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.

Blood Drive

Roe, Del, Mac and Cheese were walking back from the library where Mac had been putting up some fliers to try and get people interested in a new writing group he’d had an idea for after he went with his aunt to open mic a couple of times: “Comics and Comics!” the flier he put up had read. He had been interested in figuring out how to write jokes beforehand, like his aunt did for open mic, and put them in his comics. When he was making the fliers to put up he had told his aunt his idea. “That’s very cool!” I bet you’ll end up with the most fun comics around!” She had said, in between bites of a piece of fruit.

Roe and Del were discussing another flier they had seen there: “Volunteers wanted: Blood Drive! Help Hand out Cookies, and Blankets!” Roe took a stick offered by Cheese as they walked, and threw it off into a field for him to chase, watching him run excitedly through the grass. “The thing is,” Roe continued to Del after throwing the stick, “blood is super gross.” Del shrugged. “It’s not like you’re taking a bunch home, its for hospitals or whatever.” Roe shivered, “I guess.” and crinkled his nose looking at the flier. “Do we also get cookies, or do we only give them to the other people?” Del shrugged. “I dunno, we’ll have to ask.” Mac looked over at their flier. “Do you bring the blankets from home?” Del shrugged again. “I’m not sure. My brother went to a blood drive before and he said they give blood to hospitals for people who need it, but I didn’t know people could go and do stuff besides give blood, so I’m gonna ask.” Mac nodded. “If we don’t have to give our own actual blood, I might go.” Del nodded sagely, “I think you have to be a certain age and show your ID and stuff, and none us us have those yet.” Roe looked at the flier again. “Then maybe its ok. I don’t like getting shots either.” Mac pointed at Cheese, walking along dragging a bigger stick. “Cheese doesn’t like shots either, you guys are twins!” and they laughed.

They turned down the road towards all their homes. Del’s came up first. “You all want to come in and have some cocoa?” Del asked pulling open their screen door. “Yeah!” Roe said, jumping up the couple of steps to the porch. Cheese already knew the drill at Del’s house, and left his stick next to the porch, as Mac wiped his feet quickly on a rug outside and everyone went inside the kitchen. “The packets are in the cupboard right there.” Del said, pointing above Mac’s head, as Cheese rushed in to a comfy spot in the sun, next to a chair. Del got out a kettle and filled it with water, putting it on the stove, and Mac got out the packets of cocoa. “Can I use this mug?” Roe asked, getting them all cups down from another cupboard, “it’s my favorite color.” He held up a teal one that Del had made in a pottery class they took one summer. “Sure! Get me that Garfield one”, Del said, and Mac, stood on tiptoe looking around for the one he liked: a sunglasses wearing smiley face that read, ‘You’re Doing Awesome!’, which he took down and put on the table.

Del took the flier, “I’m gonna call and ask about this while the kettle heats up.” Mac nodded, and got out some drawings he was working on from his bag. Roe looked over at them, “I like that one, is that a shark?”. “Yeah, it’s a shark that can fly though, it’s one that lives in the water in the clouds, but it’s not really a funny one.” Roe looked at the pictures. “Those are great clouds.” Del dialed the phone, with the long coiled cord hanging down to the floor. “Hello?” they said, “Is this the person who put up the flier about volunteers for the blood drive? I have some questions.” Some quiet chattering proceeded out of the other end of the phone and Del listened. “Umm-hm, ok, yeah, I would like to volunteer, but I wanted to know is it only for people who are certain ages?” More chattering. “Me and some friends were thinking about coming to hand out cookies and blankets and stuff, but we weren’t sure if we were old enough or had to bring those from home, or how that worked, we’ve never been to a blood drive.” The phone chattered again for a while and Del wrote some things down on a pad of paper next to the phone. “OK cool, thanks!” Del said, and hung up the phone. Roe looked up from the cloud drawings. “The person said that they have a permission slip at the community center we can come pick up to get signed since there’s going to be blood. Also, they have their own blankets and cookies, to hand out, so we don’t need to bring any from home.” “Mac sipped some more on his mug. “I kinda started to want to make some cookies anyway, we should make some after we go pick up those permission slips.”

Del’s eyes lit up. “Oh yeah! I forgot to show you!” They got down a recipe book they kept in a cupboard next to some other recipe books, with ideas, instructions, doodles, cut outs from packages, and lots of other recipes mixed up inside it. Del let it fall open, and turned a few pages, then stopped at a tab. “Here!” They said, slamming the book down in front of the other two, causing a sleeping Cheese to jump a little on the rug. “Check it out! My latest find!” Del pointed to a newspaper clipping detailing some very artfully cookie-cuttered homemade dog treats. “I have a whole section in here for Cheese snacks.” Del said. “It’s this green tab.” Mac pushed aside his shark momentarily, and read the recipe. “Wow, this is a lot of his favorites, he loves pumpkins and blueberries!” They all looked over at him, and he looked back, wagging at the attention. “Maybe we can make something like this when we go get the permission slip. We can stop by Gina’s and get some canned pumpkin. I have some quarters.” Del dug around in their pockets. “I have half a bowl of blueberries at home left from out back, we can grab when we come back.” Roe said. “I have cookie cutters, and we can see if there’s any of this other stuff in my cabinets in my kitchen.” Mac said.

They all finished up their cocoa, and wriggled back into their windbreakers, heading back out onto the porch, as Cheese darted outside between them. As Del stopped to tie their shoelace quickly before they headed back up to the community center, Mac took his notebook out of his pocket and wrote “get permission slips, get stuff to make Cheese snacks”, and slipped the notebook back in his jacket as they all jumped and ran down the road, racing eachother and the dog.

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.

The Art Show

Del, Mac, Cheese, and Roe walked back from the recycling center in the soggy ditch next to the road. Each of them had a small pocket full of money from recycling cans. They had had an exciting trip, a new couple had moved into a trailer down the road from the recycling center, and were volunteering there when they arrived, their yard had been a source of fascination on the way, filled with bright recycled metal sculptures, and whirligigs, and murals and fences and boulders. When the man, Rye, told Mac and Roe that that was actually where he and Io lived, the Del jumped in with lots of questions about their art. Io smiled, “I’m sure you can make some just as wonderful. We taught ourselves how to make our art.”

As Del and Mac placed cans into the correct recycling containers, and Roe played with Cheese and a stick, the three discussed what kinds of things they could try making an art project with. “We should do something special for one of Mac’s zines, like a giant painting or something.” said Roe. Del nodded, maybe we could each make one of the pages something different and then bring them back together. Mac grinned happily, “I’ll choose one of my favorites! You all are great friends!”, and hugged Roe. “Lets surprise eachother and not show eachother the ones we work on until they’re finished!” Del said and they joined the hug with Cheese wiggling over too.