Fred
Fred closed the door as Kevin and Greg turned and headed back down the mountain. He looked at the bottle of Calamine lotion they had brought him. That surely was nice of them! Bet Meg had put them up to it though. Didn’t matter. It was still nice. He had some creosote salve that was doing the job of drying the rash up, but he took the Calamine lotion anyway. Wouldn’t hurt.
He hated to hear that Meg had to take pills. Guess she had it way worse than anyone else. Bet it would be a cold old day before he went picking anything for a woman again. He crossed to the shelves in the kitchen and gazed idly at his canned goods. Nothing looked good. He knew he should eat, but eating alone wasn’t much fun. Sure he had done it for years, well all of his life mostly. Food was what fueled his body so he had to eat. But yesterday had been nice.
Yep, there they sat at the table with silverware and drinks and he had felt really good. He liked the boys and he really like Meg, and she was really nice. Kind of reminded him of his own mother. Momma. Momma had short hair like Meg’s, but Meg’s was getting gray in it. Momma would never be gray. Momma would be forever young.
Fred walked to his bed and knelt beside it. Reaching far back he brought out the green box and placed it on the bed. Lifting the lid carefully he peered inside. He slowly picked up the picture of the pretty woman with the smiling face and kissed it. “Oh, momma, where has the time gone? It was only yesterday that you were making me cookies and smiling when I came home from school. Then you were gone!” He laid the picture gently in the box and took out another picture. This one was of a stooped, tired man with an air of hopelessness about him. Father.
Fred did not like to look at his father. That made him sadder than when he looked at mother. Mother made him happy, but father made him sad. Why? He had never wondered why before, but tonight he wondered. He remembered the years that he and father had been alone with mother gone. Some times he would find his father watching him very closely. That always freaked him out. But why? It was his father and he could watch him if he wanted to. But he never talked about mother. Neither one of them. It would have been normal for them to talk about her, but the subject just never came up. Maybe he would think about that tonight. Yes, tonight he would wonder about father and why they never talked about mother. Surely they both missed her. He made a mental note to think of father later then he opened the door and went out into the yard.
He pulled the vial out of his shirt pocket and knelt by the Antlion’s den. This time he had a different plan. He pulled out his long tweezers and held them near as he popped the cork with his thumb and dropped the ant into the funnel shaped depression. The sand began to move as the antlion prepared to grab it’s prize, but Fred was faster and caught the antlion by the leg and held it gently as it struggled trying to get the ant, trying to escape whatever held it fast. The ant scrambled frantically trying to climb out of the pit of death. Maybe mother had tried to escape father that way. Surely she had tried to escape. He closed his eyes and he saw the struggle. He saw mother’s eyes wide with terror. He saw her backing away. He heard her sobs as she flailed at father. He heard her scream. “No! No! For God’s sake stop! Stop!” He heard her dying breath and he saw her vacant eyes. But he did not see father.
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