I followed the small, dewy-wet footprints step by step down the long red brick walkway and finally around the house corner. 

            Monte Morton lay crouched on his hands and knees, nose hovering only inches from the flowerbed, the damp, bare palms of his feet shown pink in the morning sun, his was a view of dirt and fallen rose petals, but he’d heard my footsteps.

            “Lionants. They’re the best. You know why?”

            “No, honestly. No.” “I honestly haven’t a clue.”  

            “’Cause they can dig below dirt, crawl on the dirt, and fly. All three – plus they bite!”

            Curled with his back to me in grass-stained blue denim overalls, nose nearly touching the dark earth, he looked like a scarab beetle himself instead of a little boy. I decided it best not to mention that fact though. He might make a day of pretending to be a big Egyptian beetle and it would likely get him in trouble, his five-year-old boy fingers becoming pincers for the day and looking for prey. Some words are best left unsaid, even if true. 

            From across /over the line of rose bushes between my yard and the Morton’s, I could easily hear Margaret Ann’s words. Without even trying, her voice just seems to come with a knack for carrying a long ways through the air. She was on the porch and was telling someone inside the house that all the breakfast dishes had already been washed. But whomever she’d been talking to must have noticed Margaret Ann didn’t say anything about the dishes being dried and put back in the cupboard.

            “Oh, all right, but you only told me to wash up the dishes, nothing about afterwards”, followed by the sound of stomping feet and the squeak of the screen door closing. I was afraid Margaret Ann and I were going to get off to a late start even though we’d been planning this Saturday for a long spell.

            Monte stayed quiet and curled, nose to the ground, taking no notice as I turned and left him and the lionants to head across the walkway to Margaret Ann’s house.

            There was no need for me to knock on a Saturday morning. I climbed/stepped up the three familiar worn wooden stairs and onto the back porch, and it was my turn to open the screen door. Inside I could see Margaret Ann at the kitchen wash-sink, her back to me, worrying a cereal bowel hard with a towel like it needed punishing. Without even turning her head, she said, “Elora, grab the other towel and get to work helping me,” as her left elbow pointed me toward a heavy cast iron skillet. I spotted the towel easily enough and picked it up, but the big iron skillet was a different story. On my first try I nearly dropped it.

            Margaret Ann said, “Watch out, if it hits the floor, I’ll have to wash it all over again! We’ll never get going in time to catch the…. ”. Oops, she almost said it out loud, but caught herself in time. With her big family someone was almost always around. She looked me right in the eye for the first time as we both held our breaths, hoping that no one had heard, but everyone must have been too busy with their own affairs to mind our chattering.

            Now ready for the skillet’s weight I grabbed it up and made it dry with a few quick strokes of the cotton towel. I was almost as familiar with Margaret Ann’s kitchen as my own, and knew exactly what slot of the cupboard the breakfast skillet belonged in. As soon as we finished the last of the melamine cereal bowls and stacked them in a more or less orderly fashion, we slipped down the hall to Margaret Ann’s room. We knew her older sister, with whom Margaret Ann shared the room, would be gone with her beau this morning, so we’d be alone. Privacy was a prized treat with so many Morton’s brothers and sisters.

            Quietly but with a great flourish Margaret Ann pulled open the box lid. Inside at first sight, were only some old fashion cutouts from the newspaper she’d told her sister she couldn’t part with, but under the slapdash pile of paper cutouts of movie stars, was what we’d come to retrieve. Margaret Ann and I paused, holding still like statures and listened hard to make extra sure no one was coming down the hall, before she dove her hand down under the papers to the very bottom of the box and pulled out a movie magazine. The magazine really belonged to me, but if I brought it home I would not only get in trouble for owning such unseemly reading material, but it would also get confiscated. Then my two weeks worth’s of allowance would be gone for nothing. It had really been Margaret Ann’s idea for me to buy the March 1926 issue of Silver Screen magazine and keep it at her house.

            “Really Elora, it’s a splendid idea. You’ve got the money but no safe place to keep it.  I don’t have the money, but I can store it safely under my bed. Just perfect in fact.” So my allowance paid for the magazine, but Margaret Ann got to keep it in her room, which meant she had it with her most of the time, and I only got to visit it.  But today we were taking it along with us and the newest Pacific Electric’s Red Car schedule out to a far corner of my parent’s orange grove to make our important plans.

See Voices 21 for Valentino's Day.