Dawn’s Thoughts

December 30, 08

Today Mom and Dad went to do laundry, and I looked around at 2 hobby stores nearby, mostly related to RC planes, trains, etc. Found a Borders by accident, and searched for sausage books with no success. This is however, the town for small-batch jam and pickle making books, which is handy as I always have to cut amounts down when I pickle anything. We came home at dusk.

December 31, 08

For New Year’s Eve morning today, what were we doing but standing with our noses pressed to the window, watching our RV neighbors’ dog take a dump. The neighbor is in a wheelchair and has a dog about as crippled up. But what this dog missed in agility, it gained in other ways, because this was a dog so well-endowed as to appear to have a fifth leg. We watched it hopping about to pee and take a dump, marveling at how it got about so well.

Then Mom and Dad had cereal and we went to the International Market — Food 2 Go — to explore it. I spent quite some time wandering about, yanking unusual things off the shelves. Quite a find. This market had large industrial stainless steel teapots had 3-tier vegetable steamers, and sand pots which were ceramic. Also pickled lettuce, O-Leang Thai iced coffee (which had coffee, corn and sesame seed in it), ginger honey concentrate (which makes me wonder if you could pressure cook fresh ginger and honey). The honey winter loquat also made me think of pressure cooking loquats and honey — you’d have to use a lot, but Mom can eat them raw and bitter, so I suppose it could be done. This store was like a warehouse store of international food. Jujube honey, and something called dried fructus momordicae, which might have been some form of mushroom. In fact, they had various things whose only label was dried fungus, and several canned goods with no best by date whatsoever, including one with a quite obvious mm/dd/yyyy printed on it, rather than dates. There was also dried marinated mustard, dried water cress and dried leeks, all things I didn’t know it was possible to dehydrate. Sweet turnip (radish) might have been salted, since some of them were. Citron preserve, sage honey, honey ginger tea, aloe tea, and honey chinese quince tea and honey jujube tea were in the tea section. I wonder if you could pressure cook quince as well?

The roasted corn tea (the roti de mais) was interesting, as it appears to be my botched attempt at corn teas, boiled and drunk as a tea. Interesting. The yam jam was purple, of all things. Ginger brew was ginger and sugar, and sometimes lemon.

the produce section had fresh taro stick, fresh chestnuts, soy bean sprouts, asian pears as large as two fists, chinese and indian bitter melon — the indian one looked especially hard to eat, being covered with spines. Also a purple banana flower, which was quite pretty, and I’ve found can be eaten as a vegetable.

The jam and spice section had pomengranate molasses, which is what I need for picon punch, whole canned chestnuts without syrup, walnut sauce, fermented shrimp “fruit pickles” — I suppose to make fruit pickles from. The dried banna chips were fried, salted and in a brown wrapper as though they needed to be snuck into a house. Ground sour grape were ground, dried, immature grapes, freekah almanara which was grilled green wheat, foul madammas which I believe were some canned fava beans. Also dried whole lemon powder, used as a spice for Mediterrean food. Bugloss — which turned out to be borage flowers, and which were quite pretty. Pickled grape leaves, pomengranate, carob, blackberry and other molasses. Whole mahlab, which is wild cherry seed, for spice and plaintain seeds, which I bought to try and grow plantains. Only problem is I’m not sure they’re plantain banana seeds or herb plantain seeds. Either way, should be interesting in the garden.

We got food at the Food 2 Go takeaway, which had Chinese food but also whole chickens and ducks, roasted and on spits. Then we went to Costco, Barnes and Noble and Smith’s for shopping.

Then we came home, watched TV and ate cheese to wait for the New Year.

Deceber 27, 2008 (Saturday)

Picked up Mom’s chest of drawers. Went to Main Street Antique Mall, which has several rooms, and reminds me of our closest antique mall, until it went belly up. Always good.
Met Ernie at Haufbrauhaus for dinner. Have I mentioned how good this place is? Good German red cabbage and great sausages. Apple strudel was half the size of last year though. They had a christmas tree in the corner. They have a hall, like the long room in Basque places, also with long benches, though at the Haufbraushaus, they have benches instead of chairs. This is fortunate because otherwise a great number of totally drunk folks would have fallen over if the benches hadn’t been joined at the back, because the band played the Star Spangled Banner with a Alps horn and everyone had to stand on the benches with their glasses raised. And then the man with the horn said he would lie down on the table and play, and he did that too. It sounds like a saxophone. And then he said he would balance the horn on his face, still lying down, which he did, even though it was as tall as someone standing. Then everyone cheered and clapped and the man carried the horn off.
Went to Bass Pro Shop in the evening. I love the Bass Pro Shop. Something must be a bit wrong with my culture if I get excited about going to the hunting store, especially since when I mentioned archery at school, people feared for their lives and wouldn’t let me take it, but I do like it at the store. I thought they would have sausage making books, and they did of course, because Mom was just saying we need to start eating tofu, which I don’t like, but I just saw a book on Tofu at the Stanford booksale, and when we first came to Vegas I said wouldn’t it be nice to find a tofu book that told how to make everything. Then of course I found it. But, getting back to the Bass Pro Shop, tofu means sausage making and last time at Cabela’s, which is like the Bass Pro Shop, there were tons of sausage books. I found a very good book with no nitrates or dyes in it. Also wandered around the food, book and clothes aisles, as well as hunting and fishing. There’s a Jeff Foxworthy Incomplete Hunter film that might be good. Searched for the baby carriage with a shotgun case on it that I saw last time, but no such luck. Only standard game carriers around.

They aren’t as funny to look at.

By the way, there is apparently such a thing as a quail harness. Let me say that again: a QUAIL harness. It’s probably if you want to use one quail to lure others, but good Lord, I had trouble enough putting a chicken in a harness, and then being run all over. I’d hate to try shoving a quail into one.

Mmm…cartoons…rednecks with shotgun baby carriages and quail harnesses….
December 28, 2008 (Sunday)
Breakfast at Wild Wild West, soon to be Denny’s unfortunately. Stole showers at Ernie’s motel, watching bits of the House marathon on TV. Said goodbye to Ernie. Mom and I hugged him and Dad shook his hand, which made everyone laugh. Got dog kisses.
Shopped at market and took a good nap after lunch. Took the shuttle to Bill’s casino on the strip. After the state of the buses last year, I was worried they might leave us stranded altogether, but the shuttle came back after we wandering through two or three casinos, and took the ped bridge across the highway to some others. A very cold night. Had dinner at the buffett and stuffed ourselves as usual. Very good. Then took the shuttle, after making periodic mad dashes outside to see if it had arrived, as staying outside permentantly was too cold, and loitering in the wind break entrance was too far from the bus stop. But we got home regardless and went to bed.

December 29, 2008

Shopped on Maryland Parkway today. Looked at Barnes and Noble and the mall. Wanted to get some things at Barnes and Noble 50% sale but couldn’t find anything or what was on sale, except for usual bargain crap, now red tagged and on sale. At the mall, got several good shirts and jacket at Bonworth, which we can only find in Vegas. At the FYE store, found a film for Aunt Helen and called her to see if she wanted it, which she did. Also found a 50% DVD for the cheapest yet which I wanted, but still think it could be cheaper somewhere. Went to one thrift store which had four bookcases with verying levels of old books. Found an old one with rhymes and stories from the thirties.

Went home, had tea, watched more Grey’s anatomy. Had dinner of smoked chicken and plaintains. We figured out from the plaintains (!) at the buffet the other night that they are boiled, then fried, which makes them flexible. Really good, especially with cider mix over them. Ate candied pumpkin which was not as sweet as other candied fruit, and some unidentifiable form of candied fruit as well. Went to bed.

December 24, 08

Today Mom and Dad went around to look for other places to stay, but didn’t find any because they were all expensive or too close together. They took me, but there was nothing to do, and I hadn’t known we were only driving about, so we went to the thrift store as well. Then we went to the Pet Kingdom USA, which I love, because last time when we found it, it had marmosets, monkeys and some strange animal (maybe a biterong, except not black, I can’t remember), with a dog muzzle and raccoon hands, with was black and white and clowned all over his cage. This time they had the marmosets, but the bushbabies were hiding. The bunny cages were each housing a sleeping store cat, in addition to rabbits. There was also such a beast as the Ass Face Frog. I REALLY wanted to see what that looked like, but it was very small and hidden partly in the plants, so I couldn’t see what it’s face looked like at all.

What a shame.

In the car, we speculated as to how many very small dogs you could fit in a truck’s very small very long bumper tool box. At last count, it was three dauschounds or ten Beanies (Aunt Kathy’s 1 pound dog).

I am not sure exactly why you’d want to put 10 daschunds, but I suppose if you were very very bored…

After the pet store, we had lunch at the King Ranch Market, a Mexican market, next door. They had regular tamales, but also Cuban and Central American tamales. I had the Central American, which was wrapped in banana leaves, and had chicken and potatoes inside. This market was a bit different from Bakersfield’s. First off, there were great piles of green folded banana leaves (for tamales) piled everywhere. There were several fruits like nance or nameme (?) that I didn’t know. And instead of cow heads the had pigs in the packaged meats.

