Honesty
Jo Anne was worried out of her mind. The twins had told Cassie the 'rules' of wandering the neighborhood which were basic, 1. Either tell someone where you were going or leave a note, 2. If you knew the way and could get home again, and if you could prove it if challenged, you could go and finally, 3. Do not leave the yard after dark or the house after 8pm without an adult.
Cassie had told the twins she wanted to go give Daddy and Uncle John hugs and that there was something she needed to explain, when Mama told them they'd had a rough rescue and she also left a note for Mama on the fridge. The problem was, Cassie also knew her way around most of the county via the public transit system and would have no trouble proving it if asked...and Jo knew that. And she'd left at noon, after the call from Daddy telling Mama about the kid that hadn't made it. Most of the kids at a school which had caught on fire had been fine, but one had not and it was tearing Daddy and Uncle John into shreds.
So, Cassie was going to go give hugs. She had her wallet and her bus pass...Jo had forgotten she had gotten a new one. The reassurance on the note on the fridge reminded her, along with the promise she'd go straight to 51 and nowhere else.
Jo sighed upon checking the garage and finding she'd left the hoe home...there were written instructions for use on the wall next to it. She leaned against Roy's work table, folding her arms and leaned her head back with a glance toward heaven.
"That child..." She felt tired. "For a nine year old, she's ancient. What does she expect to do about it, anyway?"
It had been a very long five months. First the hospital, then months of therapy for her knee at the hospital. If Daddy didn't take her, Uncle John had. Weeks on weeks of patience, gentle encouragement, friendly smiles, hugs, supportive hands. Laps. Memories of the best few months of the little girl's short life flitted through her mind as she watched the stops go past the window headed for Daddy's station. She needed to hug them and make sure they were okay...she absolutely needed to get her grubby little hands on both of them. And there was something she needed to changed buses once and soon enough told the driver of the second where to let her off...she couldn't reach the bellcord, being far too short.
As she stepped off the bus and onto the pavement, she saw her Daddy watching her soberly and Uncle Johnny standing at the bus stop in front of the station, hands on his hips with bemusement on his face. He squatted down, Roy kneeling on her other side with a gentle hand on her neck, "Your Mama called to let us know you were on your way over." Roy started, she cut him off though.
She slid her thin arms around the two men's neck, hugging hard. "She said you had a rough morning, she was talking to Barbara over the back fence and I was outside weeding under the collards so I heard. I know I'm still little, but I need you both to listen to me. I'm not little in some ways, some ways I grew up a good while ago, because there was nothing else left to do. This is one of'em. I'm so sorry about the kid, but you do save most, you saved me...got that? You saved me and and then you loved me too, and that's...I honestly still can't see why you would but I'm not going to argue about it anymore.
Point is I'm here because I know how losing people hurts, I do. You know? I do. And I just needed to see My Tall Man and My Daddy and get my hands on you two before you did something Stupid. So, sorry, but I came here to remind you, from someone close to the same age as the lost one, that you don't lose everyone. Some of us are doing just dandy because of you two. I love you both sooooo much. Don't let the hurt let the Stupid in, okay? Please? Don't let the Hurt let the Stupid make you doubt yourselves. Cuz kids like me need you too much for that."
"Oh man." John whispered and he hugged her back, then eased back to let her pet her Dad with one hand...though the other one didn't loose it's grip on his hand. "Look, let's get you inside, okay, thank you Baby Girl. I'm sure you're aware, but we did need that."
"Yeah, but you needed it now when it hurts the most, not tomorrow morning. I knew the timing let me have the couple hours the buses would take, cuz you needed the other four talking sense to you first. Growed up boys are weird that way. Gotta talk to other growed ones before the females, you know, the ones with heart and sense, will be listened to. And I was pretty sure Mama wouldn't understand that. But I followed the rules, I can prove I can get home the same way but it'll wait until tomorrow, cuz I don't think Uncle Hank wants you on the bus right now...and to prove it, you'd need to take the bus home with me instead of driving."
"No, very likely not." Roy chuckled at her claim he and the rest of the men had no sense, as he got to his feet and John put her on his hip for the walk back up the driveway. He did take the extra copies of the bus routes she held out to him with a smile. It was a bit shadowed still, but it was a real smile all the same. "Saturday and almost one in the afternoon...it's your nap time, isn't it?"
"Only if you shove the beds together and I can keep my hands on you so you don't go poof. I'm also here to keep the impulsive stuff away, which Stupid can cause if it gets in. You and Uncle John are getting to use my common sense on loan until your's moves back into your heads."
John actually laughed at that one, her Daddy was fighting a grin as well. "Well, between runs, anyway," John told her, "But only in the end module in the front, it's got three spare beds." He met Roy's eyes over her head and saw about same amount of stunned love in his partner eyes. Thirty five miles of bus routes to get to them, just to tell them that they were loved, in person. She thought it was that important to her that she get to them.
"Tell me you didn't bring her to work." Chet asked, in disbelief.
"Nope. She used the normal rules of neighborhood wanderings to come on a cross county trip to tell us she loves us...via the county bus routes. Jo and I forgot she probably knows the county better than I do."
"But why?"
