t y’all stay and visit with my brothers?” said Aline, bustling about to set the table.
“No, thank you,” said Abigail.
“We can be your secret friends,” suggested Ernest.
“Well, y’all are the only ones who know my poems,” said Aline. “I guess that does make us secret friends. Y’all sure about your way back home?”
“I think so,” said Jacob. “Right, Ernest?”
“I can’t remember everything the monkey told me, but . . .”
“Ernest!” interrupted Jacob.
“If y’all get lost, you come right back here. I don’t want you wandering around at night with coyotes on the loose,” warned Aline.
“I forgot about the coyotes,” said Ernest, excitedly.
Abigail, Jacob and Ernest stepped out the front door just as Garland and Raymond were coming out of the barn. As before, our children were invisible to Aline’s brothers.
“They’ll never love us the way Mema does,” said Ernest.
“Is that why Aline sees us and they don’t?” asked Jacob.
Ernest shrugged.
“OK, Ernest, what do we do now?” asked Abigail. “You got us here. Get us home.”
“It’s easy. We just jump up and down and shout ‘Apper dapper apper do’!” said Ernest.
So the three children tramped out into the field, close to where they’d arrived, and they yelled and they jumped and they yelled and they jumped and they yelled “Apper dapper apper do!” ever more loudly, but nothing happened.
“Oh no!” moaned Jacob. The pleasures of the afternoon evaporated. The silence and the music and the poems lost their charms. The calm they’d felt turned into panic.
“We’re trapped here. We’ll never see Mommy and Daddy again,” wailed Abigail.
“We’ll have to start eating meat because we’re in Texas,” said Jacob. (Our children were vegetarians.)
“Huh?” said Ernest.
“We’re more likely to be eaten by the coyotes,” said Abigail.
“What are we going to do?” asked Jacob.
“I can’t remember,” said Ernest miserably.
“Ernest!” said Abigail, her teeth locked shut.
“Something must be different,” said Ernest.
“The apron. You’re not wearing the apron,” said Jacob, recovering himself.
“She’s wearing it!” grimaced Abigail in despair.
“If we go back in there, she’ll see us and they won’t, and they’ll think she’s crazy, and that won’t be nice at all,” figured Jacob.
“She believes in us, they don’t,” said Ernest.
“Let’s go around back and see if we can get her attention,” said Abigail.
“I don’t want to get her into any trouble,” said Jacob. “Especially since she doesn’t have her brothers’ dinner ready.”
Abigail gave Jacob a very cold look.
As they walked around the house, our children could hear Raymond and Garland talking to Aline.
“Let’s just eat the cold chicken,” said one boy.
“I’ll sure be glad when Mother’s back,” said the other.
A big splash was heard and then Aline’s voice: “Not again!”
Just as the children reached the back, Aline rushed out the back door, untying her soaking apron. She wrung it out and pegged it on a clothesline to dry. She was preoccupied and didn’t see her visitors.
When the door slammed behind Aline, Abigail took the apron off the line and tied it, still wet and gooey, around Ernest’s neck. Jacob tried not to look at the apron.
The children hurried away from the house. Just before they started to jump up and down again, Abigail asked her brothers, “Do you think they’ve noticed that we’re gone?”
“Who?” asked Ernest.
“Our parents!” said Abigail and Jacob.
As it happened, the parents did notice the quiet of the house and figured their children were deep in a game. Like most parents, these two loved nothing more than knowing their children were, if briefly, content with one another in companionable imaginary lands. Chaos was held at bay.
“I’d better start the laundry,” the father finally announced. He started up the stairs as the mother tidied up the breakfast dishes.
Chapter Three
Daddy
Over eighty years and thousands of miles passed in a flash. The children didn’t realize they were home until they heard their father’s voice boom down at them: “Out of the laundry, you three. You’re going to break these baskets, and then where would we be?”
The children could have said “in Texas,” but they didn’t. They didn’t say anything.
The father found it a bit peculiar his children didn’t rise to the bait of an argument, but the change was refreshing, and he decided not to comment on it.
“Is supper ready?” asked Ernest.
“Supper? You just had breakfast,” replied the father.
“What time is it, Daddy?” asked Jacob.
“It’s about ten-thirty,” answered the father.
“Ten-thirty!” the three responded altogether. They had spent hours with Aline, but time hadn’t passed at all in Toronto.
“That’s