December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas! This morning we went over to Ernie’s motel room, with presents. The dogs had their Beggin Strips wrapped in a box, and naturally tried to knock them all about the bed before they needed assistance. Then they inspected each other’s boxes and swallowed their beggin strips whole. Then they rassled.

Ernie and all of us went to the Mandalay Bay Aquarium, which is always good. They had a golden Crocodile, which was kind of mottled gold and grey and which had a partially gold tail. I spent some time at the Pacific Octopus cage (twice), because the octopus kept crossing the tank and dancing for me (also twice). It had gills very different from fish gills, because instead of layers there was only a round flap that opened and closed. And also its’ legs were webbed along the sides, like a flying squirrel, which probably helped it to float along. It had a very large head and very small eyes atop the head, and then I think it went to sleep because it stopped moving, and leaned its head away from the glass until only its legs were splayed out like a starfish.

The starfish that shared the tank was moving quite quickly (about ¼ inch a minute or less), to wrap one leg around the rock it was sitting on. (As a side note, when we were in Paso Robles I discovered why the chicken crossed the road. He did it to protect his territory on the other side, because I saw him do it).

We wandered around Mandalay Bay casino and then had Christmas dinner around 3 or 4 at the Orleans buffet. They had prime rib and lamb in the buffet for the regular price, and we ate too much. We had dinner with Ernie and then he went home, and we laid with our bellies up from 5:30 PM until bedtime and watched TV (more Grey’s Anatomy). It was very good.

December 26, 2008

Today Mom and I went thrifting. Mom found her back-room craft chest she wanted. We went looking for the Salvation Army with the yard and finally found it. They had a little sauna out there, about the size of a closet, with all the controls, locks and off-switches on the outside. I suppose that’s so you can torment the person entirely who’s dumb enough to sit inside such a small thing. Personally, I’d want more than one window in the thing myself. Saw a very proper wooden pool table with claw feet. Must have cost quite a bit new.

Went for lunch at Jerry’s, where they had very good gyros. Then we met up with Ernie and Dad to watch the LED show on Fremont Street. this is a souvenir mall with a great white metal roof over the top, which is where the LED’s are projected. Very colorful computer animation and projection, but did I mention it’s very loud? It’s so loud you can hear it through both hands clamped around your ears, which is how I was. But it’s all scyrochonized to music and, as was explained to us, the ads afterwards often have better effects than the show.

Then we had soup and sandwich at the Las Vegas Club. They had a Manhatten cream-style clam chowder, which I’ve never had before. It was very similar to the white clam chowder because of the cream. And the sandwich was good as well.
Watched more light shows and walked around the Nugget. Went to Jerry’s for dessert. They have the best desserts, made with cream so they stick to the roof of your mouth. We found them by complete accident last year. Dad had a chocolate cake, Mom and I had the brownie cheesecake and Ernie had the Boston Cream pie. These are all the size for three people anyway.

went home

Yesterday December 22, we all settled around the kitchen table to have tea and read the Bakersfield Californian, as is usual for mornings here. The Californian has a lot more local things throughout,, so I always enjoy reading it. Listened to KCRW of course, because it continues to be a great radio station that might actually have a real person there every now and again to change music. They have country that I haven’t heard for some time, and, strangely, they rotate it — you know, so I don’t have to set my watch by the Top Ten Song every single hour. There are local radio stations at home that I like, but they don’t do mixes like that.

Went to Ranch 99 market for breakfast. I thought about Noreiga’s, as they are the only Basque place I know to have breakfast, with wine, of course, just like dinner, and I haven’t yet been there for breakfast. Ranch 99 had sugar cane stalks and tamale goods all over: stacks of lard, husks, pineapple, brown sugar (proof to me that the Azteca tamale factory is wrong in saying that no one has traditional sweet tamales for Christmas. They’ve decided to experiment with their tamales, which is fine as they make the best local tamales in our area, period. However, I will miss their Christmas tamales). Of course I had to tour the meat market to see if they’re still selling cow or sheep heads (whole, with eyes and tongue intact). No luck this time, though several quite large well-priced tongues. Which reminds me, I have to get pickled tongue from the take-out here before we leave. Last time they told me they pickle it in red wine — something I haven’t tried.

I walked by the counter where they have cold things — yogurt, sour cream, flan — and discovered they have more of the sugared fruit I tried at my Suvianda at home. Got a large assortment of these — cactus, pear, orange, something I think is chayote squash with chile. Apparently, it is actually possible to candy an entire orange (with seeds) and a pear (with seeds and stem). Of course, they have stacked sugar cane and kids were strolling about with big spears of it under their arms. The best place is the produce market, with towers of fruit. They have quinces, which I didn’t buy, but they definitely have more than at home. Aunt Helen, Mom and Dad and I had breakfast there at the tables. I shared a burrito with Mom, and a champurrado, which I’m sure I’m spelling wrong. Mexican hot chocolate with cinnamon and masa harina. Really fills you up. We got a large and the woman kept looking at us as though we were crazy, until we said we were sharing. They also had pomengranates, split and cracked as though they’d come off someone’s tree.

We went thrifting all about Bakersfield, including a new clearance center that sells things in bulk. Went by Winco, got groceries, etc. Had a split pea adventure. I kept walking around Winco noticing peas, beans all over in piles on the floor. Curse the person who decided to fill the bulk aisle with tiny little bags. I have to contort myself entirely to shove whatever I want into those little bags. That said, over by the split peas were the normal sized produce bags. These survived until we were in line, when the bottom decided to fall out of them comepletely and spill peas all over. The janitor was just behind us, sweeping up the latest dried foods adventure, so I’m sure he wasn’t pleased to have another one.

Today December 23rd, we got up, had breakfast, said goodbye to Aunt Helen around 10:30 AM, and got on the road, where I watched dumb movies on the computer and read a little. We needed to leave, because the weather said there was snow, hail or high winds across the mountains, or be stuck in Bakersfield until the weather cleared. (Though being stuck there doesn’t seem so bad). We came through the Tehatchipi’s, which look green and great, like they do when mist sits over them, and you can see down into the valleys, and the trailer houses. Then we came to the desert, which looked like desert, when Bakersfield is a desert that doesn’t look like one, except in vacant lots and along the sides of the road. We went through Baker, where we once stopped off a motel with shotgun holes through the doors and an aerodynamically-arranged circle of bird shit on the window, and a man with a wife and five children. Then after dark we arrived in Las Vegas, and there was Ernie in the parking lot to flag us in at the Wild Wild West. We had dinner at the Black Bear Diner — a huge split cobb salad for Mom and me. We settled in at Wild West because where we stayed before, the Rio, wouldn’t allow RVs anymore, on account of some great idiot who emptied his chemical toilet in the parking lot. Incidently, that was the discussion during dinner — what type of idiot would do such a thing and what should be done to them that did it. There are all sorts of idiots, of course, but that in particular is a special class of idiot. We found a home at the Wild Wild West near Ernie, but left in the night due to a pipeline being installed, drilled or whatever they did, depending on what form of pipeline it was. Whatever it was, it was noisy. Now I’m all for water, oil rigs etc. — they’re fun to watch. One of our best stops at casinos is right by the freight train railroad tracks, and, once, within walking distance of an oil or water drilling operation, which we were fortunate enough to watch. Also in Wyoming we stayed by the refinary, which was one of the better places, because of the lights, like a gigantic Christmas tree. The cat, when he saw those lights, thought he’d died and gone to heaven. He stayed up to watch them. So I’m all for it, just not in the middle of the night. So we left and came to the Orleans parking lot, where we have settled in.

Well, I still have to post what we did at my aunt’s in Fresno, which should be forthcoming. As it is, we’ve arrived at Pismo Beach some days ago, with great puddles all around camp like lakes. I decided I would have to make a paper boat, and succeeding it making one last night, before we left this morning. As it was, due to my poor boat-making skills, the boat is probably the only ever that could fly out, kite-like, to the water. The only problem was that the current was going the wrong way much of the time, returning it to land, and the sails made it spin in circles. Otherwise fine. I flew the thing home.

We arrived Wednesday night at Pismo and stayed in.

Thursday we thrifted around Pismo and surrounding areas. Not much useful in the thrifts this time. In the evening we went to San Luis Obispo’s Farmer’s market. Always excellent. The stores were open, so we sampled our way through the bread store and I went to the comic book store, where there are games, DVDs and books as well. We roamed around Beverley’s craft store and I noticed they have several books and tools for our knitting loom, which Mom and I have made good use of. I made another hat. The hat I’m working on now will have an interesting brim, as I forgot to turn it and started right away on the main part of the hat. At the Farmer’s Market, someone had persimmon things: persimmon jam, dried persimmons, persimmon leather, and, of all things, persimmon walnut nougat. I may have to try that, and the jam, which I’ve heard of.

Friday we went to the three thrift stores in San Luis Obispo and to the mall. I wish I could remmeber more what we did here.

