“Excellent! They certainly are. Just like people, different kinds of worms have different kinds of jobs. Earthworms help the soil. They eat stuff and poop it out and the soil becomes richer and more fertile and your vegetables become more delicious.”
“So does that mean when we eat tomatoes and lettuce and stuff we’re kind of eating worm poop?” Annelise asked.
He hesitated only a second. “Absolutely,” he intoned solemnly.
If she never ate a salad again, that was his revenge on Avalon.
“Awesome!” she breathed.
They didn’t make little girls like they used to. Or maybe they did, and they just felt less obliged to be sissies for little boys, which was probably a good thing.
Avalon, for that matter, had never felt obliged to be a sissy of any kind.
He found coffee cans for them to drop the worms into, if and when they found them, and set them loose in his garden, about a quarter acre of tomatoes and peppers, and he kept an eye on them, because he simply couldn’t help it because they were just solittle, and how did parents not panic when they set these reckless, energetic, gleeful little creatures loose in the world?
He did his own worm hunting. He found only one.
He could see the house from this field, and out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Avalon peering out at them from the balcony. With binoculars. Even from where he stood he could imagine her grinning.
He didn’t have time to be incensed because he felt obliged by his sheer size and adultness to watch over his charges as surely as if he were a sheepdog. He was a slave to some sort of atavistic protective instinct.
They never stopped talking. Never. It was like being trapped in an aviary.Peep peep peep peep peep peepin their little high-pitched voices. A ceaseless bombardment of often startling incisive questions, sprung from minds so alarmingly quick and sparklingly new it made him feel like a dullard, like every bit of his thirty-two years. They shrieked in triumph when one of them found a worm, and they plucked with surgically delicate fingers, and showed him every single one.
He had to admit, they were better at this stuff than he was.
An hour had gone by in an eye blink, and yet it felt like he’d been sprinting that entire time.
And they’d found ten tomato worms.
That was a damn good hour’s work.
He gave each of them a beautiful ripe tomato. As solemnly as if he were bestowing badges. And as it turned out, he kind of was.
They accepted them with touching awe and great care into their cupped hands.
“Girls!” Avalon had her hands cupped to her mouth like a mini-megaphone and was now shouting through them. “Snack time!”
He pivoted and marched toward Avalon. Unbeknownst to him, he looked like a general leading a miniature parade. They followed him at top scurrying speed toward Avalon.
Avalon had set up a long picnic table neatly arrayed with shiny craft supplies, the kind that crows would just love to steal. A golden heap of hot dog buns and bowls of plastic-wrapped something or other and a cooler with juice and sodas poking up out of the ice were at the other end.
Off in the distance near the driveway, willowy Eden Harwood was moving at a brisk mom-jog, one of those giant ubiquitous mom bags slung over her shoulder, heading straight for the picnic table.
The girls broke ranks and swarmed upon all the food and shininess with their typical gusto.
“Hang on, ladies,” Avalon commanded. “We’re going to do this politely. Remember how you need to earn your good manners badge? Say good-bye to Mac.”
They paused to wave. “Bye, Mac! Thank you, Mac! Bye! Bye! Bye!”
He waved, charmed by the thank yous and the utter cluelessness to the chaos they had imposed upon his world. They took for granted that their needs would be accommodated. Happy little tyrants.
He smiled, despite himself. Albeit tautly.
Because he was not well pleased at how Avalon Harwood had engineered the disruption of his day.
“Hey, Mac. You kind of looked like a mama duck there with your little posse. You seemed to be having such a great time I hesitated to interrupt.”
“Avalon,” he said pleasantly. And casually transformed his waving hand into a single upraised middle finger and rubbed his forehead with it.
