2
"Welcome to yer next home for twenty two months, boy!" the old man exclaimed as he got out of the dirty old-people's car and took a long breath of 'fresh' air. He coughed and sputtered and turned to me.
"Well... get outta there, boy. I ain't gonna open the door for you." He laughed and then pushed his large nose against the window and said,
"This ain't no Girl Scout camp."
He chuckled, spat and walked around the side of the car to open the door for his wife. She got out like a sleep walker and stood next to her husband like pale ornament. The dead expression on her face hadn't changed since I had first seen her and I had wondered if she was ever happy...
Whoa... that kind of surprised me... I was actually thinking compassionately about someone else!
I opened the door energetically and slammed it.
That's when a saw her.
It was like beholding the most frightening thing any eyes of a young boy should never see at his age. She was a vision in brown... or maybe pink that had turned brown after rolling in the mud somewhere. Her poofy red hair was tied into two uneven pigtails and some hairs managed to escape the two different colored scrungies, making her look like she'd got up from a nice, soothing nap in a gravehole in the back yard.
Thinking about it now, she had the uncanny appearance of Darla from that stupid Nemo movie you damn kids watch.
She smiled at me—or at least I think she did, which showed that two of her front teeth were missing.
She walked towards me like a possessed doll with the old man (and woman?) watching her with pride.
"HI!" she said in a loud, friendly voice.
I was too frightened to move and just stared at her in horror, still trying to figure out what this thing in front of me was. Could I touch it? What if it bites me? WHAT IF IT HAS RABIES! OH GOD, HELP ME!
"This perdy lil' missy here's my granddaughter, Lou Walker. She's about the same age as ye but obviously far more mature.."
A mature drool escaped from her mouth.
"...And she'll be digging holes with the rest of ye." He looked down at the happy, redheaded creature staring back at him with blank eyes, "... and though she's ma darlin' princess, she could get the same treatment as erryone else." He ruffled her already-ruffled hair. "We don't want to spoil her.. turn her into a mean, awful tyrant lady when she grows up."
"I good girl!" she exclaimed, adding a cute little jump to her excitement and zest for her poor, pathetic life.
His warm and loving eyes turned cold when he turned to me.
"Did you understand what I told ya so far?"
"I got lost about the time you were talking about the "holes." I said in monotone.
The old man scowled and turned to his wife. "Linda, take our sweetie pie into the house and make her summin in the kitchen. Make me summin too."
The old, wispy woman, like a hypnotized zombie, took hold of the girl's hand and led her into a house that was just a rickety as the car.
He snapped his finger at me face and pointed towards the direction of three to four tents.
Don't snap your dirt old fingers at me, you prune.
It took all the dignity within my soul to follow him across what I'd forever know for the rest of my life to be the "campgrounds".
"The number of boys we got here increased since five years ago so we separated them into tents. A, B, C, and 'D' is where the boys be eatn'." He pointed a little further off. "Down there's a shack where you do the T.V. watchin and relaxin. We gots a pool table too, kid. Ain't we Ritzy?" He winked at me—or at least he tried to.
He led me around in circles, repeating things he thought he didn't say yet. Then suddenly he stopped.
"Boy, do you see and guard towers? Any wired fences?'
"Should I?"
He slapped me in the face, which surprised me so much I gave a little squeak.
"Don't be fresh with me, kid. You wanna run off? You just go right ahead. We won't take you back in once you do. Just a fun fact for you; we're the only ones who got water for three hundred and fifty miles." He grinned, then spat on the ground.
"So you try and run away! And if it ain't the thirst that kills ya, it's the rattlesnake or the yelleh-spotted lizard."
"I like lizards." I smiled.
He spat again, this time, some went in my eye.
"You ain't gonna like these."
He cackled and left me alone with my one suitcase in front of a dirty-green tent with the letter "C" drawn very badly upon one of its door flaps.