Saturday we went to Arroyo Grande to visit their antique stores. Silly me. Somehow I still assume there’ll be enough antiquing to last the day. More have closed. I don’t like it. I bought a few old photos at the antique store that I liked. Diet was good of course, sample of ice cream, fudge, and the excellent bakery, where you get real cream with your tea and absolutely wonderful eclairs. Visited their resident chickens that roam about their city. Always fun. Learned that apparently our chicken and rooster are not the only males to like each other, as Arroyo Grande’s roosters do too.

Also drove to Solvang. I toured thier two bookstores, including the Book Loft, which I highly recommend. Not only do they have a great bookstore below, but a museum and used bookstore above in the attic. They have things no one else does. They even had the book I wanted, though not in English, and were kind enough to come hunting for me when they found an ancient 1910 copy not in English. They let me handle it. That set of books looked brand new! Surprisely, it wasn’t embossed or anything, but it had the marbelized cardboard and a bright red spine. Very interesting. One of the things they must have had in their special bookcase.

The other bookstore had the little purses made from candy wrappers. I’ve seen them before, and once as picture frames. I have instructions on how to do those somewhere….

Solvang also had a child-sized gingerbread house and chocolate tasting. Only we didn’t go to the chocolate, because it must have been combined with the wine tasting. Everyone was drunk, loud, and apparently intended to get drunker and louder, and quickly, but with the incentive of chocolate. Solvang is always entertaining.

Went to Pea Soup Andersen’s for the Traveler’s Special, the soup and bread. Good pumperknickel. Mom informed me this is not the same Pea Soup Andersen’s where Dad and my uncle each hoisted a dog up to have pictures taken. That was a different Pea Soup Andersen’s. Somewhat a shame, as I was looking forward to remembering the hoisting of the dogs. Nothing like two people, being squashed slowly under a pair of squirming barely contained dogs. Now that makes a festive holiday.

I went to Solvang’s wonderful toy shop as well. As usual, things you can’t get very many places. For starters, a proper toy shop with wooden toys, unfortunately out of my peg tops this year. Shame about that. It’d be a wonderful thing for Quartzite, if they had any paved spaces. There’s not as many people to hit with my top in the desert. The toy shop had the model steam engines too — even a belt-driven metalshop version, with a little drill press. I’d forgotten about the engines. You just know Santa’s elves work on something like that, tiny steam engine driven shops.

 

Got up this morning, after a night of watching TV DVD’s (Grey’s Anatomy), and knitting my new hat, only to have the carbon monoxide alarm and the other alarm go off at an absolutely unGodly hour. Because of that, had the pleasure of sleeping with all the windows thrown open and every fan in the RV turned on. It actually wasn’t cold!

Then I got up at 6 this morning, (also an unGodly hour, in my opinion), sailed my boat in the little stream by the beach, drove to Nipomo’s flea market. Mostly commerical. Went last year too, though I forget it. A few regular though interesting vendors. Some interesting books and an Edward R. Murrow DVD set.

Then on the road to Bakersfield. Left at 11 AM, got here at 1 Pm or so. We went through the hills this time, through Maricopa, which has old neat buildings and down through the flatland, where the crops are, and the grasshopper pumps. Oil fields look good. Arrived at my aunt’s long enough to look through the Bakersfield Californian briefly, and go to lunch, where we discovered the Pantry closed and my cousin at the house where we weren’t. By the time we walked back, they’d gone in the car. Read the rest of the paper, a common pastime here, since it arrives everyday and has great local information. The Tandy Leather here is going out of business. Again, what a shame. Such a good store. Then again, they are having sales and it would be great to find some Tandy craft things on sale.

So now I’ve blogged, searched the Internet, read the paper, and feel a bit better after having inhaled dog hair. (Not intentionally of course, except for the dog’s being here). We arrived here before the fog did, though I’ve heard there isn’t as much now that they’re paving over the valley entirely.

Not sure what we’ll do tomorrow, though I’m sure we’ll visit the St. Vincent store and the Ranch 99 market. God, that place is good! They have everything. The flea market today had great stalks of sugarcane just like they do. I worked hard to eat mine this Thanksgiving, but most of it molded in the fridge. SInce a stalk is only a dollar, it’s not much of a loss.

Well, yesterday was the Anthro potluck. Very good, as usual, though catered altogether this year. I missed the discussion about whose grandmother made what dish and from what home country things were from. Met a few folks I knew. Sat around talking about how TV has gone downhill, with the reality shows, and CSI/lawyer shows on all the time. They’ll have those on the air until everyone’s completely sick of them. Some good physical comedy would be nice. Everyone talked about the Cosby Show and Family Matters, Mork and Mindy, children’s shows, how nice it was to have things with good values etc. A classmate brought their son, so by the end of the night, after swearing a few times and not realizing the kid was playing under the table, the bunch of us started galncing around furtively and whispering if we told anything the kid might overhear. Other typical anthro conversaitons: was our bone lab good compared to other schools, diseased bones, the new disease class that should be offered next semester (I’ll have to look! Mmm…strange anthropology diseases…). Bad teachers (and rude students), great teachers. A very good night.

The other night, Mom and I went around San Jose shopping. I bought a Japanese pickle press. Wanted one after reading about them in the pickle book. Went down to Japantown to the market, which referred us across the street to the fancy-dish place, which did actually have one. Great! Now I can hopefully make sauerkraut etc. a bit easier now.

Then we drove about in circles looking for Cosentino’s fruit stand, following an article with a horrible intersection, which did not actually exist anymore at the time the article was written. Highway 85 got in the way. But we eventually found it, with the owner outside despite the honor system for payment. That was wonderful, because he was kind enough to tell me how to plant pomegranates (by cutting) and that my seed planting for them will never work. I need to plant a cutting in February and keep it watered all the time. They have 100 varieties of fruit there. We talked about their store, and how it’s good for unusual things. I got three baskets of just-ripe persimmons for a great price, enough to try my beer recipe. We ate two whole ones in the car. It was good they were ripe, since their the huge astrigent type. I will have to go back to the fruit stand as well, to get more stuff and to tell them how the pomegranate planting is going.

Mom’s off working at the rummage sale. I should do that sometime, except for class on Tuesdays getting in the way. I bought books (again, I know, I know), a fiction book, and several recipe books which have one or two recipes in them that I need. The rest of the book isn’t that great, but one of them has how to make one of the jam recipes without using commerical dyed gelatin. I hate that idea. So far, I haven’t found any pectin recipes for that particular recipe, except for that book. I can copy what I need and toss the rest, I suppose.
Today is the cookie party. So I’m off to that at noon. Mmm…cookies…Also I packed a little for our visiting-relatives trip tomorrow, with any luck. Also tomorrow, I have to go fetch a worm bin. Yay, more worms for me! And later today, I have many little apples on the counter waiting to be turned into pickles.

I’m going to go job search on the web now. I’ll write more later.

“Five,” Oz said distinctly. “I have five candies. But I’m not showing them to you.” He shook the candy box with the feverish kind of possession little kids have.

“Fine,” I said. I wasn’t interested in his old candy anyway. A few months back I’d have told him that I didn’t need his old candy, because back then I had no less than fifty assorted pieces in a plastic sack, left over from Halloween and probably moldering away stashed in my closet. Only I’d eaten many of them after Eva got sick. Not all that much, just enough so that the hard sour taste of spoiled candy and the dry crumpled chocolates convinced me I’d expire from food poisoning. I hadn’t had the taste for them since.

To Oz this didn’t matter. My mother, for once, made no objections about my teaching him. My only guess is that she was too absorbed with caring for Eva. When Mama Regan wasn’t in her best moods, and sat dribbling cigar juice over the carpet and periodically battering away at the television with her black oak stick to keep herself entertained, the job of distracting her fell to me. I thought I’d buckle under it, but I surprised myself at how easy it seemed. So I distracted Mama Regan from her television and tried to keep her mind on reality, instead of dead folks, while Oz hopped around us, happily reciting whatever school task I gave him.

What with Eva and Mama Regan, no one had time for Oz. For a time he’d stayed with Pete Conroy, who didn’t mind him, and when he returned, he regaled us all with tales of his adventures.

“At Pete Conroy’s, there was ice cream seven times a day.”

“No, there wasn’t.”

Oz frowned. He clutched his pad of construction papers in both hands. I’d gotten them for him to draw with some of my money from collecting for Pete Conroy. “How come?”

“Because if there was,” I told him, folding a dish towel and giving it a snap, “ Mom would have his head. She’s convinced he’s a moonshiner as it is.”

“Watch how you say that,” warned Mama Regan. “It’s an honorable profession. That crazy ice cream man wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to go about it.”

“You like him, Mama Regan, remember?” Oz said.

“Ossian, I do not like the man, I tolerate him. It doesn’t mean the man’s sensible.”

After that, I had to write down the words tolerate, moonshiner, and head for Oz to copy. We only choose words he had an interest in, because he went at them with such enthusiasm, it was hard to believe he’d been held back. The school was going to be puzzled when he showed up to first grade with such words.

