"Good Lord, it's hot."
The two girls sat on the front porch, wishing for a whisper of a breeze and trying to muster up the energy to walk down to the creek. It wasn't a long walk, but long enough in this heat.
"Let's just go. We'll like it once we get there, and we'll forget all about how hot the walk was."
"But we hafta walk back."
"'course we hafta walk back! You gonna grow wings?"
"If only."
They went back and forth like this, Gladys trying to get her sister to get off her lazy butt and just go. She knew it would be fine once they got there, and she knew that Dean would, too. Gladys kicked the rocking chair, just to hear something else. It rocked a few times, then stilled. She kicked it again.
"Why'd you do that for? Cut it out!"
"Make me." She kicks it again.
"I said, cut it out! You are just doin' that ta get me ta go."
"Wow, you're smart. You should go to college or somethin'."
"That's it!" Dean reaches out and tries to slap her sister's head, but Gladys ducks out of the way, smiling. "I win! Now, let's go 'fore Joe gets back and finds work for us to do." She always used her father's proper name, out of earshot. She didn't like to think of him as her father...she didn't like to think of him much at all, really. "Oh, alright. But we have to get back before dinner. Jackson is coming over later and I want to dry out and get my hair fixed before he gets here." Gladys smiled again. "Which one is Jackson?" Dean gets up and throws a shoe at her, not meaning to hit, of course. "You know full well who he is! Now shut up and let's go before I change ma mind."
Gladys and Dean stepped off the porch and started walking down the driveway. The path to the creek went past one of the fields that her dad worked, so she hoped that he wasn't in that field when they went past. Just a chance they had to take. As they walked along, Gladys picked heads off of wildflowers, rubbing them between her fingers. If she liked the smell, she would touch it to her neck like perfume, but Dean stopped doing that a while back, stating it was for little girls, and besides, she had real toilet water now. She didn't need to pretend anymore. The kicked up dust as they went, but it never got very far. The humid heat pressed everything down, even the dark curls on Gladys' forehead. Dean had blond hair, which was another source of jealousy, but Gladys liked her curls. They made it past the field without ever seeing Joe...just a couple of straw hats in the distance and the tractor a mile off, maybe more. They turned the corner into the stand of sassafras and hickory, thankful for the shade but sweaty from the exertion and the hot damp of summer in Kentucky.
Like I said...just a beginning, sort of. Curious to know what you think.
