Chapter Five

 

 

Turns out Gabrielle’s mother & grandmother come in the Blue Heron Restaurant all the time for lunch and are now chummy with Mama. Best of all, Gabrielle and I were starting to be friends in Mrs.Stankoski’s sixth grade class. Might as well, we didn’t have no other friends.

So, I handed a note to Rhonda the bus driver. Mama was home on her day off. Gabrielle was riding home with me after school. And her mother was picking her up at six o’clock to eat at the Blue Heron Restaurant.

I was nervous.

I didn’t live in no mansion on the lake like she did. All we had was a one room apartment next to the Blue Heron Restaurant. But I had a heron bird, so I’d planned to walk to the willows with her and find that bird.

All Mama said was, “Don’t be long, Blue.”

“Pine Lake ain’t heaven, but darn close to it,” I tell Gabrielle, building up the adventure as we meandered over to the lake from my apartment building. “It ain’t far.”

In early October, it was all peaceful-quiet without them motorboats zipping and swishing through feather-white wakes. All the leaves had turned pretty gold and rust colors (Mississippi leaves is always green, so this was new to me). We was kicking them leaves, making cracklin’ sounds, and laughing. Gabrielle was rattling on and on about nothing, but I didn’t mind. The searing, summer sun had scorched the cattails brown and purple. And the cooler weather had chased every living thing away, except for the pesky mosquitoes and the blue dragonflies that eat them. Obviously, some of them was still around cause Gabrielle was scatching worse than a dog with flees. Frogs was mostly holed up deep in the dirt, getting ready for winter.

“Still some frogs left, plopping and stirring up sour, green algae smells, “I said to Gabrielle, who was holding her nose. I figured I had to say something about that awful smell.

Searching high and low, I seen my blue heron weren’t no where to be found.

“Guess he’s gone,” I tell Gabrielle all disappointed.

“Birds migrate south in the winter,” she says.

Funny we migrated from the south, I’m thinking to myself.

“He ain’t never coming back,” I said, skipping rocks at the water’s edge, thinkin’ more of my daddy.

Suddenly, we had the eerie feeling we weren’t alone. Branches snapped. Wings fluttered. Two green-headed mallard ducks scattered; circled above squawking ka-ronk, ka-ronk. Then splashed back into the water, skidding across the lake like a pair of water skiers. Instinctively, we dashed behind the dried up cattails and hunkered down.

Hiding.

Peeking out, we seen an old man with no legs seated in a scooter cart by the edge of the lake. Crying. He didn’t notice us. Or did he? Just in case we stayed hidden, not wanting to embarrass him, until he’d wheeled himself away.

Gabrielle asks, “Wondering why he was crying? “

“Shoot, maybe he don’t have no friends at the old folks home,” I answered back, knowing that the home was not far away.

“I’d like to be your friend,” Gabrielle announced shyly, walking back. This time she wasn’t just gabbin’.

I had a friend! Magic!