“You’re going to first grade, aren’t you?” Mama Regan asked. She already knew that’s where he was going. We had made it our goal. I was spending more spare time with Oz, even though Mom said it was no good, spending so much time with my little brother, since he wasn’t the same age. Besides, it distracted me from Eva.

*          *          *

Eva was mad as anything when I told her we were going out. “Who’s we?” she asked me, without her usual prissiness.

“Oz and me and Mama Regan,” I told her.

Eva nodded. There was nothing in her eyes. It scared me. I couldn’t see Eva looking out at me. I mean, princess Eva, the one Mom and Dad used to bend over backwards for. This Eva had a paleness about her, a transluceny, as if she wasn’t really there. This Eva had muddy-colored blonde hair and the manner of a wet hen.

She thrust her hands suddenly toward Mama Regan. “Tell my fortune. I’ll give you a quarter if you will.”

Mama Regan gazed at her. She didn’t take the offered hands, though she bent her head like the telling was about to begin. Then she shook her head, two quick times, like a person clearing their ears of bugs. “I’m sorry, Eva. Your hands aren’t working today. I can’t see anything.”

“That’s not right,” Eva told her. I waited for her to command. “It isn’t like a television reception.” She seemed desperate, and it was kind of sad. “You can’t just stop knowing people’s fortunes.”

“It’s cheating,” Oz added. I watched him. He had taken out his five candies again, sticky and tattered now from handling, and he tossed them with short clumsy motions from one hand to the other.

“Grace could show you her magic tricks,” Mama Regan said in consolation.

Eva shook her head. I knew she’d seen my magic tricks more than she cared to, especially when I practiced, and more so now I’d had an actual show in a basement. Thirty people showed up for it, and there was yellow cake and lemonade and milk, and Pete Conroy and Oz made paper decorations for it. Oz still bragged about his. He made a whole paper chain and a large banner. He told Pete Conroy what he wanted to say while Pete wrote it and Ossian scrawled his message below this. It was the longest sentence I’d ever seen Oz put together. Afterwards I folded the banner to put away in my room. I was very proud of him.

Mama Regan told us she’d wait outside for us, since her legs were speaking to her today.

I pestered Eva, but I didn’t have the heart for it, and neither did Eva. Her eyes didn’t glimmer. Finally I said, “You want a splinter from the mill?”

Oz caught hold of my hand, pulling downward until I winced. “Gracie, we aren’t supposed to go to the mill. We —“

“Shut up,” I said. Oz sat obediently on the edge of Eva’s bed and folded his hands. “Be quiet, okay?” I regretted that I’d said it hard like that.

“So how about it? You want it or not?”

I studied Eva’s face. Something hopeful had come into it, a glimmer of her former self. Eva never would have gone into the mill herself, though she would have enjoyed hearing everything. She was grounded, indefinitely, as it turned out, which Eva herself translated as until the snow turned blue.

Instead of mocking, Eva’s voice dropped to a whisper. “When?”

I shrugged, hoping it looked like bravado instead of deliberate indifference. “Whenever. When all of us go out I can…” I paused. A plan was forming in my mind, myself approaching the mill, like a movie. The mill, I knew, was full of security lights, even at night, and modern machinery to strip the jackets off logs the way you’d twirl shavings from a sharpened pencil. There was no fence surrounding the mill, however, there was a crochety ancient man called Eddie to guard the place. Eddie had entered the occupational folklore of the mill and its surrounding areas, being too skinny and deaf to be practical protection against any serious threat. As children, Eva and I pressed our noses against the mesh-covered windows of the guard shack until we wore a pertupetul wire cross hatching across our noses, the symbol of bravery among the elite in the playground. Our sole means of protection against Eddie was that he lacked the legs and wind to run fast, and that he was entirely without a great black oak stick like Mama Regan’s. A stick such as that, Eddie probably knew, was at its best as a missile of war against small children and had the added advantage of destroying televisions when you no longer had the patience to change the channel. “I can sneak past Eddie’s shack,” I finished, realizing I had no idea yet how I would accomplish this feat.

“That’s dumb,” Eva said with some of her usual sarcasm. I was pleased. “And if being stupid wasn’t enough, it’s illegal too.”

“You shouldn’t talk about illegal.” I had the satisfaction of seeing Eva’s face twist. Her mouth half-opened. However, she shut it fast enough, and not from being proper, either. I could tell.

Several uncomfortable minutes followed. I had what I’d come for, because Eva had some of her old spark back. I’d gotten a rise out of her.

“How will you know Grace got the splinter from the mill?” Oz asked. “She could just pick it up any old where, and you wouldn’t know.”

I wished he hadn’t said that. I was beginning to have second thoughts, and I could have easily faked it if Oz hadn’t spoken out. Lately he’d taken to telling his thoughts more. Not just to me, but Mom and Dad and teachers too. Even folks in our little store said they’d never seen the like. Mama Regan told them nothing the sort, that it wasn’t anything at all, it was my doing. And then she’d go on about me having green old-soul eyes – as if that meant something – when everyone knows green eyes are common enough.

I told Eva I’d think of a way to prove it to her, and then I pulled Oz out of there before he decided to share his opinion again. He put up a pretty good fuss about it, muttering unintelligibly, his mouth full to the brim with his five candies. Still, it was better than him having a temper tantrum right then and there, which, believe me, he would not have hestitated to do three months earlier.

“Good, Oz,” I muttered, “You’re patient.” The last thing I wanted was one of his fits. Oz didn’t get into them unless he was frustrated beyond fixing, but then he didn’t spare anything. Real screaming, throwing stuff, take-cover fits, these were. Everyone’s nerves were worn raw from Eva’s troubles, so Oz and I, the misfit children, were pretty left to do as we pleased. We decided we liked it this way.

Oz was good and quiet until we reached Mama Regan outside, when he ran straight to her. “Gracie shushes me too much,” he told her, sticking his tongue out in my direction.

Mama Regan studied her great oak stick. “Everyone has their troubles, now, Ossian.”

“Where we going?” Oz asked.

“Don’t know.”

“Can we stop by Kangaroo’s?” Oz yelled. I cringed at the noise, but I couldn’t very well tell him about using an outside voice, since we were outside.

The asphalt that served for our front yard burned my feet, so I had to hop from one to other. Oz joined me in this, although he wore a grubby pair of black sneakers with white patches over the toes.

Mama Regan shifted her stick in annoyance. “You have perfectly suitable shoes inside this house, Grace. Your father paid enough for them.”

“But it’s summer –“

“Now.”

I got the shoes. I barely used them except for school, and when I minded the store, where having barefoot employees didn’t look right. I didn’t like the shoes. They were nice enough, but they’d been bought with money from the Cadiallac Dad had sold, and I remembered the car too much not to think of it when I saw the shoes.

We did leave then, although none of us knew where we were headed. At Kangaroo’s, we found Kangaroo’s father out barbecueing. Sweat trickled through the bandanna tied round his head, and he wore a holey white undershirt and a pair of khaki cargo shorts. Mama Regan smiled at him. She knew my mother would have died if she encountered someone dressed like that.

“Is Kangaroo around?” I asked.

Mr. Fulton wiped his forehead with his left hand and jerked the thumb of the other toward the trailer. “There. Where else?”

I headed for the trailer door, but Oz beat me to it, and hollered for Kangaroo. He thought a lot of Kangaroo. He emerged from the dark coolness of the trailer towing Kangaroo by the hand.

“Doing computer work?” I asked.

Kangaroo pushed his glasses up and grinned, exposing a newly chipped tooth. “Is there anything else?”

“For people who aren’t moles, there is.”

“Moles,” Oz said. He fished his notebook from one of his pockets, and I wrote down the word mole for him, hoping he hadn’t put those candies on top of the notebook. I’d paid enough for the notebook.

“Is Eva still in confined in prison?”

“Sure is.” I said. “You know, sometimes I wonder about you. You have a funny way of saying things.”

“Well, it is, isn’t it? And if something is, I can’t help saying something about it, can I?”

We’d come to the main road by now. As always, we stood away from it and drank it in. You’d never think a road was a fine thing to look at, but this one was, for all the dust and grime and poorly painted lines on it. The road went somewhere, after all, and that was the main thing.

“There’s something I can’t figure about you,” Kangaroo itched the back of his head, making his hair stand up in stiff spikes. “How long you think you’ll keep minding the store?”

We kept walking. I kept my gaze focused on Oz while I struggled over an answer. I’d mind the store as long as needed, that was certain enough. I had no say in it, though the work wasn’t hard or even unpleasant. There were cricket noises, and the corn meal smell of their cage, and corn chips and coffee and the hard battered tortillas my father gave away free to the lumber workers. I grew used to the boredom after all these years.

“It’s being in jail, same as Eva,” Kangaroo said with an aimless kind of gesture, the way you would skip a stone. I wasn’t sure if he thought he’d convince me, but I know he believed what he said.

Mama Regan thrust her black stick at Kangaroo, who staggered, leaping nimbly backward before crashing into the weeds by the edge of the highway. After accomplishing this, she continued on in her halting steps without a word.

