At
the age of nine, my parents move us to the city of Washington, Illinois. The experience is exciting
especially the part where there will be other children to play with, on our
street.
*Lily
is younger than me and lives on the opposite side of the street, but at the end,
near “the creek”. The creek winds its way through its banks and a few trees
that we call “the woods”.
I’m
not exactly sure what Lily’s dad does for a living, but I do know he wears a
white shirt and slacks to work. I know this because one day I ride with Lily
and her mom to pick him up, from his office. Another thing I know about
Lily’s dad is that he brings home free samples to his family. In fact, the
cabinets in their basement kitchenette are stuffed with samples, as are the shelves lining the walls and down the center of another room.
One
day, we’re playing a 45 record—a Beatles’ song, on the record player, in her
basement. John Lennon is my favorite Beatle, she chooses Paul McCartney. At some point, Lily
decides to show me the shelving in the next room, brimming with samples. Inside
the room, I stand amazed at the assortment of foodstuffs.
Lily’s
voice breaks through my trance as she becomes the tour guide and calls out names
of products, sometimes touching the item and sometimes just pointing. She pulls
one box from a shelf and names it sugar.
“Our sugar doesn’t look like this.” I challenge her.
“It’s sugar cubes.”
I
feel confused, but curious about the box she hands to me. “What’s a sugar
cube?”
Lily grabs
the package back from me and opens it, folding back the wax paper lining, and
pulls out a tiny white cube that sparkles a little. “It’s sugar—that looks like
a cube,” she says, popping it in to her mouth.
Then she pulls another cube from the box, grabs my hand and drops it in my
palm.
I
turn the cube over again and again, investigating its squareness.
“Eat it.”
When the
sugar cube hits my tongue it’s gritty, but soon dissolves into a sweet crunchy
mass, begging my teeth to bite down and finish it off. “Can we take these
with us—outside?”
Lily thinks
about it, then says, “We’ll have to sneak them out. Mom won’t be happy if she thinks
we’re eating a box of sugar.”
Willing
and eager to become the smuggler, I pull up my shirt and slide the box between my
skinny belly and an elastic waistband. I pull my shirt down over the box. The rectangular
outline is obvious so I cross my arms over it, partially to hide it and
partially to hold the box in place.
The
summer sun is bright and hot when we escape the basement and run to the sparse woods,
beside the creek. After we find a stump to share, we sit beside each other and pop
one sugar cube after another into our mouths to satisfy our sweet cravings
until we eat half of the box of sugar.
Being
the sugarholic that I am, I say, “Let’s hide the box and eat the rest
tomorrow.”
Lily
says yes because she doesn’t want to return a half eaten box of sugar to her basement.
We look
around us for a suitable hiding place, but there is none where we're sitting. Then
through the sparsely spaced trees, I see a familiar old tree. The tree’s two
limbs jet upward, causing a fork, but out from there grows a canopy of limbs covered in leaves. Beneath the fork is a dark hollow that will
hide our sugary prize. There’s only problem with my idea, the field is a
pasture for a flock of sheep and a cantankerous ram.
At
one time or another, by dare or by accident, nearly every kid in our
neighborhood has been chased out of the field by the ram. Lily and I know this about
the ram, but decide to use the tree to hide our sugar. The guard ram is a bonus.
At
the fence, we look for the ram, then carefully part the barbed wire and help
each other through. On the other side, we
run to the tree and shove the box of sugar cubes deep inside the dark hole. It’s
then we see, running across the field and in our direction, the charging ram
tossing his head around. We know we haven’t much time to escape and run
back to the fence and climb through.
It is
the next weekend when we meet up again and decide to retrieve the box of sugar
for a post-breakfast treat. Outside the fence, we scan the field for the bully
ram, but he’s nowhere in sight. Feeling safe, we climb through the wire and run
to the tree. I can barely see the top of the box, but I thrust my hand inside the
hollow to get it. As I grab hold of the box and pull it out of the black hole, pricks
of pain cover my hand.
When my
hand surfaces, I see the source of my pain is a swarm of ants clinging to my hand and
fighting for the box of sugar cubes that I hold. As their attack increases, I realize the sugar war is over, and I let
the box fall to the ground. Shaking the remaining ants from my hands, I surrender our box of sugar to the ants and leave with Lily.
*Name
Changed
The first year I joined the A-Z Challenge, I wrote bits and pieces of Grim Tales from the Ruralhood.
A couple of people said I should put them into a short story collection so I removed
them from my blog and did that. The
second year, I wrote The Waiting Summer,
essays about the summer before my senior year. That was fun, reminiscing. You
can still read those under the tab, at the top, except be aware that I’m still working
on editing them and linking. 
