| |
Dust and Kittens
The day Pa left I was doin’ my least favorite chore, sweepin’. I had to sweep the entire house clean from dust. It’s a hard job, cause these days dust in Oklahoma is everywhere. The "Dust Bowl" they call it. I had other words for the clouds of dirt and dust, that I whispered to myself when no one was around.
Pa left the house for a while to tend to the animals. He’d tied a rope from the porch to the barn just in case he got lost in dust. Outside, the weather wasn’t too bad so we knew pa was safe.
I kept working. It seemed like our house had a least a bucket of dust. After a few hours, Mama peeked out the front door to see if Pa was comin’.
"Oh my, the dust is back!" yelled Mama, slamming the door. "I’m worried about your Pa. Where in God's dust covered world could he be?"
"Mama, I’ll go out and check!" Herb offered. "You can tie a rope to me and I’ll go find him".
So that’s what we did. We secured a rope to Herb and placed him in the whirling dust. If he needed help, he was commanded to yank on the rope for us to pull him back. After about ten minutes, Herb returned, dust covered and with soot on his face.
"Mama, Mama, something out there is burning. I don’t know why or how but I saw flames rising in the dust."
Mama hobbled over to her favorite chair (the rocker Pa gave Mama last Christmas) and fell into it exhausted and tearful. "There’s still a chance" I said with bravery I didn’t feel.
"C’mere children. C’mere and give me a hug".
Herb and I raced over to Mama and wept into the collar of her rough wool dress.
"Hide and seek?" My little sister, Lally, asked.
"No, Lally, we’re crying because of, because of your pa, we can’t find him. We just can’t."
I felt sorry for Pa, the dust gettin’ to him and all and I felt sorry for Lally not understandin’. We sat in our still-dust-covered house cryin’ for what felt like an eternity.
"What got y’all stirred up?" said a distant voice.
I looked up, tears still eruptin’ from my eyes makin’ it hard to see. A dark figure stood in the doorway.
"Pappy!" Lally screamed at the top of her little lungs. I screamed, too. It was unbelievable, Pa was up from the dead, well sort of, I guess he really didn’t die.
We hugged Pa until he yelled for us to stop and got everyone calmed down.
"Y’all thought I was dead?" Pa asked usin’ the same sort of chuckle we heard when he told us his favorite jokes.
"Of course not," Mama said, defending her feelings. "Thomas," Mama tone made us jump, "Where in tarnation have you been?"
Pa sat down and began his tale: "Well, I went outside to feed the animals. I got to the barn with not a bit of trouble. I fed most of the animals and was getting oats for Priscilla when I heard this bloodcurdlin’ scream. I ran outside as dust swirled around me lookin’ for the screamer. It was Mrs. O’Reilly, the one with all the cats. Her house had caught fire and she couldn’t control it. This to you may seem like a terrible situation, but it was worse. One of the cats was having kittens in the madness of it all." Pa chuckled, and his blue eyes shone like the Summer that had abandoned us so long ago. "So I threw buckets of sand and dust on the fire till it was out while Mrs. O’Reilly tended to the cat. We were mighty busy and the dust got so bad I just couldn’t come home."
Lally stared at Pa while he finished his story and then said, "Pappy, do you think we could keep a kitten?"
Pa laughed and laughed. "Sure, Sugar, that’s fine with me."
|
Help Us Stop Plagiarism -
Nearly all works at PnP are original. However a few people choose to plagiarize.
To check, choose a phrase from the work, then either drag and drop to the search box or copy and paste.
click on search and works at Google will be shown which match. Just to be sure, please do this before
you recommend or rate the work highly...
|
 |
|
|
|
Select a Random Work
from Stories
|
|
Welcome !
