Beech Tree News Network

This past weekend, Garey, Natalie and Sabria, and I traveled to Corner Alabama to see Garey’s mom, Aggie.  It pleased Aggie so much that Natalie and Sabria came with us.  Garey always does little things around the place that Aggie can’t do, and Nat and I do dishes and make beds and such.  Sabria and Aggie have always shared a strong bond with one another, and they visit like a couple of old gals.  It does my heart good to watch them together.  It was Decoration Day on Saturday, at the cemetery where Garey’s grandparents are buried, so Garey and Aggie loaded up flowers and went that way.

            It was a beautiful day, and Nat and Sabria and I decided to spend it outside.  I thought it was a good opportunity to teach them how to play Kick-the-can, a game my sisters and our friends played when we lived at Mt. Washington.  It’s a simple game where one person stands guard over a simple tin can, counts to 100 while the other players hide then tries to tag them out before they get a chance to kick the can. 

            Sabria took her role as tin-can-guarder very seriously, and would not wander very far from the can in order to look for Nat and me, who were both hiding behind some shrubs at the side of the house.  Natalie decided to run out in plain sight in order to distract Sabria, while I sneaked up from behind and kicked the can.

            At this juncture, I need to backtrack a bit.  Earlier in the day, Natalie, Garey and Sabria had had this in-depth discussion about the big wart on Sabria’s right leg, just below her knee.  They told Sabria she needed to let one or the other of them start treating it with something like Compound W before the summer rolled around or she was going to get it caught on something and torn off, and then she’d be in a lot worse pain than if she’d just let them put something on it to be rid of it.  She refused in the way hard-headed little kids refuse, so everybody decided to just let it be.

            Meanwhile, back at Kick-the-can, Natalie ran out from her hiding place in the shrubs beside the house, and Sabria took off after her.  I ran toward the can, but Sabria caught sight of me and spun around, running toward the can.  What happened next can only be explained as an arrested development episode on my part, a teleporting back to an earlier life.  I became a barefooted rascal of a child, running out from behind the oak tree on Markwell Lane, determined to win at any cost.   As Sabria reached out to tag me, I knocked her down and kicked the can.

            I turned around to see my granddaughter sprawled on the ground, holding her right leg, blood seeping through her pants.  I was horrified at what I had done.  I rolled up her pant leg, and sure enough, there was the wart, hanging by a thread of skin, bleeding like a stuck hog.

            “Baby, I’m so sorry,” I said.

            “Why did you do that!” she sobbed.

            “I wanted to kick the can,” I explained, lamely.

            Garey and Aggie pulled into the driveway about that time, so Garey helped get her into the bathroom, where he cleaned the wound and bandaged it.  As Garey listened, Sabria proceeded to tell her Papa how I had knocked her down in order to “kick the stupid can.” 

            “I tagged you before you kicked the can, so it doesn’t count, Gee!” Sabria yelled from the bathroom.  Sabria, like her mama, is big on rule-following and comeuppance for rule-breakers.

            As I lay in bed that night, I remembered the sounds of my sisters and our friends running around the yard on Markwell Lane, right about dusk, a single 100 watt bulb from the front porch casting a thin veil of light across the sidewalk and onto a small tin can.  There were shouts and screams as people were tagged, and then the sound of a foot, my foot, catching a tin can and sending it spinning and tumbling through the air. 

            “I win,” I whispered, as I drifted off to sleep.