He laughed. She was quick. He slid all the way out from under the tractor and pushed himself to his feet. “Not bad, Annelise. Hey, um, sweetheart, I’m kinda busy right now, so...”
He turned around.
And froze.
“Whatthe...”
He was surrounded.
He counted eight little girls in green dresses, knee socks, sashes, and little green berets. Sixteen bright eyes, ten sets of braids, two ponytails extending vertically from her head, like handlebars on a tricycle, one shining bob, one woven with a festival of colorful beads.
They might as well be Martians. Because he knew exactly as much about little girls as he did about little green men, and was just as pleased to see them. Absurdly, he was tempted to turn around and run exactly as if they were aliens. (“There were eight of them, officer, with these little beady eyes...”)
They stared back at him with that combination of unblinking, uncensored fascination and lack of self-consciousness particular to children.
“It smells like poop out here,” Annelise noted, matter-of-factly.
“Yep,” Mac agreed. “It’s for my garden.”
“Do worms poop?” a skinny one sporting brown knee socks and short horizontal ponytails asked. She had mischievous little brown eyes.
“Everything poops,” he said irritably.
They all giggled. He definitely hadn’t been going for a laugh, but he was flattered anyway. Unless they were laughingathim.
“Cows poop?” she persisted.
“Oh, yeah. Big time.”
“Horses?”
“You bet.”
“My dad?”
“Hopefully.”
This answer was apparently better than they ever dared dream. They erupted into squeals of hilarity and buckled over.
“Doangelspoop?” a little blond one asked slyly. A creative thinker, that one.
“I’m not prepared to answer ecumenical questions, ladies.”
At which point he took off at a brisk pace toward the main house.
“Avalon!” he bellowed.
She was nowhere in sight.
“What does eckmechanical mean?” This was Annelise, scurrying along on his heels, demanding the answer in the manner of a prosecutor.
“It, uh, means questions about angels,” Mac said, hoping if he lengthened his stride he could outrun them.
“How do you spell it?”
Uh-oh.
“I-T,” he hedged.
