Cypress Branches Literary Journal - Lamar State College-Orange

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They then followed one another to the burn pile to see what was on the buffet for the night. Once Zelda
and Henry were through demolishing the watermelon, they would waddle back to the water’s edge and
once again wash their small sticky hands.
As bedtime neared each night, the sisters would sit on their dad’s lap and play a game called
tickle torture. Tammie would take a long sun-bleached strand of Kim’s hair, and she would start by
slowly dragging the hair across her dad’s forehead, then across his nose, then finally his lips. The object
of the game was being able to will their bodies not to move or flinch, but it tickled so much that they
laughed out loud. Whoever lasted the longest would be declared the winner. Their dad would strike a
match and light the end of his cigarette; the end of that cigarette would glow like hot ambers ablaze in a
fire. As he inhaled the chemically-laden smoke deep into his lungs, he would purse his lips together and
softly thump his cheeks with his worn and weathered finger, and magically smoke rings would drift out
of his mouth like clouds floating across the sky on a warm sunny day. As the two small girls shuffled
their exhausted sun-scorched bodies across that gritty, sandy floor to climb into their dream machine, the
secret name of their bed, their mother would remind them to dust the sand off from beneath their small
tired feet. As the sisters lay their heads on the pillows, they wearily drifted off to sleep, exhausted from a
day of castle building.
There are days when the gray-haired older woman sits and daydreams of driving that old black
and white Ford pickup truck to the river with her wide-eyed sister there beside her, dreams of floating
across that liquid glass river with those empty milk jugs supporting her small frame, and of red
watermelon juice trickling down her chin. Then she realizes that it would take a full size plastic milk
truck to float her across that river, and the red watermelon juice would trickle down to one of her chins.
Out of the corner of her wrinkled eyes, if she looks long enough and focuses, she can still see the dust
trailing behind that old black and white Ford pickup truck.
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