Oz shuffled over and offered a hand to Kangaroo. He pulled him to his feet, and I noticed Oz had grown stronger.

“It isn’t the same,” I told Kangaroo severely, and both of them stared at me.

“She — your grandmother,” Kangaroo gulped, white-faced and stammering, pushing his glasses up so rapidly that it resembled some kind of primitive jig, “She tried to kill me, and that’s all you can say?”

“Look,” I snapped. Mama Regan herself strolled far ahead of us, even with her stick, and we’d have a hard enough time catching up to her without discussing killing folks in the bargain. By the side of the road, no less, which was uncivilized. Good Lord, I was beginning to sound like my mother. “If she tried to kill you, which is unlikely —“

“She missed.”

Oz nodded agreement at this and I gave him a glare. He returned it.

“She’s an old witch-woman, anyway.” I could tell Kangaroo regretted this a second after he said it because he turned white. Milk-colored, only with pink along his mouth. Mama Regan might not have been out of earshot. His voice sank to a low insistent whisper, very fast. “I didn’t mean that, Grace. Honest. I only meant she –“

“I know what you meant.”

He looked down at his feet, wrenched his glasses off and strode after Mama Regan, though a good distance from her. I almost felt sorry for him. I couldn’t forgive what he said. I didn’t know why, exactly, because I hadn’t been in Mama Regan’s good graces yet. No one had, including Mom and Dad. At least he hadn’t started in on Eva. I couldn’t have that.

Up ahead, I could hear Oz telling Kangaroo all about our plan to take a splinter from the mill. He might be stronger and have less tantrums, but he still couldn’t keep his miserable mouth shut when it came to secrets.

*          *          *

Eva told everyone that night at dinner that she didn’t want to be called Eva anymore.

My father said he’d heard enough, that she ought to have been through this kind of stuff two years ago, and he for one was not going to stand for it.

“She’s sick,” Mom said. I pulled a face at Oz. The way my mother said that, you’d have thought Eva was off somewhere, dying honorably with a saint’s expression, just like those horrible kids in old movies.

Oz giggled at the face I pulled. Mama Regan’s stick was ever-ready beside the table and she rattled it. We all looked at her, in case she had something to add, but she only wanted the gravy passed, and when it was, that proved too slow for her.

“She’s coddled, that’s all,” said Dad, shoveling peas in his mouth and wiping his face with the cloth napkins Mom set out. “She’s had it too easy around here. A princess.” He stopped with a sudden sharp glance at Mom. “You have two other children or haven’t you noticed?”

Oz and I gaped at them both before Mama Regan banged her black oak stick against the floor. This got everyone’s attention, including Eva, who had said nothing during all this. If things had been normal, she’d have been turned about by now and left her dinner, but she seemed to have neither the inclination or energy for it.

“That’s enough.” Mama Regan said. I could hear her teeth rattle, a low sound like rain-soaked wind chimes. She swallowed to make the ancient ring of fat around her throat wobble. “Ossian, go ahead, child.”

“I wasn’t.”

“You weren’t, what?” I said.

Oz blinked. I searched his face for signs of nervousness, but the only expression he gave me was one of interest. “Saying,” he said. “I wasn’t saying anything.” After a minute he withdrew his notebook from his lap and flipped it to a new page. “Write down coddled, please.”

Eva spoke at last. She shouted, or at least something like it, except for her mouth being drawn up and her eyes tight against the light from above the table. “You see? She’s at again. They’re — they’re writing down every word, like — like spies. Oz doesn’t need to learn every word we say around here.”

I didn’t know Eva was going to be genuinuely upset. I don’t think anyone really expected anything other than her usual fuss. She always raised trouble over something or other gone wrong, and it had come to be background noise.

“No one ever notices me!” Eva said. “What if I’m tired of cheerleading? What then? What are my choices?”
I realized, startled, that Eva was the one nobody noticed. Not me or Oz. Eva. Because everyone always expected the perfect one, they never saw her.

“Young lady,” Mom was eating again, slowly and with the careful precision that meant she was angry, “because of what you’ve done, you don’t have many choices now. Later, maybe. But for now, your choices will be made.”

Silence came over the dinner table. We eat and swallowed but there was no chatter and even Oz was quiet. It wasn’t a meal at all.

*          *          *

I decided, more than ever now, that I needed to get the splinter for Eva. I don’t know why, really. The splinter stayed in front of me while I did my work around our little shop. I did the sweeping and fed the crickets their wet cardboard, and the whole time, that splinter dangled in my imagination, taunting me. The pneumatic drill Dad used for the cars hummed next door in the autobody shop, and at noon Dad came in for his noon glass of milk and slab of corned beef.

He ate these standing up by freezers where we kept the cold soda, the way he’d done ever since I could remember. First a bite of corned beef, then the milk, then the beef again, spacing this with glances around the shop to make sure everything was in its place.

I sat on the counter, cross legged, waiting until he’d finished.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, coming over to me. It didn’t take him long, not with our shop that small. “You didn’t have lunch with me.”

“I’m thinking.”

“About?”

“Oz. Eva and Mom. Things.”

“Things,” Dad said. He rubbed the top of his head. The grease from cars worked its way in around his part and drove him crazy with scratching. “Got a job for you. Work’s getting heavy over with the cars. You think you can handle this place here while I go on a business trip?”

I might have jumped at the chance. I thought it over carefully first, before answering. Kangaroo’s warning was still ringing in my ears. “How long?” I said.

Dad sighed. “Two weeks. Think it over. It’s awhile to mind the store by yourself.”

“I’ve done it before,” I said hotly, before I could catch myself.

Dad laughed. “That was short time. You’d believe different after weeks of waiting on these lumberjacks and fishermen.”

“How much?” I said cautiously.

“Who says I’d pay you?”

I glowered and he laughed again.

“Would seven an hour work?” he asked. When I shook my head, he said, “All right, baby, name your price.”

“I want time with Oz.” I said.

That was the last thing Dad expected. He blinked and brushed a hand over his stained work shirt and raggedy jeans. He gave no argument.

“Mom can’t bother us,” I continued. “Eva can’t either, unless she’ll do what I say.”

Dad frowned. “This isn’t a plan to con your sister into something, is it?”
I scowled. “No. And Eva doesn’t need conning. She’s smart enough. Look, I really want this for Oz.”

“You’re good for him, babe. Anyone can see that. But your mother has her own ideas about Oz’s schooling…”

“Well, it hasn’t worked so far, has it?” I said.

We stared at each other for a beat or two. Then Dad said he would see what could be done, but bargaining were not his speciality.

He’d said that before and things turned out well enough. So I ignored this. Dad brushed something white from his jacket before waving the same wave he did after lunch – striding towards the door he raised one hand and moved it side to side. He didn’t know it made him look silly. Today it didn’t strike me silly, though. It looked just about right.

The shop grew hot, and with heat came humidity. A muggy shop specializing in fishing bait is not a pleasant destination, not unless you get used to it or have your nose lopped off in an accident, which I hadn’t. And, since I’d never gotten used to the smell, I counted the holes in the ceiling and the scarred places where the floorboards were beginning to come up.

Business was steady all day, but slow. Two lumberjacks came in wanting boots, and Mrs. Trot from down on O street came in with two babies secured to her hip, but all she did was block the aisles and read magazines, and leave without anything. Oh, she took the two kids, all right – she’s never been known to leave them, though any judge inside this county would probably say she was justified if she did. Those two tossed a disaster area around that woman, and in back of her, too. Her path booby-trapped with cereal, her retreat blocked with spilled soda, at times it appeared to be a close call for Mrs. Trot. I sometimes imagined her, lost and preferably barricaded in with spilled merchandise, after lights out, to spare the town further inconvinence.

I reconsidered this. It might spare the town from the kids, but I’d be stuck in there with them too.

After she left, no one came in for a half hour, and then Pete Conroy knocked the door open so hard it slapped against one of Dad’s hunting pictures and right into the baked bean section.

He came right in, he didn’t even bother to say hello like a decent person. I figured then he looked like a moonshiner. Mom was right. And he hadn’t put on his fedora before going out.

“Grace!” Although both Pete’s hands settled on the counter, he leaned forward and bellowed.

“Yeah. Something you want?”

“I’d like that cousin of yours out of town on a rail, is what I want. Where is he?”

“What’d he do?”

“Oh, nothing. He just came right in and ordered a double-fudge with rum raisin on top of it, and when I told him the rum raisin was in the back, he says that’s fine, and when I went to get it, he rips me off fifty dollars from the register. That’s all.” He took a breath. I expected the bellowing to stop, but it didn’t. “And my rum raisin isn’t exactly on the menu. So I started thinking, how does he know about it?” He pointed a finger at me. “And then I thought, wait a minute – he’s Grace’s cousin.”

I tried hard to think of something that would make everything better. The only sentence I could come up with was, “How much did you have?”

Pete Conroy blinked. He didn’t look as if he’d heard. “Doesn’t matter. More than that.”

I gave him a bright smile. This didn’t make Pete Conroy’s disposition better. At least he stopped yelling. “Then he didn’t take everything, did he?”

