The Mushroom Raid
His mother always cooked. So much so, she called her self a chef. So deep was her passion for the culinary arts, that she declared her self an artist. She always took special care to pronounce it with special emphases on the "I," to make more of an "e" sound.
Their kitchen had more technologically advanced tools in it than anywhere in our house. She put her foot down when the family computer crashed. She spent the money on a new high-tech stove, instead of a new computer. Dan, the middle son, protested by saying that he needed a computer to do school work, and she argued back that she needed as stove to feed the family with.
When she was confronted with the fact that the family already had a perfectly fine stove, which she her self went out and bought only a year earlier, she went on a tirade on how she wasn't loved anymore and that they didn't support her enough. The three of them, Dan, his father, and his little brother, all sighed and left the room.
She acted like an artist or artest as she would say it. She would ask the family all to leave the kitchen for hours at a time, as she was getting the inspiration for the next big idea she would test on us.
One night, inspiration wouldn't come, she hit a writers block, as it where, only with food. She stormed out of the house shrieking unintelligently, and drove off. The rest of the family sat still. After sighing, they shrugged it off, this had happened before.
She would drive off for an hour, maybe have a drink or two while driving, and come back at mid night and sleep on the couch. Sure it was dangerous, but it really didn't hurt anyone. Dan's little brother, who was only five, asked what she was doing.
The father turned from the window and looked at his youngest son and said "She just needs to go out and think. She did the same thing last month, remember honey?"
Little Miles turned to Dan with a blank look on his face; who smiled kindly and said, "She needs to manufacture insparado." Dan had explained the whole thing to Miles three months prior, right after she exploded a few episodes ago. In the explanation, Dan used the silly term "manufacturing insparado" as a name for these little explosions.
When she didn't come back by eight thirty, little Miles was put to bed. When she didn't come back by ten, Dan followed suit. The two boys didn't know when their father went to bed.
Dan lay in bed half awake listening, in hopes of catching his mother coming home. But he gave in, and was gone with out a sound.
During a pleasant dream, he was awakened by a rude smell, and a shake.
"Dan, 'an, wake up." he moaned and rolled over. He was the type to quickly wake up.
From the direction of the slurred voice came the smell of booze.
"Hi mom," he said, rubbing his eyes and sitting up.
"Honey, we gotta go." His mother said in the dark.
"Okay, okay," he said turning to get up. The woman didn't move, she kept saying they had to go. "If you could move..." he added.
He sensed her get out of the way, and flicked on a light. They both winced. When he found his flip-flops, they stumbled down stairs, and went outside to the car. Amazingly, Dan's father didn't wake up.
Dan knew it was risky for him to drive with his mother the way she was, but he lacked the nerve to say anything about it. It didn't help the fact that the rush of first waking up had faded, and he was lulling back to sleep.
The car gently rising over the hills rocked him to sleep, and after his mind caught up with his body, Dan was suddenly very curious.
"Mom," he said, "Where are we going?" he looked out the window, watching illuminated signs wiz by.
"Well," said his mother, "I went out, and thought." This much Dan knew.
"I was driving around looking at all the interesting shapes of everything, and I...uhh….er…" she made sounds from her throat that reminded Dan of a soft crackling. She made these sounds of thought for about fifteen seconds before continuing.
"And I found this place." She ended.
"And this place is where?" said Dan, being a bit rude in his half awake state.
"Um," his mother made an awkward laugh, "I don't know, that's what I'm trying to remember."
Dan nodded. He looked around in hopes of finding any names of streets that he knew. It was hard to tell at night, but he was pretty sure he knew where he was. The thought of asking to be let out of the car jumped into his head, and then left just as quickly.
"And um," said Dan, "Why are we going?"
"Well," his mother began again. "I found these wicked cool, er…" she made the crackling sound again, while rotating her hands about. She steered with the palms of her hands. "Mushrooms, fungus, dingus-is, they're on this tree I passed by. I can put them into a wicked good stew and, and, and, oh, it'll be great."
Dan thought she went on, but wasn't sure. He had grown an amazing skill to just tune her out. Unfortunately, the skill had grown a mind of its own, and he had been finding himself blocking out the voices of teachers, friends, girls who had silly crushes on him, and the girls he had silly crushes on.
"And oh, it's just so cool," his mother went on.
They passed a street where Dan's bus stopped, again the thought jumped in of getting out, then it was shot. Dan was whipped into the present by his mother swerving.
"Stupid frog." She said, in reality, she swerved around a patch of miss colored asphalt, but anyone could have made the mistake.