"Daddy told Mama what happened and I heard her talking to a neighbor while I was weeding under collard greens which have huge leaves. She didn't see me.. All I knew I had to get to them, there's stuff I couldn't never tell Mama. She wouldn't get it...no way would she get it." They'd never heard a tone like that from a child that age before. Cassie looked up at Roy, "Free beach, sounds nice doesn't it? It's not. You wouldn't believe the stuff that goes on down there at night, that's why I had my site hid and isolated. Becoming your daughter was...like moving from a pile of granite rubble into a glass castle...scary and never knowing when a rock would come flying out of nowhere. I was so scared for a long time.
Sometimes, there's just nothing anyone can do, like watching one of those big waves come take a little boat out sideways. You see it coming, nothing you can do cuz the laws of physics are in charge, yeah? Water hits the thing broadside and over it goes, dumping everything into the water: Most of the time the people get back in the boat and keep going. If the surf's up, in a tide turn or two, you might find neat things on the beach. Loaded locked ice chests and stuff. I found a wallet a few times and a purse or some bag with change in it, sometimes. But...the ones that regain their boats were a lot luckier than they had any notions of." Her eyes filled with remembered horror and even Hank squatted now near her in alarm.
"What happened to the unlucky ones?" Chet asked...and immediately wished he'd kept his mouth shut.
"They get shark bit first, though you never know if its gonna keep eating. Never know, mostly it's just a young one, trying to figure out what just landed in it's water, a little mouthy, but not actually hungry. So someone gets bit, but only because that's the only good way fish have to pick something up. But...sometimes they're hungry and the bite was tasty for them...and all you can do is stand there and watch...and listen to the screams. If the sea lions have pups or the fur seals are breeding, there's white sharks in the waves...big ones and they tend to be hungry. They're used to heavy, fishy seal meat so greasy man meat doesn't seem to put them off.
Not a damned thing anyone on the beach can do to help, becuz if you enter the water, you're dead, cuz by then there's other sharks going after that person, too, like he's a bait ball of sardines or anchovies. Mama wouldn't get that."
She scuffed her foot on the floor, eyes down, six sober men listening.
"So, she wouldn't get how it hurts, when there's nothing to be done. And the twins? No way. And you don't want'em to. But, my Daddy and my Johnny needed to understand that one of their close family does get it. Even if I'm pretty sure they'd rather I didn't. That's okay though, I'd rather I didn't too, but again, I do.
And there's nothing anyone can do about that. So...you learn to just take a deep breath, and you learn to let it out slow and you learn keep going. Cuz there's nothing else to do. I get it, that's all. I just wanted to make sure they knew I love them too, but with real understanding of what's going on. One of the old people told me once that I was way young for my life to be what he called 'tried'. He said it was trying your soul in the forge of life and on an anvil of reality, under a hammer of doom: Which sounds about right for the free beaches, especially during shark season."
Told him I just keep moving, eventually other things happen and they put the bad bits into perspective. But I ain't as young as you think, haven't been for a while, some ways...and I sure as certain wasn't leaving Daddy and Johnny hanging out to dry like wet sails, either. They don't have to do that 'deflection' thing or the cut off something they're talking about trying to work it out of their systems or anything, just because I'm nearby. They really, really needed to know that and just keep talking it out.
So, I got my wallet and my bus pass, told the twins I was coming here to give hugs and explain a couple things, and left a note on the fridge for Mama just in case they forgot to tell her. I left the hoe in the garage with use instructions for snakes and I left way before sundown. It's only two hours on the bus. And I figured Daddy would do the Daddy thing about my transportation once I got here."
This time there was a slightly cheeky aspect to her little smile. But at least her somber air and the disturbingly mature aspect she'd carried since she got off the city bus was lifting. Chet was very glad she'd stopped talking about the sharks...so were the other five.
She finally looked up at her Father and John.
"The whole ride over, I kept remembering the Stupid Bear part two thing, and the dumb cook and his pet wolf thing, and that nasty chopper ride...and then weeks and weeks nasty therapy...and of smiles and laps and hugs, and kisses and gentle hands, welcoming arms...most of that was Dad and my Tall Man, Mama a little, but most of it was you two. My foot is small, but I can make my toes really pointy and I can kick really high, so don't let the Stupid in. Cuz, I know better, so I'll kick your butts."
Roy's blue eyes were a little shinier than usual and John's brown ones were in about the same shape.
"We good?" She asked them, her own eyes a little dull. "I didn't want you to know, but I needed you to understand so you'll listen. I dunno how well you were listenin' to these four. Being able to keep moving, cuz there wasn't anything else to do, is how I got here to start with, right?"
"Yeah, it was. Oh yeah, we're good." John barely breathed the words as he lifted her from the floor and into a tight embrace, aching for the sheer volume of things she understood that she shouldn't.
"Absolutely, my brave little girl...that's how you got here. Seems like a long time now, but it's not even been a year yet, has it? We're absolutely good: I don't need dents in my buttocks." Roy sighed for the old eyes in her young face, then took her from John as soon as that worthy finished the tight hug he was in the middle of and buried her in one of his own. "You're sleeping here tonight. No more cross county trips without an adult with you, unless there is no other choice and the trip can't wait." He told her, acknowledging she'd know the difference.
"Yes Daddy. I'll keep the twins close, have Catchit with us and make sure Holler will be absolutely required to find us. I'm good at hiding." She was well aware those were not the instructions he would have given the twins. She was also well aware he'd expect her to have the twins with her if something like that was going on. "Easiest to just tell him to find Catchit."
TBC