“You’re as bad as he is! What kind of an answer is that to give a man?” He glanced my way sharply. “What about you? You ever take anything from me?”

“No,” I said.

“What about that Ossian of yours? He’s got odd enough ways about him.”

I stared at Pete Conroy until he ducked his chin down and looked at the counter like he’d never seen it before. Then he said, “I’m wrung out. Oz is all right with me. And you.”

Something about the conversation puzzled me. “He isn’t my Ossian,” I told Pete Conroy, and he gave a muffled laugh.

He leaned back from the counter to take in the broken ceiling tiles, false, all of them, and when he turned back he smiled at me. “He’s yours, if he’s anybody’s. That one will do whatever you tell him. You got a gift there.”

Now it was my turn to laugh. A gift with Ossian. My gift was being a magician, and, failing that, I wasn’t all that bad with calculating numbers in the shop. Playing with Oz was just something I did when there was nothing else to do.

“Can I ask you a question?” I said.

“Shoot.”

“How exactly do you ride someone on a rail? Do they get thrown on a train or something?”

Pete Conroy laughed again. “Give you something to do. Read up on your westerns and you’ll know soon enough.” And he turned to go.

“I don’t know whether to be happy or sad if you find Cousin Jake,” I called after him, but he was gone already. The screen door slapped back, easy this time, and it made a nice hissing noise as it settled back in place.

*          *          *

If I didn’t know where Jake was, I had an idea where to start looking for him. After nightfall, I slipped out of bed and down the stairs. My back hurt a little, from standing at the counter so long, but I managed the walk down to the beach, hobbling over pebbles. I brought my new shoes, for all the good they did me. The soles too hard for off-road walking, the material too stiff to move without pinching, I soon discarded them entirely. I ran over the sand in bare feet. Luckily there wasn’t any glass or sticks in my way, and I reached Jake’s little driftwood hut. Still standing, scrawled with knife carvings from passing kids.

The fire was out, but the smell of it hung in the air. I stayed away from the hut enough to be safe, just in case someone other than Jake had moved in. I yelled for him from there.

He came out at last, a blanket thrown around both shoulders, bedraggled. He needed a shave and his toenails looked thickened, like a wild man’s. “Oh,” he breathed. “Eva? Is Eva alright?”

I meant to ask him how to break into the mill without being seen. I had it all planned out. Instead, I ended up sitting on the damp sand. “Eva’s fine.”

“Oh,” he said, sitting by me. “That’s good. I’m glad.”

I sounded like a little kid, like Oz did when he got scared. I hated it. “Why’d you do it, Jake?”

“Because the money was there –“

I shook my head. Everyone needed money. Dad, Jake, Pete Conroy. Money was beginning to be a real pain and I was sick of hearing about it. “About Eva…”

“God,” Jake leaned back and put his hands back of his head and looked up at the sky. It looked dark and threatening. He turned his head to look at me. “I don’t know. Because I’m the same screw-up I’ve always been, I guess. You know why magicians have all those illusions?”

“No.”

“Because they don’t want you to see who they really are. Real magic, now, that’s different – you just bend people’s perceptions of how things look until they think their seeing something real, only it’s not. Ask Mama Regan, she’ll tell you. It’s what you did when you learned double-dutch.”

I struggled with this. As far as I could tell, that meant Jake thought what Mama Regan taught me was a lie, something to make other people see me differently, and it wasn’t. I said nothing, and Jake went on.

“The family loves me, all right. They do. But you haven’t ever seen me at a birthday party, have you?” He laughed. It sounded low and half-bitter. “I’m not exactly birthday material. If I did show up, they probably wouldn’t have me.”

I had it on the tip of my tongue to ask him about the mill, but every time it seemed he had something else on his mind, or was just on the verge of saying something important.

About twenty minutes passed without either of us saying anything. Then Jake yawned and stretched out until his limbs popped. “You want to know how my mom died?”

I leaned forward. No one spoke of my mother’s sister, except when they said Jake was poor Mathilda’s child, even long after he was grown. If things were like storybooks, it would be a drug overdose, something like Eva’s.

“We were at the carnival. I was maybe ten. At the pony rides. And there was this white horse there. I wanted to ride it, but the woman who ran the ride, she said that horse wasn’t for me. It was a small bucking one with these big teeth. And Mom said no one was going to stop me riding it, and she’d ride first to tame it down for me.” He stopped and stared out toward the ocean. If you forgot to listen, you couldn’t hear it anymore. “So she did.”

“What happened?” I was interested. Mainly because Ossian always begged to go on the pony rides, on a white horse. My mother never let him.

Jake smiled, something between a grimace and a good memory. He told me he swore that horse transformed, right there, into something strange that shimmered all over. It looked like a blurred staticky TV reception. It looked like something trying to crawl out of the horse’s body. Like the horse tried to slough off used skin to change into something new and different. The woman, too, was no longer the same. Her short racy jacket stretched and grew loose until it flowed around her in a grayish material the texture of moth wings.

Jake told his mother not to. She was into it now, though, riding the horse. He saw something, but only half of the something. His mother laughed. She rode the horse in a slow trot around the enclosure. It was easy. She rode once around again.

She was halfway around for the third time when the horse bucked. It threw her against the metal railing of the enclosure, hard and fast like a thrown baseball. No one thought about internal bleeding.

“And that’s what killed her?” I asked.

Jake nodded soberly. “She shouldn’t have gotten off the horse. She touched the ground. That’s what killed her.” He stood up and with one swift motion he grabbed a fistful of my collar and yanked me up after him. He shook the sand from me very businesslike, thinking. “I don’t know why I told you. I couldn’t have seen what I saw. But anyway, that’s why I became a magician. To figure all that out.”

“And did you?” I squirmed, but he still had his hand at the back of my collar. It was funny.

Jake didn’t answer. He looked critically at me. “Why’d you come all the way out here?”

I had the sudden realization that he might not be sober like I’d thought. Before, I’d have known, but after that night with Eva I wasn’t certain. I wished I’d brought food snatched from the kitchen, so we could make a night of sitting out here, with the breeze from the ocean spitting salt at us. Eva and Oz and all, wrapped in blankets and sleeping over at Jake’s hut. It sounded nice. And I should have brought Jake’s magician jacket so I could give it back to him. He looked like he needed it. “I wanted to ask you…how do I get into the mill without being seen?”

Jake took his hand off my collar so fast my legs went out from under me. I dropped unceremoniously to the ground, and ended up with sand up my nose and in my mouth. I didn’t have long enough time to get used to it before Jake grabbed one arm, and there I was, facing him.

“What are you trying to prove?” He said that low and through his teeth.

“I’m just trying to get a splinter for Eva,” I told him.

Jake grinned like I wasn’t worth bothering with. He let go off my arm then, only to give me a shove toward the road. “Go home to bed,” he shouted. “And don’t any of you kids come here again.”

I set off, half-jogging. To show him he didn’t scare me, I shouted that to him. This caused him to swear and say I was a kid and tell me to get along home before he came after me and made me get. This was all very impolite and not the way I’d ever treated him when he came to visit, which just goes to show you how some people act. That’s something Mom says when folks are rude. When the loggers come in swearing and coughing out in front of the autobody, she says, well, that’s how some people act.

After that display, I figured I’d keep his old magician’s jacket. I’d earned it, and if old Jake wanted it, he could keep himself and get it.

I found my shoes along the highway, I don’t remember exactly where. The highway did that to you, made you think it was longer than it was. I wasn’t scared, I was disappointed by the time I rounded the autobody and reached the house. I hadn’t learned how to enter the mill properly. I hadn’t learned why Jake had let Eva get drugged up, not really. The only thing I’d learned was one stupid long story that made no sense at all and that Jake was still in town, worthless information that was. On our porch I thought I heard something while I was peeling my shoes off. The shoes were hot and my feet had sweat all over. They were sure to smell tomorrow.

“Jake,” I said, not very loud, so I wouldn’t wake anyone in the house.

No one answered me. The night was dark. A few cars went by on the highway from the sound of it, and the cavernous rollup doors of the autobody shop loomed over the house. Sure enough, someone skirted back around the corner of the autobody shop and down the alley.

“Goodnight, Gracie,” Jake called back.

I rolled my eyes. That sounded like a radio show. I hated that. I forgot all about keeping quiet and hollered after him, “You didn’t need to lurk after me! I could’ve gone home all by myself! You didn’t need to walk me home, Jake, you hear me?”

No one answered. Owls called and somewhere far away a car backfired. I smiled. There might be business tomorrow in the autobody shop. I picked up my shoes and got the spare key from saucer under the geranium plant, and went in to bed.

*          *          *

The next morning all anyone wanted to talk about at breakfast was Pete Conroy being burgled. It had got around town by that time. No one knew who did it, or where to find the burgler. Since these are all important things when investigating a crime, everyone was pretty well stumped. I said nothing about and went on eating my buttered toast.

Dad cleared his throat. “I’ve got news for you, Ossian.”

