Wednesday (fiction) Story Tellin'

Rows and Rows

We waited until our parents had finished their second bottle of wine or beer before following Danny down into the woods. By that time, Danny's mother would pull her sunglasses down over her glassy drunken eyes as our fathers propped their feet up on the deck railing. Taupe canvas slip-on loafers attached to four separate pairs of waxy clean ankles all lined up on the railing like birds on a telephone wire as the sun dipped below the suburban skyline of identical tudor houses. Our parents'  laughter grew louder with each pop of the top- Miller, Budweiser, Matilda Bay wine coolers. By the third bottle we were certain that the children were forgotten and we were free to wander away.

"We could walk five miles and still be able to hear them," Danny reasoned with my younger sister who balked at the thought of letting our mother out of her sight. "If we got lost- which is not going to happen- we would follow their voices home." To my sister's credit she was only four where the rest of us were at least five. She also was easily peer pressured.

The six of us slid off the deck and past my beloved sandbox where the sand was probably still warm from the afternoon sun. My shovel and rake seemed like baby stuff now that we were following Danny to the woods. A half dozen acre grove of trees sat between the border of our subdivision and a farm whose owner refused to sell until ten years later. Now town homes are scattered where cows grazed and where we saw the plane.

A patch of wildlife... be it only a block or two... appears as enormous as Yellowstone National Park when you are six and only among friends under the age of eight. We carefully followed Danny's long, bony legs over bugleweeds and under bridals wreath bushes. We stopped when Danny stopped and there it sat just as Danny promised. Propped up against a tree was a small single seat airplane. It's nose was touching the ground where pieces of the propeller were gathered as though a campfire were to erupt from it at any moment. The tail of the plane pressed against the tree and while most of us walked no closer than ten feet from the wreckage, Danny and I continued forward. We peered inside through the cracked windshield, our greasy hand prints marking the plexiglass. My sister began to cry and I don't know why I was disappointed that the burgundy lined cockpit was empty.

"It was probably a stunt plane who had to make an emergency landing on that farm," my mother reasoned years later when I told her the story of our adventure. "Maybe I even remember reading about it in the newspaper. But I absolutely don't remember ever drinking wine from a box." She lowered her sunglasses back over her eyes and leaned back to admire the landscape: five rows of beige townhouses and four trees no taller than our SUV.