Dan threw himself into the conversation again. "And so what are we doing, stealing the mushrooms?"
"Yeah," his mother said, leaning back and tightening her grip on the wheel again. "Its not really stealing, it's well, I'm using them for art. It's a tax write off." The thought bubbled in Dan's head for a moment, and when he was very sure it made no sense, he opened his mouth to protest. The idea of saying something joined forces with the thought of getting out of the car, which only made for a bigger target. It was shot down from an invisible assassin inside Dan's head.
Dan didn't think along the same lines as his mother, not in the fact that cooking was an art. Maybe it was, but certainly not in the extreme that Dan's mother took it to. A stay at home mom, in the opinion of Dan, who is a fanatic about cooking, was not an artist.
"Four walls does not a prison make," Dan thought out loud.
This bubbled in Dan's mother's mind for two moments, and when she was very sure it had made all the sense world with the context of the conversation, she agreed.
"And Rome wasn't built in a day," she said back.
Dan's mind skipped the bubbling, and jumped to the fact that he kind of deserved such a random comment because he thought out loud.
"One of these," his mother said.
"Where are we?"
"Rome wasn't built in a day," his mother echoed herself. Dan nodded in the darkness of the car.
The lights of the house were all out, giving the whole scene an ominous look. The car slowly pulled up beside it, Dan's mother cut the engine, and whispered.
"Right over there," she said, pointing vaguely. Dan slowly followed his mother's digit, and saw an old oak tree on the other side of the driveway. It was clear to see it was very dead, or at least very close to being very dead. Around the trunk, and no more than six feet up it, where half a dozen white, fan shaped, fungus outcroppings.
"And we're gonna steal them?" Dan asked.
His mother merely nodded.
"Don't you think that's just a wee bit illegal?"
"I told you, I'm using them for art." Dan wasn't quite sure that could cut in a court room.
"What if they come out and yell at us?"
"They won't," his mother said, giving no reason why.
Dan knew the answer, though. It was because she was Heidi Lawrence, and nothing could ever get in the way of Heidi Lawrence and Heidi Lawrence's "art."
Simply because she was Heidi Lawrence.
"Alright," Dan said, "How do we get the fungus off the tree?"
Heidi looked around, and reached in the back of car. She sat back down and said "Let's go."
Furtively, they made their way to the very dead tree.
Dew was on the grass already, and Dan was bare foot. A slug stuck to his foot, he kicked quickly to try and get it off. In the end, Dan wound up flicking the poor thing away.
Every few steps Dan would look over his shoulder, the house was quiet every time. Quiet and dark.
"Shhh!" Heidi said when Dan caught up with her. Dan looked over the nearest fungi.
It was truly massive, being maybe two feet from edge to edge, and the tip was roughly a foot away from the tree. Dan wondered if they really should be taking them, they must have been scores of years old.
Dan also wondered if you could even eat them, so few wild mushrooms were edible, never mind tree fungi.
Using the spatula she had dug out from the back set of her car, Heidi was trying to pry a fungus off.
"How many are we taking?" Dan whispered.
"Enough," His mother said.
"Enough for what?" Dan asked again.
"Enough until we had enough." Dan gave up.
There was a thud as half of a fungus hit the ground. Dan looked up hopefully.
"Fuck," his mother said, she looked around a started on another one. Half wasn't good enough. Dan sighed and went back to looking at the house.
It was very dead, he thought, the whole thing. It was over cast so the stars were hidden, and there was also moon. The farthest street light was a quarter mile away.
"How bleak," Dan muttered.
"Remember about Rome," his mother said.
Dan said he would, and his mother quickly gave a eerie sound of excitement. "Got it!" she said. "Quick, lets go!" she added, and hurried as fast as she could away from the tree.
As they drove home, Heidi talked on and on about the mushroom, how wicked cool it was, and how great it would be to figure out what to cook from it. She mumbled to her self about possible recipes to put it in. Occasionally, she would ask Dan what he thought, he would reasoned with an absent minded "Uh-huh."
They got home safely, and when they pulled in, Heidi switched subjects.
"I want to thank you very, very much for all the help you gave tonight."
"No problem," replied Dan, absent mindedly, he wanted bed, not thanks.
The outcropping sat in the kitchen cabinet for a week, and next Saturday night, Heidi asked the family to stay out of the kitchen as she did her art. An hour later, she stormed out of the house screaming unintelligently and drove away.
She gets to cook when ever she wants now, if she's been okayed with good behavior, she just has to wear a bright orange jump suit while she does it.