“News!” Oz repeated. He liked the rhythm of this so well, he beat it on the table and chanted. My mother sighed. She took Oz’s hands and set them in his lap.

Dad looked at me. I knew he was thinking, well, now she’s got herself into this, let’s see her refuse it. When I didn’t try and wriggle out of it, he grinned at Oz. “Instead of studied today, would you like to work with Grace?”

“Yes.”

“You have to study. You can’t just fool around.”

Oz nodded. He slid from his chair and in one motion was around the table pulling at me. “Now, Grace. Let’s go now.”

Dad smiled but Mom looked doubtful. She wasn’t sure Oz and I wouldn’t just play tag or something. Between Oz pulling me to the door and Mama Regan discussing the weather, I didn’t have a chance to ask if Eva could come along. It was strange to actually want her to come along. No one had said when her house arrest would end, and from the look of it, it might be school time before she was released. But no one would be so cruel as to forfeit summer altogether.

Once outside, Oz and I set to work. Dad hadn’t set limits on how we had to do things or where we could go, so Oz and I shouldered our gathering sacks and went out searching for stones for Pete Conroy. In addition to those wonders, we found granite, centipedes, oak logs, and magpies. Oz had me write all these for him in his notebook. I wasn’t certain how to make a lesson out of this, or if I wanted to. I lined up all our rocks neatly in a row.

“If Pete Conroy’s wife is making a mosaic or something, maybe she’d like all her rocks sorted.”

Oz went eagerly to this task to might have bored other folks. We both made small piles of blue, green grey, brown rocks. When we were finished Oz looked at our work with true admiration. “They’re nice, huh, Grace?” he said. “They look nice.”

I nodded. They were nice. It was that simple. We counted the rocks, slowly, Oz stumbling over his as if they were names he’d forgotten. But he stayed calm and peaceful so long as there was no paper and pencil in front of him “to study with.” We wrote down the numbers of the rocks in Oz’s book too. Then we lay down on our stomachs with our legs up in the air.

After some time, Oz said carefully, “Gracie, do you think Mama Regan’s a witch?”

I considered this. “Some people say she is.”

He frowned. “Maybe she can help me.”

“How? Make you different, you mean?”

Oz nodded emphatically. He didn’t have to say why. I could feel it in him. He wanted to go to school. Not baby school, like kindergarden, but the first grade where you learned to read magical stories.

I didn’t know what to say for quite a while. I looked down at my fingers, my scarred fingers. I tried to blur them together so that I had all twelve of my fingers, so that I was whole again. Only the trick didn’t work anymore. My fingers stayed the same, ten of them just like everyone else. I wasn’t sure I wanted to make them blur, either. It wasn’t helping anything. I thought about what Jake said, about the horse that changed shape.

“I could ask her, Oz,” I said. “But sometimes magic takes a little while. It’s hard to get it working you know, ‘cause magic’s ancient. It might be real hard. Do you mind if it’s real hard?”

Oz shook his head no. He seemed serious about this. I breathed a sigh of relief. No tantrums at least not for now.

“Gracie,” Oz said. He breathed in so hard I could see his chest expand. “Can you help me write my name?”

“Sure.” I thought he knew by now.

On Oz’s notebook, I drew the letters that spelled his name. His nickname, not his real name, becaue Ossian was too complicated for most spellers.

When I handed the pen to Oz he gritted his teeth and held the pen so hard his arm shook. He studied the paper to make sure he got everything right and then he began.

It was a scrawl of lines.

Ossian studied this with battered hopefulness, his nose nearly touched the paper. “Is that my name?”

I didn’t say anything. We tried four more times, and each time turned out the same, and each time Oz looked more and more as if he were about to have a tantrum.

I had to take the pen away from him. “We aren’t going to write your name ever again,” I told him.

Oz shivered. He drew his arms around his knees and puckered up for a good bawl. He didn’t have a chance to get into it, though, because I spread the rocks out. Oz had to stop to watch. He blinked as I arranged the stones.

“Can you read it?” I said.

Oz didn’t answer at first. His mouth was open. Finally, he said, “It’s too close together, Gracie.”

So we arranged the two letters farther apart. Oz traced them with his hands. Then he built a second design underneath mine. He looked at me in a hurried manner, certain he had done it wrong. “How is it?”

“Perfect,” I said.

Oz grinned. He ran about the forest and tossed leaves into the air into the air.

Then we crossed the highway to give Pete Conroy his rocks.

Pete Conroy looked us over when Oz held these rocks back from the pile. Oz kept dropping them.

“These are name-spelling rocks,” he informed Pete Conroy.

“Are they? They aren’t giving-away rocks?”

“No!” Oz leaned forward secretively. “I can show these ones.”

“I can’t wait,” said Pete Conroy. After Oz showed him, he didn’t wait either. We got two double scoops of rum raisin right there, and Oz got a hug from Pete Conroy in the bargain. “Have you showed your folks yet?” he said.

I hesistated. “No. It isn’t writing.”

“Well, for a first day at studying, it’s something like.”

I looked doubtfully at the rocks. Sure, I thought they were writing, but all we were doing was playing around with things. That’s the way everyone else would see this anyhow. The rock seemed to hiss and murmur, like talking or the flow of a tide. I don’t why it did, and it made me think possibly I was as crazy as Oz was.

I shouldn’t have thought that. I regretted it all the way home, but Oz was so happy I couldn’t help but by happy with him. We took the writing stones back home with us. Oz balanced where the asphalt met the dirt along the roadside. He fell twice, toppling over, spilling his share of rocks, but we got home in one piece.

*          *          *

I didn’t tell anyone about the naming rocks. Oz kept them with him and played at stacking them all the next day. I watched him all that morning, but I didn’t try to teach him anything. The whole thing scared me. Not just the fact that, apparently, I was good at teaching Oz, which wasn’t exactly something I wanted to get known for, but the fact that Ossian’s eyes looked different. They were brighter and I could see intelligence there, an attention to everything, that must have been there but that I had missed. Everyone in town would know I was taking the trouble to teach Oz, and Grace Rainbird, the girl with scarred hands, would be permanently linked with Ossian, who did odd things.

Not only that, if I failed, Oz would know.

So I stayed away from him. Ever so often he looked over at me with expectation. I recognized the look I used to give Cousin Jake. It was the look that said you would be taken places. The look intrigued me – and I didn’t like it. Something terrified me that somebody wanted to follow me like I had followed Jake. It was too much, and I didn’t want the responsibility for it.

At noon Dad came out and told me that if all I was going to do was loaf around, he’d have me back working the counter. I decided then that today would be the day I’d get the splinter. Not today, but during the daylight. No one had attempted this before.

I went upstairs to pack a backpack. I had no idea what I would need, so I threw in a bit of everything – fishing line, a broken pocketknife, a flashlight, a walkie-talkie. I didn’t know why I brought that. There was no one I would have to talk to.

Eva appeared in the doorway. She’d kept to herself for the time she was grounded, except meals, and the confinement had changed her. Or if wasn’t that, maybe it was the drugs or the hospital visit – she seemed less excitable and more stable. She appeared before me and I was startled by how she acted. She wasn’t a princess anymore.

“Don’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t need you to go get the splinter.”

“I need to,” I said, though I couldn’t think why.

She didn’t challenge me after that. I looked about for Mama Regan, certain she’d appear just when I didn’t want her. She had a way of doing that. When there was no sign of her, I set off down the road with the backpack over one shoulder. I had Mama Regan’s malachite stone on one hand and my old worn jump rope slung over the other shoulder. I expected Eva might follow me, but she didn’t.

The mill wasn’t far from our house. It was close enough you could smell the burnt sawdust in the smoke stacks from it, before the fog burnt off in the mornings. I halted at the guard shack.

Eddie, the guard, was there, snoring. He didn’t wake up when I passed the chain link that partially surrounded the mill. Then I set my backpack down and studied the mill.

Eva hadn’t said whether her splinter should come from outside the mill or not, and I really didn’t want to break into the mill for fear of jail, or something worse. I hated the mill. I hated the fact that it had made Eva born a princess, and me with twelve fingers, and Oz born the way he was. Rationally, I suppose, we’d be that way wherever we lived. But I couldn’t see that. It was the mill that controlled how much work there was at the autobody shop. It didn’t matter that Dad had enough work now or that Oz and Eva and I were all changing in our own ways. What mattered was that the mill had caused it all to begin with.

I threw my jump rope at the windows of the mill. It was ineffective, as high as the window, but with no little force, so that it slapped uneventfully and fell to the ground. I was about to pick it up again when a voice called to me.

“Are you lost, child?”

It was Mama Regan. She was swinging her black oak stick toward me and hobbling in my direction.

I froze, and debating running, but we were alone, and Mama Regan alone is less embarrassing than Mama Regan in public. So I said, “No, I was just…picking up my rope.”

I knew from Mama Regan’s eyes, she didn’t believe me. “You have your malachite stone,” she said, “and you know how to fall. You have Jake’s magic tricks now, and you are teaching Ossian. If you’re trying for more than that, you are greedy.”

