Planter Boxes

Mac sat in the yard, with the hose in a bucket, soap on himself, Cheese, and a pile of Cheese’s most prized toys and other favorite things. Del rode up, slightly wobbily, on their roller skates. “Hey! What are you two doing today?” Mac waved a soapy arm. “Hey! I’m cleaning Cheese’s house, and his stuff, and him, and me too.” Mac said laughing, and pointed, to a damp, but scrubbed, Cheese house, now brighter, on the outside, the smell of damp dog and soap wafting over on the breeze. Del leaned on the fence where some of Cheese’s blankets, scrubbed and washed, hung in the sun to dry, and reached down to scratch behind Cheese’s ears. His head was damp, and he wagged his tail at the attention, flicking water with each wag. Del laughed. Mac shook some soapy water off of his arms and dumped out the bucket onto some wildflowers near the road, the dry ground soaking up the water quickly. He turned on the squeaky spigot to fill the bucket back up to rinse some toys off, and went to get a box of things off of the porch. “Want to help me touch up the paint on Cheese’s house?” he held a cardboard box with brushes and jars with paint, a hammer, nails, a saw, and some pieces of wood pulled off from some pallets they had found back on a trail behind the convenience store. “I’m also going to fix some of my aunt’s planter boxes. ” Del peaked inside the box. “Roe gave me some paint from his brother’s workshop that we’re allowed to use, he had some baby food jars from when he watches his cousins, so I didn’t have to take the whole paint cans.” There were a few colors in the box, and now that it was scrubbed off, Cheese’s house had some clean, but bare spots. Del sat on the porch step, and began to untie the doubleknotted, sparkly laces on their skates.

Notebooks and Boxes

Del, Roe, and Mac sat outside the convenience store holding a shoe box, while Cheese went back and forth nuzzling them for pats on the head, and running into the weeds chasing crickets. Del held a slightly crumpled and dented flier they had found taped to a light pole: “Rummage Sale, Saturday, 2pm, Community Center”. Roe had a small notebook, spiralbound at the top, that he had taken to carrying in his pocket with a pencil he won at the library for reading all the books in his favorite science fiction series. He got the notebook there too, and Mac had a matching one, because Roe had asked the librarian if reading your friends comics counted in the reading program where you could win prizes for reading a certain number of hours, or books. He had asked Mac first if Mac thought it counted, and overhearing, Del said they thought it kind of wouldn’t be fair, because then you could just make every book you ever wanted and read it, but Roe said, that’s just what’s at the library anyway, which made sence to Mac, so he said he thought they probably counted comics your friends made, and they all decided to ask. When the librarian said they did, in fact, count comics your friend made as part of the reading contest, and they totaled up all the things they had read, they each got their prizes for comic book reading: Roe got his notebook and pencil, Mac got a notebook and a small pack of gel pens, and Del got a pack of temporary tattoos that had UFOs on them and some reflective slap bracelets to wear playing outside in the evening. They currently were sporting a UFO on each arm.