Wolf Dreams

Kevin and Kate didn’t get another chance at the window for several days. First Kevin got sick, and then Kate did. On Saturday, when they were both feeling better, their parents took them shopping for summer clothes in the morning and in the afternoon, it poured rain. On Sunday, everyone in the family was at Great-grandmother’s house for dinner and the afternoon.

Sunday was sunny and warm, and after a big potluck dinner (Great-grandmother refused to cook for the entire family anymore - she said in no uncertain terms that they could all help out, so they did) the whole family went out to the back yard with the croquet and badminton sets and lots of lawn chairs. The boys shed their suit jackets and all of the children ran around playing tag and hide-and-seek and getting in the way of the grown ups who were trying to beat each other at lawn games. Great-grandmother still beat everyone at croquet.

Kevin and Kate really did enjoy these Sunday afternoons with all of their cousins and aunts and uncles and great-aunts and great-uncles - all together, there were probably about forty people there, and ten of them were children. But this Sunday, all they could think of was the window. Kevin’s heart just wasn’t in showing his cousin Jack how high he could climb in the cottonwood tree in the back yard, and as much as Kate usually enjoyed playing with her cousin Beth, she just wasn’t having fun today.

The window called to them, a seductive siren song that was incredibly hard to resist. Kate and Kevin really wanted to see if it still showed a different outcome for things, or if they had imagined it all. But everyone was in and out of the house all afternoon, and there wasn’t any chance to go in and climb up on a stool to look out of the window without someone coming through and wondering what they were doing. Kevin tried. He used going to the bathroom as an excuse to go inside so many times that afternoon that he wasn’t allowed to have any lemonade and cookies with the others because his mother said he must have an upset stomach if he needed to go inside so much. Kate knew what he was doing, and snuck his lemonade and cookies to him later on.

“Kevin, if you’re going to be so obvious, we won’t be able to do anything, Someone will catch on and ruin everything. Stay out of the house!” Katie scolded him.

“All right. Next week Great-grandmother will be doing a lot of gardening. I heard her telling Aunt Patsy. We can do something then.” Kevin sighed miserably. “I really just want to check out that window again, and work out how we’re going to do this, though.”

Kate shook her head and went back to play with Beth some more.

Kevin stayed out of the house until it was time to clean up. Along with everyone else, he helped put everything away - dishes washed and put up, outdoor games and chairs in the basement. When the last lemonade glass was put away and the last lawn chair folded, all of the relatives except Kevin and Kate and their parents left. Since their family lived just a few blocks away, they always stayed later. Mom and Dad would help Great-grandmother with things she just couldn’t do anymore, like heavy lifting.

Mom and Dad had gone to the basement with Great-grandmother to help her re-arrange some furniture, leaving Kevin and Kate on their own upstairs for a short while. They looked at each other, and Kate grabbed the footstool from in front of one of the chairs. She carefully put a piece of newspaper on it to keep their footprints off of the fabric. (They had made that mistake one time before - they had thought that since footstools were for putting feet on, they could stand on them too, and had been playing super hero by jumping off one with capes on.  They had left  the footstool quite scuffed, and found that Great-grandmother didn’t like footprints on any of the furniture, not even the footstools.) Quickly they scrambled up on it and, side-by-side, peered out of the blue stained glass window. It was early evening though, and there really wasn’t much to see. Kate noticed that a bird that flew up into the tree through the rest of the window stayed on the ground in the blue window, but that was it. By the time they heard the adults coming back upstairs, they had already put the footstool back, thrown out the newspaper, and were playing checkers on the floor.

That night, Kevin and Kate made a few plans. They decide that one of them would stay inside and watch through the window, and the other would be outside and try to help passers-by. It wasn’t a sure-fire thing, but they might get a tip or two from someone whose dog didn’t run off or who missed stepping in a puddle. It was the best they could think of for right now.

Kevin found his old walkie-talkies and put fresh batteries in them. Then Kate dug around in the basement and found a little folding stool that would fit underneath Great-grandmother’s sofa where it couldn’t be seen when they weren’t using it. That way, they wouldn’t have to use the kitchen stepstool or the footstool that showed footprints too well.  They were ready to go.

The next day after school, Kevin and Kate took the stool and the walkie-talkies over to Great-grandmother’s house and left them in the bushes by the front door. After Great-grandmother had gone out to work in her garden in the back yard, they brought the things in.

“I’ll watch first,” said Kate. “You go out with the walkie-talkie and tell me what people are doing as they come by. Then I’ll tell you what I see in the blue window.” Kevin agreed, and went out.

Things went along all right for a while, although Kevin got some strange looks for hanging around in the front yard by the sidewalk with a walkie-talkie. No one was doing anything they could do differently and Kevin got bored. He decided to observe things from a different angle, and scrambled up one of the trees by the sidewalk where he sat happily on a branch in the shade. Even if someone noticed him, Kevin was often found in trees, so no one would think it was odd.

He was leaning out, trying to get a better look at what was happening down the sidewalk when suddenly Kate shrieked into the walkie-talkie. “KEVIN! HOLD ON!” Startled, Kevin did just the opposite, and slipped off the branch he was on. The walkie-talkie went flying and Kevin found himself dangling from a rather skinny limb with his toes ten feet off the ground. The limb was drooping lower and lower, and Kevin could hear a cracking noise. To make matters worse, his tie was caught on the branch too and the hard cement sidewalk was below him. He was frightened. He didn’t know which would happen first - if the branch would break and he would fall to the sidewalk or if he would choke on his tie. He needed to get his legs up over the branch so he could untangle his tie and get down, but when he tried to wiggle and swing his legs up, the branch creaked like it was going to break. As he struggled to hang on and tried to think of a way down, Great-grandmother came around the corner of the house into the front yard.

“Kevin! What on earth are you doing?” she called. Just then, Kate came around the other corner of the house struggling with the awkward ladder, and together they put it up under Kevin. He got his feet on the top step just as the branch broke. His tie ripped and he quickly scrambled down, happy to be in one piece, but still shaken.

“Now Kevin, you know I don’t mind you climbing the trees, but you must be careful. And don’t climb over the sidewalk. It’s too hard for landing on!” She looked him up and down. “And your tie is torn.” Great-grandmother shook her head and went off to work on the flower beds by the front walk.

Kate hissed, “I told you to hold on!”

“You shouted and scared me! That was why I fell!” Kevin replied, furious.

“But I could see you falling, and then I said something!”

“Well, all I know is I didn’t fall ‘til you told me not to,” said Kevin, pulling the walkie-talkie out of a bush. He checked it to make sure it was still working, stuffed it in his pocket, and folded up the ladder. He crammed his torn tie into his shirt front and, glaring at his sister, he stomped off to the back to put the ladder away.

Kate’s feelings were hurt - she had thought she was helping him, but it all went wrong and now Kevin was mad. Head down, she wandered slowly back to the house.

As she passed Great-grandmother, Great-grandmother said, “His pride is injured, just like yours would be if someone saw you looking foolish. Leave him alone for a bit, and it’ll be all right.”

Kate nodded sadly and went to make sure the folding stool and walkie-talkie were put away before Great-grandmother came in. Great-grandmother didn’t know the half of it. Kate just hoped that Kevin would realize soon that she didn’t mean to make him fall.

By evening, Kevin had cooled off. At bedtime, he told Kate, “Tomorrow, it’s your turn to be outside. I won’t make you fall out of a tree!”

“No, because I don’t intend to climb one. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some things I need to get ready for tomorrow.” Her nose in the air, Kate went off to find some things she thought she could use.

-She Wolf © 2008