“So what if I am?” I didn’t see how any of that was being greedy, but I argued through habit.

“You let Eva go her way and you’ll go yours.”

“What does that mean?”

She shrugged. “It means what it means. Eva doesn’t need you doing things she doesn’t feel like doing herself.”

I wondered if she had seen any of this. I didn’t ask her though. Mama Regan didn’t handle any exploration of her witch-woman existence with tolerance. I said carefully, “If I went home with a splinter, what would happen?”

Mama Regan scratched her stick against the bare dirt. “Many things, child. Eva could brag she stole it. She could become a criminal, you could become a criminal. Your father won’t let you teach Oz anymore.”

I stopped. The jump rope swung back against my arm, mid-throw. It all seemed a bit extreme, and I suspected a morality lesson here, but then again, Mama Regan saw things and it wasn’t wise to go against the things she saw.

“And if I go home?”

“If you go home, you have the potential to become a great magician. Perhaps not with cards, but with people. Oz has learned a lot.”

I gaped at her. I hadn’t told anyone about the rocks, except Pete Conroy of course, and Kangaroo, who I’d sworn to secrecy.

Mama Regan smiled. “Maybe things aren’t as mysterious as you seem to think, Grace.” She turned and began to walk away, and soon I ran after her, my new shoes pinching my feet.

I didn’t know why I didn’t get the splinter at first. Only Eva was improving and changing without any magic, so a splinter would be useless. And if I was going to be Oz’s teacher, I suppose I’d better commit myself to it, whether Eva or anyone else objected. Eva’s interest in life at home had perked right up just from talking about the splinter. I didn’t need it to accomplish anything.

On the way home I asked Mama Regan if she was a witch woman. She drew her lips thin and gave me a light whack with the stick. It didn’t hurt. “You are, too, if you’d pay attention to what’s around you.”

I frowned. We barely associated if she was in public, though at home our relationship was different. I was rountinely embarrassed and fascinated by her, but it seemed like she hadn’t done anything that I’d paid attention to lately. Except for whacking a policeman over the head during a car trip, and surely she didn’t want me to imitate that kind of behavior.

“What do you want from me?” I asked. I thought of Oz, how he looked at trees and rocks and the sky with the same attention you would give living things. Something like that couldn’t be all that odd.

“Learn from everything,” Mama Regan told me. “Eva. Oz. Pete Conroy. That cousin of yours. That’s what I want from you. There’s magic and then there’s everyday magic, and they can get mixed up, child.”

I frowned. “So something I’m looking at could be magic instead of being ordinary?” I thought of Jake and the story of the white horse. “Do you know where Jake is?”

“Left town. Probably playing poker this very minute.”

I laughed. That sounded like Jake all right. But behind us, I thought I saw something move quickly in the window of the old mill, in the abandoned portion. It might have been a sweater or a bit of cards falling down. Or it might have mice. Or it might have been Jake.

I didn’t find the splinter, but I’d found Eva could live through things I’d thought she was too weak for, and that I cared about her. At least, some days, she wasn’t such a pain. I never expected to get worried over her, not enough to do something for her. She hadn’t even asked me to do it, I remembered, and then she had told me not to.

I smiled. I went home with Mama Regan and I made up my mind then that I would take Oz into the autobody shop that afternoon. There were pneumatic drills to count and write, and there were the naming rocks. I’d need more of those. And paint. Oz liked to paint. The possibilities for just ordinary magic were endless. After all, it overlapped with real magic, and blurred the real world a little, and that’s where I liked to be.

Well, yesterday was a good literal thinking night — all at one time too. Someone at History Club mentioned that so-and-so had to have cookies before a computer could be fixed.
“Why did they need cookies to fix the computer?” I asked.

Or course, by then, a picture of that little warning about computer cookies had popped into my brain, but by then my classmate had launched her own explanation of it.

Well, years ago, the way to get the Spartan Daily to use their pictures and articles about me or the nieghborhood was to bring cookies. So naturally, the first thing that popped in my head was a sugar high for the computer gurus.

The group had a discussion about a botched assasination attempt on Hitler. “He would’ve been killed by cement.”

Killed by cement? Really? “Did they have a mixer or cement blocks?” I said.

Hitler: “Ladies and gentlemen!”

Splat!

Everyone stared at me. They explained that a bomb would have thrown the cement at HItler had he been there.

Oh. Well.

Curse my cartoony mind. I’m the only person I know who would see Hitler’s assasination attempt as directed by animator Chuck Jones. Let’s see…was it Godfather style with cement blocks or someone with a cement mixer over his head like Wile E. Coyote?

Well, I thought it was funny.

Earlier, I had an OT interview. These can be lots of fun. I get to tell funny stories, medical info and make folks laugh. I like it. I told them about how I am no longer allowed in gas stations. They live in fear of what I might do with their coffee. A heebie jeebie dance while juggling a full coffee cup throughout Chevron is an experience. Multiple times. I told them about reflexes and movie theaters.

“But you seem so upbeat,” they said, “isn’t there anything that frustrates you?”

Yes, I said, I don’t have conversations like normal people.

Who told you that?

A lot of people lately. Have I mentioned how annoyed conversations make me recently? They do. Okay, for several years people have given me that look: “Boy, that was dumb. Why don’t you shut up?” So I do. Only problem is, that’s a lot of the time. For starters, I generally have absolutely nothing to say in conversations OR I’ve been trying to interrupt like everyone else normally does and when I finally succeed everyone stares at me. Or what I wanted to say is now so out of place it makes no sense. Or it just feels like some sentence ought to go there, which means I’m off mentioning something about art museums while everyone had been talking about art — but not that way.

Act like you’re interested, people say. Sorry, tried that. Smiled and said “Oh, how nice,” when people talked about shoe shopping and parties and what they’re doing. I’ve tried to say things that fit. It feels very hollow because I have to pretend to like things I really don’t care about. But this shouldn’t bother you, people say.

Why? Some day, wake up and pretend to be someone else. All day. You can’t slip up. Don’t mention what you like, or what excites you, or people will be bored. Never do this. Always smile and shake hands. Ask how their weekend went, even though you couldn’t care less and won’t remember five minutes from now what their grandmother said. Always focus on what they like, even if their interests and yours will not overlap.

Am I exergerating? Quite a bit. I really am interested a lot of times in what people have to say — the problem is I look like I’m not paying attention when I’m listening hard. A couple of years ago I figured out that when people ask how your weekend went, they don’t really want to know.

That sucks. Why don’t they say that then? How can you tell when they are actually interested and want details and when they just want to pass time? I have no editor in my head, which means I see what I did and any movies or stories as a straight line. I have a hard time summerizing. I can remember dialogue and details. For some reason, everyone in the world has decided all at once that they will no longer tell stories at all after they graduate from high school.

So they say, “I went shopping.”

God, I hate “I went shopping.” I don’t think like that. And God knows, the stuff I’ve adapted to do because I don’t party, drive etc. just doesn’t fit either. Darn it.

Worm farming, anyone? Beer making, writing, scrounging for stuff? Taking apart owl pellets, etc.? I’ve done it and in most cases am excited about it. But for some unknown reason, telling anybody about it bores them to tears. Why?

Some folks have superficial stuff they shout over cell phones — stuff you really really don’t want to know that people do (like, hypothetically, who got drunk last night and how they plan on getting drunk again, very very soon — in fact, right after they get off the phone if at all possible, and what slutty friends they’ve had for absolute years)  — and I have to feel bad because I do odd things?

How’s that for annoying?

And by the way, I’m supposed to be perfectly fine with the idea that all those years I thought people thought I was an idiot but I went ahead with things because for some reason I had this strange idea that I should actually do things rather than sit around searching madly for some cool acceptable thing to do.

Well, guess what, apparently people did think I was an idiot. Down Syndrome. I AM NOT DOWN SYNDROME. And that’s just the 2-3 people that told me to my face. There’s been a bit of it lately, which is why I’m in a cumulative snit. Maybe the blog will work well. Somehow I’m supposed to be perfectly fine with all of this.

And I am. A little. And part of me is in a snit.

Okay, first off, if two people actually did sit down and each person talked only about what they think the other people wants to talk about, what’ll happen?

Those two folks will be so frigging bored.

But that means, if I’m excited about something, I’m going to have to assume other folks aren’t. I’ve done that and I don’t like it.
Remembering detail makes me a good writer and so does doing oddball stuff. If I only had a car, new shoes, and slutty friends, what would I have to write about? Things would be very boring. Luckily, I don’t have that problem.
Can I “pass” as a “normal” person? At this point, probably only acting. It seems very shallow to be normal in some cases. You can keep it.
Anthropologist that I am, maybe the thing is to blend in to this strange culture and learn the ways of its natives. Yes, that sounds about right. I can write a book about it later. The habits, cultural rituals, socialization, hierarchy groups and customs of NormalPeopleLand. Sounds neat.

Pardon me, I must do participant observation, aka People Watching, to prepare for my quest into the unknown and previously unrecorded savage land. Tonight there’s a movie in a large group — a perfect opportunity. Wish me luck.