The rain's a blessing, in more ways than one.
The garden needs it, that's for certain. Kansas is a little bit parched this year, and though the family farm has dwindled from what used to be wheat and corn as far as the eye could see, down to a kitchen garden off the back porch, rain is still a welcome sight. Thunder rolls softly in the distance, but the farmhouse has sheltered Ruth's family for the better part of a century now, and she's never been afraid of storms.
But better still, perhaps, is the way it's confined her grandsons to the living room. It's a summer rain for a summer holiday, and all of her boys off from school, and staying with their grandparents for a few weeks. Jeff and Lucy are taking a well-deserved break, a holiday of their own. Grandpa Tracy, in the manner of farm-owning grandparents since time immemorial, is taking advantage of the handily provisioned child labour force represented by his grandsons. He's put them all hard to work.
Ruth doesn't especially mind. Grant has the four of them well in hand, and it leaves her own days to be blissfully, beautifully full of her newest and tiniest grandson. Little Alan, with his big blue eyes and wispy blond mop of hair, not even half a year old. It would be a lie to say she's not happiest to have him all to herself. He's a sweet, good-natured little boy, and she gets a little melancholy to think that he's likely to be the last baby she holds, til her grandsons go on to have babies of their own.
Of course the elder three are really the only ones old enough to be of any help, at thirteen, ten, and eight, respectively. Gordon, at four, is still game for anything and in a very helpful phase of life, and trails around after his brothers, just happy to be included. He rides around on his grandpa's broad shoulders as often as not, echoing Grant's orders to the older three, like a tiny assistant-foreman, until Scott or John drags him, whining and protesting, to collapse in the house for naptime. Under their grandfather's watchful direction, there's been hoeing and weeding and the mending and painting of fences. The tractor has been ridden around the perimeter of the property more times than might have been strictly necessary. An entire new toolshed has been constructed. It's only been a week.
So it might just be that, after the week in question, the rain is as welcomed by her boys as it is by her garden. It's possible that a week of hard labour has tuckered them all out, because it's just barely afternoon, and the five of them have already given up the ghost for the day, after a morning of board games and puzzles and a brief adventure, during which Gordon had managed to wedge himself in the dining room credenza during an ill-advised game of hide and seek.
It had been the sort of incredibly good hiding place that meant that even the three eldest by their efforts combined had been unable to find him, and had needed to nervously report to their grandmother that Gordon was missing. It's not clear whether this is Scott's fault for suggesting hide and seek in the first place, John's fault for being terrible at seeking, or Virgil's fault, because John's just at the age where he blames Virgil for everything.
Grandma Tracy, wise and well-experienced in the habits of mischievous children, had sat Scott, John, and Virgil at the kitchen table, and started to dish out slices of apple pie and scoops of vanilla ice cream, loudly announcing what a shame it was that Gordon wasn't around to have any. Gordon made his appearance in record time and proclaimed himself the uncontested winner of hide and seek, forever and always.
And now the early afternoon. And the heavy, oppressive darkness of an early summer storm. And four out of five of her boys, dozing and drowsing and just completely and utterly flattened, on, around, and under the couch in the living room. Ruth watches from the doorway, unseen for the moment, and just enjoys the peacefulness of it all.
Scott's got Alan. Scott seems to be just as aware as she is; that this is going to be the last baby this family has, for a long, long while. He's only just old enough to really appreciate that—she suspects that John and Virgil both share the opinion that Alan is noisy, stinky, frequently cranky, and won't be remotely interesting until he's nearer to Gordon's age. But the way Scott holds his baby brother, lightly asleep with both hands to keep the little boy snuggled against his chest, it's plainly apparent that he cherishes this. Ruth's heart swells with pride for the eldest. He's a good-hearted boy. It's going to be ages before his brothers know just how lucky they are.
Virgil sleeps at the opposite end of the couch, caught between the back of it and his brother's long legs. He looks so much like his grandfather. She's pointed this out to Grant on more than one occasion, at least a couple times in Virgil's hearing, and it's hard to tell which of them puffs up prouder, grandfather or grandson. They're a perfect pair. Grant's gone into town to pick up groceries, and had very nearly taken Virgil along with him, but such a show of favoritism probably wouldn't have been well received by the committee at large. And so Virgil's currently snoring on the couch, just the same as his grandfather does at the end of a long week of work.
It's an extremely tiring business to wedge oneself in a credenza for an entire twenty minutes, even if it does result in the uncontested win of all games of hide and seek, forever and always. So Gordon's curled up in the gap between the couch and the floor, a bare eight inches of clearance that he's folded himself up beneath, accompanied by a blanket and a collection of stuffed sea creatures, all of which have been his companions through every nap and bedtime since his arrival at the farmhouse. Similarly, since his arrival at the farmhouse, Gordon and his entourage have made their way out of his own bed in the room he shares with Virgil, and into someone else's. Ruth's found him curled up like a cat at the foot of John's bed, or wedged in the space between Scott and the wall. More than twice he's clambered into the bed she shares with her husband, yawning and mumbling and making vague protestations about nightmares. With all his brothers around him, he doesn't appear to be having them now.
And as thunder rumbles again in the distance and the lights in the room flicker just slightly, John looks up from the pages of the book he reads instead of sleeping. From the living room doorway, Ruth shares a brief smile with her grandson, always the odd one out, somehow. The redhead in a family of blonds and brunettes, an introvert among extroverts, awake and watchful when the others are sleeping. John's always been a reader, but it's only at the farmhouse that one gets a real sense of just how much and how quickly he actually devours books. Every time his grandmother sees him, it seems like the cover he peers over has changed, working his way through old summer favourites, some of them as old as the farmhouse itself. He smiles at her now, rare and shy, even among family, and then his attention drops back to Tom Swift and the Race to the Moon. She can hardly blame him. It was always one of her favourites.
She leaves the living room doorway with the same smile on her face, warmth in her heart, and what might just possibly be the slightest suggestion of tears in her eyes. Grant will be home within the hour. He'll have brought groceries for yet another week, and probably all manner of extra treats and goodies for his boys, because as hard as he works them, he spoils them twice as well. At the thought of her husband having missed this sight, she remembers herself, creeps back to the living room doorway, and very quietly snaps a picture of her boys. It's the sort of memory she wants to be quite sure she keeps.