Todays Big Smiley book 5, 12th. skit. Happy Saturday, everybody. Jake got his little truck washed and vacuumed as clean as my car is kept. It makes me mean for my car to get messed up. I brushed Ashley Marie. Shes lounging in here with me and the cats. Weve got a warm fire burning. Last night was the coldest night, down in the lower 20s, weve had so far. Chapter 12 Julio had delivered a written invitation to Father Howard shortly after ten o’clock Mass, at St. Jude’s Catholic Church, to pay a visit at the Treadaway Mansion, which the guests had humorously renamed Treadaway Resort. While the young priest’s step-father and his mother, Joseph and Holly, were lingering, he told them about the rescued children at the safe house. They had plenty of time to do a little Christmas shopping at Walmart before the tea party. So they engaged Isabelle because she had the correct ages and sizes for toys and warm clothing. Wrapping the gifts for underneath the tree and hiding the larger ones would bring a source of happiness to Kim and her new friend, Karen. To Dawnte’s relief both ladies energetically set about on an exercise program. Kim said, “I just can’t make myself jog up and down the road, when I can sweep, mop and vacuum and do something useful. That cheap room the baby and I stayed in was a mess before I got it mucked out and the blankets washed in the middle of the night. I was running a pretty good fever when I started but I felt a lot better when everything was cleaned up.” “I can relate to that, my parents spent their whole lives in the mission field. Dad was a medic in the army and he was the closest thing to a doctor where we were in Mexico. I was only with them during the summers. Most of the time, I stayed with my grandmother. The only thing she cared about when I wanted to get married was she thought my boyfriend was a Christian. Little did we know… She passed away last year.” “Two weeks after the wedding, my mother was helping me clean house. She found a shoe box full of prescription medicines that belonged to Russell. A bottle of Phenobarbital nearly scared her to death. She begged me to come home right that minute. I had no idea what she was talking about. Isn’t it funny the older you get the smarter your mother gets? “I should have listened to her when she told me about how she hid behind a dresser when I was a baby, praying that I wouldn’t start crying, late at night when my dad would stagger home roaring drunk. “She had three kids before she unglued her co-dependence, packed up and left him.” Monday morning, Tucker had an appointment with Precious Furs for Goldie. The cold weather temperature was taking a nose dive and he was having doubts about having her clipped, but he didn’t want her long fur to get matted. Besides that a friendly cop on the street had informed him there might be trouble brewing. A red flag came up that rocked Sheriff Simpodee back on his heels and put the Police Department on alert. The entire force was called on duty for December 21st. Tucker was concerned that if the planetary sun storms caused an electrical blackout it might be ages before Goldie would be able to get another clip. Meanwhile he decided to keep the appointment and he’d put a sweater on her. Even as cold as it was, he thought, after the three days’ slushy rain, snow and hard freeze, life was still fairly comfortable at the Daisy Trailer Park. At his age he wasn’t much into going all out with decorations. While Goldie was doing the works at the groomers, he did take a small nativity scene out of its box and set it on the table. Months ago there was a woman who stayed to herself like a recluse in the park even her curtains were kept closed, except during Christmas then she went all out. Only after she died, in the spring, when a distant relative set up her estate sale did it become obvious how poor she was. Christmas decorations were about all she owned. Thinking about the holidays and what with the absence of his closest companion, before he grew maudlin he slipped into his coat and a new pair of gloves. Then he took a long walk out of the park along the trampled pathway, across the alley and over the snow covered center garden of Old Main through the bright little town houses and the historic Chinese labor camp on toward the cat lady’s apartment. On a cheerful note as he punched the doorbell, a most delightful smell of spice cake greeted him. “Wonder where all the kids went, I saw the melted ruins of two snowmen and a pile of snow slush sled tracks, but no kids anywhere?” Tucker said, as the cat lady invited him inside. “Probably lunch time,” she replied. “I’m sure nervous ever since that demon afflicted shooter loosed his guns on that Connecticut school.” To lighten the subject, she asked, “Where’s my Goldie girl?” “Precious Furs, you almost have to make an appointment a year ahead of the holidays before you can get your dog in for a Christmas clip. We didn’t dare pass it up.” “You look like you need an old lady hug,” with that said, she reached up from the wheelchair and he accepted, giving her a gentle pat on the back. Marble eyed cats of many colors had arranged themselves in leisurely positions all over the well-kept house. They weren’t exactly glad to see an uninvited guest, but they had learned a polite measure of tolerance that aroused a thread of hurt feelings within him. He had been worried already that the separation from his cocker spaniel would washout the whole day. For the life of Tucker, he couldn’t explain why a kind word had caused the sharp pain of tears to blur his vision. Since he was already shaken he went on to admit his own helplessness against the deaths of so many little children, some of their gifts already under the spruce trees, had indeed brought the whole world to grief and he was certainly no exception. “If that mentally ill guy had shot his mother and killed himself, another murder-suicide added to the crime wave, just like that Impeach Obama, mad-man who hunted his wife down, would hardly have raised a brow.” “What’s funny to me,” she mentioned, confidentially, “a four foot short fellow of no obvious power, like Andrew, has a simple solution to stop a portion of such violent crimes. Nevertheless, they were forced to quarantine the deadly plague, out of town, into the tight security of the Arapaho Nation.” “That’s a switch, our Indian neighbors return good for evil.” “You might say that, and perhaps we haven’t saved as many as Connecticut lost, but we have protected all that were given to us.” Shortly after he scooped up a second piece of cake, with a cup of hot tea, his cell phone rang. Goldie was all finished, dressed in her sweater, and ready to come home. Even though he couldn’t bear to watch anymore television funerals, the day had taken an upper turn. Those on the outskirts of the inner circle mostly depended on Coy and Julio to drop by with the latest grape vine twists and turns. The community reporters were just leaving, as Tucker and Goldie swung around the corner from the pet groomers. They caught the judge, with a smoking pipe in his mouth, sanding the icy stone walkway, at the gate, accompanied by Ebony Eyes, the mule, chewing on an apple core. What’d you hear?” greeted one re-registered Independent to a like-minded soul. The mule sucked in a tiny blob of apple juice bubbles that sorta got away from him before he grunted a compliment toward Goldie, “Better yet, what’d the girls have to say at the beauty shop, Babe?” She batted her eyes, just like a pretty woman and sent him a silent flirtatious remark that seemed to tickle his funny bone. He chuckled, “Heehaw,” a couple of times, “likely story.” Fitch laughed, too. Then he told Tucker about according to the boys, how Sonny had had a chance to speak to the Indian night guard, Pet Coon, at the Arapaho Rock Jail, early yesterday morning when they changed shifts. The preacher’s son was planning to lawyer up, enough for both of ‘em. “Well,” pondered Tucker in Biblical response, “can’t our side cast five smooth stones?”
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 12:45:27 +0000
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