Why can’t I do both?
Why can’t I live both here and also right where Junie is for college?
“You’re getting snot on my sweatshirt, Mom.”
“I have to while you’re still here. I won’t be able to when you leave me for college.”
She lets me go and flops off with a sigh that I know she’s affecting just for me, but when I’ve finished pulling on my work clothes, she’s waiting for me next to the door in work clothes of her own.
I don’t say a word.
I won’t complain if she wants to help, and I won’t tease her about it and make her change her mind.
“I broke it,” she mutters. “I might as well help fix it.”
“It was the best kick of the day.”
She rolls her eyes, but she also smiles a little. “I know.”
I’m laughing as we both head out to help our friends help us.
And with so many trucks out there at the barn and so many helping hands, it really is all done in under a day.
Someone shows up with a load of sandwiches from the deli right about the time I’m starting to realize I should feed all these people.
The trucks keep coming, then going with loads of wood and shingles and whatever tools and equipment we uncover in the barn. Someone’s even brought us a massive dumpster too.
Several of Junie’s classmates show up, and they all laugh and gossip and tease each other as they work together. I overhear stories about Uncle Tony and his cows. More stories about Gingersnap. Someone asks if we marked Gingersnap’s grave, because she wants to leave a token in memoriam to the time she caught Gingersnap eating the laundry off her line.
A few people ask me about doing handyperson work. They’ve heard I’m good and haven’t been able to find a local business with availability for a patch-and-paint job or sealing concrete or a few other small things before winter sets in.
And the minute we find Junie’s soccer ball?
It’s Flint.
He finds it under a panel of boards, lifts it in the air, and calls, “Hey, June, you wanna frame this?”
After a beat of total silence, Junie does the last thing I would expect, and she cracks up.
“What’s the story with the soccer ball?” It’s a murmur going through the whole group of ranchers and teachers and residents of Hell’s Bells who have come out to help us today. Junie’s friends too.
I’m sure many of them know she wanted to be on the team but that we got here too late and Flint wouldn’t bend the rules.
And I’m sure those people who know suspect there’s tension there, and they’d be right.
But Junie strides right up to Flint, takes the ball from him, tucks it under her arm, and faces the crowd. “I was out here kicking it around yesterday, and when I turned one of my cones, it whispered, ‘June. Juniper. That barn is so ugly. If you kick me, I’ll take it down,’” June answers dramatically.
A few people share nervous glances, but more laugh or giggle.
“So I was like, ‘No, ball. No. That’s bad. That’s wrong.’ And the ball whispered, ‘But if you don’t use me to take it down now, someone could get hurt if they’re inside when it falls. You need to do this. You need to do this tosave lives.’ And so I trusted the ball, and I trusted the universe. I knew if the ball was lying, it would bounce off, but instead, it went right through the wall and took down the whole barn.”
A few people look at me.
I shrug. “She took the barn down with the ball. That part’s true.”
“Saw it myself,” Flint says.
“She had to have hit the side at exactly the right weak spot to do it,” I add, “but she did it. I actually think the balldidtalk to her.”
