rubbed her lower back muscles, as she made her way to the kids' work table. Callie's lessons done for the day, sat coloring within an outline of a group of people gathered around an old plank-board table. Between checking her son's division problems, Shel did a double-take. Her little girl had drawn the outline a bit earlier. Good job. But that wasn't it. The table had contained roughly the same items, and the people wore roughly the same cut and color of clothing. Wait a minute...her girl was only four. Below, she'd even written a little caption. California People.
"Very good job!" She hugged her daughter. Maybe someday, her kids would meet their aunt, uncle and two - maybe three by now - cousins. But today, of course, wasn't the time. And yeah, the news brought hopeful forecasts of the continuing peace-agreement...uhm- hmm, last week's coverage was different.
She then returned to Johnny's work. One of the problems was a six-digit, divided by a four-digit. "Honey, here," Shel peeled off a fresh sheet of paper. "It's always better to have plenty of room, especially for those kinds of problems." Yep, squeezing every last little bit, so like his dad.
She heard sniffling coming from Matt, who was reading, what appeared to be some sort of quasi-newspage. From where she sat, a small image what looked like a barbed-wire fence was posted along with several other sidebar gifs. Though Shel, being near-sighted, really couldn't tell. And besides, it was her boy's sniffle that caught her attention. Last evening the boys had been playing near the creek, and of course...we all know the drill: kids + water = WET! Mid june is just a tad too early.
"Son?" She approached her boy, whose back remained toward her. "Are you catching cold?" His response was a stifled sniffle, he didn't turn to face his mother. Instead he attempted to hide his face from her.
"Matt?" She spoke softly. He didn't have a cold. But something was wrong. She turned to her other two. "Class dismissed, go outside and play."
The two shot up, and were out of there.
"Matt?" She pulled over a chair. "What's wrong?" Her eyes scanned the site. It was one of those, fake news ...well, hopefully, fake news sites.
The boy began to sob. He looked up at his mom. "Are they gonna come and put gramma in the gulag?"
Shel paused. "No Matt... of course not." Her response, was to calm herself, as much as her child.
Was by no means, a ridiculous question...considering last Sunday. Short version goes like this: Not long after they'd gotten back from church, while Brian and the kids were playing tag, Gwin was puttering in one of her flower beds. A familiar whizz came by. Seriously, nobody likes slow-movers, but hey, it is what it is. Shel didn't think anything of it. Relaxing her tired back on a chaise, she nodded off.
"Cha-chah, BOOMMM!"
The old lady, with one hand on Pop's shotgun, with the other, fist in the air, blurted out a few choice words.
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